Done with my editing

Finally I finished my second set of pages to edit. I found it went faster by wearing one of G.'s pairs of glasses over top of my own. Then it was both in focus and big enough to read. G. is in his office doing statistical comparisons of how many errors were found per page per editor. Each page was independently read by two different editors, and amazingly the overlap in mistakes found by the two different editors was not very great. This does not inspire confidence in how error-free the final product will be. But the nature of this book is one of tiny detail, which comes from many different sources at many different times, compiled by many different people. It is no small task to make it error free in either content or presentation.

I learned five new words while editing:

• swidden
• massif
• canton
• riverine
• transhumance

Editing continues

Today was the due date for the 30 or so people to turn in their editing assignments. I got my 33 pages done by 10am. Lots of people did turn them in, but not everyone has yet. And one person gave up on it, so now I have 20 more pages to do :-( That is NOT what I wanted to be doing this weekend. But G. has been working like a dog on this, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much.

Son D. phoned this morning from DC with good news/bad news. The good news: he gets a pay raise before his first week of work is over. Apparently he gets $2,700 per year more than they told him because he has good grades. "'Bout time those A's did you some good," I told him. The bad news: "I don't get my first paycheck until October 10. Can you send me some $$?"

Yay! Copy Editors!

They came. Lots of them. G. was so happy because many colleagues responded to his plea for copy editors. We may get this thing done by Friday yet. I myself haven't gotten very far on my section, but I will keep plugging away. All 32 sections were claimed. Thank you, Lord.

The evocative nature of music

I'm thinking particularity of church music here, but of course any kind of music can cause one to be reminded of an event in the past, a feeling, a happiness or a sadness. Two Sundays ago I wrote in my blog about a song that was sung at church that evokes lots of bad memories for me. Today it was different. The music was "Shout to the Lord." The song is kind of worn out from overuse, but really this song almost always makes me cry because the first time I heard it my girl was standing in front of our little church, doing sign language to this song. That may not sound like such a big deal, but it was for her: she was never that good at performing in front of others, and she was never any good with things that involved physical movement. But she was beautiful and graceful in this performance and it blessed me when she signed and sang this song. I will always remember that feeling of pride and joy in her and feel drawn to the Lord whenever I hear that song.