Thanked for a thankless task...

Korean Association of International Studies
(Image from KAIS Homepage)

I've just passed my 911th blog entry, according to the count being kept by Blogger, so I suppose that I ought to be posting something on Al-Qaeda's 9/11 attack -- if I were superstitious about number symbolism. In fact, even before knowing the number of my entries, I was considering a post on the Crusades, for I've been doing some reading on that series of Medieval enterprises as I prepare a course on "War, Religion, and Civilization" that I'll be teaching this autumn at Yonsei University's Underwood International College.

But I'm not quite ready to post about that.

For the moment, I have other fish to fry. All day yesterday and facing me all day today are articles that I'm proofreading for a book scheduled to be published this year here in Korea. The book will include the best of the presentations given last year at an international conference on issues related to Northeast Asian and East Asian peace and prosperity in an era of globalization -- the special emphasis having been on the future of the two Koreas -- in commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Korean Association of International Studies (KAIS).

Copyediting can be a thankless task, even if one happens to enjoy proofreading scholarly articles, but a couple of scholars have actually thanked me:

UC Irvine social science professor Patrick M. Morgan, who gave a talk on "Theory and Practice of Security Management for a Highly Dynamic Environment: Challenge and Response in the Northeast Asian System," wrote only yesterday in response to my editing: "I think the copyediting is very good! I have some changes to suggest but they are minor."

Princeton sociology professor Gilbert Rozman, who gave a talk on "Reshuffling Priorities for Northeast Asian Security: Revisionism, Regionalism, Reunification, and Realism," wrote a few weeks earlier in response to my editing: "I accept all of the changes. The editing was very well done."

That might not seem like much, but it's nice to know that someone on the other end can respond personally, and positively, to something that I did during the long, lonely hours of the early morning or late afternoon.

Anyway, all of this is to let you know why today's entry is so short -- my summertime is being eaten away by such grinding scholarly undertakings as trimming the papers of other people.

And thereby neglecting my own...