The structure of the human skull Is very, very good; It can withstand great pressure and The same is true of wood.

Still sorting through mountains of family photos dating back to the late 1800s.  The goal is to digitize them to arrest decay and fading and make them easily available to all members of the family.  Some photos are loose, some pasted in albums, some removable from albums, some in frames.  Some clean, some needing cleaning.  A lot of careful work required. 

And some delightful surprises along the way.

In a wallet-like case for two photos, on the left is a picture of my mother-in-law when she was perhaps 25.  On the right is a photo when she was perhaps five years old.  Something she had for herself?  Something she gave my father-in-law?  I would have guessed the latter.  But then the mystery deepens.

When I remove the photo on the right to be digitized, I come across a newspaper clipping tucked in behind the photo.  From the brittleness of the paper, perhaps from the 1960s?  Five little poems collected as Some Notes on Science and signed John Bailey.  I have not been able to resolve who this poet might have been, there being more than one plausible candidate.  

Almost doggerel verse. But . . . My father-in-law was a Physics PhD.  This would have amused him.  Did my mother-in-law see these and slip them in?  Did he create the wallet, and include that which would make him smile.

They are gone and so, most likely, is the origin story of this little bit of family ephemera.  But it is pleasant remembering them and remembering their ways and circumstances.  

Some Notes on Science

If all the molecule on earth

Were on a grain of sand,

The ones who got there late would not

Have any place to stand.

The indestructibility

Of matter will be plain

If you buy a five-cent roast of beef

And cut across the grain

If anyone should go straight up

At near the speed of light

In sixteen thousand million years 

He'd reach a dreadful height.

Experiments with fruit flies

Have produced such odd new traits

That some of them pomade their hair

And go on double dates.

The structure of the human skull

Is very, very good;

It can withstand great pressure and 

The same is true of wood.

- John Bailey