[Author’s note: The following email was sent to members of the Campus Times copy editing mailing list Sept. 26. After combining extra strength cold medicine, a state of delirium, a sense of stubborn duty, and a visit to Rare Books earlier that week, this period-inspired email was produced. What period? Don’t worry about it. Edits have been made for clarity and style.]
Subject: Copy editing tomorrow!! (print week!! also I’m sick)
From: Campus Times Copy <ct_copy@u.rochester.edu>
Esteemed and noble copy editors,
I am writing this to you from my deathbed (my bed in my house off-campus) and letting you know that I am becoming frailer and frailer day by day (I have had a cold since Thursday and I’m being a big baby about it). My physician says it could be terminal (I will probably be better by Monday).
It is very possible that I will not be able to make the car(riage) ride to our place of business (Wilco 104) tomorrow and I shall have to send my notes in by carrier pigeon (I will be editing documents remotely from home). Feel free to send me a series of elaborate smoke signals (slack or text message) should you have any questions for me. I pray that I might once again walk in the hall of the living (I’m drinking so much gatorade right now).
If you have not found this message to be sufficiently witty or droll, please understand that I am currently under the effects of a laudanum tincture (cold medicine) which has caused me to become befuddled and daft. As always, I leave you with a portrait of my estate’s finest heir (hare).
[Author’s note: included here in the original email is a picture of my rabbit, Daisy. Those on my mailing list know that Daisy is an email blast staple and ironically the inclusion of a random pet photo had nothing to do with my addled state of mind.]
[Final author’s note: I was not indeed being “a big baby about it.” In the week that followed, I paid a visit to no less than two court physicians (urgent care and my UHS doctor) and was prescribed the most potent opium from the Orient (a Codeine syrup, a.k.a. a literal opiate). I had to make the treacherous (20-minute) journey to recover by the seaside (my parents’ home in Penfield) and was bedridden for the better part of the week. I kept myself occupied with novels of frontier romance (playing Stardew Valley) and consuming the elixir of a reptilian alchemist known as Alligator’s Aid (Gatorade: Glacier Freeze and Gatorade-branded water. My honest review is that it’s no different to normal water).]
Faithfully yours,
Katherine Elizabeth Jarvis
—
she/her
Chief Scrivener at the Universitas Tempores
Blacksmithing ’25
Obtaining Fifthly 2026
