Time Warp

Just over a week ago, I finished a big project for work. This presented me with lots of "leisure time" for Christmas week. We'd be home for Christmas so this was indeed a wonderful opportunity.

I'm generally a multi-tasker. I play on-line Scrabble (actually, it's called Literati) several times a day with my good friend, Judi. But I'm rarely just playing Literati; I'm usually also eating dinner, or watching TV, or cooking at the stove.

But when I want to, I can focus on just one thing. Intently. And that's just what I did.

With a full week of time for me to use just as I want to, I decided to invest some time in the completion of the transcription of my mother-in-law's father's World War I journal. It's a project I started for her some time ago, but until last Sunday, I'd only squeezed in a little bit of time here and there, and hadn't made much progress with the 270 page hand-written journal.

So, during this Christmas week, I came to know Elmer Underwood. And his buddies, Monty, Dunlevy, Grover, Jake, and many others. And I learned much about France. Elmer had many opportunities to travel while serving in the US Army in rural France. He visited museums, old chateaux, historic sites, and took hundreds of walks into nearby villages. By the river. Usually to the YMCA for ice cream and lemonade. And he made lots of friends at all kinds of shops -- patisserie, cafes, restaurants.

And he was an incessant reader. And, of course, loved to write. Letters to his sweet Marie. And daily entries in his journal. And more than anything else, he loved to get mail. Soldiers in Europe during WWI didn't have our current-day luxuries of e-mail, instant messaging, and web-cams. All they had was mail. And sometimes it took weeks for letters to arrive from the United States to our soldiers.

However, our current electronic access provided great fact-checking while I transcribed. Elmer's handwriting was often very difficult to read. Google maps is a great tool -- when in doubt of the name of a remote village, I could type several variations, one at a time, into Google maps and sure enough, a map would pop up.

I became an historical detective during this past week. Did you know that you can go to the Louvre's website and type in the name of a sculpture in its collection, and hear an entire lecture, complete with linked photographs? Fantastic! Here's one that I learned a lot about -- the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Fascinating!

The transcription is done. In fact, it's printing right now, and I'll punch holes and put it into a notebook. What a privilege to get to know Elmer so well.