We arrived in Kyrgyzstan yesterday and it was a remarkable change from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Gone is the sweltering heat of the black and red sand deserts. Gone too are the soaring domes and spires of lapis and turquoise. Mountains surround the city of Bishkek and the streets are full of cars and commerce. Statues of…
Category: Writing
Samarkand Paper Mill
We visited the historic Samarkand Paper mill as part of our Silk Road expedition. It lies on the outskirts of modern Samarkand, beyond the opulent Registan Square of Timur. It can be found among the long stretches of old mounded earth, all that remains of the storied mud brick Samarkand leveled by Ghengis Khan. The…
Samarkand
Gentle Reader, We have arrived in Samarkand at last! Our journey overland from Bukhara covered 460 kilometers over roads that were rough but not nearly so much or so dusty as those in East Africa. Christy and myself began the day early and I enjoyed a breakfast of black coffee and a small omelette. On…
Cursive and Cultural Continuity
As a fan and advocate of all things related to travel and history, it was wonderful to recently be able to sort through a collection of antique postcards in San Francisco. Many were of photographs from the time immediately surrounding the 1906 earthquake and fire. However it was the writing on the backs of the…
Pen versus Keyboard
The debate rages on, which is mightier, the pen or the keyboard? A flurry of recent articles has been lamenting the demise of handwriting and the inability of the internet generation to read and write cursive script. The arguments don’t simply center on which is the more efficient tool, rather the lines are being drawn…