What It Is (posts below left; rate sheet, client list, other stuff below right)

My name is Bob Land. I am a full-time freelance editor and proofreader, and occasional indexer. This blog is my website.

You'll find my rate sheet and client list here, as well as musings on the life of a freelancer; editing, proofreading, and indexing concerns and issues; my ongoing battles with books and production; and the occasional personal revelation.

Feel free to contact me directly with additional questions: landondemand@gmail.com.

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Wednesday, December 19, 2018

The Lattice Strikes Again

I'm copyediting a book that deals with national issues in 1943–1945. One of the players is Edward Stettinius, who for a time was secretary of state under FDR and Truman, and whom I have never heard of until this book.

I was distracted for a moment and landed upon Wikipedia's page for people from Staten Island. 

  • Edward Stettinius Jr. – Chairman of US Steel; left to become Secretary of State to FDR Administration; former home is now Staten Island Academy, Todt Hill. . . . [from the famous people from Staten Island page]
  • Stettinius grew up in a mansion on the family's estate on Staten Island and graduated from the Pomfret School in 1920 after which he attended the University of Virginia until 1924. [from Stettinius's page]

I doubt his former home is now Staten Island Academy, because Staten Island Academy tore down its original big schoolhouse-type structure, which very well could have been a home, in the 1970s and rebuilt its entire campus — unless the school has purchased one of the grand old Vanderbilt-era homes that borders the now much more developed campus than existed there when I lived over the hill from it.

Perhaps the former Staten Island Academy structure was Stettinius's family estate, in which case that's where I attended first through fourth grades. I had repeating dreams of launching off the tops of the big stair landings there and being able to fly. And in real life I held Beth Leventhal's hand in second grade and spoke of marriage. Years later we were in summer camp at the same place and time and both were so painfully shy we couldn't even look at much less speak to each other. 

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