Errata.

Last night, I worked on the program for the Folio issue launch. Today, I finished it, in between meetings and lunches and writing center tutorials. I sent it to the editors to review--it looked great. I polished it up some more. And just when I had printed 100 copies, double-sided...I found a typo, where I'd substituted "Tributes" for "Tribes" in the title of an audio piece.

This was not the only error we found as we looked at the finished book and website. We found a few. It was a moment when we all acknowledged our capacity for error, a good thing to remember from time to time.

This semester has felt, perhaps, a little more rushed, a little more harried, than usual. I think I might be making that up--I think I might just be more tired, but I've felt details slipping away from me with greater regularity, the consequence of which is that I forget more things, I let things slide.

I admire people who know how to stay on top of the details. This is not, generally speaking, my greatest area of expertise. I admit that I can be attentive to detail here and there, and I'm intermittently better and worse at it in general. Tonight was a night where I found myself sweating a little on this account.

And yet: the book is so beautiful, truly. I find it exquisite. And it is full of the voices and the vision of the people who are educating themselves at our college. The evening was full of lovely surprises, including a gorgeous, transcendent bit of performance poetry. It was like ending the evening on a blessing.

Yet again, I am so grateful for the chances I've had to make something like this with others--to play my little part with everyone else, with the result being joy, errors included.

Check out the website for a look at the cover image and the superb web content:

[and here's the couplet.]