Halloween Kitty

My 17-month-old granddaughter, Ana, is trick-or-treating as a kitten. Cute little thing, isn't she?



Halloween kitten granddaughter Ana EditorMom

Marriage Rights for Everyone

This video clip breaks my heart:




If you live in California, please vote no against proposition 8. If the proposition passes, it would take away the right of same-sex couples to marry. If you know anyone who lives there, please urge them to vote against the measure.



proposition 8 gay rights civil rights same-sex marriage EditorMom

Audio Conference on Medical Editing

On Tuesday, October 28, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern time, I'll be a copresenter of an audio conference, sponsored by Copyediting newsletter, on common problems in medical editing. The conference is for new medical copyeditors and for those who would like to become medical copyeditors. You can get more details and register by going here.

My main topics will be

• When to stet jargon and when to eliminate it



• How to describe patients—they aren't their diseases and they aren't on meds



• How statistics can trip up researchers and editors alike



• Where to find solutions to problem reference-list entries



• Which sections of the AMA Manual of Style you'll keep returning to

I have spent the last 18 years of my 24 years in publishing as a medical copyeditor, most of them as a freelancer, and I'm also certified by the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences as an editor in the life sciences. I'll be speaking from the viewpoint of an editor who works on both medical textbooks and medical journals.

There will be a Q&A period at the end of the conference.

If you can't change your schedule to participate in the audio conference, you can go here to order a CD of the conference. If you can't afford the cost of the conference yourself, you and one or more colleagues can register under one name and make arrangements among yourselves to share the cost. International callers are welcome; consider using VoIP to decrease the cost of your time on the phone. And remember, if you're already self-employed as a freelance editor in the United States, the cost of the audio conference (and the audio CD, if you purchase it) is a business expense that you can write off on your income tax forms.

Get ready to pick up your phone and learn from the comfort of your employer's office, your home office, or your home. If you've wanted to know what makes medical copyediting different from copyediting in other fields, this is the conference for you.



audio conference medical copyeditor medical editing copyeditor copyediting editor editing freelance publishing BELS Board of Editors in the Life Sciences EditorMom

Why Certification Is Valuable

Yesterday I wrote about my pleasure at having been notified by the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences that I am now officially certified as an editor in the life sciences.

But why is certification a big deal? After all, I've been a medical copyeditor for nearly 18 of my almost 25 years in publishing. But having certification certainly will help me be more confident in raising my rates come January. And yesterday, I notified all of my clients by e-mail that I'm newly certified and explained what I believe that it means for them:

What this means for you as my client is that whenever I edit medical documents for you, you are getting the services of someone well trained and very experienced in medical editing. My skills have been vetted by experienced professionals in my field. Even when I edit nonmedical documents for you, I bring to my editing the precision and attention to detail that are earmarks of a medical editor. I sought the certification as part of my continuing commitment to excellence in serving you. I will continue to seek out educational opportunities to keep my skills current so as to serve you well.

Katharine O'Moore-Klopf, ELS

Several of my international authors are now oohing and aahing over my certification, viewing it as the editorial equivalent of their being board-certified in their medical specialty. And they're telling their colleagues that they know of this great certified medical editor, which will certainly mean more clients for me in the near future. One author in China, on hearing that I was preparing for the certification exam, told his supervisor and mentor, who suggested that he write, for the hospital's newsletter, about the editorial assistance I have given him. I have apparently now been profiled in Chinese in the newsletter; he even asked me for a photograph of myself to accompany the article.

And because I got into medical editing through the back door—by learning on the job rather than by first earning a degree in the biomedical sciences and then taking medical-editing courses—the ELS (Editor in the Life Sciences) designation lends extra legitimacy to my skills. After all, my only academic degree is a bachelor of arts in journalism. I will likely eventually sit for the ELS(D)—ELS diplomate—exam within the next few years.

I suspect that the reason more U.S. clients don't seek out BELS-certified medical editors is that BELS hasn't done a great job of educating the publishing world about its existence, its goals, and the value of the certification that it offers. I hope to help change that. After all, how many copyeditors in nontechnical fields have bemoaned the lack of certification for copyeditors?



BELS Board of Editors in the Life Sciences certification medical copyeditor medical editing copyeditor copyediting editor editing freelance publishing EditorMom

Certifiable

I am delighted to announce that I have passed the examination of the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences and am now a certified editor in the life sciences, which is what the newly acquired initials ELS after my name in work-related situations mean. It's nice to have an organization recognize that I know what I'm doing as a medical copyeditor. After all, I've been doing it for only the last 18 of my almost 25 years in publishing.



BELS Board of Editors in the Life Sciences certification medical copyeditor medical editing copyeditor copyediting editor editing freelance publishing EditorMom

Fear Response

It is always true that if you reach out, friends will respond.

I reached out here in my previous post, and lots of you handed me generous helpings of care. Because we all know one another only through cyberspace, you will likely never literally see how much good you did me, but I am no longer feeling alone. I am warmed, cheered, and inspired by your words. Thank you so very much. If I could hug you all, I would. I think my husband, Ed, would hug you too, if he could. He's the kind of guy who makes instant friends of everyone he meets. You'd like him.

Ed now has a job interview scheduled for Friday with one of the big-box home-improvement stores, and people everywhere are offering him ideas. My in-laws, on a fixed income, have withdrawn a chunk of their retirement funds for us to use in paying our personal bills and business bills for about the next 30 days.

My editing business, which has been going strong now for almost 14 years, seems poised to get stronger, if that's possible. My e-mail in-box is overflowing with offers of new projects. If I could clone myself so that I could take it all on, I just might do so.

What's next after 30 days? I don't know. I'm fervently hoping that Barack Obama becomes president, and that when he gets his financial plan ready for when he's in office, he'll up the measly 15% that he wants John and Jane American to be able to withdraw from their IRAs without a tax penalty, even if they're not ready for retirement, to use for financial emergencies. Fifteen percent of Ed's and my IRAs wouldn't be big enough to help us much. And I know we're not the only ones in the same situation. I'd also like to see him and Congress offer some real financial assistance to small businesses. We have two of them in our family, and with both of us at the peak of our experience and earning capabilities, going back to work for the man ain't agonna get us what we need to put our boys through college and help them get started on their own one day.

And now, back to work until the final presidential debate comes on TV.



economy recession fear friends EditorMom

Fear

It has become painfully clear that the sudden gut-wrenching drop of the economy is making it impossible for my husband, Ed, to get work. He was laid off, after 14 years with the same company, in October 2007 from his cabinetmaking job. He started up his own company, without any financial cushion, thanks to that layoff. Despite that, his business has done very well for the last 9 months. His clients are the usually-recession-proof wealthy of the Hamptons on Long Island.

But now that the bottom has suddenly dropped out of the stock market and many large banks and investment firms are failing, none of those people are clamoring to have custom work (new furniture or cabinetry, new kitchens, refurbishing of existing kitchens, etc.) done, or if they are wanting anything done, they want it done at half price, which Ed can't make any money on. We suspect some of them are now losing their high-paying jobs. It is now likely that we won't be able to make our November 1 mortgage payment, November 1 health insurance policy payment (through his company), his business loan payments, or several other payments.

I'm not a person to panic easily, but I'm fairly panicked now. I spent the weekend scrambling, with Ed, to find ways out of this problem. One thing we do know: Though my business is doing very well, it won't support a family of 4, plus his parents (who live in our house, have a fixed income, and pay us a small rent) and Ed's business expenses. He is out now looking for jobs, but no one's hiring in his field at the income level he needs to make. He'll likely end up with a Home Depot–type job, which won't begin to pay things off.

We'll talk to our accountant tomorrow (we hope; we've left a phone message for him) and to our banks (personal and business). We may end up pulling all of our funds out of our IRAs to give ourselves a temporary cushion.

I suspect that there aren't enough antidepressants in the world to ease the anxiety of everyone in the same position as Ed and me.



economy recession fear EditorMom

Girls Are Calling My Son!

Okay, it's only one girl.

But a young female person did just now call and leave a message on our land line's answering machine for Neil, my almost-14-year-old ninth-grader, with her phone number. He says that at school, she'd asked for his phone number. He's sitting over there on the living-room couch right now, continuing to play his computer game as if this is no big deal. I told him that it was fine with me if he wanted to take the phone into his room to call her back. "Oh, I'll write down her phone number," he says, not making any move away from his computer. Either he's trying to play it cool or, more likely, he's like all of the nerd boys with whom I fell madly in love at that age who really hadn't yet developed much interest or skill in dealing with girls.

I never had the nerve at 13 or 14 (or at any time during adolescence!) to call a boy. And there's another girl on the school bus with whom Neil watches movies on his laptop sometimes.

Huh. My son, the chick magnet. His voice already breaks as it decides anew each moment what register it will land in. What's next—facial hair? A learner's permit? Ack!



adolescence boys girls Neil parenting EditorMom

A McCain McMansion

Yep, ol' maverick John McCain is a man of the people. He knows our pain. He knows how we live.

Not!

Take a tour of one of his little bungalows, a 13-bedroom, 14.5-bathroom Phoenix compound on 2.7 acres, now up for sale:













presidential candidates McCain maverick mansion EditorMom

The Case of Moaning Myrtle

For your amusement, here's a poor drawing (mine) of what my husband, Ed, was working on for a large part of today:

We don't have central air-conditioning (AC) because this 40-plus-year-old home wasn't built with it. Instead, we have several window or wall AC units in the upstairs. The setup in the drawing is what we have in the living room (with the AC unit) and the master bedroom (oscillating fan instead of AC unit). A few years ago, Ed put the two little stereo cooling fans (shown in the drawing as being green) inside the wall to pull some of the cool air out of the living room and into the master bedroom. The setup works really well; on hot days, our bedroom is quite pleasant, temperature-wise, for sleeping in. The job was a big, hairy deal back then, involving cutting a hole through the wall, installing the little fans into the tight space, and framing out the hole on both sides of the wall.

Today he was dealing with the recent problem of one of the stereo fans moaning periodically. It had begun to sound a bit like a bass Moaning Myrtle. Ed had to get into the very small space to take the stereo fans out, replace one because its bearings had worn out, and lubricate both. He's done now, but his work style is vastly different from mine. When he encounters a really difficult task, he bitches and moans loudly throughout the whole process, winding himself up until he achieves mental vapor lock. When I encounter such a task, I keep quiet and remain calm, knowing that if I wind myself up, I won't be mentally clear enough to think through any problems that might come up. Our house is so small that whenever he's in "[wood] shop Nazi" working mode (my term) inside the house, it interferes with my ability to edit because his cursing winds both of us up. There's no quiet place for me to escape to.

I understand having different working styles. I just wish that I could turn off his volume when he's working in my space. Now that he's done and calmed down, I like him again. ;-)



home repairs Moaning Myrtle working style husband Ed EditorMom

If We're Talking Alaska, It Must Be About Palin

The afternoon mail just arrived, and in it was a postcard from Alaska.

Says my mate, getting ready to start one of his several-times-a-day anti-Republican rants, "If that's Sarah Palin asking for contributions, she can just shove it where the sun don't shine." (Yes, there is a downside to having two self-employed people in the house all day, every day: It's nonstop Rant-O-Palooza here, and it'll stay that way until after the November election.)

"Honey, wait," I reply. "It's from our friends Don and Lisa. Remember? They're vacationing in Alaska." (And as Democrats in Palin country, they had to remain undercover at all times.)

Poor mate. His reason for ranting was just taken right out from under him. Ah, well. He'll have plenty more reasons tonight, when we watch the presidential candidates debate.



Alaska Sarah Palin Republicans debate EditorMom

Brain Scans for Presidential Candidates?

Daniel G. Amen, a neuropsychiatrist and brain-imaging expert well known for his work with autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, suggests that all U.S. presidential candidates should be required to undergo brain scans so that we know if they have any brain dysfunction:

What do Rudy Giuliani's messy personal life, John McCain's temper and Hillary Clinton's inability to seem authentic have in common? Maybe nothing. They may be just overblown issues in the otherwise normal lives of candidates under the political microscope.

Such symptoms, however, may mean a lot—such as evidence of underlying brain dysfunction. Sometimes people with messy personal lives have low prefrontal cortex activity associated with poor judgment; sometimes people with temper problems have brain damage and impulse control problems; sometimes people who struggle with authenticity have trouble really seeing things from someone else's perspective. ...

Seems a bit too invasive to me, but then again, as Amen wrote:

Three of the last four presidents have shown clear brain pathology. President Reagan's Alzheimer's disease was evident during his second term in office. Nonelected people were covering up his forgetfulness and directing the country's business. Few people knew it, but we had a national crisis. Brain studies have been shown to predict Alzheimer's five to nine years before people have their first symptoms.

President Clinton's moral lapses and problems with bad judgment and excitement-seeking behavior—indicative of problems in the prefrontal cortex—eventually led to his impeachment and a poisonous political divisiveness in the U.S. The prefrontal cortex houses the brain's supervisor, involved with conscience, forethought, planning, attention span and judgment. ...

brain scan brain MRI presidential candidates brain dysfunction EditorMom

Weekend Granddaughter Blogging

I haven't posted any photos of my granddaughter, Ana, in a while, so this shot's overdue. This is my adorable 16-month-old girl eating a fast-food lunch. She brought her mommy and daddy over to our house for a visit this afternoon. The way she runs is so cute, and she talks a lot. And of course Grandma and Grandpa just love it when she raises her little arms for them to pick her up. There's nothing more soft and snuggly than a toddler. She grins and lets me kiss her belly and her cheeks fairly often. I'm hooked!




granddaughter Ana grandparenting EditorMom

McCain Has POW Skeletons in His Closet

Sydney Schanberg, the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who has been reporting on foreign affairs about as long as I've been alive and wrote the book (The Death and Life of Dith Pran) on which the 1984 movie The Killing Fields was based, has written a huge investigative piece about John McCain and McCain's alleged role in a coverup about American prisoners of war in Vietnam. McCain the Vietnam war hero has POW skeletons in his closet that need to come out before some people try to elect the man.

A big chunk of Schanberg's piece has been posted to the online version of The Nation; the print version is scheduled to carry the piece in the October 6 issue. Here are snippets from the online portion:

John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW ... hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn't return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero people would logically imagine to be a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books. ...

The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a Special Forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington and even sworn testimony by two defense secretaries that "men were left behind." This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number—probably hundreds—of the US prisoners held in Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain. ...

McCain has hardly been alone in this hide-the-scandal campaign. The Arizona senator has actually been following the lead of every White House since Richard Nixon's and thus of every CIA director, Pentagon chief and National Security Adviser, among many others (including Dick Cheney, who was George H.W. Bush's defense secretary). ...

And the full piece, with illustrating documents, is online at the Nation Institute, whose Investigative Fund provided research support for the story. A snippet from that longer piece:

... [Staff members of the] Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs ... made the following finding, using intelligence reports marked "credible" that covered POW sightings through 1989: "There can be no doubt that POWs were alive ... as late as 1989." That finding was never released. Eventually, much of the staff was in rebellion. ...

Schanberg's belief is that McCain made a deal with his captors to get him out of Hanoi and that McCain's helping keep secret records showing that POWs were purposely left behind is part of that deal. He implies too that the pressure of keeping all of this inside for decades is what makes McCain such an angry, bitter man.

McCain is a very frightening story in so many ways. Why is the mainstream media so in love with him that it never checks very far into his past?



McCain Vietnam POW scandal Schanberg EditorMom

Cookbook by the World's Best Copyeditors

I am pleased as pumpkin chiffon praline pie* to announce that the second Copyediting-L (aka CE-L) cookbook, More Food for Thought, is available for sale in the CE-L store. I was its production editor.

I am also pleased to say that it looks terrific. That's what happens when professionals write and produce a book! The book is a very reasonably priced at $25 for 320 pages, with 225 recipes from 96 contributors from around the world. It's Wire-O bound so that it conveniently lies flat when it's open.

The CE-Lery (aka denizens of the Copyediting-L e-mail list) are some of the most intelligent, detail-oriented, and helpful people around. Of course, you'd expect nothing less than a fine and sure hand in the kitchen from such folks. In this cookbook, you'll find their favorite recipes for everything from Cheese Scones to Green Chile Bread Pudding, from Tomato Pie to "Mom's on Deadline" Tortellini, from Myke's Escargots à la Romaine to Plummy Mushrooms, from Moambe to Killer Jamabalaya ... and even recipes for potpourri and drain cleaners.

Generous folks that they are, the CE-Lery are donating all profits from cookbook sales (meaning all amounts above the base price charged by store host CafePress.com) and all other items in the CE-L store to charity: to the Grace Meredyth Lovegrove Scholarship at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. Grace was the daughter of CE-L listmate Richard Lovegrove.

Buy a copy for yourself; buy copies for gifts. Tell friends about the book. Send your relatives the link: http://www.cafepress.com/copyeditingl.303904398.


____________________
*There are no recipes for punch in the cookbook, so I can't be pleased as punch. ;-)



cookbook copyeditor charity EditorMom

McCain Invented the BlackBerry!

MIAMI (AP)—Move over, Al Gore. You may lay claim to the Internet, but John McCain helped create the BlackBerry.

At least that's the contention of a top McCain policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin. Waving his BlackBerry personal digital assistant and citing McCain's work as a senator, he told reporters Tuesday, "You're looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create."

McCain has acknowledged that he doesn't know how to use a computer and can't send e-mail, one of the BlackBerry's prime functions. ...

Um ... reality? No, I don't think that McCain or his staff is familiar with it. Why do you ask?



McCain liar delusional BlackBerry EditorMom

How to Make a Grown Editor Cry

Copyeditors edit for money and for the pleasure of dealing with words. But sometimes we do our work because we know just how much it helps authors. One of my repeat ESL (English as a second language) clients, an orthopedic surgeon from China who apparently just got a promotion, sent me this lovely message tonight:

Dear Katharine:

I just took a glance of the revised paper. I am deeply moved. You must have spent great effort on revising it.

Now I am the chief of the Adult Reconstructive Surgery department, I am fueling my junior staffs to do more research, so we will continuously need your help. If you get a chance to visit China, please kindly let me know. I am very happy to arrange some part of your trip in Beijing and invite you to visit our department.

Y.Z.

That's the first author note that ever made me feel like crying. What a sweetheart! And what a humbling honor to be so trusted.



freelance copyeditor copyediting editor medical editor editing publishing EditorMom

I Don't Like Ike

Earlier today, this was the predicted path of Hurricane Ike, which may make landfall tomorrow night.

My sister, Becky (yes, my daughter is named after her), and her family live in the area of the lower yellow-and-blue star that I've placed on the map. My brother, Wally, and his partner, Roger, live in the area of the top yellow-and-blue star.

All of them went through the attempted mass exodus from the Houston area when Hurricane Rita blew through in 2005. This time, my sister's saying that she's staying put, but Wally and Roger plan try to head out for Lafayette, Louisiana, tomorrow morning.

I cannot allow myself to think anything but that they will all be fine, especially because Wally is not only my brother but also one of my best friends. I'll be keeping my cell phone on 24 hours a day for the next couple of days. I'll also be fingering the lovely stones on what I use as a worry chain that was made for me my a sweet friend when my nephew, Jordan (Becky's son), was shipped to Iraq as a member of the Marine Reserves.


Updated at 3 p.m., 9/12/08: Got a call from my brother. He, Rita (his dog), and Roger have made it to Lafayette, about 200 miles away from home. Both guys work for the same company, which has a branch there in Lafayette. The staff members there have put aside food and drink for the guys, and there's even a shower available, so they'll have a place to stay for a few days. I'm hoping that they'll be safer there than they would've been in the Houston area, and I really hope that when they get back, their homes are still standing and relatively unscathed. I've called my sister's house, but no one is answering the phone. She is directly in Ike's path. I'm scared.


Updated at 3:55 p.m., 9/13/08: My brother has spoken with people from his neighborhood who stayed put, and his house is fine. He, Roger, and Rita will head back home from Louisiana tomorrow or Monday, depending on road and power conditions.

My sister, who stayed in her home with her children, said her home is fine too. There was some water seepage under her front door but no flooding or wind damage to her home.

Amazing!



Ike Rita hurricane EditorMom

"In the Seventh Year"

And in the seventh year after the fall, the dust and debris of the towers cleared. And it became plain at last what had been wrought.

For the wreckage begat greed; and it came to pass that while America’s young men and women fought, other Americans enriched themselves. Beguiling the innocent, they did backdate options, and they did package toxic mortgage securities and they did reprice risk on the basis that it no more existed than famine in a fertile land.

On the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States, each of us needs to read all of Roger Cohen's column in the New York Times.



9/11 terrorism moral failure Republicans Iran Bush EditorMom

Admiring Talent, Continued

Earlier this week, I posted a new entry from the files of My Husband the Master Cabinetmaker^tm. Ed finished installing the dry bar–media unit today, so go check out the last two photos on this page of his business web site to see the unit in its full glory.

The middle section has glass shelving all around the wine rack, and the four top cabinet doors—one larger one on each side of the wine rack and two small ones above the wine rack—have been installed. All of them have glass faces inside wood frames.

Ed is done for now. The home owner will have to choose knobs for the cabinet doors, which Ed can later install. And the painting subcontractor will install that really tall crown molding—the molding that is atop the beigy wall behind the dry bar–media unit—across the top of the new unit.

And now comes the sweet part: the contractor paying Ed the final portion of his fee.



cabinetmaker dry bar media unit husband Ed EditorMom