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On Being an Editor
Blatherings From The Editor As a few of our fellow SEAT members know, being an editor of a club Newsletter teaches you a lot of things about...a lot of things. Not only have I learned volumes about the Beemers I like to ride, I have learned tons about the people who ride them. And, I’ve learned that while there is definitely more than one way to say something, there are literally thousands of ways to write about it. It took me a few years to discover that there’s this thing called grammar. I never was the best English student in my younger days. Seems I have always been able to think way faster than I could write, so I preferred to talk. My Dad said I was vaccinated with a phonograph needle. Didn’t take long to learn that writing “I must not talk in class.” multiple times on the blackboard was painful and boring. I never did stop talking in class, but I did put some effort into learning how to put a cogent thought down on paper. Words - there are hundreds of thousands of them. There are times when knowing which one to use when writing can be confusing. Knowing when to use an apostrophe is a good example of written confusion. There’s no difference between its and it’s when spoken. But did you spell it right in your head? And how about words that are words, just not the right word…form when I wanted from, two when I wanted too. Smelling checkers don’t always help. See what I mean? Then there’s those humorous misspellings that crop up at times. We wrote a kind of press release praising our newly designed SEAT shirt a few years back. What a surprise when we read that page, after printing them all, to find we left out the “r” in shirt. We didn’t hear from anyone on that one, must have been too busy laughing. Working out in the shop I meant to say I was using my wrench, rather that twisting my wench. Who knows, she may have enjoyed it. One SEAT member did, he sent me an email congratulating me on a new way to use my wench! Even the pros are susceptible to an oops or two. One of my all time favorites is in the Guggenheim Museum’s first printing of The Art of the Motorcycle. BMW was one of the major sponsors of the Art of the Motorcycle exhibit, and of course there are Beemers scattered throughout the very classy and huge coffee table sized book. The description of the R90S and it’s small fairing on page 337 contains a grand slip of the keyboard. “The small fairing not only provided a surprising degree of protection for the rider, but also housed a voltmeter and an electric cock.” Not sure, is that a farkle or a bling? So far Wanda and I have not missed an issue nor been overly late in getting an issue into the mail, although it has taken some prior planning on more than one occasion. One month we had the newsletter in plastic grocery bags, stamped and ready to go two weeks early as we were going to be on the road until the last two days of the month (hmmm...just like this month). Just to make sure, we left the Newsletter at a fellow SEAT member’s house so she could drop them off at the Post Office if we didn’t get home on time. They did and we did, worked out just right. My biggest concern, the thing that scares me the most…what if members stop sending in their pictures and/or their stories for the SEAT Newsletter? Members’ stories are the best and without them the Newsletter just wouldn’t be the same. Not all SEAT members have the time and the resources to travel as much as they would like. Reading about other SEAT members’ adventures helps keep “The Itch” away and gives us all ideas on where our next ride should be. On that next trip, during that next major or minor service, while visiting relatives or hanging with friends, take a few pictures, jot down a few words, and share them with us. They make the best reading. Deryle & Wanda, Editors at large!
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