EDITOR'S NIGHTMARE

There is a couple who live here in the park who, at the moment, are off on a month long cruise of northern Europe -- England, Scotland, Norway and Russia. Both husband and wife email daily the various places they visit, and part of their intent is that we should publish some of this in our park monthly magazine. Good idea. Except that because of the length of the trip, we are getting enough to publish a small book! And my editor wasjustthisclose to tearing her hair out. So I offered to do the editing job. Yikes!
Part of the difficulty is that both hubby and wife write about the same day -- sometimes. So I had to read everything! And I discovered something very interesting. The wife writes in great detail, and most of it is quite interesting. Here is a brief example:

“He also asked if I would like to see the six reindeer that live in the town. Well, of course I would since I'd only seen one at Ny Alesund. So he took me to the big window at the back of the store and pointed across the small harbor and sure enough, there were six reindeer sitting on the slope below the hospital. He said he hated them! They ate his flowers and roamed the town and people had to shoo them off the streets, but they were "protected". All the reindeer belong to the Sami indigenous people who we learned in school were the Laplanders. (Sami people don't like that term.) Seems the Sami people won't thin out their reindeer population and their numbers have increased so much that the land cannot sustain them, so they come to the town to get what food they can”

Interesting stuff.

Now here is a typical example from hubby:

“Today we are in Leknes, Norway, and I am at the only Internet contact we could find in this small town. This is at the dock where the ship is docked, and they charge 20 cents per minute compared with 40 cents on board ship. Of course this is a chest high keyboard with no chairs, so I plan to stand here only 20 minutes. It is chilly and overcast, but not raining yet. Soon I shall get back on the ship and have lunch. I may come back here for another 20 minutes after my nap.”

Once I figured out that I really only had to use the wife’s material, the rest was fairly straightforward.

Other kinds of fun --

As a company was preparing to move to new quarters, a memo was sent around reminding the workers to label their items. So one worker placed the label STAPLER on the stapler.

“Reverend Smith? This is the Internal Revenue Service. Is a Samuel Jones a member of your congregation?”
“He is.”
“Did he donate $10,000 to the church?”
“He will.”