Wherever you are, stop for a moment and take a look around you. At all times, you are surrounded by

objects that at first glance seem meaningless. But if you really think about them, they tell stories.

A boarding pass that's still folded in your pocket. The book on the shelf that you were assigned in Freshman Seminar only read half of,

but you still held onto for 20 years.

A picture of your kids at the beach.

Or even the paperclip that once fastened some important papers,

but for the life of you, you can't remember which ones.

Gather enough of these objects, and they begin to form a biography of who you are through

things, the precious keepsakes, the clutter on your nightstand, even the stuff you'll

eventually throw away. Now, stay with me here. Imagine you are the United States of America,

and it's your 250th birthday.

What objects would tell your history?

Of course, there's the original Declaration of Independence and Lincoln's top hat and, I don't know, like a canon from Fort Sumter.

All worthy and fascinating objects to be sure.

But there is another story to be told using the objects that you don't see on sweaty field trips to museums.

The equivalent of the ticket stops and the favorite knickknacks and the paper clips.

Like a bootleg band t-shirt that tells the history of American punk rock.

We're a little blue book that enslaved people transformed into a tool of liberation.

Or a one-inch screw that shows how America built a hidden industrial empire.

The screw thread is a simple device, but it ties together the whole mechanical skeleton of our civilization,

which on the one hand seems overblown, but you're like, is it wrong?

I don't know that it's wrong.

...