Category: Letters to Esther

Letters to Esther

What is Letters to Esther?

Shelly

Joyce asked in comments about the story behind Letters to Esther, so I thought I’d answer her here, in case others were wondering.

Several years ago, I found a large wooden crate jumbled full of letters at a flea market. The stall owner was selling them piecemeal. I started digging through the mess and noticed that they all seemed to be addressed to the same person. I wondered how many had already been sold; it seemed criminal to me that someone’s life was being divvied up and meted out in little parcels, so I offered the stall owner $20 for the whole lot. He accepted, and I lugged the crate out to the car and took it home with me. I had no idea at that point what I’d end up doing with the letters, if anything. I just knew that they were in need of a guardian.

I knew I wanted to read the letters, but beyond that, I didn’t have any plan for what to do with them. However, it quickly became clear to me that I needed to find out more about Esther. Obviously, original documents are the best place to start researching a person. The problem was that these were letters to Esther, not from her. Sure, there is a lot of information about Esther’s life contained within those letters, but her voice is missing. Or so it appeared to be. What I found was that she had saved rough drafts of many of her replies. Those drafts were written on the backs of homework assignments, in faded pencil on badly deteriorated pulpy paper, often on time stolen from her school day. I became even more certain that I should do something to preserve and share these letters. Surely someone who cared enough not just to save a lifetime of correspondence, but to also keep rough drafts of her replies, would approve.

I started transcribing the letters a few years ago. It’s a tedious but satisfying process. I had in mind putting them online, but at that point, I had no idea how I wanted to go about it. Last year, I decided to start uploading them to a blog, so that I could get a feel for whether or not people even wanted to read them. It wasn’t a perfect solution, and soon got bogged down for several reasons. I decided to hold off on uploading any more letters until I had the time and energy to create a website for them. So, that’s what I’m doing now.

About Esther herself, I’ve been able to find out quite a bit. She fell in love, I think, with a young man from her hometown of Geneva, Indiana. The letters between Esther and Richard began when she was still in high school and Richard in college. Esther later attended Indiana University, and continued to write to Richard for a couple more years. At some point, and for some reason I’ve been unable to determine, the relationship–and the letters to and from Richard–ended. It may be that those letters were destroyed by Esther herself, or by a family member after her death in the 1997, or maybe they were sold before I bought the crate of letters. I know that after she finished college, she taught grade school. She later married a man named Robert H. Cooper. Dr. Cooper was a lover of nature, a conservationist, and a professor of science at Ball State University (my alma mater). The Cooper Science Building was named after him. I’ve spent many hours in that building, so it was a very strange feeling to see that circle closed, and to know that Esther was part of my life long before I’d ever “met” her.

It’s funny that this subject should come up today. I just got off the phone with my mom. At one point, I mentioned the fact that when I was small, we would drive around in the country and look at old, abandoned houses. We’d park the car, then everyone would get out and go their separate ways, exploring the things that interested them. The grown-ups seemed more interested in the crumbling bones of the buildings, but I was always fascinated by the detritus left behind. Pieces of yellowed newspaper stuck under torn bits of linoleum, marbles or the arm from a doll that must have belonged to long-gone children, calendars left on damp and peeling walls, a spoon lying in a door-less cupboard; then as now, it was the small artifacts that commanded my attention.

Letters to Esther, Meta

Letters to Esther Update

Shelly

I spent the better part of last night creating a header graphic and playing around with formats. I think I’ve finally got something that I’m reasonably happy with. I decided to go with hand coding, because I couldn’t find an automated way to get what I wanted. Yippee, more work. But, I think it’ll work out okay. For now, I’m dumping everything into a sub-directory of the mother site, but that may change at a later date. If it does, at that point, I can also re-visit the issue of content management systems that might (or might not) do what I want automagically.

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Esther Munro

Anyway, if you want to take a look at a rough conceptual draft: Letters to Esther. There are only a few letters at this point, and Home is the only nav link in the header area that goes anywhere. I’m trying to make sure that the letters themselves are legible but not huge. At this point, the thumbnails are around 10k each and the full-size images are 30-40k for half sheets and 80k for full-sheets (many of the letters were written on a folded sheet of paper that opens like a book, with two small pages and an interior centerfold page).

I also scanned some photos that were included with the letters. One set is a mass-produced group of photos of the University of Chicago’s buildings, c.1920. I’ve uploaded them to a Flickr set. The others are of the Indiana University Cosmopolitan Club’s 1923 International Banquet. One of the photos shows Esther herself. I’ve created a Flickr group for those, as well.

Letters to Esther, Meta

Content Management Systems

Shelly

I’m trying to figure out how to handle the Letters to Esther project, which has been dead in the water for several months. I just can’t get motivated to work on it, when I don’t know exactly where it’s headed. I’ve only transcribed a small fraction of the letters, but already it’s too unwieldy for a blog-type format. I knew that was only a temporary solution, but I was unprepared for how quickly it got out of hand. So, I’m trying to figure out what to do with it. What I want to do is transcribe each letter, then add it to a database, along with accompanying scans of the letter and envelope. Yes, I could do it in HTML, but it would be god-awfully tedious to code that many pages (I haven’t counted them, but there are several hundred letters). Plus, I’d like it to be easily searchable and sortable, which is beyond my coding abilities. So, third party software seems like the best bet.

My web host provides a slew of free content management systems (Drupal, Mambo, Joomla, PHP-Nuke, etc.), but are any of them suitable? I need to sit down and do some research, I guess, but I’m really not looking forward to it. I suppose I could just install and test each of them one-by-one, then, if the program doesn’t meet my needs, delete the directory when I’m finished playing around. That, too, sounds like a lot of work.

Blah. I have a sneaking suspicion that any of them will work, and that they’re all pretty likely to be similar in functionality. From the descriptions on their websites, I sure as heck can’t tell why any one of them would be more appropriate to my needs than the next.

Anyway, I guess my main point is that I haven’t forgotten about Letters to Esther. I just haven’t had the time or the motivation necessary to do anything with it lately. I’ve been thinking about it, though. Hopefully, that thinking will soon turn into something more concrete. Or, um, virtual.

Art, Collage, Letters to Esther

Better Late than Never

Shelly

I finally found time to transcribe some more Letters to Esther. I believe I uploaded 11 new files, which completes the first–and smallest–box o’ letters. Whew! As I get time, I’m going to put the transcripts on-line, with scans of the actual letters. That way they’ll be more searchable and user-friendly. Or, at least, that’s the intention.

One box down, four or five boxes to go!

That’s about all I have to report. It’s bloody damned hot–95F with 1000% humidity. I need gills. All I want to do is sit and try to expend as little energy as possible. The dogs aren’t enjoying it, either. They’re both as flat, and useless, as pancakes.

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This photo is from a week ago. It’s nice and cool and green, which is not at all what my yard looks like right now. Now, it’s overgrown (too damned hot to mow) and steamy looking.

Edit: I forgot to mention the mosquito bites. Lordy! I went with some friends to scope out the loot at a yard sale they were having. I scored a bunch of books for arting, some cool bones (big–cow or horse or something in that vein) and a mess of mosquito bites. I’m about to cry. I put lidocaine lotion on them and took Benadryl, but nothing seems to be helping. Yuck!

We also went to see Batman Begins after the yard sale set-up. I’ve never been a fan of the Batman movies, but I was impressed. It was easily one of the best movies I’ve seen in quite awhile–well worth full evening price. It’s dark and, while there are humorous moments, it’s not at ALL cheesy.

One last thing! Here’s the top of an end table I decoupaged a few years ago. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s a fun and colorful way to tart up an ugly piece of junky furniture.

Collaged End Table

Art, Collage, Letters to Esther

Vessels: Tesserae

Shelly

A Book of Vessels: Tesserae
Vessels: Tesserae
collage

This is another in the Vessels series. I’m not completely happy with it, but that’s how it goes sometimes. The title comes from the central image–the interior of a mosque dome. The tiny tiles that make up the mosaic are called tesserae. A Latin word, it also was used by the Romans to describe small plaques of bone or wood that served as tallies or identification vouchers. A multitude of tiles creating a larger picture; a multitude of people creating a larger society. Each tiny piece is important to the whole, but in becoming part of the whole, the pieces cease exist as individuals. The understanding that there exists an unending conflict between individual identity and society as a whole is at least as ancient as Homer’s Akhilles. Yeah, he was a whinging mamma’s boy, but he did have a legitimate complaint.

There was a recent-ish discussion in one of my groups about old family photographs. Someone said that, after she was dead and gone, who would care who those people were? It’s probably true, and I find that incredibly sad. Maybe that’s why I’ve been so obsessed with getting all the Letters to Esther transcribed. I hate to think that no one cares. I’m not particularly religious. I don’t believe in an afterlife. Once we’re dead, we’re dead. The only way we continue on is in the consciousness of others and in the marks we make on this Earth. If we leave no marks and are unremembered, we truly go back to the dust and ashes from whence we came–just one unremarkable grain of sand among millions of other unremarkable grains of sand.

Crankypantsing, Letters to Esther

Asswagons, Network Outages & Letters to Esther

Shelly

Just kill me now. I didn’t want to come to work this ayem. The county roads were icy and, even if I weren’t worried about sliding off the road, I would’ve been worried about random asswagons committing random acts of asswagonry. I was not disappointed. When I turned off HWY 46 onto Arlington Road (from 4-lane highway to 2-lane road), some jerk decided to try turning left at the same time. I looked up and saw that there was a car to my right. Now, I’m not a brilliant physicist, but I do recall that there is a law stating that two masses cannot occupy the same space at the same time. I braked and let the Mr. Asshat get in front of me. I’m not in a big enough hurry to get to work that I’m willing to get involved in a game of dueling sub-compacts with an uberasshole.

Then, because a 45 minute white knuckle drive wasn’t exciting enough, I got to work and the network was down. God clearly hates me. Because the network is down, everyone is milling about and chit-chatting. There isn’t really any work we can do, and staring at the ceiling is boring, so that leaves talking. One woman has been on the phone for over an hour, whinging about her family problems. The phone is rightbehindmydesk. I’m stuck eavesdropping on what is turning out to be a very private converstation. I am not amused. I resent having to listen to her tale of woe. And, so much for anyone else who needs to use the phone or any incoming calls. Sheesh! On the bright side, I stayed home yesterday and got a lot done. I thought briefly about going back to bed, but decided I should make the most of my unplanned day off. I did a little arting and scanned and uploaded what I’d done, I worked for awhile on the Dada Book, and I transcribed some more letters.

About those letters. Oh my. When I first started this project, I didn’t realize there were so many rough drafts of Esther’s replies (so far exclusively to Richard) included in the envelopes. I’m grateful that she was so organized. However, the replies themselves are difficult to read. Because they are rough drafts, there are numerous cross-outs and insertions. The punctuation and spelling are not as careful as they likely would’ve been in the finished drafts. They were written in pencil on cheap, pulpy tablet paper, often on the backs of school lessons. The pencil has faded and the paper has darkened. The paper is also extremely brittle, so unfolding and refolding it is tricky. All this makes for slow going in the transcription department.

I did a little more digging and came up with an old post to a geneology group from someone looking for information on Esther’s brother, Clark Munro. The poster’s e-mail address is no longer active, so I can’t contact her directly, but I left a reply. Hopefully she’ll check back.

The pièce de résistance was finally locating a bundle of letters written after Esther married. I now have her husband’s name: Robert H. Cooper. I did some quick Googling and found that he taught at Ball State University. The Cooper Science Building was named for him. I’ve spent an awful lot of time in that building. It’s funny how the threads of different lives become interwoven.

Dr. Cooper was a conservationist. The regional chapter of the Audubon Society was named after him and one of it’s most prestigious awards after him and his wife. Ball State University has also named an award in honor of the couple, as well as one of the its field sciences study areas.

Letters to Esther

Letters to Esther

Shelly

And now for something completely different…

I started a sister blog today. It isn’t art related and the content isn’t even written by me. It’s a collection of transcribed letters written to a woman named Esther Munro. She was born in Illinois around the turn of the century. When she was a small child, her family moved to Geneva, Indiana. In the 1920s, Esther attended Indiana University, where she received a degree in elementary education.

Esther died in 1997 and her letters were sold at an estate sale. I stumbled across them a couple of years later at a flea market, where the vendor was selling them piece-meal. I thought it was criminal that he was splitting them up, so I asked him what he wanted for the whole lot. I ended up paying $20 for an orange crate crammed with hundreds of letters–her entire life’s worth of correspondence.

I haven’t even read all of the letters yet. Some of the letters are from friends, some from family. Many are from college sweethearts. They all help to paint a picture of the people around Esther. Interestingly, they don’t tell us much about Esther herself. I have an interactive art project in the planning stages that will help remedy that. Esther should have a voice, too, I think. But, for now, I’m working on transcribing these boxes and boxes and boxes of letters. I’m hoping to add a couple more each day, time permitting. I’m also trying to find related information on-line (e.g. the links to the Panama and Pacific Exposition and the PBS special on the 1918 influenza epidemic). If anyone comes across information or websites that they think would be informative, please let me know.