A Book You Can, So To Speak, Burn

Yesterday afternoon, as I was going through an oft overlooked section of my limited bookshelf space at home, I came across a book I had bought over a decade ago, at the then price of Kshs. 2,300/-. It is a 1993 paperback, a Ziff-Davis publication, titled "PC Learning Labs Teaches cc: Mail". This cc:Mail (ver 1.1) probably took several years of marketing and trading to reach the Nairobi bookshop in which I had found it.

My first reaction, after perusing it, was to throw it in the waste-paper basket, painful as that (nay, the very thought of it) was going to feel. And so I did. On second thoughts, however, I retrieved it -- just a few steps after I had, with seeming finality, dumped it. It was too good-as-new to throw away just like that. Should I do so without a thought -- without a "theory" to accompany the act? Wasn't there need for a ritual conversation about its historicity -- its once-upon-a-time pride of place (or, now, lack thereof) -- in the scheme of things, such as we are given to see?

Of course I knew that the paper (the book's holistic body-part) was recyclable, by virtue of which fact it may happily go. But the book's "finishing" provoked feelings of doubt and touchable regret -- a countervailing keeper's dream of endless, unperturbed possession (of that which one, at this unspeakable moment, wished to be finished with). I wanted to be sure.

But what of the ideas in the book that ultimately made it the book that it essentially was? What error would I, really, commit this late afternoon by letting go? There was nothing to stop the ritual "burning", but I wanted to be sure.

And so I granted a reprieve, which has run into today. Here's what I have concluded. This book is archaic, and was almost from the day I bought it. There is not an idea in it, no iota of knowledge worth preserving -- except perhaps the knowledge of it, and its very presence, as a symbol: of the total absence of knowledge of any practical or irreplaceable value, and of the virtual deadness of the procedures which it continues, in these changed times, to describe and prescribe.

It was designed, when DOS still held its ground and floppies were forever, principally as a LAN email software for windows, with some capacity for extranet and global connectivity. Events have overtaken it. From Wikipedia,we note the following facts, including one saving grace:

LAN based e-mail technology was rendered obsolete by client/server e-mail systems such as Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange. The final version of cc:Mail, cc:Mail 8.5 was released in 2000.
October 31, 2000: cc:Mail withdrawn from the market.
January 31, 2001: All cc:Mail development ceased.
October 31, 2001: cc:Mail telephone support ceased.
Despite its having been discontinued, a small number of customers continue to use cc:Mail and the product continues to be commercially supported by Global System Services Corporation.

In the age of global, web-based email services such as Gmail and Yahoo, cc:Mail is gone, gone and gone -- except for a few diehards who are not about to change the world.

So this cc: Mail book of mine can burn, baby! There are books you can throw away, books you can "burn", with a clear conscience -- without invoking Thoth's name and without fear of him. But, as swords turn into ploughshares, so will this book recycle into some other, unrecognizable, paper thing -- in which the very memory of it is obliterated. And yet I don't know what path it will follow to those imagined ends, after my last act (after that final curtain) at the basket. Or perhaps there will be no pathos to talk of, as pressure mounts to preserve this thing as forensic evidence of that which I speak of.

William Ruto, Time To Step Aside

Let me add my voice to the intensifying call for William Ruto, Kenya's Minister for Agriculture, to step aside over the maize scandal in the ministry he heads. Accumulating evidence suggests that tycoons and other businessmen allied to him have benefited in corrupt ways from the sale of maize meant for poor and starving Kenyans.

Particularly troublesome have been the claims that his friends and/or business/political associates have made windfall profits from the plight of ordinary citizens. It is alleged in various circles that they recently "procured" thousands of bags of maize at a give-away price from the state-owned National Cereals and Produce Board, without moving the consignment an inch from NCPB premises (One beneficiary, recently appointed by Ruto to a reconstituted NCPB board, was reportedly allocated a whopping 600,000 bags). They then "sold" the produce at inflated prices to millers, who incurred additional cost to transport the maize from NCPB themselves. The millers, of course, eventually passed their cost to the consumers.

Ruto, the erstwhile Youth For KANU '92 activist, sees nothing wrong in any of this -- including why millers were not allowed to buy the maize directly from NCPB -- and claims that it is "a scandal that never was." He has publicly sworn not to resign. Meanwhile, ODM, his political party (he is one of its two Deputy Chairmen), has wrapped its protective if half-hearted arms around him, claiming that he is the victim of NSIS (National Security and Intelligence Services) campaign of character assasination.

If Ruto will not resign, then he must be made to. In fact, the heat must turn on Raila Odinga, the Prime Minister and ODM leader. An increasingly agitated public, which is aware that Ruto is probably also among those in Waki's envelope who are bound for the War Crimes Court at the Hague, will expect Raila to write to the President (as stipulated in the Grand Coalition accord) asking that Ruto be relieved of his duties, at least for now. If Raila does not do so, very soon, then the public's nagging perception that he himself is soft on corruption will only grow.