I ran across this photo recenty. I took it in the summer of 2007 when I was spending 3 weeks of intensive archive time in Boston. On my laptop is an image of a wonderful, crumbling, 17th-c New England notebook full of original devotional poetry. The laptop is in the gorgeous reading room in the old building of the Boston Public Library. (It's a summer evening, mind you, and a lovely breeze and street noise are drifting through the great windows.) I had taken shot after shot of the notebook at the New England Historical and Genealogical Society earlier in the week, the patient, be-gloved manuscripts librarian taking lots of time with me and eventually getting involved in puzzling out the handwriting herself. (The poetry notebook is an extraordinary demonstration of the poet in action. The writer drafts poems on the left-hand side and puts a relatively fair copy on the right.)I don't have much to say about it. It's just irresistible to gaze at the layers and the contrasting technologies (pen and ink to blog composing software). I also really had a wonderful time that summer, running from archive to archive for three weeks and figuring out new directions for my book project. Nothing wrong with nostalgia. Or a cool photo to spruce up the blog.
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