Footnotes

I'm often fascinated by uber-footnotes in history; either in pictures (ie. who's the woman in the picture they always show kneeling over the body at Kent State?) or otherwise (ie Raymond Jones - to quote Wikipedia: The Beatles had recorded the 'My Bonnie' single with Tony Sheridan in Germany...Epstein's version of the story was that a customer—Raymond Jones—walked into the NEMS shop and asked Epstein for the "My Bonnie" single, which made Epstein curious about the group.") Who are these people? Has anyone ever interviewed them? That should be a whole book, interviews with these footnote people. There's millions of 'em.

I thought of this cause over the weekend I saw some of the Ken Burns baseball doc, and there was a story about Joe Dimaggio's favorite bat being stolen during his famous 56-game hitting streak. Joe D was very upset about his favorite bat disappearing, of course. Luckily for Joe, turns out five days later the bat was found and returned to him; some kid in Jersey heard about the bat and somehow tracked it down. Wouldn't you love to her from this guy? How'd he do it, why, how the fuck did he even remotely know where to start looking, etc etc. Fascinating to me. Like people in the background of pictures. Footnotes.