Stacks and stacks of letters

Nobody recognized the picture on the last blog post so I'm giving you a BIG hint!   That song -- now stuck in my brain -- was from the Perry Como show back in the '60s.  And yes, I'm old enough to remember the show.  Do you?

Back to the topic at hand, I left off the last post ready to tackle the letters between Walter and me.  And so I did!  Well, I started by reviewing what I had been carrying around all these years:  letters from Walter to me, photocopies of my letters to him, a few audio tapes, and printouts of some of the letters.  Back a while ago when I had a Macintosh computer (late 1980s?), I had begun typing up the letters.  The diskette for them was long lost so all I had were the printouts.  Not much help since I would have to retype them.

But wait, there might be a better solution:  speech recognition software!  I had an old version of Dragon Naturally Speaking on my computer so I could read the letters out loud and they would be captured in a word processing file.  I first heard about Dragon Naturally Speaking when a colleague told me that he used it after he got carpal tunnel syndrome and was unable to type.  I gave it a try -- reading the letters was definitely easier than typing them all, but the results were disappointing!  It was easy enough to read the letters, but the software mangled a lot of the words.  Not good enough!  I got discouraged about the project and lost momentum.

At a party at my neighbor's house last February I met Johanna. I had mentioned that I was working on a book, and she and others asked about the topic. I began an explanation at a fairly high level saying it was based on a romance from the 1980s. Johanna took me aside and asked me more and more questions, saying that she was particularly interested in romance. She was clearly fascinated by the story, and at one point as I talked, she pointed out that my face had lit up while talking about the letters and the experience. This conversation was a real inspiration to me, and immediately I began to regain interest in the project.

The next day after taking a walk I got to talking to another neighbor, Dan Connolly.  Once again I mentioned that I was writing a book, but was kind of stuck. He immediately went into his house for a book he wanted me to read. It was The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield.  Dan had bought the book at the airport and read it while waiting for a plane. The interesting thing to me about this book was that the act of giving it to me inspired me, even as much as the book itself.  It felt like the world -- or my neighborhood, at least -- wanted me to get going.  

These two incidents, one with Johanna and the other with Dan, put me back on the right track. Monday morning I began in earnest to dictate and edit the letters.  With this new inspiration, I bought and installed the latest version of Dragon to try again. The first step in using speech recognition software is to "train" it to understand your speech.  Once I did the training (by reading some passages aloud) and identifying myself as a speaker of "Southern English," I had much greater success.  Version 11 of Dragon was greatly improved, and I could immediately have more confidence in the results.  Another hurdle crossed!

During this time I was deeply immersed in Walter's life in 1984, as I read aloud his letters and remembered the incidents he referred to.  It almost felt like I was intruding, although of course these letters had been written to me.  But they were written 27 years ago between two individuals were in such a different place, oh, those many years ago.  The question occurred to me whether Walter would still be willing for me to publish the letters.  I hadn't been in touch with him for decades, since 1989, so finding him was the next challenge!  

Future posts:  finding Walter, revisiting the past, plugging gaps in my memory, . . . 

Letters, We've Got Letters, Lots and Lots of Letters!

Okay, I got the first blog post up yesterday.  Today I sent out an email letting folks know about the blog.  So now it's time to deliver!   Where do I start?   Let's go back to last December. . . .

Right after Christmas 2010, I got a call from one of my coworkers who let me know that my position in the company was being eliminated.  So I wasn't "fired" exactly, but I was now out of a job, effective immediately!   I was a little surprised, but more importantly tremendously relieved!   I had dreaded going to work for months, due mostly to the boss (located in a different city, thank Heavens) who thought he knew everything, but . . . well, you get the picture.  Anyway I was free!

First I had to take care of business to sign up for health insurance, etc.   Then the question was what do I do now?   I wasn't ready to retire, but thought I would take some time for myself.  And then I remembered that I had a tote bag full of letters from 1984.  I had moved that bag from New Orleans to Washington, DC, to Austin, Texas, each time saying, "When I have time. . . ."  NOW I had time!

The letters in the bag were written between Walter and me after we met at a conference in Belgium in April 1984.  Many, many letters back and forth!  In July that year, I went to visit Walter in South Africa, in the wine country!  What a wonderful 17 1/2 days that was!  We agreed that some day the letters should be published, one way or another.  Walter made copies of my letters to him so I would have the whole set.

I stayed busy all those years after that.  I was teaching Computer Science at Loyola University in New Orleans at the time, trying to get my first book published.  When that book (Introduction to Natural Language Processing) came out, it caught the attention of a government contracting company in the Washington, DC, area.  They called and offered me a job so I moved to DC.  After three years at the company (SRA International) I realized that I wasn't cut out for that position.  I started my own consulting business which lasted for 10 years.  During that time, I had moved to Austin -- the joy of working for yourself is easy relocation!  

Part of my reason for moving to Austin was the weather!  I had contracted Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in 1993 (a story for another day), which made the cold weather in DC hard on me!  Soon after I arrived, I was hired to teach Computer Science at UT Austin, as a lecturer.  After 5 years, I was hired by a start-up company to help develop part of their Electronic Medical Records system (another story for still another day).  That job lasted 9 years through 4-5 different CEOs and several management companies.

And here it was January 2011 and I was facing my future without a job.  I hadn't applied for a job since 1975 when I first got my Ph.D.   Every time one situation ended another opportunity opened up, so I trusted my instincts.  Writing a book was the right thing to be doing.  It felt right, and I believe that when I should change my situation, something will show up for me.

Time to tackle the letters. . . .

PS:  Who's in the picture?  Are you old enough to remember?

Future posts:  starting to write, finding Walter again, remembering details from way back when, . . .

Getting started, finally!

Today is the first day of my blog, after many years of writing in other formats.  It reminds me that when my son was an infant, I started a conversation with him.  I said, "I've been told that I should talk to you so here goes!"  I guess it worked:  he started talking at 18 months and didn't stop for many years.  When he was 12, he teased me that I should talk to him then because "Next year I'll be a teenager and won't talk to you any more."  It wasn't true -- he continued talking to me.  And now that he has children of his own, we still talk.  


So maybe I'm starting a blog that will last many years!  Or at least as long as it seems interesting to me -- and others, if I may presume that others will read my musings.  
"We didn't know what to do with a smart girl." That statement comes from a conversation I had with my mother when I was about 30.  It struck me right in the gut, but confirmed some of my childhood suspicions.  I was born into the wrong family!  Well, not really, but that feeling of being an alien hits all of us at one time or another.  I have intended for many years to write a memoir called "Smart Girl", but haven't gotten to that one yet.  So I'll start with a blog by that name and explain the current project.    


The memoir I have written has no title, as yet.  It describes part of the year 1984 when I went to a conference in Belgium and fell in love.  The story begins when Walter comments on my Opium perfume as he passes by me.  That begins a conversation that leads to a walk in the woods and looking for fairies.  We spent the following day in Bruges, the romantic northern city called "the Venice of the North."  Walter lit a candle in the cathedral to represent a turning point in his life.  After a romantic evening, Walter and I left the conference and ran off together to Brussels to seek more fairies before we each returned home to our ordinary lives.  


Neither of us was willing to give up on our romantic adventure so letters starting flying back and forth between New Orleans where I lived and South Africa, where Walter was.  I planned a visit to South Africa during the summer -- winter in the Southern Hemisphere.  More letters flew with plans for the visit and more promises of fairies and love.  I spent three weeks with Walter in the beautiful wine country around Stellenbosch in the Western Cape of South Africa.  


In later posts to this blog I want to explain how I came to write this story, so many years after it began. And the process of getting the story and the letters into a format to share.