Asking head of Broadcasting Val Pinchbeck, the night before the game, if he could add another camera on the field for superbowl.com:  he nearly killed me.

Suing, then working with Mark Cuban on the first online audio broadcast, which we did in multiple languages on broadcast.com, or was it still audionet?

Being caught smoking on live television in the NBC control booth.  Was it Chris Collingsworth who gave me a cigarette to calm me down, when the IBM servers crashed during the pregame testing?  I thought that maybe nobody  would notice, until my brother in law called to ask “why was Annie smoking before a zillion people?”  I swear, not a cigarette since…..

My brother Joey convincing my dad that no, he couldn’t scalp the tickets I’d given him, and how hard it was for them to walk across the parking lot to Joe Robbie stadium without my dad making the sale.

Saying yes to my daughter when she wanted me to take her undeclared boyfriend, now husband, and #1 Giants fan to the game.

NBC hiring Donna Summers to sing “Last Dance” at their post-Super Bowl party, fearing that it was their last forever.  Good that they’re back!

Keeping my fingers crossed that the NFL would allow me to put Microsoft Internet Explorer CDs in the Super Bowl cushions — imagine, no downloads for the IE 1.0.

NFL SUNDAY TICKET party at the historical museum in New Orleans, and then the crowd spilling out into the streets of the city after the game.

Diana Ross descending from the helicopter during halftime after days of legal wrangling about the liabilities.

Whispering in the phone to find out who Roger Staubuch was, before welcoming him as our first halftime chat guest.

Taking my husband’s college roommates to the Big Game in San Diego…or was it Miami??

Sitting in the Patriots end zone at University of Phoenix stadium when Dave Tyree made that amazing catch.

The professional high I felt in Sun Devil stadium after the first Super Bowl online in 1995.  Never equalled.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

On our way to the Metropolitan Museum to hear the wonderful Pacifica Quartet.

So relieved that my son doesn’t think living with his parents is shocking, shameful, or even all that inconvenient!

GO DAVID FERRIERO! Quote of the day:  I want every stinking piece of this collection digitized,” Mr. Ferriero said. “I want it available to the world 24 hours a day.”

No mere mortal can search across the nation’s rich archival and book databases, and life’s too short and too expensive to fly everywhere.  I’ve lived this change as a writer, seeing things get so much easier from 1991 until now, but I can see where this is going, and I’m so eager to get there!

I’m an enthusiastic user of WorldCat — just imagine that in a reader-friendly format, cutting across searches in newspapers and manuscripts as well as books.  (Yeah, I know WorldCat does some of that, but it’s a thin layer on top of the mountain of the world’s knowledge.) How I love the Library of Congress’s Historical Newspaper Index, a beautiful interface that has led me to a many a delightful new find.

Then again, I think of poor old Casaubon in Middlemarch, searching for the Key to All Knowledge.

When I finish my book, and Josephine Marcus Earp releases me from her clutches, I will dig deeper into DPLA.  And the marketer in me says, KILL THAT DUMB ACRONYM!

Jill Vexler and I will be speaking on November 17@6p.

Suffolk Center on the Holocaust, Diversity, and Human Understanding
Suffolk County Community Center
533 College Road
Selden, New York 11784