1023 When my life imitates an Internet search

One of the problems with reading on the web is the linking feature. I can never get through the original article, start clicking away on the links and end up researching something I had no interest in 15 minutes before. This happens in life too: clean your kitchen and end up digging out files from 10 years ago.

I rushed in the door from the coffee shop this morning intending to clean up the kitchen before my husband returns from California. After cleaning up the tiny aspirin the cat had dumped to the floor, I began stacking up books and papers to remove from the kitchen table. When I moved the pile to my office, I discovered that "Recollections of Life in Ohio from 1813 to 1840" was 2 days overdue at the public library. I had come across it several weeks ago while browsing the shelves for something else. I am a "first family" Ohioan (ancestor arrived before 1803, the date of statehood), so I checked it out thinking it might be interesting to see what sort of Ohio my grandfather's grandfather had come to as a teen-ager. I promptly forgot about it, and never read it.

When I opened it this morning I discovered it was written by one of Ohio's most famous authors, William Dean Howells. Although I'd intended to return it unread, after leafing through it, I decided to renew it. Calling the library to renew (too much trouble on the computer), I discovered I needed my library card which meant I had to find my purse, etc. (Nothing is easy at a library.)

Then I had a vague recollection that while I was researching women writers who published in Ohio Cultivator and Ohio Farmer in the 1850s, I came across the information that Howells had been a printer for one of those publications. So that started a hunt for my notes, which I thought were in a metal recipe box. After about 10 minutes I pulled out a cardboard file the contents of which I didn't remember and found my notes on the back of old circulation cards from OSU Libraries. After several passes through them (the rubber band had long ago died and left them in disarray in the box, I found it: "William Howells, Ohio Cultivator 11(10):155 May 15, 1853. Poet. Typesetter for Cultivator." I can't tell from my notes if one of his poems appeared in this newspaper, but I think it did, in case you are a Howells researcher. I also noted his appearance in "Poets and poetry of the West," p. 678, which apparently reported he was a regular in Ohio Farmer, Atlantic, and Ohio State Journal.

The last thing I had intended to write about today was William Dean Howells, but sometimes you just have to follow the links.