Miscellaneous Items in High Demand

  might be almost any pre-digital image grouped together now online

  by earnest librarians unable to place them in another category.

  For example, an etched illustration of Ursa Major dating from 1825.

  Or two smiling girls on a beach in 1987, each holding up her left foot.

  The Marx brothers mugging together. Mustachioed bidders at an auction.

  A favorite: a 1909 photograph of an "educated horse" before a blackboard.

  To its left, a small girl in a white dress pointing to it but looking out at me.