AfterWords Weekly

Tech Docs and Finding Pete

2009-05-25T13:33:00.002-05:00

My series of server documents for the Apple Mac OS X Server platform has been taking up most of my time (it's now a May/June project). Indexing them involves not just reading and typing in terms into my indexing program, but also embedding those terms as index elements in the XML-based program that Apple uses to create their documents. A bit awkward, but it does mean that when they make any changes, the index elements will ensure that the page numbers in the index stay accurate. I've had some not unexpected delays in getting to play with all of these thirty guides on everything from managing your wiki service to mail, firewalls, directory domains, user management, remote management, web services. Looks like we're moving up against the release date for the new version, so, I'll have to get access to the rest of the docs soon and get them all indexed. Ah, the technology world; they never plan in enough time to do anything, I think.

Also in the technical documentation world, but much more basic, are the cell phone guides for Nokia. I worked on part one of this project earlier, and did part two in late April. Indexed one more guide as a sample for the writers to get the idea, and then used the three guides I'd indexed to build them a standard vocabulary so their technical writers can take it from here and make future indexes more consistent. A standard vocabulary is harder than you think to put together, especially when you're dealing with two versions of English (British and American), but they settled on British as their preference, so that makes things simpler. So, buy a Nokia phone or PDA and you should have a much better index in the back in case you want to do something specific that's not in the table of contents (how do I change the lighting on my display?).

And, just to keep my hand in on real narratives, I worked on Finding Pete, a memoir by Pete Hunting's sister, Jill, of her search for his memory after he died in Vietnam in 1965. Jill's mother hid all his letters in her grief and wouldn't allow the family to talk about him. The silence was deafening. Jill was a teen at the time of his death and ended up taking a 40-year journey through the grief process before actually finding all his letters and going to Vietnam (1991 and 2006) and getting closure.
The really neat thing about Pete is that he wasn't a soldier or sailor or airman. He was a civilian in a nongovernmental foreign aid organization called the International Voluntary Service (an inspiration for the Peace Corps) that was working in the hamlets of rural Vietnam in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I never knew. All the historical analysis I've seen has been on the military presence. These guys and girls in the IVS were out there in the hamlets helping people to grow food, raise animals, build schools and teach basic skills. Unfortunately, since they were a) American and b) helping the Vietnamese people, the Vietcong did not like them at all. The risk of being killed by Vietcong units grew as the war escalated, and Pete ended up being in the wrong place at the wrong time in the Mekong Delta in November of 1965. A wonderful person was taken from the world on that day. He's still got windmills of his own design bringing up water in hamlets north of Saigon, and a series of libraries inspired by one that started from his memorial fund. Quite the legacy for a tall, blond, twenty-something kid from the Midwest. The other really cool thing about this story is that it is well-written. Sometimes memoirs can end up being a bit amateurish in their writing style, but Jill is a professional writer on other topics, and it shows in the great way she organized this material and told her story. A great read.

Servers, Holiness, and a Russian Rocket Scientist

2009-04-05T10:32:00.000-05:00

Now, those are contrasting subjects, trust me. The Apple server documentation indexing thing is stretching itself out, just like it did in its 2007 incarnation. The software to build the documents is causing a bit of trouble. This March/April project looks to be an April/May project with some 20 or so docs left to go. Still, when done, they'll have the best indexes such tech docs have ever seen.:)

Occasionally, I actually get copyediting jobs as well as indexing ones. It's a nice change of pace. The Quest for Holiness and Unity is the second edition of the history of a nondenominational church called The Church of God (Anderson, Indiana). There seem to be other Churches of God, so one has to put the location in. They started as part of the Protestant religious revival in the 19th century. Folks got tired of all the rules and creeds and bureaucracies of the main Christian churches, and again, wanted to get back to a more direct experience of the Divine. These folks did a lot of itinerant preaching, mostly in the Midwest, and tried really hard not to develop a "human" organization. People were attracted to the ideas that the Holy Spirit should directly inspire all we do, that living a holy (morally right) life was possible after accepting Jesus as personal savior and then being "sanctified," and that Christians should be unified with only the Bible itself as their guide. Sounds great, but as the group got bigger, they found that some kind of organization was necessary to conduct missions, particularly in other countries, and to actually have some kind of unity within local congregational diversity. It was a difficult balancing act that the church is still struggling with. They still have no creed that you have to sign on to, but there is a set of beliefs that it makes sense to have if you want to be part of the movement. I wish them Godspeed in their continuing endeavor to stay connected to Spirit and be organized at the same time.

And, then, there's the rocket scientist. This is a nice little bit of almost hidden history about a regular/non-aristocratic (but pretty inventive eccentric) guy from the outback of Russia, who, from his little outpost, managed to make a really big impact on rocketry and space travel. Konstantin E. Tsiolkovskii was born in the 19th century when the tsars still ruled. He was inspired by both science and science fiction, was almost entirely self-taught, and spent most of his working life teaching at the equivalent of high school level in the little town of Kaluga. But he submitted scientific papers to the official academies and made airship models in his house. He also wrote science fiction stories himself in the optimistic, transformation-of-humans-through-space-travel philosophy that was popular in his world at the time. After the Bolshevik revolution, he asked for funding for research from the new Communist government, and got a lot more support than he had gotten under the tsars. He'd actually contributed some sound scientific ideas to rocketry, but he was virtually unknown in the West. The Soviet government under Stalin decided he'd be a great poster boy for their technological superiority propaganda, so they adopted him, made him larger than life and a Soviet Hero. He died in 1935 in his little house in Kaluga, before the space program got started, but he is now considered, partly for real contributions and partly from propaganda campaigns, as one of the fathers of space flight.

Well, back to drier stuff now. I'm helping update a multi-volume work on accounting, and then back to those Apple server docs whenever the writers get done with them. Hope another interesting story comes along in between. I'll keep you posted.

Wine, Cell Phones, and Rocks

2009-03-06T12:42:00.001-06:00

Not quite as romantic as wine, women, and song, but I haven't gotten any books to index on those last two topics. Here's what I did get to do over the past three weeks.

California Wine For Dummies is a great read and reference book for finding tasty California Wines. The main thing I learned was vocabulary. I found out that French wines are named after places, but most California wines are named after the primary grape variety they're made of. The French use many of the same grapes, but they have a long vineyard tradition, so they never sold their wines by grape variety. They also tend to blend grape varieties more, whereas California varietal wines are primarily (at least 75%) one grape variety. I'm looking forward to exercising my new knowledge during my next foray to the store, but with this book in particular, a tear-out section with just the lists of recommended wines would have been a good idea.

And back to cell phones. After training Nokia's technical writers and giving them a standard vocabulary to work with back in 2007, I'm in the process of updating the vocabulary and editing some of their indexes to improve consistency. Finished two documents with new features and all, and have one more to do before finishing the vocabulary update in April. If you've ever seen the clunky and incomplete indexes in cell phone guides, try to imagine one that has all the main and minor topics you might be looking for all laid out and easy to scan. That's what I do. If you aren't with Verizon Wireless (they only have push-to-talk Nokia phones) and have access to Nokia devices, I highly recommend them.

And finally, this past week I finished a short analysis of the effects of Connecticut's geology on its human inhabitants over the past, say, 400 years. It's amazing how much geological activity has occurred and still occurs in New England, and in Connecticut in particular. Did you know they have regular earthquakes up there? They're just pretty small scale, so we don't hear about them. Over the years, they've generated something called Moodus noises that come from some caves near Moodus. The Puritans thought it was the wrath of God, but the scientific explanations eventually prevailed. And the Central Valley of the Connecticut River, leftover from old lava flows and glacial activity, was instrumental in allowing the Native Americans and early settlers to survive by providing great soil for growing food. There's also been a lot of mining activity in this area; believe it or not, there's gold in them thar hills, along with an emerald or two. No big operations, but folks in the 19th century made valiant efforts to get the stuff out of the ground. Today's efforts seem to be centered around keeping suburban blight from eroding away what's left.

I'm now getting ready to update indexes I did for Apple server documentation. Should take rest of March and part of April to get through them all.

Four Scholarlies from the University Press of New England

2009-02-19T18:17:00.002-06:00

Didn't make much money per hour on these; too complex, but some interesting stuff from New England's professorial crowd. I'll give them each a once over:

Sustainable Learning Community by Aber, Kelly and Mallory--The University of New Hampshire (my alma mater) is doing awesome things to be environmentally sound in this new century. Tons of other institutions should take note of the programs at UNH and adopt as many of them as possible. From a rejuvenated public transport system on campus to a new, green power plant (even using methane from the local landfill) and fresh food from local growers, sustainability flows through every part of this campus and serves as an example and support for similar programs in the surrounding community.

An Improper Bostonian by Marilyn Greenwald is a biographical profile of Cleveland Amory, animal rights activist and social commentator (or curmudgeon) of the mid-to-late 20th century. His biting wit was first aimed at the upper class Bostonian culture he'd come from, with best-selling results, and then at the then-new medium of television. He had a stint on the early Today show, and then was a long-time critic for TV guide. I remember him vaguely from my childhood. But his most lasting legacy seems to be his work for animal rights and protection. Quite the character.

Levirate Marriage and Family in Ancient Judaism by Devora Weisberg--Nothing like contrasts in the indexing biz. This scholar delved rather deeply into an analysis of the custom in ancient Israel and then on through in Judaism of taking care of the childless widow by having her brother-in-law marry her out of duty. It gets real complicated when this rule from the Torah bumps into incest taboos, inheritance issues, and the shift from polygyny to monogamy in the Jewish community (it's a little hard to marry your sister-in-law in a monogamous society when you're already married).

And finally, science fiction literary criticism in the form of one of its long-time masters, Samuel R. Delany. His The Jewel-Hinged Jaw, a collection of essays on science fiction and criticism applied to it, is in a third edition, I think. Lots of lit crit language, and Delany's rather eccentric and highly intelligent character comes through on every page. He's also a successful science fiction story writer himself. Some folks may think that sci fi is too commercial to be the subject of traditional literary criticism, but Delany will quickly disabuse you of that notion. I am a sci fi fan myself, from way back, and I value this genre as adventure and escape, but also, and more importantly, for its societal analysis and visions of possible futures for humanity. Delany's wide-ranging essays are not for light reading, but are a worthy analysis of science fiction as literature.

Now I get to shift to Nokia cell phone guides, California Wines and the geology of Connecticut. More later.

Bugs and Relationships Endings

2009-01-18T13:56:00.001-06:00

After spending a couple of weeks in December with some mechanical indexing of buzz terms for elementary math textbooks (no wonder our education system is a mess!), I got to graduate to bugs, Texas bugs, that is (some are really the biggest bugs you've ever seen, but some very small as well). David Kattes, an entomologist, has written a nicely accessible review of Texas creepy crawlees called Insects of Texas: A Practical Guide. I found out what those little moth flies as they're called, are that like my bathroom so much, and also about everything from scorpions to ants. Kattes gives the taxonomy (what orders and families everybody belongs to) but doesn't get too complex. The focus is on having photos and descriptions of the bugs so we can identify the ones in our yards and (ugh!) homes.

And then, back to humans who like to make things much more complex than they should be, especially if lawyers are involved. A trip down memory lane, it was, indexing Divorce For Dummies, 3rd edition. Again, the For Dummies folks at Wiley Publishers have come up with another really accessible book on a subject of practical interest to at least half of the U.S. population. Having been through this divorce process about eight years ago, I felt some discomfort in indexing this book. Didn't really want to know what I'd messed up on, but it turns out that my ex and I did a pretty good job of mitigating the damage to our children, of continuing to be cooperative parents, and not letting our anguish make us forget to take care of the kids needs. We made mistakes, no doubt about it, but it could have been much worse. The book lets you know in no uncertain terms that fighting over everything has deleterious consequences for everyone, and gives you guidance on all the attitudes and resources you might need to make this difficult transition as smooth as possible.

Black Migration to the West, and NASCAR For Dummies

2009-01-03T12:35:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year! As the old year waned, I watched the economy go into free fall but kept busy. We'll see how the new year goes in the publishing business. It may contract a bit, and is, according to what I've read, but I think there will still be opportunity for indexers and editors.

Meanwhile, I got to read and index a lovely memoir by Rudy Martin, a participant in the migration of African Americans west from the deep South to places like Wyoming and California during the Depression and World War II. Rudy's parents took the chance and left their very interesting families in north Texas to be the only black people in Cody, Wyoming in the mid-1930s. They were amazed that the prejudice they experienced in Texas didn't quite translate to white folks in Wyoming. Whites were more curious than anything else and ended up welcoming them into the community. Rudy had an unusual ancestry in any case, with a great-grandfather who owned significant land in North Texas in the late 19th century when whites rarely sold land to black folks. Ultimately, Rudy's dad's work in the Church of God in Christ took him to northern California during WWII, where Rudy got to experience middle-class life in post-war America. He still feels somewhat disconnected with the traditional southern black culture, and ended up being a number of firsts as a black man in academia in California. His story just shows me yet again that it's always more about where and how you were raised that forms you, and not just your genes or the color of your skin.

And, then, for a great contrast, I got to find out how NASCAR works. Mark Martin (no relation to Rudy above) is a well-known driver on the circuit who has an engaging writing style. Not a fan of NASCAR myself (couldn't see watching guys and girls racing in a line around a track for a couple of hours), but for those who are into it, this is a great guide to the complexities of NASCAR racing from the racing team's point of view. There's a lot that goes on, mechanically, technically, and psychologically, to make that racing event interesting for the fans. It's an extreme sport in a number of ways, and the drivers have to have the best physical coordination at speed. And the NASCAR organization must be ever-vigilant in inspecting the cars to make sure that there is a level playing field competitively. The fans are very loyal to their favorite drivers and teams. I think I'll stick with watching NFL football (don't ask me why I like that particular sport, but I do), but for fans of NASCAR, this is a very entertaining and informative resource.

For the new year, it looks like a start with a guide to bugs in Texas, and then a string of scholarly books for the University Press of New England. I'll keep you posted.

Housing Market (how apropos) and Pregnancy, for dummies, that is.

2008-12-04T10:23:00.001-06:00

Ah, the conservative perspective. Actually, the American Enterprise Institute folks have some good arguments for restructuring the incentives in certain housing markets. I like that they understand that one size of reform does not fit all. We have very different markets in different parts of the country, and they point out that the real problems with scarce supply and high prices are only in certain places, primarily on the East and West Coasts. Of course now that the whole market is depressed, even these places have seen drops in prices, but the underlying artificial control on development in these areas has not been addressed. I know that most folks think that developers are the bad guys, but AEI gives a good argument that localities can provide weird and perverse disincentives to build, not just for environmental or other high-moral ground reasons, but simply because elites don't want too many neighbors too close to them. In the quest for affordable housing, this book advocates separating the idea of providing housing for the poor from the manipulation of the market itself. They want to tweak the market in certain areas to make housing more plentiful and affordable for the middle class, and let programs like housing vouchers and regular cash assistance programs bring the poor up to the level where they can afford to live in housing. I'm mostly a liberal (in the postmodern rather than classical sense), but what they say has some merit.

On the other side of life, there are those younger folks than me (my kids are in high school and just graduated from college, respectively) who are creating families, and the For Dummies series from Wiley Publishers has taken on the task of adding to the advice glut on the subject of pregnancy. As is usual with this series, they've hired good writers to explain clearly all the ins and outs of this great change to a woman's body and to a family's dynamic. They do a good job of balancing positive info with medical stuff on potential complications. It was a stroll down memory lane for me (not interested in doing that again in this lifetime), and a good read. Just wish it hadn't taken so long to index the thing.

Sometimes I truly wish there was a faster way to index books, but I can't compromise quality for speed, and the publishing market will not bear what it's really worth to pay for this work. But I like it, and it still pays the mortgage, amongst other things. My brain never goes into rigor mortis, I can tell you.

An Episcopal school, being for the other, and a border guard

2008-10-26T12:44:00.001-05:00

Trinity School turned out to be a place with a neat history (it's 300 years old next year) and even though it lost its openly Episcopal religious feel, moral instruction and interdenominational chapel services are still very much a part of the scene. Kindergarten through high school, preparing mostly really smart kids with wealthy parents for leadership in business, government, society in general. At least they're teaching against greed and with a sense of obligation to serve the community. Funny thing is that the school started out as a church charity school for poor kids in the 1700s, and now teaches primarily rich kids from the upper part of Manhattan.

After the school history, I got to index a book on psychology and philosophy at the same time. The author, Paul Marcus, has taken a fresh look at the weaknesses of the psychoanalytic perspective in dealing with the ethical imperatives of life. Psychoanalysis has a very self- centered approach to dealing with the anguish and anxiety of life, and the patient spends most of their time going within to balance themselves. The results are often good for the folks around them in the end, but there's little sense of moral obligation to others in the psychoanalytical process. Marcus has taken the ideas of a French philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, and applied his radical altruism to the psychoanalytical project. I was very impressed with Being for the Other; it gave me some personal guidance on how to be in the world myself.

And then, back to Texas history with a short book of memories from a Missouri National Guard and sometime regular army fella from the second decade of the 20th century. Ward Schrantz (a very handsome fellow in his youth, by the way) started out in the Guard in Missouri and then switched to the regular army, and then back to the guard. Looks like this business of the border issue between Texas and Mexico has many antecedents. In the period between 1912 and 1917, the problem for the U.S. was the Mexican Revolution and the semi-chaos after it, all influenced by the beginning of World War I. Schrantz didn't get to invade Mexico in 1916 with Pershing, et. al. in the Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa, but he did participate in the guarding the border in various places in Texas and was a witness to the major changes in control over the National Guard that came from Wilson's administration. This was when the federal government got the power to call up the guard for any and all national military operations and the right to control the troops directly. Ward was a journalist in his civilian life and although he didn't originally write this material for publication, the editor, Jeff Patrick, has done a fine job of making his story flow nicely. I think Ward would have been proud. Schrantz was an excellent storyteller, and I laughed a number of times at his anecdotes about life in the army and the characters he encountered. You should check out the naked swim across the Rio Grande story in particular.

Believe it or not, but the American Enterprise Institute, after some last-minute revisions, is putting out a book on the housing market that I get to index later this week. Conservative think tank perspective ought to be interesting in the current context. I'll let you know how it goes.....

And now that we've settled down from the hurricane......

2008-10-13T18:22:00.002-05:00

Sorry about the delay, folks, but there was this hurricane called Ike....kinda glad I'm living in Houston rather than Galveston at present, although Galveston's a nicer place most of the time. Thankfully, we didn't lose our big yard tree, just the fences blown down and some roof shingles torn off. Loss of power for several days slowed down productivity, and then the Internet was out a week longer than that. Had to hang out at Panera Bread for free WiFi for awhile. Been back to normal for about three weeks, but too busy catching up with work to write about it.

Let's just begin where I've been recently, literarily speaking. Most fun since the hurricane was with a lovely coffeetable book on old photo picture postcards from Texas towns from about 1900 to the 1930s. Towns had their own photographers whose main job was to take pictures of all the economic progress as folks came in to farm on lands once part of the open range in the Panhandle of Texas. Some of these places were boom towns at the time and are ghost towns now. The weirdest part is seeing all those "old" western buildings looking brand new for a change. Picture books are cool. It's called Taming the Land, and is being published by Texas A&M Press.

Today I just finished indexing a book on four centuries of Jewish women's spiritual writing. Having indexed a lot of Jewish history for the New England Press's series, I was already familiar with some of the names in the nineteenth and twentieth/twenty-first-century sections, but the really early stuff was new. They actually found excerpts from some poor Jewish women who were interrogated by the Spanish Inquisition. They had to "confess" to conducting Jewish rituals (Sabbath, Passover, etc.) in secret in their homes. Very sad. Also, although I've read some stuff about the Holocaust as well, it is still moving to read surviving poems and diary entries from the mostly ghostly hands of those who suffered so much at the under the Nazis. The good part is that time has seen a reduction in anti-Semitism as well as a big improvement in women's public role in Judaism, even in Orthodox circles.

Next up is an index for a history of the Trinity School in New York City, some kind of prep school, looks like. Way too many endnotes in tiny print. I'll let you know if the story turns out to be a good one.

A Young Lady's Diary, and the Problems of the Poverty Rate

2008-09-01T10:07:00.000-05:00

My diary subject, Sallie McNeill, turned out to be a short, tedious and ultimately tragic story. Poor thing wrote about the normal day-to-day of a wealthy slave-owning family in south Texas before, during, and just after the Civil War. The war didn't affect her much, although her brothers were on coastal defense (they both outlived her, actually). In choosing not to get married, Sallie opted for a very lonely and purposeless life of sewing, reading and complaining about herself and everyone else. Because of her gender, her options outside of marriage were very small, and she seemed to not have the energy to pursue anything on her own. She died in her early twenties in 1867, probably from yellow fever, having never lived anywhere near to her potential. But her musings do give us some idea of what plantation life was like back then, although her attitudes toward the slaves did make me cringe. She saw them as ignorant, inferior, child-like creatures who needed white folks to "take care of" them. Sallie's is a little window onto daily life in the antebellum South.

Today, I'm working on the last half of a short treatise on the problems with the official poverty rate, published by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. Now, you can imagine what position the author takes, but you'd be wrong to overgeneralize that he doesn't think poverty exists or something. He actually has a pretty good statistical analysis argument that the official poverty rate does not accurately reflect material deprivation in America anymore. It was established in the early 1960s based entirely on reported income, and it doesn't seem to reflect some serious changes in consumption patterns since then that make the official rate way out of kilter with other indications of how folks are doing, like the unemployment rate, education level, expenditure vs. income, net wealth, noncash public assistance, etc. It actually looks like from his viewpoint, that despite the seeming stagnation of living standards according to the official poverty rate, folks at the lower end of the income scale are actually doing better than they ever have, and it looks to me like this may largely be due to public assistance they've received. So the official poverty rate says that government antipoverty programs are not helping, but all other indicators say that they probably are. Looks like the author may be right, and we may need a new measure for the poverty rate so we know how to form policy to help folks.

This coming week, I'm shifting over to a guide to military life for families and antique furniture from eastern Massachusetts. Should be an interesting week.....

Abolitonism and....Detergents?

2008-08-24T22:16:00.001-05:00

This world of literary contrasts seems to be a regular pattern for me. I thing that's why I'm still indexing and editing books after thirteen years.

Once I got through the battles of the Vietnam War (see last post), I moved back in time to 18th and pre-Civil War 19th-century American and British perspectives on slavery. This book was a literary and socio-cultural analysis of anti-slavery writing, mostly by blacks, but also some material by whites, that started as early as the colonial period. We tend to think of abolitionism as a 19th-century phenomenon, but writings against the slave trade, and the use of the slave's life narrative go back further, actually. Although the author eventually talked a bit about Frederick Douglass, one of the most famous black writers of the later part of this period, most of the writers were less well-educated, and less well-known to us. They used a variety of methods to get the sympathy of their audience, and the use of certain literary techniques in what Slavery and Sentiment calls the era of sentimental literature is the focus of the book. To me, the interesting bit was the making visible formerly silenced voices of history.

The book on detergents was surprisingly interesting in places, actually. It's a multi-authored explanation of detergent chemistry and production for chemists, so it was a bit of a challenge. Fortunately, I wasn't expected to index this material to a detailed level, so my general knowledge along with the detailed hierarchy of subjects was enough (I hope) to get most of the most important keywords into the index correctly. I did learn a bit about what goes into the tricky business of making chemicals that can handle being in water and still bond with mostly oil-based dirt and stains in order to remove them. In addition, I learned about some of those gobbledygook words on your bottle of shampoo or shower gel and how much of a chemical challenge it is to combine substances to clean the dirt and oil from your hair, for instance, and yet still leave it soft and manageable. Lots of stuff going on in those suds! The latest challenges include making anti-foam chemicals for these high-efficiency, low-water-usage washing machines, and going back to plant-based oils to make detergents more environmentally friendly (we got very dependent on petroleum products over the years since we moved away from soap for clothes cleaning).

This week I've returned to history, this time a diary of a young Texas woman who lived on a wealthy plantation and had to deal with the challenges of the Civil War. One of those "ordinary folk in history" stories that are very "in" among historians these days. So far in my reading, the war has not intruded, and Sallie McNeill's life is pretty sheltered and predictable, except that she is college educated and refusing to marry, both most unusual for this time frame and rural area (we're not talking about the height of the suffrage era here, but the 1850s).

I'll keep you posted on how the Civil War affects her life.

Joanne

Nothing Like Subject Variety!

2008-08-06T16:38:00.002-05:00

Sorry to be gone for a bit. Got caught up in a bedroom painting project as well as managing multiple indexing projects.

Global Bioethics was an interesting scholarly collection on ethical issues in the medical and biotechnology areas these days.

More fun was Investing For Dummies. Made me want to check out my IRA's balance of investments and make sure I didn't panic over the recent volatility in the market. I'd say the author is a fan of what's called value investing. Do the fundamentals research on your investment targets, invest for the long term (no day trading--might as well go to Vegas if you want to gamble like that), but don't be afraid of the stock market.

In complete contrast, I then started on a son's remembrances of his father and mother, who were leading literary figures of the 1920s-1970s. Edmund Wilson was famous for his intensively researched writing on world events and places for magazines like the New Yorker, and his third wife, Mary McCarthy, was famous for her biting satire of the bohemian culture surrounding her. Reuel (the author and their son) focused his memoir on the literary community at Cape Cod, back in the days when you didn't have to be rich to stay there. It was a wild, name-dropping ride for this indexer, with pauses for detailed nature descriptions by Wilson and some pretty good poetry, in between his drunken tirades at his wives (four altogether), and the multiple love affairs that both Wilson and McCarthy engaged in. A bit unstable for Reuel, but he seems to have come through it all right, with a good academic career of his own.

And then, we travel to...Vietnam in the 1960s, which means the war that the U.S. got sucked into. This book, Steel and Blood, is an oftentimes blow-by-blow account of the war from the experiences of a South Vietnamese military officer. He spares no expense in criticizing his superior officers and then-president Thieu, along with the U.S., for abandoning the fight. Way too much detail in places, but a very eye-opening perspective.

More later!

Joanne

Web Programming, Digital Photography, and The Old Leather Man

2008-07-08T12:28:00.002-05:00

Interesting set of subjects over the past couple of weeks. The Adobe Flex For Dummies indexing project turned out to be a competitor to JavaScript for creating interactivity, etc., in websites with programming code. Flex has some interesting features and works like most object-oriented programming languages. It integrates well with the animation capabilities of Adobe Flash Player, but folks could still use JavaScript as well. Lots of class, object, and method names in the index.

Digital Photography is part of a modular lesson series from Labyrinth Publishing. They do great stuff to help novices in particular learn how to use the computer and different kinds of software. This book/lesson series is designed for folks new to working with electronic versions of photos. It goes over the basics of how the different types of cameras work and how to download photos and organize them on the computer. Easy and fast to index, and very useful stuff.

Ah, and for a complete contrast, The Old Leather Man. Wish I could have read this one myself, but my working partner, Sue Gaines got to index this fascinating nineteenth-century story. This old French guy just turned up in the mid-1880s in western Massachusetts and Connecticut and parts of New York as a wandering "homeless" person. He had an extremely regular route and the book is made up of all the journalistic references to him in the local papers of the day. He even got a profile in the New York Times at one point! He wore all leather patched clothing, knew how to read and write, spoke some English and lots of French, but mostly said not a word to anyone. He wasn't a beggar, actually, but seemed to have some money and did odd jobs, they think. Legends grew up about how he'd lost the love of his life and took to wandering in his grief. He lived mostly in rock shelters and caves along his walking route. Many of these shelters are still in existence, I guess. Really interesting little story being published by the University Press of New England.

This week, I'm trying to finish up a book index on global bioethics and a small project comparing Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007.

Joanne

Patents and Poverty

2008-06-18T18:29:00.000-05:00

Finished the Patents, Copyrights & Trademarks For Dummies index the other day. Found out that my business name is not ideal (too descriptive and not unique enough) and that it's already registered to a neat little cafe in DC and a bookstore, I think. Oh, well. After reading this humorous tome (you will not be bored), though, I don't think I'd ever try to patent an invention. The cost alone would send me home, but I guess if you had some deep-pocket venture capitalist at your side....
It was a good read, though, believe it or not. Those Dummies folks over at Wiley Publishing are pretty good at picking writers.

Finally got back to The Colors of Poverty, a social science book on why poverty tends to concentrate itself in certain ethnic groups. Mostly, the Russell Sage Foundation researchers find so many complex factors involved in anything they research (humans are so fascinating that way!) that their conclusions tend to be very tentative; they just don't get the statistical results that would floor anybody. This book is different, especially the last chapter on the relationship among race, class, welfare policy, and incarceration in this country. The poor are being thoroughly marginalized, particularly when African American, by a combination of welfare-to-work and massive incarceration and post-imprisonment monitoring by government. It's a bit scary, frankly. The authors call this new thing neoliberal paternalism (despite the name, a philosophy of political conservatism). Doesn't seem to make for opportunities for poor people to get out of poverty, though. And this policy is not in the federal laws that regulate welfare per se, it's embedded in the decentralized implementation of the law at state and local levels.

Lots of factors go into social inequality, and the white folks in power are not responsible for all of them, but this neoliberal paternalism is a blow to individual freedom in favor of social control.

Ok, ok, end of rant. I'm just the indexer, you know. Next up is Adobe Flex For Dummies. I'm pretty software savvy, but I don't even know what this is yet. I'll keep you posted.

Credit Repair and The Colors of Poverty

2008-06-11T20:14:00.000-05:00

Well, so much for that Wednesday and Thursday off the last week in May. Actually, I did take that Wednesday off, so, my apologies for goofing off and not writing to you all back then.

As I usually do, when I think I'll have a break, I send out energy to the Universe that puts more work on the desk, and so it was this time. An established scholarly client (Russell Sage Foundation) sent me a book on the persistence of poverty being associated with certain racial/ethnic groups. Very complex factors go into all this, of course, some historical and cultural, still discrimination going on, but it's more subtle, things like that. And the scholars are still a bit befuddled, actually, particularly at how stubborn disadvantage is among African Americans. Lots of complex reasons that are hard to tease apart in order to identify policies that will work to help the situation. I've set this one down after getting about 100 pages indexed, though, because I received another job in the For Dummies series.

Credit Repair Kit For Dummies turned out to be a well-written explanation of how to avoid bad credit situations and how to get out of them once you're in. I certainly made mental note for my own purposes and will be going to monitor my credit reports (all three) when I get a chance. Done with that one today after about a week's worth of work, and thought I'd go back to the Color of Poverty, but, no.

Another For Dummies book came in with a shorter deadline. This one's about intellectual property rights (you know, patents, copyrights, trademarks and such). Just got started this evening, but now my eyes and butt are getting tired in this sitting position, so off to relax.

I did get the last couple of weekends off, though, both days. So that was very cool. Started on a bedroom painting project and got back to my piano.

Later!

Schwarzenau Brethren....and...Linux?

2008-05-25T10:48:00.001-05:00

Variety is the spice of life, they say...

After my marathon session indexing the AutoCAD Bible, I was about to continue my technical stuff by indexing a Dummies book on the Linux operating system when an indexing colleague became ill and I took on a job for her.

Short book, some guy's dissertation, actually, on the founders of the Brethren Church. I'd done some subcontracting work for this colleague before on this subject; she has an ongoing arrangement to index stuff for the Brethren. They have their own encyclopedia, actually. This little book, only 145 pages, but packed with people, places, and theological concepts (lots about baptism), talked about the origins of the Brethren in what is now Germany in the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century. These folks were part of a "back to basics" movement after the Protestant Reformation. Really into separating from the material world, awaiting the apocalypse (slated for 1700), cultivating a pure and literal obedience to the New Testament and Jesus' commandments. The author's theme was to dig up more about what other movements influenced the Brethren (Radical Pietism and Anabaptism mainly). The Brethren are not as strict as the Amish, or the Mennonites, I think, but close. The Mennonites are the original Anabaptists (adult baptism is better than the infant kind), and the Amish are an offshoot of the Mennonites. It was interesting to keep track of all this stuff. Didn't make much money per hour, but it was a cool story.

Now I'm back to learning about the Linux operating system. Lots of good stuff I'd had a hint of in other books I've done, and this author does a good job of explaining it all. Linux can really be a substitute for Windows if you really, really, hate Microsoft (the different versions have nice, clean graphical interfaces), but its power is in the ability to send commands directly into the system without the graphic interface and do programming stuff. About 350 pages out of 600 left to go. Wish me luck meeting my end-of-Tuesday deadline.

Oh, and you'll notice I'm working on Sunday, and tomorrow as well. I don't pay much attention to weekends and holidays, although I do try to take Saturdays off (God was right about that day of rest idea in Genesis, just for mental health reasons if nothing else). But from the looks of the schedule, I'll get Wednesday and Thursday off instead, since my next project isn't supposed to come in until next week. But....you never know.

AutoCAD Can Take Up Your Life......

2008-05-25T10:33:00.000-05:00

Sorry about the delay, but 1100 pages of AutoCAD guidance in seven days really takes up one's life.

Finished up the Social Class book index on May 5. A good analysis of how we do so want to think we're a classless society in America, but....not! As I expected, class even trumps race and gender in helping decide how life goes for people, but not always. What I like about Russell Sage's researchers is that they tell you about all the complexities of an issue, so I get a better perspective than through sound-bites on the news.

I know I indexed an AutoCAD (CAD stands for computer-aided design) book awhile back, but this one was the "bible" for folks looking up more and more specific stuff on how to use this engineering/architectural/mechanical design software. The 3D modeling is the coolest part. Reminds me of computer games like the SIMs where you can build house models, but this is not child's play by any stretch of the imagination. I just wonder how Wiley Publishing can call this a book for dummies. You have to know something to even begin. Not being a designer myself, I've had to absorb what this is about over several projects in the past three years. This book, The AutoCAD Bible For Dummies, gives the best explanation of the relationships among the different elements and concepts involved. I found out that I didn't understand the material as well as I had thought until I was done with this book.

More on what I've been doing since mid-May in the next post....

And Now for Another Kind of Class

2008-04-27T12:55:00.001-05:00

Finished my "class" in indexing elementary math textbooks. Long project, somewhat tedious, but good money. And yesterday I wrapped up the index for the book on Tom Lea, WWII combat artist. A riveting story with adventures from England to China to Peleliu Island in the South Pacific. War is definitely hell. Please strive to avoid it whenever possible.

And now, for social class. In America, class is often considered a dirty word because we have quite a bit of potential economic mobility here, but class still exists and is a major factor in how well people do in our society. Starting from the bottom is still really difficult even when the barriers to progress are not official. They are still formidable. This social science book from the Russell Sage Foundation should shed some light on how class currently impacts people's lives here. I'll pass on more when I get into the details.

Visions of a World at War

2008-04-20T11:45:00.002-05:00

This week, although I still have a number of chapters of elementary math terms to index, the real interest is in a coffee table book on the work of painter/illustrator/writer Tom Lea. Texas A&M Press is doing up this book that pulls together the El Paso native's artistic work and writing from his WWII adventures as a Life magazine correspondent. Life actually believed in the value of combat art in addition to its addiction to fine photography to capture an experience. And Tom Lea was the perfect agent for that attitude. He bonded with the men on board ships in the North Atlantic and South Pacific, and with troops in North Africa and Europe, portraying their triumphs and tragedies, and more importantly, their daily lives, both in his paintings and his diary and other writings. His paintings are strikingly realistic in a time when abstraction was the artistic rule. The impact is very "in your face." He does not spare us the horror of war by any stretch, nor does he forget the nobility of the warrior.

As you can tell, I'm really enjoying this material. Just gotta make sure I index it, too!

Still Swamped with....First Grade Math?!!

2008-04-13T09:35:00.000-05:00

Sorry about the delay, folks, but juggling multiple projects seven days a week makes it hard to get back here and let you all know how the biz is going. Since the week of 3/24, I've finished indexing a college textbook on how to work in/for nonprofit organizations. I also finished an index for AutoCAD For Dummies (600+ pages), which was fun just 'cause it's very discrete subjects, although there are lots and lots of complex features for computer aided design.

And then, I started first grade. Really! Indexing a first grade math textbook, both student and teacher versions, which is a little weird. All the regular stuff is in the student version (addition, subtraction, counting on number lines, reading stories that illustrate math concepts), but the teacher edition has miniatures of the student pages with all sorts of pedagogical terms and instructions around the borders of the student page. It's the repetition of all the teacher jargon that's getting to my brain right now, but I've learned to feel great compassion for elementary public school teachers who have to keep up with all the state and local curricular requirements while still making the learning fun for the students.

Now I really need to get back to it so I can meet my Tuesday deadline for all these first grade textbook chapters. I'll let you all know about my cool book project on Tom Lea, Life photographer during WWII, next week. Stay tuned.

AutoCAD--Project of the Week

2008-03-24T16:08:00.001-05:00

Lovely to get that ESL textbook business out of the office. What a mess those books were!

This week, it's AutoCAD, AutoCAD, punctuated by a short stint with Macintosh server documentation.

What's AutoCAD, you say? It's software designed to help folks who produce architectural, mechanical and engineering drawings. We've come a long way from lonely draftsmen leaning over slanted platforms and meticulously penciling and inking these drawings by hand with rulers on one side and compasses on the other. AutoCAD has all kinds of features to make both two-dimensional drawings and three-dimensional models easier to create. But there are lots of complex features. Indexing these 756 pages will take awhile, but this particular book (another in the For Dummies series) is clearly written, making indexing that much easier. The most fun part is seeing the pictures of 3D models when they're all done.

The Mac server documentation project is an update of their standard vocabulary that I created a couple of years ago. I also indexed all the documents myself last year. Now, with my updated standard vocabulary, the technical writers can hopefully continue the consistency I created for the indexes and keep them truly useful for users. We'll see, though. Often technical writers have very little time to put together text, much less tweak or create indexes. You can take a writer to a standard vocabulary, but will he/she use it? That's the question.

Modern Religions and....ESL Textbooks

2008-03-24T16:05:00.001-05:00

March 16, 2008

Finishing up Modern Religions For Dummies today. I did, indeed, have to deal with some interesting "political" issues with terms and cross-references. Like, after you cross-reference from God to Allah and Yahweh, do you also cross-reference to Jesus and the Holy Spirit? Well, that's hard to say. For Christians, the answer is yes, but for Jews and Muslims, no. Any way I do this, I'm bound to offend someone, I suppose. I'm thinking about just putting "Jesus as" under "God" and leaving the rest of the stuff about Jesus just under his name. The Holy Spirit I haven't decided on yet. It's been real interesting indexing this particular overview of the Abrahamic religions. The authors have a very engaging style and have brought out a number of fascinating facts about the development of each religion that I didn't know. And I'm rather well read on the subject. Anyone who'd like a good perspective on these religions should take a look.

Last week, I also got a new project, short deadline, to add the Teacher Edition material to the extant indexes of a set of textbooks on English as a Second Language (ESL) for what looks like late elementary or middle school kids. It is most unfortunate that the index for the student edition isn't really an index at all, but an artificial hierarchical list of terms with no detailed terms as main entries. Rather frustrating to just add "t" page numbers for all sorts of pedagogical headings buried under very general topics like "Literary Analysis, " "Language and Grammar," and "Vocabulary." But we provide what the client wants, and with the short deadline, we can do no more. I'll be glad when that project is out of here.

Later on this week, I get to tackle AutoCAD (CAD=computer-aided design) material. I've worked with this stuff before. It should go pretty fast once I get started.

Biochem Wrapped Up--Now for God and Office

2008-03-09T14:19:00.000-05:00

Biochemistry was, in fact, a bit of a bear to index, but I did learn some cool stuff about how enzymes and DNA work in our bodies. But, it was somewhat slow going for the rate of pay.

This week, I'll be working a couple of contrasts: A beginner's guide to Microsoft Office 2007 (easy and fast), and Modern Religions For Dummies. Modern Religions seems to be an overview of the three Middle Eastern origined monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Should be a good review, but I have to be careful not to phrase things or choose terms that might offend one group or another. A delicate task.

Biochemistry--Project of the Week

2008-03-04T13:45:00.001-06:00

Well, not sure I'll do a book like this again, particularly not for the usual page rate for this publisher. So many chemical names that are only slowly typed in. It's actually a pretty good read (and this coming from a total non-chem person). The Dummies folks do hire writers who can clarify complex material and inject just the right amount of humor to keep things interesting.

But indexing this material is a bit of a bear.....back into enzyme kinetics.....send sympathy, please!

Computers and Biochemistry--Go Figure

2008-02-26T13:27:00.000-06:00

It never gets boring, I'll say that. This week I've got a lovely set of lessons on how to work your computer, designed for the novice computer user and marketed to senior citizens. Great series by Labyrinth Books. Even my mom, bless her non-technical heart, could figure things out after taking this course.

As a complete contrast, I've got to wade through biochemistry; fortunately, it's part of Wiley Publishers For Dummies series, so I think my primarily liberal arts brain can handle the concepts at this level. I'll let you all know if it kills my brain instead.

Note on last week's project: Mercy Otis Warren, in addition to all her writing and revolutionizing, managed to live into her eighties. A feat in itself, especially for a woman who had children (five sons in her case).