I’m so cross with myself. Some years ago I ordered a paper copy of PhD thesis containing a translation of John Chrysostom’s Eight Homilies Against the Jews. It cost real money. For years I have tripped over it. Now I need it, and it is nowhere to be found. Drat the thing, where can it be hiding? I was going to convert it to PDF.
I was also looking for the Fathers of the Church volumes which are freely available on Archive.org. I know I downloaded them. But are they are on my hard disk? They are not!
However do I avoid this happening?
I’m hoping to get the lost (and rediscovered) portion of Chrysostom’s Second Sermon translated and up on the web. Time for another go at that particular hobby horse! This one I will give away.
UPDATE: Hmm. Well I’ve just found the Chrysostom. You see, when you have photocopies of complete books, they do make very large piles. In the days when I was scanning a lot, I acquired a few of these doorstops. My solution was to get the boxes that photocopier paper comes in (with lids), and place the books in those, writing on the lid which books were present within.
Unfortunately I have acquired few such in recent years, and the pile of seven boxes next to my desk has come to serve as a make-shift extension on which papers get put. Fortunately I thought to look under the papers. In the second box down was the Chrysostom. Thank heavens for that! And I bet modern scanning will take a fraction of the time it did the last time I attacked that one. I ordered it on 27th March 2007. Was it that long ago? Wow…