The book is the metaphor Benjamin Franklin uses most often to consider his life. Even as he writes his autobiography and describes his work as a printer who composes the page of type, he is also suggesting that his life can be corrected as the composer can remove the wrong letter and replace it in the tray with the correct letter.
I'm reminded of Elsa, a woman who worked in the office where I had my first post-college job. This was in the early days of photocopying (1976-7) so we did not have a photocopy machine in our office. Instead we had a mimeograph machine that required us to "cut" a stencil on the typewriter, attach it to the drum, and then run-off the copies by turning the drum so that ink was pressed through the stencil on to the paper. Elsa was a master of every step in the process including correction of errors. Usually an error in typing/cutting the stencil was corrected by first painting over the error with correction fluid that filled in the wrong holes and then recutting through the patch. However, once we forgot the second step and ran hundreds of copies of the song sheet for a pastors' retreat with a syllable missing from one of the songs. Elsa to the rescue! I watched in admiration as she cut a new stencil that consisted solely of the single missing syllable and then reran the whole stack of song sheets. When she was done, no one could have seen the repair.
Are repairs in one's life made so neatly? When Franklin entered into a common-law marriage with Deborah Reed, did he undo the errata of having neglected their engagement? Surely he did not erase the consequences of events and actions. Perhaps the metaphor works better for his financial debts.
No comments:
Post a Comment