Do you keep a diary or journal, Frank? I swear, I'd love to read your life story.
Don't make too much of these; many of these were by chance random things, such as my being in the wrong place at the right time (usually because I didn't hear the place I was supposed to be). And it's not like I got intimate with any famous people; it was generally pleasantries, nothing of significance.
I'm sure, for example, that thousands and thousands of people met Pope Paul VI (he was very old and frail when I came along, though) up close or H.R.H. the Duchess of Gloucester.
There was one accidental personality who did spend a great deal of time with me, when I was a teenager, and going to spend my first winter in England. A friend, a music
aficiando, had given me six LPs, recordings of Beethoven, conductor Sir Adrian Boult, which he wished to have autographed, if I could, by the conductor.
I had supposed it would be a ten-minute courtesy call at his home (I didn't just show up at the door; there was correspondence beforehand), but I ended up spending the entire afternoon there. The home of he and his wife seemed rather small and cramped (although comfortable, in a dowdy sort of way), but because it was winter, perhaps it just seemed that way.
Sir Adrian Boult, very old and frail at the time (this was in 1978), was intrigued that a deaf person would be interested in music (I wasn't, really, but I made it seem that way), and insisted upon demonstrating to me how he scored sheets (I think that's the proper term, but am not sure); there were more sheets of paper around his place than in Alphonse Capote Gore's office. He even took specially-lined paper and wrote "music" for me.
He also played the piano for me, myself standing at the other end, palms firmly down on the case, so as to "absorb" the music. And other musical instruments, most noticeably a violin, in which case I had at least my finger-tips on the most "musically-sensitive" part of the instrument, so as to "absorb" the music.
He did this all afternoon, and his wife served tea.
It was wonderful; Sir Adrian Boult was a true gentleman, top-notch, first class all the way.
As for your question, madam, yes, I've kept my written observations; my stay in the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants, for example, is demonstrated by 27 three-ring notebooks full of notes (no photographs, though; I'm not a camera person). I don't look at such things; they've been stored away for years and years, out of sight, because they make me very sad, very melancholy.
Which is best explained by (14) of "Twelve things people in real life know about one, but people on the internet don't":
(14) franksolich has never wanted anything so badly, so desperately, than to be a middle-class white-collar with wife and children and dog and split-level house and station wagon--franksolich has wanted such things so badly he could taste them, and never in the history of the world was so much labor expended for so little result.