Anything can be an artifact if it gets old and dusty enough.

The scrolls of ridgewood are used lotto tickets, wrinkled sticky notes, discarded crossword puzzles, receipts, and candy wrappers. Every week I dumpster dive for a piece of paper — any piece of paper, with words on it — and I offer you a deep dive. Where and when was this artifact created? Who might’ve owned (and later discarded) it? What does it say, and what might it have meant to the owner? What infinitesmal chain reaction might’ve lead to its discovery in Ridgewood, Queens?

For The Scrolls of Ridgewood, bits of trash are profound ancient tomes. If you’ve ever found half a ticket stub on the ground and wondered who’s walking around under the same red sun with the other half, you’re in the right place.

Andy Loftus is a writer based in Ridgewood, NY, and a journalism student at The New School. Their work concerns immigration and border studies, environmental ethics, and now, the garbage of New York.