Folding, sewing and contemplating Les — and my press

Work on the eulogy is nearly complete, leaving me feeling both relieved and sad.   With each paragraph I typeset, I recalled a hundred memories of my dear, crazy, funny & cantankerous father-in-law.  The printing was a marathon: I sorely felt the shortage of type, forcing me to compose, print and diss each page separately.  I have to confess that I’m not sorry that task is done!

Sewing the pamphlets
Sewing the pamphlets

Still, it was a good opportunity to learn about spacing, alignment and registration. As I fold and stitch each pamphlet, I’m studying each printed page – looking at the evenness of the inking, leading and spacing,  justification (one of my weaknesses, it seems).

I’m still struggling with the finer details of justifying my texts: somehow I can’t quite get the knack for a fully justified text – at least not without some ragged lines, or rivers or lakes appearing on the page. I tell myself this will improve with practice – and now that I have more time to devote to the craft, I hope to focus on this problem first.

I’ve also learned that I should have someone else proofread my copy because clearly, I was blind when I proofed this page.  I discovered these typos as I started to stitch the pamphlet (and long after the type had been dissed!) : an upside down “o” and a comma used instead of the full-stop period.  Even though it felt like I proofed each text a thousand times, evidently I missed a few glaring errors.  While it’s tempting to say something like “o, it’s fine — no big deal– it just shows that it’s handset,”  I feel somehow that it’s disrespectful to the intent of the project and to the memory of my father-in-law.

Typos in text
Typos in the text

There’s not much I can do about it now, except to document my mistakes and learn from them in the future.   And to my-father-in-law, I would say “I’m sorry about these mistakes.  Adieu, dear Les.”

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