May 23, 2024

Hi, I’m Serene. Or at least Serene is my name because my mom was hopeful and liked words.

Honestly, I hated writing those pieces and I hope that part is over now. It was murder for me and I’m not good at it. I really am not. It takes me weeks and almost every moment feels like torture. I’m not a natural prosecutor, I’m who you call to bail you out of jail.

What if I just throw up some Tune In text-to-source comparisons as I remember them? Random things that strike me to some degree but are hard to define or write about? Not blockbusters, perhaps, but source representations that crop up in my head again or in some way poke at my conscience. In the end it’s your judgment that matters, anyway. I just needed to get your attention and had absolutely zero idea how to do it.

I have made at least one (pretty big) mistake so far and feel pretty confident I have or will make more. I’m really sorry when I do and will continue to eat my crow and correct them as quickly and transparently as possible. I try soooo hard not to.

I didn’t end up here because I had some vendetta, but instead I got here because I was such a huge fan of Mark Lewisohn. I was in love with Tune In. The audiobook was my comfort through COVID and long-COVID, and I listened to some parts fifteen, sixteen times. But as I got better I naturally started looking up sources. That’s what endnotes are for. They’re like a little treasure trove. And that is really all that happened. I’m not on some mission, and if I sound angry and offended sometimes, it’s because by this point I am angry and offended sometimes. I genuinely am. But that’s just my human reaction, and your reaction may be different, and we can still be friends. I won’t be mad. I just felt like it was important and wanted you to pay attention to this long enough to look at it and make a considered judgment. You don’t have to like me or trust me, but I suspect I have already prompted more fact-checking in a few days than have happened in the last ten years and that is a huge relief. Plus, citations are awesome. Citations are how you learn more. Citations are the toy at the bottom of the cereal box. Citations are free candy. So if you’re checking Mr. Lewisohn to check me, that’s not only exactly what I wanted, it’s also free candy for everyone. Just please do not judge whether the sources of a history book are accurately represented based on whether or not you think I’m insufferable. My job here was to wave my arms around and get you to pay attention. We all love the Beatles, and that’s the main thing. If we could just sit around and talk about the Beatles I bet we’d have the best time ever. In a way this is a side issue to the Beatles, but in a way it also very much isn’t. And I bet that most of you, if you’d noticed this, would have felt just as miserable as me and felt like you needed to tell someone, too. I bet you would have felt like you sort of owed it to other Beatles’ fans, and to the Beatles’ themselves, dead and alive. But mostly I just wanted Robert Rodriguez of SATB to notice and have a look himself so I could stop worrying about it. He’s fair and serious and cares about the historiography and I figured he could tell Erin Torkleson Weber and they’d take it from there. That was my genius plan. It was just much harder to get his attention than I thought it would be.*

Okay. Down to business. Happily this is maybe one of the few topics left where “do your own research” is not a joke, a conspiracy theory, or something that would make your family worry about you.

*I blame WordPress.

Who is this Tune In quote about?

TUNE IN, 10-13 (Chapter-Endnote)

When I can, I will post screenshots of what I can manage to fit in of Tune In and the source, but probably not always and most of the people I really want looking probably have their own books and ultimately—while I want to make it as easy as possible—the more context you have, the better it is with all of these. Some more than others, and this one is pretty straightforward and not context-specific, but it’s the context-specific ones that made me think of this idea. Those are the ones I really want to do this with, but this popped up first.

Also, the Internet Archive is an excellent resource that I just want to make bigger.

I just went AMA on Tumblr. Seems only fair.

May 25, 2024

20-32

Not only is this not one that bothers my conscience, it’s an easy one to chalk up to an honest mistake. Still, it’s a very recent Sharon citation check that flowed naturally from yesterday’s. Happy weekend.

May 26, 2024

22-5