Thursday, November 25, 2010

A story in every piece of paper

A 30-pound box of ephemera in my bedroom.
Almost everything fascinates me.1

Old pieces of paper. Old books, magazines, pamphlets, postcards...

All of these fascinate me. I have trouble throwing away even the seemingly most ridiculous pieces of old paper -- a magazine subscription card from 1965, a bookmark from 1975.

Each one offers an opportunity for some entertaining archaeology.

What the heck is it? Who made it? Why did they make it? What was the social context in which is was made? Is the company or product still around?

Each piece can tell a story. And the beauty of it is, the story path I'm led down by one item might be entirely different than the story path you're led down. No two tales would be alike. And that's fine.

This blog will be a place for those explorations.

Footnotes
1. One notable exception: Writing an introductory post to launch a blog is not fascinating to me.