If only I had brought my checkbook with me, I might have been able to purchase John Bringhurst and Rosina Matern’s Quaker marriage certificate from June 2, 1682 for a mere $5000. But I didn’t, so I limited myself to browsing, and chatting with some of the staff who had been released from their research nooks to be available to wax poetically about the esoteric materials on display.

One table exhibited a collection of early to mid-20th-century house plans, down to things like plumbing fixtures, in case I wanted to build the retro abode of my dreams, like Brendon Frasier did for his parents in Blast from the Past.

Another, which actually held some interest for me, presented the sheet music for twelve Tunisian dances, composed by Ali Ben Salomone, from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, made more interesting by the fact that at least some of those dances were notoriously performed by Fatima Djemille, the belly dancer famously known as Little Egypt.

Lastly, I would be remiss in not mentioning the Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger Coffee Book display, which might go well with Cosmo Kramer’s coffee table book of coffee tables that turns into a coffee table.

The married couple used a different piece of paper as a coaster for their cups every day from January 25 through August 30, 2020, and apparently forgot to throw them out, so that today I could appreciate the coffee stains and rings they had left.

I would have expected to see something like that at the Museum of Contemporary Art, especially since, it turns out, perhaps not surprisingly, that there is something known as coffee art, though that at least requires some creative value-added over and above putting out a new piece of paper every day.