Freshbump's A-Z of Typographers

Modern typography builds upon a long tradition. Today's typographers are far from being out of fresh ideas. That realization, alone, is a delight.

Click here for an A-Z of what all this means, by way of truly refreshing images and conversation pieces.

Alien Brother We Didn't Ask M/Any Questions: Haiku

A roomful of tears.
Pictures, days, we remember.
Rainbow in the... Time!

A Chorus Michael Jackson Never Danced To

[Here's a chorus MJ never danced to, a rendition of a popular Swahili ballad from Kenya]

Wani ua ua ki (ki) pezi
Wani ua ua,
Mwendo wako wa ma (ma) ringo
Wani ua ua!

Kiuno chako che (che) mba mba
Wani ua ua,
Wani ua ua ki (ki) penzi
Wani ua ua!

Nomad II: Haiku

Nor kindred spirit
Stays the nomad's course. Nor king.
It's the vast harshness.

Gatherer: Haiku

Is what keeps me going:
To see all that yin-yang yields.
Feets! Don't let me go.

First Case of Swine Flu Confirmed in Kenya

[Read updates at bottom of the page]

Nairobi was abuzz last Saturday with rumours that the first case of swine flu (H1N1) had been detected or confirmed at the AAR clinic, based at Sarit Centre, which is one of the country's leadng shopping malls. The event behind the buzz was quickly dismissed by the authorities as either a "hoax", or a premature newsbreak concerning a case that in the end tested negative at the CDC-Kemri Labs, located in Nairobi's western suburbs.

Keyans seem generally to have accepted the government's explanation late last Saturday. Little did they know that that was the lull before the storm; that the government would get back to them in about 48 hours with a confirmed case -- not in Nairobi but in Kisumu City, far to the west of the country.

A 20-year old British student from the University of Nottingham College of Medicine, who, it turned out, was already in the country when the "hoax" broke -- having arrived in Nairobi on Sunday, June 21st, and having then travelled some 350 kilometers by bus to Kisumu -- ended up testing positive for swine flu last Sunday, June 28th. The government did not go public with the confirmed case until yesterday, Monday. The story hit the newspaper headlines today. Read more from:

(1) The Standard and,

(2) Daily Nation.

I do not detect any palpable panic in the general public: I was at the sarit Centre this morning. I walked some of the streets, downtown, this afternoon.

I think the Mexican experience in this matter strongly suggests that this absence of panic in Nairobi is not without reason -- or recent precedent. Perhaps, too, in a quaint sort of way, the Saturday "scare" numbed some of what might have been nerves today.

Still, it is reasonable to say that the Kenyan government has handled the case quite clumsily, since the student was a member of a visiting party from a part of the UK [East Midlands]well known to be a sort of swine flu "hot zone" right now, with at least 63 confirmed cases. The visiting party of medical students should have been quarantined (and should have themselves asked to be quarantined, on ethical grounds)as soon as they arrived at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) more than a week ago.

There is another culprit here, let it be said. The British government was derelict here; it SHOULD HAVE ALERTED Kenya. Better still, it should have quarantined its own citizens before allowing them to travel to an obviously more vulnerable country -- both economically and in matters of preventive, and curative, medicine.

The British government will owe Kenyans one big one, should things get out of hand; and even now is obliged to join Kenya in a substantial way in preventing things from getting out of hand.

UPDATE:
1. July 1, 2009 story in The Standard: Click here
2. July 3, 2009: It is reported that confirmed cases of H1N1 in Kenya has risen to nine. Read: The Standard

Michael J'Angelo: Haiku

I can C U dance,
In th'in between. Hear U sing.
It's my soul danceth.

A Ghost Harmattan in Nairobi City

Yesterday afternoon I "updated" this piece on my Twitter page.

Just thought I should post it here in order to share it with my blog visitors. So, here:

A palpable temp drop, dwntwn, this mid-aft. A ghost harmattan, sort-of, grips da city. A romp of dry leaves, which -- let them romp

Incidentally, one of this morning's papers reports that a strong wind blew a small plane off the runway and into the trees yesterday afternoon [killing a 70-year-old lady, seriously injuring the pilot, and attracting a band of looters], as it tried to land at Malindi, Kenya. I don't know if there was a connection with the winds experienced in Nairobi.

What connection there was was in what we noted and what surprised us when we got home last night. There had been rain in our part of town (while there had been not a drop in downtown Nairobi). Yet what was remarkable about the afternoon wasn't the rain there but the strong winds that had accompanied it.

So, it seems, the ghost harmattan was more widespread that I'd originally thought.

Michael Jackson, via Abydos: Haiku

Th'King of Pop's no more.
O Faeries, be with him still --
For a million years!









_____________________________________
About Abydos: Click here to read more

Pictures of Young Barack Obama

Click here for a see-for-yourself: a Picture Gallery

Ninja Obama Wastes a Marauding Fly With One Lightning Strike

Here, have a look at the big swat

For our very own Macharia Gaitho's tongue-in-cheek, "iko kitu", word-picture of the whole "Sagana": Click here

Need I say more? Go bro!

Neda, Dying

Here's the distressing You-Tube video of Neda dying, to see for yourself: Click here






P.S: How to treat a gunshot wound

Vuvuzela For the Beautiful Game, in 2010!

I love Vuvuzela. The name itself has built-in poesy, which we want the world to get comfortable with. It's a new comfort zone we're offering, and we're willing to compromise.

I've recently (4 to 6 weeks ago) heard the Vuvuzela on the streets of Nairobi -- "my city, my life" -- and was pleased that it was at last here. The Vuvuzela-laden commercial I've seen on TV is heart-warming, and calls to mind the Africanness in all of us Africans. And I have seen and heard, on TV, the Vuvuzela "at full play", most currently at the FIFA Confederations Cup tournament in South Africa.

I haven't been to a live soccer match for decades, though, so I don't know if a multitude of Vuvuzelas in full blast (there is no other kind of blast here) exceeds the tolerable decibel level -- for the scientist and for reasonable men and women (young and old) -- when you are actually in there for over ninety loud and clear minutes. And I don't know what the ardent and not so ardent fan really, really thinks about the incessant bleat that's the hallmark of a jam-packed South African or other stadium. But, clearly, there are concerns being raised in important stake-holder quarters, which call for give-and-take.

Vuvuzela's haunting, primeval, elephantile bleat has something aroused and arousing about it. Something trenchant, even, when you flip the coin. It gets the soul going, but not, I suppose, that of the opponent -- or that of someone more used to a sedate (sedated?) kind of mass gathering and participation.

The question to be answered by FIFA in the not too distant future, well before 2010, is: Is too much of a/an (always good) Vuvuzela -- is making too concentrated a bleat of it -- too much to be any longer good at any one place of fun and merriment? Alternatively, is Vuvuzela a great African contribution to soccer fandom, or a fun but noise polluting and irritating instrument which Sepp Blatter, FIFA's boss, only pretends to love, for now; that is, till he is rid of his current hosts?

I think we can eat our cake and have it, Vuvuzela addicts. Outright ban would be too cruel and unbecoming, appearing as it would to be culturally particularistic. I think the use of Vuvuzela can be allowed on strictly enforced terms. Thus (a) you can choose to allow only a limited number of designated groups of entertainers (or bands)to enter the stadium with an ensemble of Vuvuzelas and other instruments (remember, not every Brazilian soccer fan enters the stadium with a Samba instrument); or, (b) you can permit only a specified percentage of paying fans, say 5-10% -- issued ahead of time with special tickets or tags -- to enter the stadium with Vuvuzelas.

Bottom line: We're going to have Vuvuzela, and we're going to have fun in 2010! And the Great She Elephant, wherever she'll be watching from, will, I believe, approve!

Neda's Pass: Haiku

Unwanted airs.
Cold calc plodes 'er b'lievin heart.
Mama baby's gone!






Note: Link to: Tributes to Neda

None, Too Distant: Haiku

I've gone to great lengths.
And covered no distance, none.


Ends. My chourney ends!

Rain

Somebody wondered out "loud" on Twitter the other day why there are so many (African?) tweets about rain. Why shouldn't there be? It's the most natural thing, for all humanity and through all time.

When it rains it rains no only outstide and not only over there and not only on but also inside our bodies -- which are at one with the rain, even though the body be cold and weary. We rain in spiritual and material communion with the rain, when it rains -- even though the spirit be wary. When it rains we rain in synchrony with it, and it rains with us.

Which is not to say that there are no horrors!

Rain is, and always has been, nature's most visible promise of continuity -- promise that another time will come, and that it will find you here, and that there will be more of you(and you will be the witness)when that time arrives -- blessing of all blessings.

It is life's most inclusive, and its most generous, insurance scheme: the one which, in the broad scheme of things, always pays and always delivers witnesses -- witnesses to the Light, which there (and thereby) shall continue to be.

So when Ayi Kweyi Armah asked, "Why are we so blest?", the answer he so desperately sought, and which eluded Modin and Solo and even him -- the answer of all answers and all of Two Thousand Seasons -- was: Rain.

Ma'nade! : Haiku

Dead hooves et crossings:
This is how the story ends?
O my snow-cap't mound!

No One, Going Home, Should Cry: Haiku

No one...has to cry.
Etched brow mimics a stun'd vale.
Such bitter tears.

Mihaela Lica on Twitter, Haiku and Maria Puente

Mihaela Lica has written a commentary on Maria Puente's piece on the quality of Facebook and Twitter writing, which I commented on yesterday. Lica's commentary is titled, "Twitter is Haiku, if you Didn't Know it by Now". You can read it here.

I have written a comment on Lica's own comment on Puente's comment, and posted it on Lica's blog. I am reproducing my comment here below, just to give additional access to it, access under my control, which some readers might more easily gain:

"Greetings from Nairobi, Kenya.

I do appreciated your contribution to the on-going conversation regarding the quality of writing on Facebook and Twitter. I did mention in my own blog-post yesterday that Maria Puente's piece is a valuable piece of advice to all who would like to add value to their Facebook or Twitter contributions. Content is the real "King of Kongo", but it has to be one's own and it has to seek elevation beyond the mundane. ReTweets are other people's content, which we pass along. Pepy's diary entry on a bad ("down") day should not be today's standard "update" -- particularly when we are "up" and/or "about".

Still, the average social-networker (or social capitalist) does need a measure of orientation -- indeed, in view of all the water that has flowed under the bridge, re-orientation -- but is currently left, in this particular jungle, to his/her own Twittering devices. That is not the way the Great Conversation that's social networking is going to truly benefit from the angularity of our individual "takes" on the wonderful diversity that's the human condition.

I did also quote the Debby Weil "pearl" in my blog post yesterday, but her own contributions which you cite certainly do not measure up to her own stated standards or ideals, or to those that Maria Puente was clearly rooting for. We do need standards of quality, to shovel a large section of today's "diarists" out of the rut of mediocre articulation/cnversation.

Incidentally, let me say this and then I'm out of here, the Kobayashi Issa haiku that you quote does not -- certainly not in the English translation that I see -- meet the 5-7-5 standard which many of us are attempting to preserve today in Twitter. What do you say?"

Maria Puente's Art of Writing on Facebook or Twitter

Maria Puente bemoans the all-too-common habit of writing on Facebook and Twitter as though art, the art of writing, does not matter in those fora. She complains, "the modern status update is not always compelling reading." I cannot but agree with her entirely. In a recent twitter update I remarked that "content is the real King of Kongo." She puts it much more elegantly. Clearly, "Feeding the cat" or "Watching TV" is no one's king -- though, Puente concedes:

"To be fair, even great diarists of the past had bad days: Samuel Pepys, the Englishman whose journals clarified a big chunk of the 17th century for historians, sometimes had nothing more imaginative to say than: And so to bed."

Yet she wants something more: "Surely we could do better 350 years later?", she remarks.

Approvingly, she quotes Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book, who notes:

"Great blogging is great writing, and it turns out great Twittering is great writing — it's the haiku form of blogging."

And she, Puente, insists: "Funny, clever and sassy updates and tweets stand out because they are the exception. Boring, vapid or just TMI — too much information — updates often dominate in cyberspace."
Click here to read more

Further Reading:
1. Click on link to read: Ten Ways to Put Your Content in Front of More People.

Of Kenya's 1 Million Child Workers

A story in today's East African Standard reports that Kenya has one million child workers -- children who are out of school and working under hazardous conditions -- despite the national policy of free primary education for all. More

University of Nairobi Students Reject Sub-Standard HIV/Aids Exam

Last Monday, University of Nairobi students walked out of an examination hall in protest against a compulsory, end-of-semester HIV/Aids examination paper which, they argued, was not only sub-standard but also contained the answers that they were supposed to struggle to give.

That was truly a strange incident. Equally bizarre was the revelation that the paper had a multiple-choice format, which is supposed to be contrary to University policy -- though some of us have been rooting, unsuccessfully, for the sanctioning of that format as an option in specific undergraduate settings (particularly courses with very large student numbers). More

Maseno University Students: Sexually Active, Averse to Condom Use

A study by Kenya's Maseno University's School of Public Health reports that while nearly 70% of a sample of 500 Maseno University students were sexually active, only 15% consistently used condoms during their (practical/empirical?) 'tests' of "sexual compatibility". More

Ninth Life: Haiku

What else shall I tell:
What I didn't do in nine lives?
Grass grows 'neath my car!

My City: Haiku

Aint my Iborian
Too big a place for thirty?
Telltale winds blow by.

Happy Ness: Haiku

What d'I say to dis?
De answer's pretty much known:
Fu-furahi day!

Obama's Speech in Cairo: June 4, 2009

Obama's speech, it seems, was well received, both by the live audience and the global TV audience.

1. To view the speech: Click here

2. To read the full text of President Obama's speech in Cairo, click here

Witness to Manda: Haiku

Coup da bin so. Brave!
Khou la seyy'd: dis de de ma!
Mon, soon, he'd bin -- fien'!

Obama the Nilote, in the Land of the Pharaohs

Obama the Nilote, whose own roots are the Nile's very own, today comes upon the Nile's journey's endless end, there in Egypt -- the glorious land of the Pharaohs. That same Nile, which is timeless: nourisher of Time itself, which is likewise timeless; and nourisher of the earth's very soul.

How so very apt the moment & how so very nice & else!

May his speech there be great and may it gladden Imhotep's heart, who is for all Time!


____________________________________
Note: Obama at the Sphinx and the Pyramids:
Click 1
Click 2
Click 3 (For info on the Sphinx)
Click 4

____________________________________
References:
1. Ali Mazrui, "Nilotes I have Known, From Obote to Obama"
2. Philip Ochieng, "The Pride of a People: Barack Obama, the Luo"

Structural-Functionalism

Structural-functionalism is a compound of two broad social theories, or theory sets -- "structural" and "functional" theories -- which attempt to show how society is structured (or organized) and how its identified parts relate to one another in actual (real-life) social interactions and processes. Structural-functionalism are two sides of the same coin. You cannot have structures without functions, and no functions without the structures whose consequences and reciprocal rationalizations they happen to be and in fact are.

Structure refers to the inter-related, and inter-relatedness of, parts constitutive of a given type of social organization, which are required for its effective and sustained operation. Indeed, a discrete social organization (or system), which we may give a more specific label (such as society, or family or community), is the "social fact" that embodies the more abstract idea of structure, and structure is what enables us to see, by way of metaphors and similes, the shape and form of a generalized or particular kind of social organization. Social structure and social organization are thus, in effect, also one and the same idea. But that is still only one half of the story; for it is important to add that, in this sameness, structure represents what, and only what, we may call the statics of social organization.

Social organization has another side -- the functional side. Since it is to be understood that social organization is the product and reflection of social inter-action, its components must, ipso facto, be understood to relate to each other in motion -- some kind of motion, even if not necessarily perpetual motion. Hence the idea that the flip side -- a necessary side -- of social statics is social dynamics.

The functional side is the dynamic side of the social organization. However, it is functional not simply by virtue of the motion we observe in the moving parts, but of something more fundamental to sociologists. It is functional in the sense of the consequences of the motion(s) that may at first attract attention. Both Durkheim and Merton saw "function" in those terms; the consequences being the "solidarity" which the parts generate for and among themselves, and the adaptive capacity which the parts, in their motion and solidarity, confer upon the whole.



[More to follow]

Herdsboy: ILRI's June 2009 Calendar

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), www.ilri.org, has a knack for producing remarkable calendars. I was just looking closely at the June 2009 calendar this morning, which affirms that view, and which prompts a nagging thought.

There is a warm and eye-catching picture of a boy taking a dozen or so cattle to pasture, such as there may be, and which stirs up a wave of nostalgia. He has just left the village, though the sun is already quite up. Both the sun and the village are caught up in a haze of dust whipped up by the cattle's, walking. But I can spy a thatched roof, which is what I was saying -- and which whips up emotions wherever you are if you remember these icons of the village, as we all do, don't we?

This is the Savannah, for sure. But it might be the wetter side of the Sahel, too. The animals look well fed, no matter where this is and no matter what all that dust suggests and no matter that the grass looks sparse.

The boy wears "gum" boots! But boys at that tense border between rapidly eroding innocence and days of raging hormones will wear anything that suits no one else's fancy but theirs. Or perhaps there is a patch of wetland, or a river to contemplate, somewhere ahead, and the boy knows more than you do. Perhaps there are snakes there, and horror stories. Perhaps where he walks there will one day a tarmac road, as there was, out of the blue, for me (who herded barefoot, but not for long).

And he, the herdsboy, wears a cap which is more hip than functional. He has a plastic "gourd" with him. Enough drinking water for the day, which mama made sure he had. Perhaps he already has had a meal, such as there was, and goes forth without any worries about logistics and without his mama fretting either about a son who gets the animals to feed and will not himself be gotten a meal so that he may grow properly into as much a man as his father and more.

The boy looks purposeful, and without regrets; but this is what I really wanted to talk about, very quickly. The ILRI slogan at the bottom of the picture reads: "More livestock means more young people educated." The picture and the slogan are a contradiction, for this is a boy of school-going age, who is not at school. Unless it is the picture of a boy on school holiday, it is, besides being a contradiction, obscene in its implications. And if he is not on school holiday, what one would like to know is: is he waiting for the fees to add up or is he a dropout or a hired hand or an orphan or an eldest son or else?

Directors' Shareholding at Cooperative Bank of Kenya: A Stink to High Heaven

Like other Kenyans, I am proud of our country's cooperative movement, which is a shining example around the world. And I am proud of the Cooperative Bank of Kenya (CBK), a state institution which had its IPO only last December. Before the IPO, only cooperative societies had a real chance of buying CBK shares in bulk. For retail investors, there was one over-the-counter route to obtaining CBK shares, for a good number of years. This was what is now Suntra Investment Bank, which is presently weakened by scandal of huge proportions.

I have just had a look at CBK's Annual Report and Accounts for 2008, which has just been released. I am talking in particular of pages 144 to 146, which, thanks to an aspect of Kenya's corporate law, obliges the bank and other publicly quoted companies to show the distribution of shares among the bank's top 10 shareholders, the bank's own Directors, and different categories of the bank's shareholders. If you peruse those pages too, you will, as I do, smell a rat that stinks to high heaven.

CBK has a total of 3,492,369,900 issued shares, and a total of 116,068 shareholders. That averages at 30,088 shares per shareholder, regardless of category. More importantly, Kenyan individual shareholders own 939,112,300 shares, and there are 112,774 of them. This averages at only 8,327 shares per Kenyan individual shareholder. Alas, among CBK'S seventeen Directors (who own a total of 138,995,700 shares), the average is a staggering 8,176,217 shares (that's more than 981 times the number owned by the average Kenyan investor).

In fact, if you compute the average for Kenyan individual investors without including the shares held by the Directors: the total number of shares held by Kenyan individuals (non-directors) drops to 800,116,600 shares, and the average among the 112,757 of them drops to 7,095 shares per individual (which is 1,152 times less than the average for the Directors).

We can look at the directors' allocations to themselves in even starker light, as follows:
1. The Managing Director owned, as at the end of December 2008, a total of 68,121,000 shares.
2. The Chairman of the Board owned 8,000,000 shares
3.The Vice Chairman owned 7,700,000 shares
4. The Company Secretary owned 5,090,000 shares
5. The Commissioner of Cooperatives owned 2,750,000 shares
6. Five other Directors also owned just over 5 million shares each
7. Three other Directors owned exactly 5,000,000 shares each
8. One Director owned 2,750,000 shares
9. One Director owned 2,310,000 shares, and another owned 2,300,000 shares
10. The "poorest Director", representing the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Finance, owned what you may call a "token" of 1,000,000 shares! [Currently each share sells at around KES 6.50, or US$0.083]

The circumstances under which these stupendous amounts were allocated and paid for require a forensic investigation. The Directors should step aside while this happens, for, clearly, there has been no transparency here. Previous annual reports of the company may suggest where these shares came from over the years. For at least a couple of years after the bomb blast, annual reports showed significant amounts of issued shares, without explanation as to who was receiving them. The public has reason to need to know now. At the SACCOs, and at the bank's registry, officials did not seem to ever know that additional shares were being made available each year for purchase by members. What Suntra did over the counter, as far as one knew, was to match retail buyers and retail sellers who had owned their shares for some time, perhaps even since before the bomb blast, which nearly reduced the bank to a rubble, in August 1998.

The shares previously held by individual cooperative societies, amounting to 64.56% of the total, were (wisely in my view) grouped together, just before the IPO, under a corporate entity called Co-opholdings Co-operative Society Ltd. This ensured, and still does, control of the bank by the country's cooperative movement. However, the then acting Minister for Finance, John Michuki, issued a strange edict prior to the IPO which keeps secret for some five years or so the identities of the societies (and perhaps other "entities") brought together under that corporate entity. Let us hope that there are not even more rats under cover there. Five years may be too long to find out the truth!

Kenya: That Inobscure Object of Ridicule

Kenya's youth no longer have any political heroes, and they have no champions. Nor do the poor and the hungry and the marginalized and those ill of health. Their erstwhile heroes have commited the political equivalent of hara kiri before their own eyes -- theirs and theirs. Any name picked from a list overpopulated by the discredited lot is likely to be met with hoots of derision and dismissive laughter, whichever name is mentioned as a possible exception and a potential hero in the days ahead.

At the helm of the political class are, of course, President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga, the most ridiculed twosome in all of Kenya's post-independence era; a sort of two-headed gargoyle. In their official prominence, and enormous capacity for attention-grab, the pair has become that inobscure object of ridicule -- and loathing. This is a tragedy of monumental proportions, both for the duo and the nation, for all societies must have an acknowledged leadership -- which must be trusted to lead, and lead with vision and coherence to be trusted. But there is no trust here, for there is no coherence and no vision. The public interest does not matter. In its place there is brazen parochialism. And there is pathological greed, mean-spiritedness and myopic self-interest.

More and more Kenyans, it would seem, are cultivating the view that it will not matter who wins the next Presidential election in 2012. So, there may well be no "fire next time", contrary to widespread concerns here and abroad. There will be no one worth fighting for, or dying for. What is more likely to happen is that certain political fortunes will come to a dead stop at the hands of an electorate that at last rejects, with finality, their decades-old Presidential and related ambitions. Kibaki will, of course, be retiring. So the future is not as forbidding for him as for Raila, for whom time is clearly running out; and who does not seem to see that Kibaki is perhaps letting the time run out unhindered and even, by design, quirkily -- at whatever cost, that is.

The face which the twosome appears bent on presenting to the naton elicits only opprobrium, on a large scale, which is infecting the entire political class; which, incidentally, is not guilty merely by association, but by brazen deeds, acts of omission and, in effect, broad-daylight contempt for the peoples' sovereign aspirations. There is now mutual contempt, as Parliament degenerates and descends into a den that will defend its own at every turn and every opportunity, against a public opinion that has gone hoarse in its incessant call for accountability, simple justice, equity and the practice of basic principles of elective representation.

Crow Bar

Paka Chee, Rhapsode:
"Mi milele na yeah, yeah!
All her's, sugar dough."








[Haiku]

A Dog's Life

Froze by the headlights.
Something else will matter now.
Time! Nor will mine fly.






[Haiku]

The Egyptian Book of the Dead: A Re-Reading

A number of versions of this iconic text, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, are to be found floating in the Internet. I give below three links that I have found worth perusing. One of them, Link I, is, save for a few omissions (which I shall mention in a monent), a true replica of E.A. Wallis Budge's "Transliteration and Translation" first published in 1895 by the Trustees of the British Museum, and republished in an "unabridged form" by Dover Publications in 1967. The full title of Wallis Budge's publication is: The Egyptian Book of the Dead: (The Papyrus of Ani) Egyptian Text Transliteration and Translation.

The omissions in the online version at Link I which I hinted at a moment ago are, specifically, (a) the absence of the Egyptian text/hieroglyphs (this is the much more serions omission) ; and, (b) the exclusion of Wallis Budge's "Bibliography." Thankfully, the Dover hard-copy edition of 1967 contains both the full measure of the original Egyptian hieroglyphs -- and for that reason is of far greater epistemological, hermeneutic and historical value than the online edition -- and the "Bibliography" (or, more correctly, the References).

There may be other omissions, but I suspect that even on closer and more exteded scrutiny they will be minor. It is only today (May 20, 2009) that I even thought of searching, and indeed searched, the Internet, for the first time ever, for an online version of the book; and it is only on May 21st that I attempted a comparison of my hard copy with the online version. I did not have a lot of time in which to do this, too many things demanding attention, but the impressions I have made will have to do for now [Note: The first draft of this blog post was penned and saved, but not published, on May 20, 2009. An update was inserted and completed on May 21st, when the post was published for the first time. Blogger records the date of the first saving, though I read that this dating set-up will soon change. If it has, it is not an automatic switch, or I would not have had to edit this chapter as I have. More updates on this post will surely follow, and I will remember to indicate the dates].

I have had a copy of the Dover edition for just over thirty one years now, going on thirty two, having bought the book on August 26th, 1997 at the Illini Union Bookshop at the University of Illinois, at Urbana-Champaign. It has been a constant source of inspiration during all that time, even as my life itself has gone through significant changes and rites of passage. Its influence has insinuated itself into my poetry, even, and into examples I occasionally use in my graduate and undergraduate classes.

I consider The Egyptian Book of the Dead to be one of the greatest and most awe-ispiring books of all time, and not just because it is an African text that temporally precedes many, if not most, of the world's great writings -- including the Bible and the Quran. It already articulated certain ideas which subsequent cultures, civilizations, histories, narratives and even religions came to associate, with no apologies or accommodations at all, with elsewhere and with other origins. For example: the ideas of the life hereafter, and of the one God (He of many names); and the meme of the "Son of God", and of what morphed into the Ten Commandments.

The blurb itself describes the book as "unquestionably one of the most influential books in all history ...[a book which] served as the most important repository of religious authority for some three thousand years." So my superlatives have a precursor -- indeed, precursors.

Via the book I have been inspired by aspects of the captivating life-story of Pepi II, for example (of Pepi and the Pigmy). Besides the content, the form that characterizes the book's conversations and incantations has itself greatly inspired me by its grandeur and example.

From time to time I will make brief comments on sections and aspects of the book, and on any related matters, as the moments at which I have Time shall prompt me. For now, enough.

Here, then, are the three links:

1. Link I (the "complete" E.A. Wallis Budge transliteration and translation): Click here

2. Link II: Click here

3. Link III: Click here

[Updates on: May 21, 22 and 23, 2009]

Time Traveller

Achtung! The man said.
You weren't the only one there.
One froz'n tear drop.





[Haiku]

My Blog is My Avatar, It is My Ankh

My blog is, for me, two things in one. It is my one true avatar -- the one constant me at the one invariable place where I am and where you find me, as I am and as I might be(come). And it is my ankh.

Avatar = 1. Click here 2. Click here

Ankh = 1. Click here 2. Click here

Mauri Yambo's Blog Posts at RssSearch

Two of my blog posts currently feature at "RssSearsh: Rapidshare, Mega Upload & Torrent Search".

These are:

1. Messenger, at Two Bridges [Haiku]
2. Six Sigma Obama.

Click here to go to the RssSearch site.

Harvest

Dreams & Else Sunday:
Tomatoes und May-on-Nais.
A sudden rain dance!








[Haiku]