newspaper clippings

read an article about using old newspaper clippings from the 1940s or so as the basis for a collection of poems.  reminds me of the time when anna and i discovered -- we were looking for our cat, ernie, who had a habit of getting lost in his own home -- a batch of yellowed crumbly newspapers from the teens and twenties of the last century in the attic of our first apartment on G st.  the papers were so fragile they would crumble to the touch.  we also found many prohibition era booze bottles.  what interested me were the series of stories about the murder trial of fatty arbuckle.  arbuckle was one of the biggest hollywood stars of the time.  he was accused of the murder of a young woman in the midst of a drunken debauchery.  arbuckle was innocent of the crime but so lurid were the details of the crime fatty's career crumbled like the yellowed newsprint in my hand.  i don't recall what happened to the newspapers.  i think we had them as long as we could keep them but they all turned to yellow dust in a short time.