This just happened. I’m researching a project \u2013 can’t tell you about it yet, sorry \u2013 and you know what it’s like whenever you dig into something. You find interesting things.<\/p>\n
Usually it’s a little fact, some detail and it Is incredibly exciting to you \u2013 though, okay, maybe not to anyone else.<\/p>\n
Such as a time I was reading the original typescript of a novel I love but which has a startling mistake in it. A plot mistake, I suppose, but one that made a character so wrong that you just ignored it.<\/p>\n
In the manuscript, I found a last-moment change to something else and that fix is what created the mistake later. I ran to the archivists to enthuse. They were very patient.<\/p>\n
Anyway, sorry, this is not the kind of thing I just found.<\/p>\n
I found chewing gum.<\/p>\n
Included in with a letter sent in 1978 is a single, unwrapped stick of chewing gum. It’s a little jokey present to the letter’s recipient, and it fell out of the envelope into my hand 41 years later.<\/p>\n
Ewww.<\/p>\n
Four-decade-old chewing gum.<\/p>\n
Both the sender and the recipient are now quite long dead, I remain upset to tell you, and I’m doing this research at their request.<\/p>\n
So I am now the recipient. That chewing gum is now meant for me.<\/p>\n
I put it back in the envelope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This just happened. I’m researching a project \u2013 can’t tell you about it yet, sorry \u2013 and you know what … Continue reading