Some things stick.
For me it was Mr. Shapiro’s eight grade English class. We read some great books that year: Welcome to the Monkey House, A Separate Peace, and the iconic Catcher in the Rye.
We also learned how to research. On old-school index cards. Idea on the front. Citation on the back. Last name, first name. Title. City, publisher, year. Page. Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. New York, Bantam, 1969. This would be the ubiquitous, maroon-colored paperback that everyone everywhere read at the time, although the novel was first published in 1951.
Research meant going to the library, and Mr. Shapiro taught us that the largest collection was at the Mid-Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library.
Ah, Mid-Manhattan. What a dump. Although the outside of the former Arnold Constable and Company department store was lovely, the inside, designed in the brutalist style and opened in 1981, was brown and bleak. I look forward to seeing the stunning renovation, which was, sadly, to open in the spring of 2020.
Something about that research lesson never went away. To this day, I prefer index card citation to keep track of my research. One reason is that I find it harder to lose information when I have it in my hands. On my laptop there is that gaping black hole.
On a recent research project, I hauled out those index cards and file box and got to work. It was deeply satisfying.
Thanks, Mr. Shapiro.