The following articles, “Shi’s Manzanar Years,” will be presented in 19 parts, written from 1974 through 1976. How these articles came about will be described in Shi’s own words as you read Part 1.
What you see in the image on this post is an original copy from 1974 of the Inyo Museums News Bulletin, a monthly news letter published by the Eastern California Museum, in Independence, California. You’ll immediately notice the faded yellow paper and the mimeograph print. What you might miss are the edges of the paper with the tell-tale signs of silverfish munching.
Another thing you won’t see, which very few have seen, was the process in creating these articles. I remember seeing him late at night, after putting in his 12 hours at his Fish Market. He would sit at his desk busily writing. Yellow legal pad. Black ball-point pen. Writing in block letters – all caps.
In the days with no cut and paste, you would expect to see on the tablet scribbling in the margins, lines or paragraphs scratched through, a wastebasket full of crumpled drafts. But no. The words seemed to flow from his mind, as if he was closed captioning from a movie playing in his head.
According to Mary, he would mail his document to the museum, one month in advance, where someone would type his words into the format suitable for their newsletter.
The transcribing for the newsletter was exact. There was no correction of grammar or punctuation. Knowing this, in reading the articles for the first time, I was amazed at his writing. He describes events and images with such colorful language and imagery.
I often wonder what became of those handwritten originals. They would be a treasure to hold and a great visual of his penmanship. If you look around carefully at the Eastern California Museum, you might see one of the index cards labeling one of his artifacts, showcasing his handwriting in its faded, worn condition.
In transferring these articles to the posts on this site, I changed nothing. No grammar, punctuation or spelling changes (not that many were needed). I simply downloaded images of the newsletters and let google docs do the transfer into a written document. (I did make minor changes when google thought a period was a comma, or a quotation mark was an ll)
Enjoy the journey. Comment if you are so inclined.