The title of my upcoming article for the neighborhood newsletter had to be kept a secret up until the very last minute, and the editor, Reggie, was none too happy about that! I don't feel like saying right now if Reggie is a man or a woman so for now I'm just gonna go with hir as a possessive pronoun.
I worked for awhile at the New Johnny Appleseed Museum in Pittsburgh. It was a strange and difficult period. Presently I am living in my cousin's attic in a minor suburb of that fair city. Thankfully, my anonymity is still almost completely intact. I no longer engage with any social media and I concede that this is probably a major mistake. I don't know what people's name's are. I don't know what their occupations or areas of interests are, either. I know nothing and no one, essentially. A desert island existence. Confused and humbled beyond all proper measure. If there are other people out there like me, and I'm sure that there are, I will most likely never become aware of their innermost secrets, and that's something I'm just gonna have to get used to.
I was told by people on Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter that I was making serious errors, and that I probably needed to go off by myself for awhile and reflect at length on what those errors consisted of. I was a greeter at the museum. I sat in a desk chair just inside the front door and greeted people, in full costume, dressed as a middle-aged Johnny Appleseed. When there was no one to greet I was allowed by my boss to read books, because apparently Johnny himself went in for that kind of thing. The only stipulation was that they had to be well-worn 700+ page monsters, published before Johnny's lifetime, so as not to break character. Books that Johnny might have actually read himself, if he'd wanted.
It was a bizarre job, indeed. I'm not ashamed to admit it. People must have thought I had some sort of psychological problem. I guess that's not totally far from the truth! I learned about some of these things from Robert Burton's encyclopedic The Anatomy of Melancholy. If you know what I'm referring to here, send me some sort of message. Drop a letter off at the museum and tell them it's for William. They will understand what you are saying and happily comply with your wishes. Believe it or not, I was fairly well-liked by my co-workers.
