Classbook Errata and Mea Culpas
The ClassBook was a big hit, with the accent on big! Over 800 pages, 8 pounds, 530 personal essays, obituaries, and 12 longer essays offering broader, deeper looks at our experiences over the past 50 years. Yet, sadly
Mistakes were made.
John Waldman was one of the first classmates to submit his essay online, and yet, his was the one essay that fell through the cracks completely. Our apologies to John and his family … and his friends. The only thing we can do now is to publish it here, in its online version. We are doing that and promoting it to the front page, partly so you all can see it, partly to atone for the error.
And no, we weren’t going to get off that easy. Stephen Lord‘s entry in the ClassBook was also mangled. We lost his Personal Data and his Personal Essay. Our humblest, most abject apologies to Stephen, his family and friends. You can find the essay here. We also put a notice on the front page. We will be sending out an Errata sheet for inclusion in the ClassBook.
We also used an early version of an obituary for Jim Lansing, one that contained several inaccuracies and key omissions. The errors have been corrected, and his widow is working with us to add the omissions. When it’s completed, we’ll re-publish and invite you to read it. Our apologies to Jim’s widow and children, who really wanted to Jim’s information published in the ClassBook itself.
Another editing error occurred in a classmate’s essay, someone who prefers to remain anonymous and not call attention to either the old version or the corrected version. The copy editor made a few changes and dropped some key commas that did change his meanings, in material ways, and we are sorry for that.
We also failed to update an obituary for William Weinraub. Our Corresponding Secretary will be addressing this in his next Class Notes column, but the correct obituary is available online now.
On behalf of all the editors of the ClassBook, we are sorry for the errors and omissions. Please do take note that all Personal Essays are available online now; if yours has any inaccuracies or tweaks to be made, you have complete control over your own essay.