Moving Right Along...

I'm still trying to figure out how to set up this blog. It is very frustrating that it is not as easy to work with as I have been led to believe. I guess I should just quit worrying about how it looks and get on with writing.

I was reminded not long ago how I used to agonize over my college freshman English compositions. I had to type them, too, and that was an even worse form of torture. Kids these days can't imagine how hard it was to type on a typewriter without being able to make corrections easily. During the 1950's a paper called "easy-erase" was invented, which made fixing letter errors as one went along a little easier. You couldn't change more than a word, and re-arranging paragraphs meant you had to start completely over. (People who could type well made good money typing papers for those who couldn't.) As for making copies, well, you had to use "carbon paper" (look that up if you need to) which meant that most of my work consisted of only one copy which has now been lost to the ages. So I really appreciate what I can do on a computer now, in spite of my frustration.

My dad could type well from the time he was a teenager. Perhaps that is why he was such a good linotype operator. (If you don't know what a linotype machine is, look it up, too.) He became a signal corpsman in the Navy in WWII because of his typing ability. It kept him out of front line battle, though not from serving on board ships that supported combat craft. Although I inherited some of his ability to design and lay out a page, I didn't inherit being able to do it without changing my mind a dozen times.

No discussion of my writing would be complete without my mentioning my wonderful 8th and 9th grade English and Journalism teacher, Iris Hunsinger. I think my knowledge of grammar and punctuation is due to her superb teaching. Wherever she is, I hope she knows how much I appreciate her work with me.