Category Archives: letters

letters, memories

Letters Between Friends

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Corrected, redacted, and now available as an e-book. And as a paperback, though that’s quite expensive.

My latest book, Letters Between Friends, is different. It is a collection of letters, mostly sent as e-mails, between Gary Boden and me. We met in high school, most likely when we were both on the track team. Our real friendship began in college, however, and continued on into adulthood. We had many common interests, including track, boy scouts, political views, and summers spent on Point Judith Pond in Rhode Island, our houses visible to each other less than a mile away but a five mile drive to get from one to the other.

The idea for this book came to me shortly after Gary died in July 2020 (not from covid). I took a little time to pull up all e-mails he and I had shared through the years, all of which I had saved. I found it to be a rich exchange of ideas, happenings, and on occasion foolishness.

The idea came to me to pull these together into a book to present to Gary’s widow and daughter. I didn’t know if Gary saved e-mails the way I did. I thought that would be a nice gesture, a lasting memorial to Gary and to the friendship we shared. While I exchanged e-mails and sometimes snail mail with a few other friends, they amounted to a tiny fraction of the amount Gary and I shared.

I asked Gary’s daughter about what e-mails he kept, which turned out to be fewer than what I had. I’m not sure mine are a comprehensive record. In fact, I have only one letter before 2007, one that Gary sent with a Christmas card in 1993. I had an e-mail program I used before 2007, but alas, those letters are lost into the ether.

The letters in the book include some from a few other besides Gary. In those years when I made trips to Rhode Island, four of us would try to get together. The e-mails usually flew between us as we tried to coordinate our schedules. Then, after my visit, we kept up the multi-person exchange for a while. All but one of those correspondents were fellow 1970 graduates of Cranston High School East.

These letters are not works of art. They are what would be called “familiar letters”, not artistic letters. They capture normal thoughts and communications. For me, those are the letters I tend to like to read best. I left in all the typos so as to reflect what we read at the time they were sent. Here’s an example, showing excerpts from letters we exchanged on 17 November 2008, a day Gary and I celebrated as National Boise Idaho Potatoe Day (don’t ask why):

David to Gary: I begin my work day, at least the pre-hours, by wishing you felicitations on this glorious day. I’m afraid the adherants [sic] to what should be a national holiday are slowly dwindling in number. Is it more than 2? Or has it always been just 2?

Thanks for coming by and reading my blog….

Gary to David: May you also have a grand and glorious NBIPD.

It’s always been only two.

I don’t know how you keep up the volume of writing you do and have time for anything else. Maybe it’s that engineering training and a billable hours mindset that makes you efficient. It’s fun to check in on your blog and I’m curious about a lot of things so your topics naturally raise some questions for me.

I had planned to have the book ready to go in time to take it to Rhode Island in August 2022. Unfortunately, I had to cancel my trip there. So I completed the book and shipped it. I published it on Amazon so that a few friends could buy copies. My plans were to pull the book down after everyone had made their purchases. However, one of the correspondents thought it was so great, he posted it on Facebook for the world to see. I quickly asked him to take it down, explaining that I hadn’t sought permission of the copyright owners for publishing their letters to a broad audience. He removed it. Another correspondent in the book said he, too, thought I ought to let the book be known to the world.

So I went through the process of obtaining the permissions needed. Two correspondents asked for a handful of redactions, which I made. I saw two redactions that should happen as well as a half-dozen typos to correct, and I did those. Then I reformatted the book for print, and developed an e-book. I uploaded the new files on Saturday, March 18. Amazon approved them the same day. The book had remained for sale all the time while the permissions process was progressing.

Now, Letters Between Friends is out for purchase by the general public. Letter collections are not very interesting to most people, so I don’t expect this to be a best-seller. In fact, I would be shocked if it sold more than 10 copies. But it’s out there, for whatever good it will do. It is available at Amazon should you want a copy.

A tribute to a friendship cut short.

home improvements, letters, self-publishing, Writing

Thinking About Letters

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I made this presentation on Tuesday, but still haven’t put the stuff for it away.

When I came to The Dungeon this morning, mug of coffee in one hand and laptop computer in the other, I was greeted by a mess. Lots of writing related stuff strewn on my near worktable. A few stray income tax forms on the printer table (making me wonder if I forgot to put one in the packet I mailed to the IRS).

And also on my worktable, some things about letters. Three are notebooks that contain just a few letters, the ones I’ve been digitizing then discarding the originals. I need to consolidate them into one notebook and complete the process. Three notebooks to go to a thrift store, a little more free shelf space.

Somewhere, either on the worktable or possibly upstairs still, are the things needed for the presentation I did on Tuesday to the Northwest Arkansas Letter Writers Society. The topic was “Letter Collections: A Window on History in the Making”. The presentation went well, and we had a good number of people there. Now I need to get a number of books back on shelves and my notes somehow stored so that I can find them again should I ever need them.

Gary is gone, but the letters between us live on. A few edits to this are possible this month. Hang on, folks. It will soon be done and available.

Then, there was the book Letters Between Friends. I thought I had written about this before, but a look back on my posts indicates I haven’t. I guess that was because I wasn’t quite ready to announce this project to the world. And, actually, I’m still not. I finally have permissions from all copyright holders to publish the book, but I had a few redactions to do then reformat as needed. I also felt I should add an e-book, which takes some more formatting.

But I found my copy of it, before redactions, on my worktable. I need to find two hours of time for completing this project, then let people know it’s available. It will be of interest only to family members and classmates of the people involved. Perhaps 20 copies will be sold. I would consider that a success.

But when will I get to it? The two Bible studies I’m working on have consumed all my available writing time. And they will do so today. Somehow I have to carve out those two hours to complete that project.

And another two hours to complete what’s needed to get rid of those three notebooks. That may not take that much time. I should get to it. Right after supervising two workmen at the house today, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. Right after the weekly grocery run. Right after finishing a letter to my oldest grandson. Right after…

…oh, where is my to-do list?

Oh, yes, I’m still reading that scholarly magazine article about letter collections. I should finish that today and dump the pixels back into the ether.

Bible study, goals, letters, self-publishing, The Gutter Chronicles

Monthly Progress and Goals

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The sequel is done, and close to publishing ready. Hang in there, folks.

And, for the second month in a row, I forgot all about publishing my progress against my goals as the first post for the month and setting new goals. I should have done that Friday. What was I thinking? Well, a couple of days late, here they are. The progress first.

  • Blog twice a week, on Monday and Friday. Yes, I did this. I liked the series I thought of, posting library memories.
  • I won’t be attending writers meetings this month. There was nothing to do about this goal.
  • Edit and complete A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 6. … Part of this goal is to, at the end of February, have a publication-ready book. I completed this! I was able to knuckle down, finish all chapters and sections, add the Introduction, and declare the book publication ready. I even figured out a cover scheme for the series.
  • Begin work writing AWTHW Part 7, simultaneously to when I teach it. I have been doing this. Fairly successfully I think. My co-teacher and I have now taught two lessons in the series. Chapter 1 corresponding to Lesson 1 is complete. Chapter 2 corresponding to Lesson 2 is close to complete. Last night, after doing other things and watching some Miss Marple movies, I spent a very productive hour on it. I think I shall be able to finish Ch 2 today, putting me ahead of where I usually am for this simultaneous teaching and writing.
  • Get TKTTT to beta readers and receive their feedback back. I did this. One of two grandchildren read it and gave me feedback. I also sent it to an elementary school teacher to give to students who will be beta readers. No feedback from them yet, but it will be coming soon.
  • Work with the cover designer of TKTTT. Yes, I got with the cover designer. I gave her my ideas, and she will work with it. Hopefully she is working on it now.
Gary is gone, but the letters between us live on. A few edits to this are possible this month.

So, here are some goals for March.

  • As always, blog twice a week, on Monday and Friday.
  • Attend four writers meetings this month. I already attended the first one, held last Thursday.
  • Keep up with A Walk Through Holy Week writing simultaneously with teaching. You never know what curve balls life will throw at you, but, based on how this is starting, I think it is doable. By the end of March, I should be through Chapter 5 and have started on Chapter 6.
  • Finish either Part 4 or Part 5 of AWTHW. I actually worked on this a little last month. Or maybe that was Thursday-Friday, which would be this month. I spent time reading where I was when I pulled of this last year, split and organized files in the new part designations, and put a few words down. Part 5 is farther along than Part 4, but I feel like I want to get Part 4 done first. We’ll see.
  • Organize some writing ideas files. I began this last Thursday and presented them to the Scribblers & Scribes critique group. They liked one idea a lot, but not the other. A new idea came to me on Saturday and fleshed out a bit with brainstorming yesterday. I plan to document that on Monday—today—the put it out of my head until the time is right.
  • Get any needed edits done to TKTTT according to feedback from beta readers.
  • Make a handful of edits to Letters Between Friends, and republish it. This is based on feedback from copyright holders. This is not really urgent, and I may put this off until AWTHW and TKTTT are further down the road.

That’s enough. If I get all that done this will truly have been a productive month. Also, my business partnership taxes are due this month, which will cut into my writing time.

Bible study, Documenting America, letters, The Forest Throne, Writing

2023 Goals

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A few days ago, I gave some January goals. I did that before I had given a lot of thought to 2023 as a whole. I’ve since been able to do that, and have come up with some goals for the year. Here they are.

  • Edit and publish The Key To Time Travel
  • Determine the structure of the overall A Walk Through Holy Week Bible study series, and whether it will be six parts or seven. It’s being taught in six parts over six Lent/Easter seasons, but I’m thinking it’s better as seven parts in books.
  • Finish/edit Part 4 (what may become Part 5) of AWTHW
  • Finish/edit Part 3 (what may become Part 4) of AWTHW
  • Write Part 5 (what may become Part 6) of AWTHW, simultaneously with teaching it.
  • Start Part 1 of AWTHW, after determining the overall structure, of course.
  • Depending on how work on this goes, publish some or all of the completed parts of the study.
  • Start writing the next book in the Documenting America series. It will cover the years 1761 to 1775 and is tentatively titled Run-up To Revolution.
  • One other item, which is non-commercial but which will be a book, is to start transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia (1981-1983). I don’t think this is something that I can finish in one year, given that it will be fill-in work when I have nothing else to go, but I’d like to at least start it. I’ll wait to start it, however, until I get a few more disaccumulation items done.

Since these are goals covering a full year, and since way leads on to way along this path through the woods, I reserve the right to change these as the months go by. Possibly there will be updates. If not, look for a post in late December 2023 as to how I did in 2023 relative to these goals.

expatriate life, family, letters, Stars and Stripes, The Forest Throne, travel

More On Those Three Special Projects

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Back on September 26, I posted about three special projects I was involved in and how they were keeping me from writing. The projects were:

  • inventorying the Stars and Stripes newspapers before donating them to the University of Rhode Island Library.
  • Digitizing years of printouts of letters, as a deaccumulation project.
  • Finishing the Kuwait Letters book and make it available to family members.
These newspapers, on which Dad set type in Africa and Europe during WW2, are on their way to their new home and, hopefully, permanent place of preservation.

I wrote about each of these projects in the previous post and won’t detail them here.

By a strange set of coincidences, all three projects finished on Friday, November 11.

I finished inventorying the Stars and Stripes not too long after I made that post in September. But the newspapers sat waiting on me to make up my mind whether I was going to ship them to the library or not. I hemmed and I hawed. I carried two of the three boxes upstairs. I gave it much thought. Did I really want to trust this precious cargo to a shipping company? At last I made a to-do list of all the things I have to do and included shipping them.

Dad at the truck-mounted mobile unit of the “Stars and Stripes”, putting out the Combat Edition in Italy.

When I saw the large number of tasks I must complete, I decided to go ahead and ship them. I self-scheduled that for Friday afternoon and brought the last of the boxes upstairs from The Dungeon. I loaded them in the car and headed to UPS. I wasn’t impressed with the people there and how they might handle them. They recommended re-packing the newspapers in their boxes, which provides better assurance of safe delivery (and insurance against damage). I decided to go ahead and do it.

I left the boxes there. Due to busyness on UPS’s part, I wasn’t able to hang around and supervise the transfer to new packaging. I’m trusting that they will do it right and, when they are delivered this Thursday, November 17th, the Library will find them undamaged.

See that tall stack of paper? About half of it came out of old correspondence notebooks.

Also on Friday, around 9:00 a.m., I completed scanning the printouts of emails I found in a thick, bulging, 3-ring binder. These were from 2002 to 2005, consisting mainly of e-mails and messages that I sent or received when I was a member of and later moderator/administrator of a couple of poetry critique boards. I wrote a little about that in this post. The letters were arranged more or less chronologically, but were interspersed with printouts of poetry critiques I made during that time. Those critiques, posted at the poetry boards, might be considered correspondence but I chose not to do so. I will deal with the critiques some time in the future.

That one notebook is now devoid or letters. It is full of those critiques, but they are consolidated from two smaller binders and are in an arrangement that I can tackle with less effort sometime in the future.

These are not all the letters I need to digitize, but they represent the lion’s share of them. I have one other notebook that contains letters from about 1990 to 1999, a mix of typed, handwritten, and e-mail letters. I started on them Saturday. But it’s just a 3/4-inch binder and will be short work. I hadn’t even counted them as part of the special project. Why? Because this binder is small enough that I won’t mind if it stays on the shelf for several years. It won’t, but it’s not part of the special project.

The Kuwait Letters book is done. This is the final cover—before the typo was fixed.

The other special project was my book of correspondence, The Kuwait Years In Letters. I’ve blogged about this several times, one of the best of those posts being here. When I wrote that, in June 2022, I had the proof copy in hand. My wife and I were either just starting or well along in the proofreading process. I finished that a couple of weeks ago. But before publishing, I decided to ask the family about the cover and if they wanted changes in that. Yes, they did. I put together four alternate covers, and they chose one as the best.

I uploaded that cover to Amazon, and it was approved with no changes. I again sent it out to the family. My daughter liked it, but found one typo on the back cover. I fixed that on Friday night, and uploaded to Amazon. Since the only difference between that cover and the last one was a single letter on the back cover, I knew it was going to be accepted. I went to bed Friday night knowing it was all over but the ordering. Sure enough, I started Saturday morning by looking at an e-mail from Amazon. The cover was accepted and the book published. I quickly ordered family copies. Once they arrive and are in good condition, I will unpublish the book.

So, in a 14 hour time span, those three special projects that were preventing me from doing much writing came to a close. I will continue to worry about the Stars and Stripes until I hear from the Library. I will continue to scan a handful of letters most days, probably into early December. I will anxiously await the arrival of the Kuwait Letters book and the family’s reception of it after Christmas.

But I think, now, I will feel much better about carving out time to write. When will I start? Maybe as early as today. The Key To Time Travel awaits my attention. Eddie is in trouble, and I need to figure out how to extricate himself from it.

home improvements, letters, The Forest Throne, Writing

A Project Complete

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The brush pile back in the spring.

Dateline: Saturday, 22 Oct 2022

It was earlier this year, in the spring, that my wife asked me to do something that I wasn’t excited about. On our wood lot, adjacent to our house lot on the uphill side, was a large brush pile. For years I took deadfall from the trees in our front yard and built that brush pile. We didn’t own the lot at the time, but the owner was nowhere to be found, and rather than haul the stuff way downhill behind our lot, I put them “next door.” By this spring, the pile was about 7 feet high.

For years it was nicely hidden from the street by the many saplings and weeds in the space between the street and the big trees line. Back in early 2020, the power company cleared out all the saplings so as to keep them from growing up to the powerline. They also took out a few of the bigger trees. Since then, I’ve worked on that area to keep it in grass but let the blackberry bushes grow up. As a result, the brush pile became quite visible from the street. Lynda asked me to move it way down the hill.

Being a dutiful husband, I resisted. Then I said okay, I’ll do it. I think it was April or May that I began. That was about the beginning of “snake season,” and I was sure that they would be living in the pile. So I started very carefully. Working from the downhill side, standing as far away from the pile as I could, I used a strong garden rake to pull the top branches off the pile. Once I got them to the ground, I threw them down the hill, saving my legs.

Taken from close to the same place as the previous photo, the brush pile is gone! It’s beginning to look like the wooded park I want it to be.

The first day, I spent maybe half an hour on that. I figured I had to take the pile down a little at a time. Week by week, I raked branches off the top and threw them down the hill. Slowly, I could see the pile height reducing. Slowly, if the snakes were in it, they must have moved because I never saw even a one. This summer, when the oldest grandson and his friend were here, I hired them to move the thrown branches to the downhill brush pile.

I’ll fast forward. Around three weeks ago, the brush pile was gone. All that remained was several little piles of smaller sticks. I raked these up into small piles. This week, I spent time almost every day taking wheelbarrow loads down the hill to the lower brush pile. This morning, I took the last three loads away. I had already raked and smoothed the area of the brush pile. This is near enough to the tree line that I hope some volunteer grass will sprout next year.

And why, you ask, am I telling you this? A few weeks back, I posted about special projects I was working on. Those were three things in the house—paperwork stuff—that were cutting into my writing time and sapping my energy. I forgot about this big project mainly because it was outdoor work. But it was also taking time and energy. Now it’s done. Also, my work on the Stars and Stripes is very, very close to being done. They are inventoried and boxed. All that is left is to take them by the UPS store, get their guidance on whether the packaging is suitable for transporting with them. Then, I’ll add padding to the boxes, seal and label them, and ship them. That will then be only two special project left.

I’m making good progress on digitizing my old letters. My wife and I are also making good progress on proofreading the Kuwait Letters book. I believe we have only five or six reading sessions left. I’ve been making corrections as we go, including moving a couple of un-dated letters that we decided I had in the wrong place. We are down to 45 pages in the original book, maybe 60 pages including items I found after I had the proof copy printed.

I feel so good about these projects, that this week I plan to back off the letter digitizing some and resume work on my latest novel. Just today, I wrote a letter to grandson Ezra, detailing more of the plot to him so that he can be thinking about it and help me if he can think of anything else.

This all feels good. I’m going to go now and finish that letter, or maybe read some and save that for tomorrow. Life awaits. I will awaken the dawn.

letters, poetry, Politics, Writing

The Poetry Wars

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As I’ve described in other posts, one of the special projects that is taking me from my writing is scanning/saving copies of old letters. The goal is to get rid of notebooks of paper. The letters get saves to the “cloud”, also to my harddrive, and I can get rid of notebooks.

I’m currently working on a notebook that contains letters from 2003-04. This was a time when:

  • I was still working fulltime, in a fairly stressful job;
  • We had four foster kids, up until June 2003
  • I was a moderator at two different internet poetry boards—successively, not at the same time.
  • I had a different e-mail address, one that I later abandoned and lost whatever e-mails were stored on its servers when it went defunct.

What I did back then, not thinking much about the future, and still somewhat stuck in a pre-internet mindset, I printed e-mails and instant messages, saved the papers, and deleted the electronic files. I know, what was I thinking? I obviously wasn’t thinking about a time, almost 20 years in the future, when those notebooks of paper files would be a heavy burden to get rid of.

On the other hand, since I printed and saved these communications, I still have them in 2022 even though those electronic files are lost. So, that is the silver lining to this.

In February, 2003, I agreed to become a moderator at the Poem Kingdom website. This was another “what was I thinking” moment. The site was the main place where I learned poetry, and how to critique poetry. I had been to other sites earlier—Wild Poetry Forum and Sonnet Central—but PK was what I needed in my early learning process. I studied hard and learned fast.

Alas, the site was beset by strong personalities that clashed, and argument after argument came upon the site. The better, more experiences poets and “critters, ” as we called ourselves, left. They formed other poetry message boards and started over, bringing people from PK to their site. It was when PK was already in this decline that I was asked to join the mod squad there.

As I described it to one former member who tried to recruit me for his site, it was like putting a Volkswagen engine in a battleship and trying to get it turned and moving back in the correct direction. It could be done, but would take time.

Scanning and saving these paper files from that era has brought back a lot of memories, many of them not that pleasant. We had a poetry war in early April 2003, as poems for and against the then-raging Iraq war were posted and critiqued. Strongly opinionated people let their feelings come out and did more than critique poems.

There had been poetry wars in October 2002 and January 2003 and February 2003, each of which resulted in much poetic talent leaving the site. ‘Twas sad times, and sad communications from those times.

But good also came. I had many written conversations with other poets about the art and craft of poetry. I forged a few friendships that continue to this day.

As a result of this, I spent a little time on Facebook looking for these old comrades and opponents in the poetry wars. I found some. One man in particular, who was the biggest thorn in my side, I found living in a foreign country. Now married (I think) to an Asian bride, he resides in her native land. His FB posts make it seem like he has done a 180 in his politics. I almost clicked on the “Invite Friend” button, but I hesitated. Did I really want this man back in my life? After reading a few more communications from him, I decided I did not and moved on. He obviously hadn’t come looking for me.

Another one or two people I might message or friend. We’ll see.

Even though this is giving me a significant amount of work, I’m now glad (given that the electronic files were lost) that I printed and saved these communications. I’m only skimming as I scan. I hope someday to cobble them up into a book that I will have printed just for me, and read them at leisure. How was my performance during the Poetry Wars? Did I behave well? Did my attempts at peace-making have any positive results? Did that Volkswagen engine at all move the battleship before the owner let the domain name die and lose the site? Reading these will tell.

family, Health, letters

Another Busy Day

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Here it is, late on Friday afternoon, and I’m just now getting to my blog post. I have several posts started, but none close enough to complete to justify spending my currently limited brain capacity on.

I’m writing very little these days. Today is typical of that. I began the day, after devotions and prayer, transcribing and scanning old letters, putting them into Word files so I can get rid of the paper. I’m currently working on my old poetry notebook. I thought this was mostly critiques (which I also need to digitize) but it turns out, so far, to be mostly e-mails and IMs from what I call “the poetry wars” at Poem Kingdom and other places. The years covered are 2003-04-maybe 05. I’m able to “save-out” i.e. digitize close to 20 old emails a day and put those sheets in recycling.

This morning I got that done. I digitized 18 old e-mails. It seems like that’s not many. What I do is, after the scan is complete, I open the scan file in Word, save it as a Word docx to the right folder with the right, descriptive file name, and clean up the text. That means setting margins, eliminating formatting irregularities, changing the font, correcting outright scanner errors. So all this takes a little time, but that makes the file ready to be added to a collected correspondence file whenever I choose to do that—if ever.

I also, this morning, completed the inventory of the Stars and Stripes newspapers. This was specifically of the duplicates, which I am keeping and not donating to URI. Those duplicates are now in a box (a little bigger than necessary) and ready to be distributed to Dad’s descendants or kept by me. This special project is thus almost done. I only have to complete the boxing and decide if I want to ship them to URI soon or delay the donation to a future time, maybe sometime next year.

I also made my weekly run to Wal-Mart this morning, and almost got away without talking to anyone except the pharmacy clerk. Alas, the self-checkout station wouldn’t accept my dollar off coupon, and the cashier hoverer had to help me.

I got some time in the sunroom, most of which went to a nap (after sleeping less than optimally last night). Lynda and I took a walk on one of our easier trails this afternoon. I went 1.64 miles, her less. That was mostly in the shade with a nice breeze, and was pleasant.

The good day will not be marred by my having to go prepare supper. The microwave decided to die after just three years of service, so I am having to cook the old fashioned way and not really enjoying it. Tonight will be simple hamburgers, tomorrow frozen pizza, I guess.

Well, this isn’t much of a post, but it’s all my mind can take right now. Hopefully Monday I’ll complete my three-part book review. I have others lined up in the queue.

Oh, the other good news: Went for labs yesterday, with the result posted today. My A1C was down to 6.1!

America, family, home improvements, letters, Stars and Stripes

Special Projects Interrupt Writing

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The newspapers have taken over my work table, as well as my writing time.

It has now been close to two weeks since I have done any significant writing. Why? Not writer’s block, but three special projects, things I’m doing that are capturing my time and will soon (hopefully) be done, allowing me to go back to putting words on paper.

I wonder if Dad modeled for any of these Bill Mauldin cartoons.

The first is going through my dad’s Stars and Stripes newspapers from World War 2. I’ve posted before about this collection. Dad, a typesetter before the war, was able to get a transfer from the invasion forces to the G.I. newspaper. In Africa, Italy, and southern France, Dad set type in war areas for more than two years. He sent copies of the papers home and his parents kept them. He took them when he came home and kept them till his death in 1997. He had told me they would be mine.

Publication locations of the “Stars and Stripes”, and the editions, changed during the war as US troops advanced.

I kept them for years, hoping to go through them, to learn more about the war and Dad’s part in it. Alas, too many years have passed without doing that. I’ve decided to donate the collection to the University of Rhode Island. They will preserve them, make them available to researchers. I was to do that in August when we were to drive back there but, alas, had to cancel that trip for health reasons. I decided I would inventory the collection (though URI told me I didn’t have to). At least that would give me a better idea of Dad’s movements through the European Theatre of Operations.

Starting with about 30 issues a day, I slowly did more and more. I’m now down to around 100 to 150 newspapers, having inventoried over 900. This has been hard work, but it’s almost done. The good news is I’ve found a fair number of duplicates, maybe 50 to 80 issues that I will be able to keep and distribute some day to Dad’s grandchildren. That is a manageable number to keep. I anticipate finishing this project before the end of September.

The next project is digitizing my letter collection. I’ve been at this for a year, and can see the end of it—sort of. I keep finding more letters to digitize. Two weeks ago I pulled a notebook off a shelf, a notebook I thought included some magazine essays (not mine) I had printed. Not so. They were copies of e-mails from the late 1990s, emails I had printed and saved then deleted the electronic copies. What was I thinking, right?

Now, to reduce possessions, I’m scanning them, saving them in an organized way. The process is slowed because sometimes the scanner doesn’t produce the letters exactly as they are. So I have to check the text to make sure it’s right in my new electronic file. Then, I’m also converting it to better fonts, spacing, and layout on the page, just in case I want to assemble them into books in the future. This project isn’t that close to being done.

I’ll finish with this notebook in about a month or a little longer. Then, I’ll get to start going through copies of handwritten letters. I’m not looking forward to that, and won’t start it right away. Gotta finish and publish at least one book first.

The end is in sight of this special project, proofreading our Kuwait Letters book.

The third project is also related to letters. Lynda and I are proofreading the Kuwait Letters book that I put together over the last two years. I ordered a proof copy of it, and saw a number of places where there were typos. Our son looked at it last month and suggested I add more photos to it. Our grandson Ezra read in it while he was here in July. One letter that his mom had written when she was not quite seven years old, looked wrong. I looked at the original and, sure enough, I had skipped a line when transcribing. How often had that happened?

So Lynda and I are proofreading it. She reads from the original letter, I follow along in the book and mark whatever changes are needed. There are too many changes needed, showing that I’m not the world’s best transcriber. We are a little over halfway through the book, able to do about ten pages in an hour in the evening. Only 14 or 15 more sessions to go.

Once that’s done, I’ll pick more photos, reformat the book, and see what I have. I also added in five lately found letters, including one taking six or seven pages. The current file is 325 pages. More photos will likely expand it to 340. No, we’ve found a couple of letters that need some editing either due to repetition or the nature of the material. Maybe only 337 pages. I see that all coming together around the middle of November.

C.S. Lewis, critique group, family, Health, letters, miscellaneous, reading, research, Stars and Stripes, The Forest Throne, Writing

A Busy Week Ahead

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I hope to do some writing on the sequel to this this week.

It’s Sunday evening as I write this, multi-tasking as we watch the specials about 9/11. I’m looking ahead to tomorrow, and realize I don’t have time to write the type of post I’d hoped to have for Monday. Even Friday is a little iffy for a post that takes a lot of time.

This is a killer week. Not so Monday and Friday, but the other days have a lot of activities and appointments.

First, I have two “gigs” this week. On Tuesday, I will repeat my presentation on the Universal Postal Union to the NW Arkansas Letter Writers Society. I made this presentation in May, but almost everyone who normally attends was gone that day. So I’ll do it again. Fortunately, all I have to do is dust off my PowerPoint and run through it once or twice.

Then, Wednesday morning, I am to be at John Tyson Elementary School in Springdale (40 mile drive), where I will make a presentation of There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel to Henry and Izzy, the two students I had Zoom meetings with about a writing project they were doing, then had them be beta readers for my book. They don’t know I’ll be there and giving them the finished book. This will be at 9:00 a.m.

I have several hundred more of these WW2 newspapers to inventory.

Then, at 12:00 noon, I have an appointment with my cardiologist’s P.A. Hopefully I’ll learn how well the cardio rehab program went. Between those two appointments, I’m hoping to meet someone for coffee. We’ll see if that happens.

Then, Wednesday afternoon, Lynda and I have dental appointments. I’ll barely have time to get home after seeing the cardiologist to leave for the dentist. But, unless we head to church that night, that will end appointments on Wednesday.

At noon on Thursday, Lynda will have her MRI to find out what, exactly, caused her sciatica attach in July. That has been twice delayed, not because of us, but because of insurance and provider problems. Then, that evening, is a semi-monthly meeting of the Scribblers & Scribes critique group. I’ll have some preparation time required for that.

In addition to this, I have my normal activities, which at the moment include:

  • morning 2-mile walks
  • digitizing a minimum of 10 printed letters a day
  • inventorying a minimum of 30 issues of the Stars and Stripes
  • whatever writing I can squeeze in, most likely on The Key To Time Travel, though I have other projects to work on as well, if I want to do so.
  • A little bit of yard work, although the work I got done on Saturday puts me a little ahead of where I normally am.
  • reading for research as well as for pleasure, including a couple of C.S. Lewis writings.

At some point, I need to begin the strength exercise program recommended in the cardio rehab program. I hope to begin that on Monday.

So yes, it will be a busy week. Hopefully I’ll be able to see progress on all my tasks.