Biographer's group

Today is my first time to the Biographer's Group meeting. I shall be leaving shortly for the two plus hour journey. A friend with business in Boston is driving me. I am not physically capable of making this a day trip, so step-son Harry and his wife Annie invited me to a cookout tonight, sleep over and breakfast tomorrow. Harry and I will discuss just what and how I can include proprietary Font Bureau material authored by Mike in his biography.

I talked with Mike yesterday afternoon about the Wikipedia entry I want to write for him. We accomplished a lot. I will have a draft to him when we meet again on Wednesday. At that time, I will meet one of his early employees from Linotype (Mike forgot the name. I will introduce myself). We were able to go deeply into the Linotype years but did not cover much on Bitstream. I will call Matthew Carter for some help on this. I was surprised The Company, a consulting firm he owned with Ann Roe-Hafer and Pages Software were completely off his radar. I will call also get in touch with Ann for some filler information. Mike had courted me in 1990 before he started up Pages so I have recorded in my journals that company from beginning to end, and then, to post-end patent infringement legal issues and settlement. He seems to have completely forgotten his employment with Design Intelligence in Seattle in the late 1990s-2001. (Though he does remember having bicycle accidents in Seattle.) I have to pull out records of that employment. Since then, it has been the Font Bureau and the Starling typeface. Mike has good recall of his Font Bureau involvement and can endlessly talk about Starling, So the big memory hole is about work done from about 1985 to 2003. I tested him with a little personal information from our time together(1990-2004) and the birth of our six grandchildren- then, our joint involvement with the Pages law suit 2005-2007. He remembered things after my prompting. Strokes or dementia; I don't know what has caused this loss, but I will find the information. No matter how this book turns out, no one will ever feel Mike had a ghostwriter for a personal promotion tool. It is frustrating for him to acknowledge the memory lapses but when I throw out the fact which is the key to that door, he gets happier than a kid. I think he is really enjoying this project.

This morning, I am becoming obsessed by a word. I am changing my working title to:

FONT GOD Mike Parker's World of small letters

Gotta' talk to Harry.

I have been so wiped out the last couple of days since our MWPA fundraiser, I did not mention the truly helpful advice on biography writing given to me by Richard Ford, Joyce Maynard and Phil Hoose. If you write or read and live North of Boston, you should join our group. The benefits keep coming and coming. Here is the expanded Portland Press Herald article:

Society Notebook: A new chapter | The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram

www.pressherald.com

The Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance says farewell to one leader and welcomes another.