a little more about truth

Here is a site dedicated to scans of inscriptions found in books. It's sort of a cross between Post-secret and Found.

As I was poking my way through the site, I was particularly struck by an inscription from an old copy of Watership Down (US,UK) split up into two parts. A letter from a father to a daughter after three months of bedtime readings.

At first, I found this extraordinarily depressing. As the letter was dated in 2004, I had assumed that the book and the letter in it was found somewhere - a used book store or garage sale or something. Because of that, I had presumed that something particularly awful had happened, and the daughter would never see this note.

Then I read the caption to the first part a little closer, and realized that it was submitted by the father and that everything seems to be alright. Which makes me feel better. The idea that there are still children out there who are being raised to love books this much gives me more hope than I've had in quite a while.

The father signed his name and I tried Googling it, to see if I could find out more about him. I found my way to this site about the history of "Froggy Went a-Courtin'." This seems to be the same sensibility, but I'm not sure if it is the same person. It is, nevertheless, the sort of project the internet was built for.