I'm leaving the old intro here, but adding this- it appears the doves have taken over my blog for their fiction. Just as well, I was doing a piss poor job of updating. They're doing much better.

This blog is infrequently updated, full of incorrect spellings, misused words, and general bad grammar. It started when I was trying to use google+ (which I've since given up on) and discovered there was no character limit for posts. If you've known me a long time, a lot of these stories will be old hat. If you plan to know me for a long time, you'll no doubt hear many of them in person. But, folks seemed to enjoy them, so here they are.

Sunday, January 6, 2013

the Seventy Third story

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/the-secret-race-to-save-timbuktus-manuscripts/article6763747/

The above is an article  I came across yesterday, about trying to save manuscripts in Timbuktoo while there is fighting going on all around. My mother and I made it to Timbukto, maybe four years ago, now? There were little museum/libraries all over the town, where a family would charge some small admission and let you come in and look at very very old manuscripts under plexiglass displays. We went by the institute in this article, too, and most miraculously, met a resident (student? professor? scribe?) who gave us a mini tour of his favorite books before getting back to the work of copying them. I didn't see the digitizing process, only hand copying. Many of these papers have been hidden before- in walls, underground, taken out to the dunes- and we were told over and over that many had been forgotten, and were likely still encased in mudbrick homes. Here's hoping that words win out.

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