A Christmas Miricale (Academic Version)

Here's the cool thing that happened today:

After four days of very intense family activity in which I'd had no time to myself, I arranged to have an afternoon off. I met up with a good friend who also happened to be in town for the holidays, and we headed to Puddletown Books, which is a wonderful place to be at any time of the year.

Another reason to love Puddletown: longer lines at the bookstore than at the mall.

Good friend was wonderful, in that she gets where I'm coming from with the holidays.** We sat and had coffee and talked, and then spent an hour browsing the stacks, where I picked up a discounted copy of a book written by an early modernist I knew from back in grad school.

After we finished up, I struck out on my own to grab one last present and then rewarded myself with a slice of pizza (pepperocini and feta -- yum) and started reading the introduction to the book I had picked up. And lo and behold, three pages into it, I came across an unexpected bit of background information that I think explains a connection I had wondered about between two documents (one from the 14th century, one from the 16th) that chronicled a certain 14th-century event that is part of my current research. I had wondered at the time if there was a specific reason that these accounts were so different; now, thanks to some serendipitous reading, I think I can explain it. Better yet: I think I'm the first person to figure out how explain it (or even that it needs to be explained!), because so few people (myself included, up until today) read across that medieval/early modern divide to explain events like the one I'm focusing on here.

And so, over pizza, I got an idea for an article -- one that feeds into my current book project, and one that I've got an ideal journal to place it in.

Maybe it's not the most typical of Christmas miracles, but I'll take it.


**For example: when we parted for the evening, rather than wishing me "Merry Christmas," she hugged me and saw me off with a cheery "Good luck!"