Scraps in Stacks

When I was studying for my comprehensive exams in 2008, I read about 100 books, mostly from the Hillman Library at the University of Pittsburgh, but also from the PALCI system. In a handful of these books, I found scraps of paper with notes on them. There were about five in total: some referred specifically to the book in question, one was a shopping list, one was a puzzling fragment from the life of a stranger, and one was a lengthy (though mundane) email exchange between two people I know personally.

I said I was going to start a blog about this in my Facebook status, where I usually say I'm going to start these blogs that I'm never going to start, and later in a comment on a friend's blog about scrap writing. By the time I wrote that comment, comps were well over and I'd thrown out the notes, or lost them in the enormous pile of my own notes that now sit ominously in the corner of the living room. Besides, the screen on my camera was smashed under mysterious circumstances, so I couldn't photograph them at the time, and just lost interest.