A is for ...

The last couple of weeks have been so busy as the semester started today. I have been working on my syllabi and trying to work on some other of my writing projects. In between I have been reading a couple of books that I hope to use in some form on this project, but this has little time to actually explore the Ethel Index. As this semester is going to be pretty hectic, I wanted to figure out something that I could do with this blog that wouldn't be too time intensive. So my plan is to take one carton and completely digitize it. Sometimes I will present just the cards, while others I will add my thoughts. The obvious place to start is with A, since my grand-mother took so much time alphabetizing her index.

Here are a couple pictures of the first carton, which I have labeled "A-Absolutely TR."





This is another re-purposed laundry detergent box. The bottom, which I neglected to take a picture of, includes the "Arm & Hammer" logo.

Initially I thought I might digitize 20 cards tonight, but then I took a look at the first one and thought that would be enough. Here is the first card in the index:


In the top left corner are the capital and lower-case versions of the letter in print and in cursive. There is also a cut-out included that gives a basic history of the letter. On the right side, she has written different ways the letter has been represented in various languages (arabic, german, hebrew, yiddish, french, and russian). On the bottom she relates the letter to Hawthorn's Scarlet Letter and also has a reference to shorthand which was developed by Gregg and Pitman.

Once again the card folds open to uncover various other tidbits of information about the topic. Here are scans of all the included materials:





I am not going to go into every detail but there are several really interesting things collected here. It is hard to appreciate from the scan because the pencil markings are so light, but her A drawings are really cool. I especially like that she drew a piano keyboard in order to note where the A is. It is also noted on this card (and at least one other) that the A note has 435 vibrations per second. My other favorite fact is from the cut-out with the bull on it. Here we learn that the A was originally upside down. Before the Greeks took the alphabet from the Phoenicians, the point at the top of the A was its root. The Phoenicians named the letter aleph because it meant ox, and the upside down A resembles the head of an ox. Fascinating!

I think it is great that there is so much information included about the letter A. Though it is also important to state that it seems as if much of the information is repeated on various included materials. It might be fun to at some point attempt to edit all the information into a single entry and figure out exactly how much information is presented.

Anyway, I will start finding time to digitize the rest of this box, hopefully updating the blog at least twice a week.