October 2nd - October 8th, 2022
HANDWRITING!
Some letters have handwriting that is really easy to decipher and are quick to transcribe. Others...not so much.
Some letters I have to to rotate different directions, change filters and backgrounds on, and enlist the help of family, friends, and colleagues to try to understand what is being written. When I encounter letters like this, it can sometimes take awhile to transcribe because I have to leave and come back to it.
Another obstacle with transcribing these letters is that they were all written in the 1960s and come from all over the world. So slang and turn of phrases can be different from what I may know as American 60s slang. Sometimes even the spelling of English words can vary, for example, the word "colour" in Europe is spelled differently than in the U.S.
Additionally, punctuation can be very different in these letters. Dashes, commas, colons, and abbreviations are used in ways that I am not used to seeing.
Another aspect of these letters that I find incredibly fascinating is that Mr. Meredith was somewhat of an amateur archivist. Not only did he save nearly every letter and respond to a great many of them, he also made notations on them with a red pencil. These notations included text such as the date he responded to the letters, dollar amounts that were sent as contributions to his education, more details regarding mailing addresses and who the sender was.
Comments