Recently, I slipped into Barnes & Noble to use the
restroom. Of course, I can’t walk into a bookstore without spending a little
time there, so after I washed my hands, I looked around.
At this B&N, the section nearest to the restrooms was
New Age items. Tarot cards, runes, books on Wicca. I glanced over the selection
and saw a book called Haunts of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Highlands.
Intrigued, I picked it up, and as I frequently do when
looking at local work, because, you know, reporter brain, I flipped to the back
to see if there was an index that might have any places in my county listed. I
idly flipped to “F” for Fincastle.
What I found instead was my name!
The book author, Joe Tennis, had listed a bibliography in
the back, and he cited an article I’d written for The Fincastle Herald in 2008
as a source for one of his entries.
I bought the book. Not everyone can walk into a bookstore
and find their name in it, after all.
This was a delightfully weird little full-circle moment. Of
all the places to discover it, this was unexpected. I know my name is in some
local history books at the museum. I’ve seen my name in emails from folks who
were researching other aspects of the county, and I know some of my work has
been used (frequently without permission) in various books and publications.
But I wasn’t expecting to find my name in something at
Barnes & Noble while I was wandering through the New Age section. The
universe apparently decided the ghost book needed to find me.
Seeing my own name in
the bibliography of a published book made me realize that my work is
history now – not history as in “done with it,” but history as in, many of the
pieces I wrote will someday end up in other publications. Maybe cited, maybe
not, but about 40 years of the story of my community lives because I wrote it
up.
I spent decades gathering small pieces of local history, the
stories people might dismiss as "just folklore," only to find that one
of the pieces traveled beyond the local newspaper pages and became part of
someone else's research.
I found the author on Facebook and wrote him a little note
thanking him for listing me in his bibliography. He wrote back, telling me he
remembered the first time he’d found his work cited in something else. He too
wrote for newspapers and is now retired. It was a little kinship between
strangers.
This was a quiet reminder my life and my work exist whether
or not certain people acknowledge it.
The story exists because I showed up. My
byline is in the annals of the newspaper because I was there. I interviewed
people. I wrote articles. Other people will find my work useful.
I went out and I created. No one can take that away,
overlook it, or decide it didn’t count. Because what I did counted then, and it
counts today, and it will count 100 years – maybe 200 years, even – from now.
It was a pretty remarkable thing to find on a random Tuesday
morning.
