Category: process

Cleaning up the Blog Posts

On By BarbaraIn letters, process, scanning, transcribingLeave a comment

I’ve been going through all my blog posts over a period of time, deleting ones that no longer fit my vision for the project, and editing or adding dated comments to a few. I should have noted how many there were when I started. Oh, well, there are 98 now with this one.

I have very slowly been adding transcriptions of Ruth’s Letters. I have nothing else to say about that except that I have sure come to detest scanning. 🤷‍♀️ There are four page drafts waiting for me right now to finish. The last letters I posted were in February of this year.

As I mentioned long ago in a blog post, the nature of blog sites is that followers only get notified of new blog posts, like this one. When I add another transcription page, no one is notified. Readers must, for example, go to the page for Ruth’s Letters and see if any letter dates have turned into links. It’s a bad system for readers.

June 1942 Letters Transcribed ✅

On By BarbaraIn letters, process, transcribingLeave a comment

I’ve finished the letters from June 1942, which end on the 27th with news of Ruth’s impending visit to Manhattan, KS. Then there’s a pause in the letters until July 10 when Ruth is returning home on the bus. Maybe we’ll hear a little about the trip after the fact.

I often use these posts to reveal something stupid I’ve done in the transcribing or something I’m trying to figure out. Today, I’m just admitting that I don’t often know when Walt means a capital or lowercase T/t—and maybe he doesn’t know either. So I’ve taken the approach—oh, hell, there’s no approach. I just put down whatever I think at the moment.

The Wizard Behind the Curtain

On By BarbaraIn letters, process, transcribingLeave a comment

Don’t pay any attention to pages of letters that show up before previous ones have been filled. For example, the March 1942 page where one letter is posted in the middle of the month. I had been working on it when I realized it was misdated. I found its mate in March, with the same incorrect date, but matching paper and a content reference. Both had clear March postmarks. Rather than try to keep it as a draft, it was just easier to create the March page and post it.

Advice: Don’t read letters out of order if you want to read them in order.

Some Letter Sleight of Hand

On By BarbaraIn letters, process, transcribingLeave a comment

If you’re looking for the first three letters that were listed under January 1942, their dates were corrected and they were moved to February 1942.

If you remember back to when you used to write checks for things like your landline phone, you know how easy it is to keep writing the previous month or year a ways into the next one. I think that’s what happened with these few letters, and I’m sure I’ll run across it again. Walt gets all the way to the end of January and keeps writing, correctly changing the day but keeping the previous month.

Meanwhile, I’ll finish January before moving on to the rest of the February letters, trying to catch any mistakes like that in advance.

Cleaning up my pronoun references

On By BarbaraIn family, letters, processLeave a comment

I took a breather after finishing the letters from Korea, and am getting ready to go back to January 1942. I’ll open pages to the public by month and not make you wait for a whole year’s worth, since it may take a long time to go through the hundreds of letters from the 40s.

pronounYesterday, before moving on, I went back and cleaned up my pronoun references in those opening blurbs that I wrote to summarize the main themes of each letter. I was using he throughout, meaning the author, knowing it sounded odd to begin that way without a prior reference, but assuming you knew I meant the author. It was personally difficult figuring out what to call the author, so I deferred until that section was all done. I finally decided on my father to replace the first he in each blurb, and I hope you agree that it sounds right and clears up any confusion. If you think that was an easy decision, you would be wrong.

It will be easier to write about the WWII letters, calling the author and his sweetheart Walt and Ruth, back in that time when I didn’t exist.