Note on Memoir

I'm finally getting back to this “Memoir” after half a year of neglecting it. It's not really a memoir, of course, but a collection of writing from old notebooks, going back to the earliest ones I can find. I'm retyping them, presenting them more or less as I've found them, but also editing somewhat for various reasons, based on my judgment.

Since this is in “blog” format, and dated, I am using this to not only record these old documents, but also to comment on them, in some cases, anyway. Also, I'm going to speculate about the large gaps in time. This is going back roughly 40 years, so in a lot of cases, I don't remember.

I am keeping another online journal, as well, of more recent notebook writing (see: Notebook Journals) but this is still, at this point, going back 20 years. The reason for doing this in two places is just that in each I want to go chronologically, and there is so much notebook writing, I wanted work in two places at once. I know it's kind of confusing, and even confusing to me sometimes! And what is the point? Maybe it's of no interest to anyone but me, that's OK. But I think, if given the chance, to read some typed out writing from people's old notebooks, I might be somewhat curious, because that's often private stuff that no one's allowed to see!

—Randy Russell, May 24, 2017