Next Steps

I copied the images and php pages for the website onto meotod.com yesterday & sent an email to the cousins group, receiving some nice positive replies. I need to make some minor cosmetic fixes to the php pages-- the CSP signature image is repeating so I have to change that; the next page and previous page links on Notes should not be on the far left and far right; the text on the home page should not be more than 900 pixels wide, and the background color on the catalog page is not right.


Bill Petty has requested I publish the family photos; small in number, they'll take little time, so I'll do them next. The question is should I use the scanner or the digital camera? Probably the scanner. After that, I'll upload the images of the handwritten pages of introduction to the Notes, and continue shooting and uploading images of the remaining handwritten volumes-- 9 through 15.

The Notes being complete, I'll perhaps turn to the dated notebooks, three of which continue past the end of the Notes in 1942 to 1945.

Clarence Sibley Petty & his Writing

This blog is being launched simultaneously with a new website which shows a collection of the writings of Clarence Sibley Petty (CSP) .

http://meotod.com/csp

CSP was born in Gadsden, Alabama in 1871 & died in Guthrie, Oklahoma in 1955. He practiced medicine in Guthrie beginning in 1897, and for the next fifty years or so, wrote primarily as a diarist and essayist about human nature, love, aesthetics, history, politics, war, religion, science, and, of course, medicine, to mention only some of the many topics that fascinated him. He also wrote some poetry, fiction, and medical papers.

In the early 1930's, my mother, Helen, his youngest daughter, transcribed more than five hundred pages of his "Notes," typing them on legal-sized paper. After CSP's death, she preserved them along with many of the handwritten original notebooks, and a mass of other papers; she entrusted these with me in the late 1990's.

Now that I am retired, I have begun photographing parts of this collection and putting them on the web. All seven typescript volumes of the "Notes" as well as the hand-written volume 8 are ready for the first phase. The timing of this launch is driven by our upcoming Cousin's Reunion in Oklahoma, about a month from today. In another blog post, I'll outline how I plan to continue.

I want to use this blog to report on my progress, write my reactions to what I have read in CSP's texts, and give a space for family members to comment on the writings, the website, or to make requests.