Last month I posted about a neat book that Lucy brought home (linked via title bar); one that had reproductions of letters and pamphlets in little pouches and pockets, items that could be removed and handled as if transported in time in all their antiquity. The key to the time machine must still work and Lucy brought home yet another “museum in a book”, this one by Mark Essig, “Inventing America – The Life of Benjamin Franklin”.
Anyone who reads my articles knows that National Treasure is on my list of movies that I can watch over and over, the chance to touch history vicariously through the invention of others. Here’s a chance to hold a copy of a Silence Dogood Letter as it appeared in the New England Courant, to wonder which line and which letter holds the next clue to finding the treasure left by the Knights Templars. Would handling an aged copy of Poor Richard’s Almanack complete with water stains or technical drawings for one of Franklin’s many scientific endeavors make your heart race?
Reading about history involves only one of the five senses or having it read to you would add yet another; how much more interesting our link with the past becomes when we involve touch; just step into my time machine and find out.
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