Taking a Moment to Linger Over Two Jean Biirkenstein Pieces

Woman and Man with Books

Jean Birkenstein (1926–2003) was a Jewish artist and fearless Civil Rights activist who, in the 1950s and ’60s,opened her Chicago home as a neutral safe space for rival gang members (Vice Lords and Cobras) to meet, while working as a teacher and “ambassador” for them at Marshall High School. An officer with CORE and the NAACP, she led protests for open housing and against school segregation, and was celebrated in a 1961 Jet magazine feature for her powerful paintings and profound respect for human dignity.
Having recently shared some of her artwork here a couple weeks back, I wanted to take a deeper look at a few individual pieces. Besides the fact that her work is interesting, I am also attempting to teach art viewers that increased engagement with another's art can yield some interesting, and occasionally profound, ideas.

Woman and Man with Books
This painting fits comfortably within the tradition of mid-century expressionism, with echoes of Paul Klee, Georges Rouault, and even touches of Lyonel Feininger in the angular treatment of faces. Yet it doesn't feel derivative. It has its own visual vocabulary.

Here are some things that immediately stand out. There's a geometric aspect to their faces. The woman's triangular nose, simplified eye, and sharply outlined jaw reduce the face to a few decisive forms. She is recognizable without being individualized.

This suggests Birkenstein was searching for emotional truth rather than anatomical truth. The black contour lines don't imprison the figures—they hold them together, almost like stained glass leading.

There is a psychological aspect to the painting which depicts two people reading in a cramped space yet different emotional spaces, each lost in what they are reading. The woman dominates the foreground, yet her head is bowed. She appears introspective, perhaps withdrawn into the book she is holding. Behind her is the bearded man.

He leans in, but not aggressively, almot hovering. Though he almost occupies another plane of existence, he is simulataneously near.

Notice how restrained the palette is. Soft greens, muted pinks, warm browns. Almost no saturated color. The effect is contemplative rather than dramatic, like the characters themselves.

The watercolor is wonderfully free. Rather than carefully filling shapes, Birkenstein allows washes to bleed into one another. Some passages are almost accidental, allowing a spontaneity that gives the work life.

  

Vermont Farmers 
This is an ambitious work that creates a world filled with symbolism while remaining rooted in ordinary life. The obvious subject appears to be two young farmers beside an old automobile or truck.

The title has to do with rural life, but its theme may be the human condition. The bull peering in from the upper right almost functions as a silent witness.

The drawing itself is technically fascinating.

The cross-hatching dominates the picture.

Almost every surface vibrates with directional marks, building atmosphere.

Notice how the darkest passages unify the composition. There is almost no empty space.

Everything participates.

The two young farmers wear serious, understated expressions.  Neither smiles, neither seems posed. Birkenstein avoids telling us exactly what they are thinking. That ambiguity draws us in.

A dominant image here is the wheel, which anchors the lower left quadrant. As a symbol the wheel can have many meanings: progress, modernity, work and (esoterically) the wheel of life. 

There's an emotional tone present in the story pictured here. It's not despair, nor does it convey sentimentality. It's not even resignationb exactly. Perhaps it's quiet endurance in the face of a conundrum. It makes you want to inquire further of the author. Something has happened. What preceded this moment? What follows?

That's the cool part of engaging a painting or drawing. Here are the clues, what's the story? Every work suggests a narrative. Birkenstein compresses a lot of clues into a finite space. If I may quote Marvin Gaye, "What's going on?" 

 

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PostScript
Regarding the first piece, Man and Woman with Books, this weekend our family discussed an article in The Atlantic titled "The End of Reading Is Here," which presented some disturbing stats regarding our national decline in literacy and reading for pleasure. Kids can graduate high school without ever having read a book. How can this be?

501 Great Writers—and Why the Classics Still Matter

This weekend I wrote about one of my favorite reference books, Sir J. A. Hammerton's Outline of Great Books. It's a volume I've dipped into for more than forty years, ever since I rescued it from a yard sale for ten cents.

Sitting just below it on my shelf is another book that has served me equally well when I was expanding my reading of serious literature: 501 Great Writers.

Like Hammerton's masterwork, it isn't a book you read straight through. It's a book you browse. Open it almost anywhere and you'll encounter someone you've always meant to read—or someone you've never heard of but suddenly want to discover. That's one of the great pleasures of reference books. They don't simply answer questions, they create curiosity.

I've often heard people dismiss the classics as old, difficult, or irrelevant. Yet I've found the opposite to be true. The classics are the books and authors that have survived fashions, politics, literary movements, and changing tastes. Thousands of writers have faded into obscurity while Homer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Steinbeck, Dickens, Dostoevsky, and Orwell continue finding new readers. 

This doesn't happen by accident.

They continue to speak because they continue to tell us truths about ourselves and our human predicament. Technology changes. Governments rise and fall. Languages evolve. But human nature changes very little. We still love and envy. We still hope and despair. We still wrestle with pride, ambition, betrayal, forgiveness, and the search for meaning. The great writers understood this, and that's why they still feel surprisingly contemporary.

One of the unexpected benefits of books like 501 Great Writers is that it continually introduces us to authors we've somehow overlooked. Some become lifelong companions. Others simply remind us that the world of literature is much larger than my own reading history.

The structure of 501 Great Writers is different from Outline, which is primary excerpts and summaries. 501 features writer bios accompanied by their signature titles, and photos, pointings or illustrations of the authors themselves. For Robert Louis Stevenson, the first three "signature titles" listed are Treasure Island (1883), The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), and Kidnapped (1889). He also wrote poetry and did some travel writing.

The book is useful for introducing readers to authors with whom we're often unfamiliar such as Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman to win the Noel Prize for literature. Occasionally there's a little sidebar briefly describing one of the author's most significant work. For Lagerlöf there's a callout on The Wonderful Adventures of Nils.

Every writer needs teachers. Some teach us through personal friendship. Others mentor us across centuries. I've frequently mentioned how a mentor, the late John Prin, helped jumpstart my writing career.

The value of a book like this is that it introduces us to writers who have already stood the test of time. They remind me that clarity outlasts cleverness, substance survives fashion, and honest observations about the human condition never become obsolete.

Books are conversations across generations. Every time we open a classic, we're listening to someone whose voice has refused to disappear.

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PostScript: Yesterday I wrote about Thomas Carlyle. I find it interesting that Carlyle's name didn't appear in this volume. I'm curious whether he appears in this publisher's companion volume 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I just took a peek at the first books listed and see that I've read nine of the first twelve. So many (great) books, so little time!

What recent book have you read that you'd like to recommend to more readers?

America’s Real Problem Isn’t Failure. It’s No Consequences

I was listening to a talk by Thomas Sowell yesterday. He noted that when businesses make poor quality or useless products that no one wants, they lose money and either learn something or go out of business. But when a government program fails, no lessons get learned. It isn't their money, it's the taxpayers. Instead, they ask for more money and do more of the same. 

One of the saddest failures today is our American education system. For years we've seen articles about the decline of education, including not only outcomes but expectations and standards as well.  

Here's just one example of how far we've fallen, a 2024 article in The Atlantic titled "The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books," by Rose Horowitch. The subtitle sinks home her message: "To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school."

Horowitch examines how many students at elite colleges (e.g., Columbia, UVA) arrive unprepared to read full books—often due to high school practices favoring short excerpts, standardized testing, smartphones, and shorter attention spans. Professors note students struggling with long-form reading, getting overwhelmed by novels or multiple books per semester, and sometimes shutting down when facing unfamiliar or challenging ideas.

This feels shocking to me. I remember reading Dickens freshman year (A Tale of Two Cities) and having an "Aha!" moment my sophomore year while reading Cyrano de Bergerac. I have a hard time imagining an education without reading being a fundmental practice. 

Over the past decade, according to Idress Kahloon, staff writer for The Atlantic, American students’ academic skills have sharply declined, regressing to levels not seen in 25 years. Test scores have fallen to record lows, while the percentage of students reading at a “below basic” level has reached record highs. As staff writer Rose Horowitch has reported, a shocking number of American college students say they didn’t read an entire book in middle or high school. What exactly went wrong?

Some believe Covid is partly to blame, along with smartphones. But Kahloon believes there is aother factor a play: low expectations.“Schools have demanded less and less from students,” he writes, “who have responded, predictably, by giving less and less.”

When I read this I wondered if this is one of a primary issue is our country today: low expectations. When people fail to find a job, or simply make poor decisions, we

When I read this I wondered if this is one of the primary issues in our country today: low expectations. When people fail to find a job, or simply make poor decisions, we look for someone or something else to blame. The system. The economy. The curriculum.  

But rarely do we ask: What was expected? And was it enough?

Expectations shape behavior. When standards are high, people stretch. When standards fall, people settle. That’s not cruelty—it’s human nature. 

In my case it was expected that I would get good grades and I got them. My parents also expected me to go to college. In short, they set me on a trajectory. (There was also an incentive when I was in grade school. I'd get a dime for every A and yes, incentives matter.

Somewhere along the way, society began confusing compassion with the removal of standards. We didn’t want students to feel discouraged, so we made the work easier. We didn’t want failure to sting, so we softened the consequences. We didn’t want anyone left behind, so we lowered the bar.

But lowering the bar doesn’t lift people up. It simply changes what “success” means.

And over time, that redefinition spreads. If a student can graduate without reading a book, what else can be bypassed? If effort is optional, what happens to discipline? If discomfort is avoided, what happens to growth? Failure is painful, but it's also a prod that goads us to figure out the why. 

I once knew a publisher who had previously been a high school football coach in Texas. If you know Texas, football was a big deal for small towns there. He was recruited to coach a team in another town that had never won a game in several years, and frequently they were spanked quite badly. When he arrived, he quickly saw the problem. There were kids with talent, and heart, who loved playing foorball. But they were in the wrong division. It would be like college kids playing the Seattle Seahawks. By spearheading the division change, his team was suddenly competitive.  

The point here: failure is an opportunity to learn. And sometimes the solution involves thinking outside the box.

This is not just an education problem. It’s a cultural one. Thomas Sowell’s point lingers here. In the private sector, failure teaches. In public systems, failure can be absorbed, explained away, or funded again. The feedback loop breaks. And when that happens, decline can continue for a long time before anyone is forced to reckon with it.

The irony is that most people—especially young people—are capable of far more than we ask of them. The question is whether we still believe that. Because if we don’t expect much, we shouldn’t be surprised when we don’t get much.

The Dark Arena: An Anecdote about the Writing Life

Throwback Thursday*

Nearing the finish of Mario Puzo's The Dark Arena, an early novel written before his fame. He must have been dealing with his own inner demons here, after going through the war. Was Puzo (the character) Mosca? The book is dedicated, "for Erika." Written in 1953. He was writing for almost two decades before producing his mega-blockbuster The Godfather. Years of discipline and development, unseen in the womb of dark struggle, where the writer is formed: The Arena. Only the best gladiators will survive... the rest are washed away and forgotten. We remember not their names. "The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but time and chance happen to them all."
April 20, 1998

I wrote this journal entry upon completion of my short story Unremembered History of the World and as I neared the end of Puzo's book, which I was reading at the time. In my youth I remember vividly the reading of his compelling blockbuster The Godfather. One evening I couldn't put it down, and when my mom got up in the morning I’d been lying on the couch reading all night.

The power of good books is revealed in this anecdote which I remember from a Puzo interview years ago. He had been a struggling writer for years, but with the success of The Godfather he suddenly had more wealth than he could have ever dreamed of. For a year he did everything money could buy, went everywhere, exhausted himself in his pursuits. At the end of it all, he was bored by everything... except his books. Reading, he said, was the one thing that he never tired of.

I would concur.

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* During my first year of blogging (2007-2008) I would riff on passages from my 30 years of journal writing. This blog post was published 2 January 2008.

Related Link: Unremembered Histories: Six Stories with a Supernatural Twist

Literacy and Crime

I think a lot about literacy. In part, perhaps, because I am a writer and would like it if there were still readers around to read what writers write. 

I also think about it because of what I remember about how being able to read opens people's minds, enables them to engage ideas that ennoble them. 

About a half century ago I heard a man speak about Literacy Evangelism. His organization would go to villages and teach people how to read. The stories he shared about how much their self-worth increased never left me. "I am not just a beast or animal. I can read." The impact was profound.

These thoughts were re-awakened in me by Neil Gaiman's Art Matters and Other Insights for Writers. Early in the book he shares the importance of reading and how it makes us better people. He warns against trying to force books on our kids. If they are reading, that is good. If they develop a love of reading, that is great.

At one point Gaiman shared that politicians calculated how many prisons to build based on how many illiterate young people there were. Even if that is a myth, it's apparent that there is a direct correlation between literacy and living a successful life. (I could share a Michener anecdote here, but will save it until you ask.)

All this to say that our education has been failing our children and literacy rates have been dropping. How have we lost our way? How can we get it back? 

What follows are some stats about the relationship between incarceration and low literacy from literacymidsouth.org:

85 percent of all juveniles who interface with the juvenile court system are functionally low-literate

Juvenile incarceration reduces the probability of high school completion and increases the probability of incarceration later in life.

High school dropouts are 3.5 times more likely that high school grads to be arrested in their lifetime.

High school dropouts are 63% more likely to be incarcerated than their peers with four-year college degrees.

Mississippi has the second highest incarceration rate in the nation. The average adult inmate reads on a sixth-grade level when admitted. Half of the state's inmates never finished high school.

The same article cites this disconcerting stat by Donald Hernandez in his book Double Jeopardy: "children who do not read proficiently by the end of third grade are four times more likely to leave school without a diploma than proficient readers."

Libraries are great. If you don't have the money to buy books, you can always borrow them. There are few things more wonderful than libraries.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. When my grandfather got married he was illiterate. Grandma, who had been a schoolteacher, taught him how to read and write so he could fill out a job application. I always remember him sitting in "his chair" in the living room with a newspaper in his hands, the television up loud.

If reading is a struggle, don't give up. It's never too late to begin. Start where you are at and keep practicing. Find library books at your reading level and don't give up.

Do You Read Banned Books?

When I was young Mad Magazine used to cost a quarter. My allowance was a quarter, which worked out well. I could buy a Mad magazine or save two quarters and buy Famous Monsters of Filmland, which was fifty cents. This left me with one more quarter to save for something more expensive, like a Revell model battleship or submarine. That was always around a dollar. 

Mad was famous for occasional inserts. For example, they inserted a vinyl record in the center that you could play on a record player. Side A was It's a Gas, in which the only lyrics were periodic burps. (Burps are a gas, right?) Side B was She Got A Nose Job, which I can still sing to this day. 

Another time, the magazine inserted full color book covers that could be used to wrap around trade-sized paperbacks. The book covers were intended to shock adults by appearing to be banned books or very adult content. The fake title would be large and in small type the rest of the title. One of the book covers was Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. Those three words were writ large in white block letters on a blue background. The full title might have been something like Let's go to a TROPIC isle OF no importance and get skin CANCER.

Other scandalous titles included Lady Chatterly's Lover and Fanny Hill. When I took a couple of these fake book covers and put them on my paperbacks, they achieved the intended goal of shocking an adult, specifically my mother. 

As it turns out, when I was in college eight or so years later the movie version of Tropic Of Cancer was playing at the theater. I probably would not have noticed but for the fake book cover I'd used from Mad. Out of curiosity I went to see it and left after about 20 minutes, not because it was vulgar but because it seemed pointless. (My assessment wasn't far afield. On imdb.com it has a 5.5 rating out of 10, which is pretty low.) 

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There was a time when the label Banned In Boston was a badge of notoriety. Perhaps it was Boston's Puritanical roots that resulted in the region's power to censor books, plays and movies, thereby dictating what was acceptable and unacceptable.

In addition to books like Ulysses (Joyce), Leaves of Grass (Whitman) and The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway), the Everly Brothers' "Wake Up Little Susie" was censored.

While perusing the shelves at our local library this past week I discovered the 2014 edition of Banned Books, a catalog of books that have stirred the ire of people in various parts of our country over the years. It's a large book with more than 325 pages of listings, identifying books and the causes of their being barred, or recommended to be. Here are some of the more surprising entries.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury surprised me. It's about book burning. Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles was also banned by one school district because the N-word is used in one of its stories. The book was reprinted without that sentence and is OK now. 

One of my favorite Bradbury stories is The Veldt. It's a short sci-fi story that was included in his The Illustrated Man. I went through a sci-fi stage once, reading a lot of Asimov short stories as well as Bradbury. I had to scratch my head as to why The Veldt would be criticized. Fortunately, Banned Books included the reason people were upset with these various books. In this case, the parent who complained felt the story failed to show any consequences for the children's actions. That's getting pretty picky. 

Various school districts and communities took umbrage with six of Richard Brautigan's books, most of which I read in college.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was banned in the USSR because of references to occultism and spiritism. A Study in Scarlet was pulled in one county school district because it portrayed Mormonism in a bad light. The surprise for me is that Sign of the Four doesn't seem to have received any complaints even though it begins with Holmes rather enjoying the effects of shooting cocaine. 

Upton Sinclair's Oil! was banned in Boston because of its criticism of the Harding administration. Harding was no longer president and his cronies already dispersed by the time the book was published. It was also banned in Yugoslavia and burned in Nazi Germany, the latter because of its socialist views. The film There Will Be Blood, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, was loosely based on this book.

John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men was banned in dozens of localities for language and in some municipalities because it used the N-word. I've read this book a few times since first reading it in high school. I remember the characters and the power of the prose, not these language matters which passed faster than a speed bump.

Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels was banned in Ireland.

Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn received dozens of challenges and has been pulled from countless reading lists because it was deemed to "undermine the self-esteem" of black youth, and the N-word is used in the book a number of times. 

Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird suffered the same fate, despite it being a story that shines a light on the evils of racial inequality. Some school districts rejected it because of racial slurs used in the story and does "psychological damage to the positive integration process." Ironically Harper Lee was showing the ugliness of people who demean other simply because of the color of their skin. 

Several Kurt Vonnegut books made the list including Slaughterhouse Five and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. 

* * *

There's much more that can be said here on this topic, but it's nuanced and I don't have time to detail all the distinctions as regards this issue. I agree with those who believe there is an age appropriateness to be considered when recommending books to younger audiences. Then again, that's a much longer discussion. 

This book, Banned Books, caught my attention when I saw it, and I decided to check it out. The subtitle is Challenging Our Freedom To Read.

A Discussion with Elle Sandy About the Business of Proofreading

Elle, looking at the stars with our mutual grandparents, 1956.

Elle Sandy is a professional proofreader/editor. We first met in Maine when I was one year old. She is my cousin and there is a great photo I have cherished all my life of my grandparents' four firstborns (all born in 1951-52). My second favorite memory of Elle was frog hunting in Boston when we were eight years old. After circuitous careers, we re-connected through social media. She's an avid reader with keen powers of attention to detail, well-suited to a late life career as a pro proofreader. 

In this era of deteriorating standards regarding the rules of grammar and usage, I thought it would be helpful to let other writers know Elle is a superb editor and proofreader who still has room in her schedule for new clients. Whether sending a manuscript to a publisher for consideration or self-publishing a book or major document, you really want to put your best foot forward. Elle Sandy can help you.  

EN: You've always been an avid reader. Who or what were your biggest influences in this regard?

Elle Sandy: The joke about me has always been that I'm the sort of person that will read the ketchup bottle on the table if there is nothing else available. My earliest reading memories of any consequence were reading both the Hardy boys and Nancy Drew mysteries under the tree between our house and the one next door with the boy next door. I brought the Nancy Drew books, he brought the Hardy Boys. That lasted until I discovered my father's collection of science fiction, mostly Ace Double Books. These were books which had two short novels in each volume, printed upside down from each other. Mysteries were good, but science fiction ignited my imagination! I've also always loved fantasy. Alice in Wonderland was a long-standing favorite of mine. I had an illustrated volume with both Alice stories in it which I loved because it was annotated, giving the background for all the British "in" jokes, such as the Cheshire Cat and why the Hatter was Mad. I guess you'd say the authors who first formed my love of reading were Caroline Keene and Lewis Carroll. 

EN: Are you affiliated with a group of proofreaders?

ES: Yes, there are some Facebook groups, private ones, that are proofreading groups I became associated with as a student of proofreading. However, there is also a group I have recently become a member of, the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors, NAIWE.  I'm still getting my footing there. The place where I have decided to "put up my shingle," so to speak, is Fiverr, a freelancer's shop. I have a gig listed there as a medical proofreader, since I also have earned a Certificate in Medical Transcription. Fiverr requires that some freelancers, like me, prove their proficiency so clients can be sure their freelance hires know what they are doing.

EN: I agree with you that there is a lot of bad spelling and grammar on social media. What's especially atrocious is how many self-published books have been produced seemingly without being proofed at all. Care to comment on this?

ES: My fellow proofreading graduates and I have been known to bemoan the apparent blatant disregard many authors have for the printed word that they rely on to communicate. It is painful at times to read a newspaper, magazine, or book that desperately needs proofreading. Most could use a good editor as well. Sentence fragments are often orphaned. Other sentences are page long run-on sentences. Granted, there are some great writers who use excessively long sentences, but that is not something everyone can pull off well. I know that good editing and proofreading can be a bit costly, but by scrimping on these services, most writers are being penny wise and pound foolish. Readers will only buy bad authors once or twice before they have had enough, and guessing at the meaning of a sentence with incorrect punctuation and spelling can be very confusing.

EN: Do you have any specific kinds of clients that you are seeking to work for?

ES: As I mentioned, I have earned a certificate in Medical Transcription, so I am particularly interested in medical proofreading. However, I will proofread just about anything, with the exception of biographies and technical material which have a tendency to put me to sleep! I do charge a bit more for medical proofreading, because it is exacting and requires specialized knowledge. But I enjoy ferreting out and correcting errors. It's almost like a puzzle that requires special knowledge and attention to detail. I worked on the Gutenberg Project for a while, and still go back now and again, even though it is largely volunteer, because I find it challenging. 

EN: There are a number of different style manuals. Which are the most popular today and why?

ES: First, let's define what a style manual is. A style manual (or guide, or sheet) is a set of rules for writing. The standard has changed over the years, because the language has changed and even technology has impacted the rules we write by. You would choose a particular style sheet because the industry standard is different for the different purposes of writing. For a scholarly or academic writing, you would probably want to use the APA (American Psychological Association) guide, but for a newspaper article, you would want to follow the AP (Associated Press) style guide. While you can choose any style sheet you want to follow, it's usually best to choose the sheet that your prospective publisher follows. The one I usually use is CMOS (Chicago Manual of Style) because most book publishers follow it. However, if I'm proofreading for medical journals or a thesis, I'll use the APA guide. The differences aren't huge, but can be confusing to someone who doesn't know the difference.

EN: What are you doing to promote your services?

ES: Aside from doing interviews like this, you mean? Currently, I'm mostly networking and gaining a reputation, I hope, through some volunteer work, like the Gutenberg Project. I do occasionally speak to people I run into who have web pages, and offer to look them over. My services are listed with several social media sites, like LinkedIn, and I'm offering my services through freelancer's sites, like Fiverr. I hope these efforts will bear fruit. For all your readers who are writers, remember, it is very easy to overlook your own errors, and then you have to bare - excuse me, that should be bear - the consequences! 

EN: How long have you been a paid proofreader and how did you get into this line of work?

ES: As with many of my fellow proofreaders, I have felt bothered by the lack of good writing in social media. Mostly, we try to just ignore the people who say "we went over to there house" or "I wanted 2 go 2", but find that we have a desire to make the world more readable. I don't think that many of my fellow students thought they had many things wrong in the areas of grammar, punctuation, spelling, and word choice. 

That is before we got involved in a class in proofreading. 

My particular downfall was commas. I came to think of them as little wild animals, and I was definitely not alone in that! However, with persistence and a perfectionist streak, I have learned how to place them correctly. I have a love of reading and the printed word, and have always felt that proper use of the English language minimized the number of misunderstandings and helped to further civilized debate. So, when my husband died last year, I looked around for something to do with writing. I found a course which I was sure I could complete by the end of the pandemic, and sure enough, last December I earned a Certificate in Proofreading. At the age of 69, I had a new career.

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To contact Elle Sandy, visit her page on Fiverr.
https://www.fiverr.com/s2/babf26d47d

Though she specializes in proofreading medical documents, you ma contact her for other kinds of proofreading projects. If she is unable to take an assignment, she's part of an association that has reliable, capable help for your proofing needs.