My allegiance to subbing seems to have been for naught. Not one call to “the front” for more than a week, and I can’t imagine one coming with only two more days in the school year. I’m almost resolved to calling it a year with them. Still, you can never tell.
Now that Henry’s Appliance Store has successfully installed two new heat pumps for my upstairs resident, I’m relieved that she’s happy and cool. By law she could give me 30 days’ notice on July 1 and I’d be stuck with the $4,000 bill and suddenly almost no dough re me. But I don’t have time for strategic paranoia. Tactical paranoia is all I can afford right now, and there’s just enough to keep my reflector shields — not to be confuserated with Brooke Shields (she’s a mighty babester, yah!) — at the ready.
On the positive side, I’ve added a new member to Central Illinois Visual Artist Galleries, and her check could not have come at a more propitious moment. It pays for groceries this week. Allelu, allelu.
Monday & Tuesday, I’ve spent about 11 hours proofreading the American Aviation Historical Society Journal, the organization’s quarterly scholastic compendium of newly researched articles about . . . . you can guess. The task of proofing the Journal and alternating, much thinner and less-formal Newsletter quarterly give me more personal affirmation and validation than any other activity I can do without taking my socks off and especially trimming my toenails. Poetry has never had the same allure as aviation history, though I still enjoy poetry.
Proofreading for AAHS (it’s a volunteer thing of course) is more than deleting commas, inserting semicolons and setting straight the occasionally mis-applied capital Letter. I catch the author’s reference to the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1944 as WRONG because I know the organization became known as the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1942. I catch the fantasy statement regarding the use of Curtiss SBC-4 dive bombers in combat in 1943 because I know the type were returned stateside by the end of ‘42. Boring to you, mayhaps, but these errors glisten like diamonds in fertile soil of good aviation history to me. Remember SAT scores where you’re given “What happened next?” multiple choice questions?
Rover waded into the lake. He gently retrieved the fallen mallard. A. It was dark when Ben and Rover left home in the old pickup. B. The feast would be complete with Mallard gravy poured over the Purina. C. A few moments later, he shook his body like a canine castinet.
You would be surprised how many authors might have failed that part. A 20-page epic today included the arrival of a French flying boat to New Hartford in 1928, who test flew it after it was assembled from the shipping crate, when it was retired from service and details of the design. Do YOU get it? What’s wrong with that sequence?
The only negative aspect is dealing with some authors’ proclivity to write as though (NOT as if) they were Shakespeares writing eulogies to expired kinsfolk, packing the illiteration and flowery eloquence-ishness into what should be simple exposition. Some of what I do involves removing the extra layers of verbage to reveal the facts sans bravado. And I like the task. WHY? Because I like clear writing.
<>There’s a new arts organization up the rood a fur piece called the Contemporary Art Center of Peooria. Visit it at
www.peoriacac.org
I will add it to my CIVAG ArtsLinks and ArtsCalendar pages and have invited their people to link to CIVAG. Visit CIVAG after Wednesday for a schedule of coming exhibitions there. Wouldn’t it be nifty to get a car full together to visit their three riverfront galleries? Who wants to go? Who wants to drive?
I’m also using my hours “at liberty’ to catch up with AeroKnow indexing. I know you’ve consumed your ration of aerobabble, but I must say it’s great to have the time — at the cost of zero income earned, true — to make some vital progress there.So if you hear of EMPLOYMENT opportunities for photo journalists or just journalists or even media flaks, you be sure and let me know, y’ hear? Much obliged.
Live long . . . . and proper.
