The story about the War of 1812 that you probably remember from your U.S. history textbooks concerns the British soldiers burning the White House in 1814. Dolley Madison, then first lady, had cut from its frame a famous portrait of the nation's first president, and she whisked the art to safety.

"This is totally false," wrote Paul Jennings in his 1865 memoir. "She had no time for doing it. It would have required a ladder to get it down. All she carried off was the silver in her reticule..."

Jennings was an enslaved man at the White House, and he worked with several other men to remove the painting and load it onto a wagon along with "such other valuables as could be hastily got hold of."

I couldn't find any record of the Library of Congress keeping Madison's reticule (a handbag), but the library is home to one of those "other valuables," a French crystal flute that turned up on a concert stage in DC this week.

The Library of Congress shared the full context of the impromptu collaboration, and Lizzo thanked the institution for "preserving our history." In this case, that means serving as an archive and an activator, a catalyst for extending the "useful life" of an object whose function has not ceased despite its long, quiet past.

An instrument, like any, that "prays a wind / might enter it."
 

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This newsletter was written on the traditional lands of the Piscataway and Nacotchtank.