A Sad Day

In 18 minutes the funeral for a grandson of a dear friend and cousin will begin. It is sad indeed. I am grateful for one very large thing; governors in South Dakota and Wisconsin have signed laws restricting the hateful picketing at the funerals of Iraq soldiers. Small solace, albeit very important.

The funeral will be officiated by another cousin. Life and death become such a tangled web.

This young father didn't die in Iraq; but he did spend a good deal of time there seeking and dismantling land mines. He leaves three little children fatherless and a host of distraught relatives. "Burial with military honors in the Black Hills National Cemetery."

His death could have brought out the sleazy Topeka families with their hate signs and slogans; I see by the news that they are busy in Minnesota. They did their dirty deed in South Dakota long enough. WE BLOG addresses the issue of free speech this morning. I am not, however, painting this with a wide brush. There are fine people in Kansas and I love them a lot. Some, however, are horrid.

The Devil is in the Details

"Even the grandest project depends on the success of the smallest components. This version of the proverb often implies that the details might cause failure. A more positive version is "God is in the details," a saying often attributed to the archetect Le Corbusier." He was a 20th Century French city planner known for designing buildings with unusual curves and unconventional shapes." Gurunet and Bartleby.com my, ever there, sources of information.

The book is an embarrassment. It would be easy blame it on those tempting templates in MS Word. The blame is entirely mine, for looking for an easy way, and not reading manuals. The hiccups and errors in the final printing are irritating. I need to get over it. Iimperfections get in the way of the viewer or reader. The last thing a person would do is purposely annoy a reader.

The book annoys me, like a baby, so sweet after a bath and two hours later it needs changing.
Drat.

Miracles Still Happen

The book has gone to print. It feel like sending a child off to grow up and become a person. Books, like children reflect thier author-parents. They can embarrass you half to death, give you some pleasure, do things you are proud of, or make you wish you didn't have your name written all over them.

It is a scary thing, this book thing. Writing to market would send me right over the edge. Vanity press is very safe. Expensive, but safe.

What I have done for for nine months is gestation. Have I given birth to a beauty or a beast? I have prayed to God every day before starting that I can give honor to my heritage; and to the people and place I try to put into print. I pray that I can stay awake, that my computer keeps working and that I can endure the pain. The stuff of consequence.

Iit is a miracle. It is done. He Who Must Be Obeyed has read proof pages, made good suggestions, a dozen phone calls, cooked for and fed me, and put me to bed. Even though I resisted a lot of it, and called it "loud, pushy behavior," and I made noises back; I couldn't have finished without it.

This morning I woke up, too early, to hear him talking on the phone about school sections determined by the Homestead Act. My source was correct. That is what I mean about the baby. When you are footnoting names like Mykkanen, with an umlaut, you can't rely on your spell checker.

Like babies, books are miracles.

Tomorrow: to the Printer

After three or four very long days, I anticipate a tomorrow of minor correction instead of writing and scanning. Only the deadly proof reading left on the last half of nearly one hundred-fifty pages of family story and old photos.

It is a deadly business, this writing, and I am not likely to take on another project such as this. Don't get me wrong. I like what I am doing, actually I enjoy it. A lot. But the deadlines are as deadly as they were in the real world. Why a deadline? You know we ancients are the world's best coupon clippers! This one is saving me nearly a helf-K. That is enought to deal in deadlines.

Retirement is not the real world. It is that twilight where a person relives the past, even before they were born. I told He Who Must Be Obeyed that it would be more fun to write script for shows like House, Gray's Anatomy, or Judging Amy. Whatever happened to Judging Amy?

There you have it, script writing would be dealing in deadlines. I guess I will enjoy the twilight zone

A Pain in the Patoot

I have sat in front of this monitor until I am cross-eyed.

Any of you that have written a book or two, know what I mean by it being a painful endeavor. The first one I attempted to write, edit, do the layout, and go through the agonizing Library of Congress Copyrighting ordeal, just about did me in. Actually, I ended up in the hospital for back surgery when I was done with it.

Today reminds me of that.

He Who Must Be Obeyed is proof reading for me; and cracking the whip at every page turn, I might add. He has me on a deadline that I cannot meet; all to save a few hundred dollars. I don't think it is worth it. I still have material to locate, Finnish letters to get translated into English, and more photos to scan, push around in Adobe Elements and then push around into a pleasing page layout. Researching a little corner of the earth and the events of a hundred years ago doesn't exactly drop into a person's lap.

To tell the truth, I am darned sick of the whole business right now.