While working on a dissertation chapter this morning I was perusing notes I made months ago on archival documents. In this particular case I had been trying to establish a timeline for what I suspected was an incriminating series of events, but the documents were jumbled and fragmentary and I just wasn’t sure what exactly happened, or when.
Sometimes you find tantalizing pieces of evidence and you wonder if you’ll really be able to use them. Can you establish with clarity what exactly they mean?
That was the state of play months ago when I made some notes that made me chuckle today when I rediscovered them. One document is tagged, “smoking gun.” I was on my way to confirming the timeline. Then, dozens of pages later, my notes say:
“Earlier smoking gun! More smoke! The bullet is visibly exiting the chamber!”
I guess I was pretty excited. I established my timeline. And that’s a good feeling.
