not too overboard, is it?

you like your bizzzness, eh?

I'm lost, Stace...huh?

another"Conference news, business [read: bizzzness] and questions" topic... I was just teasing you, virtually of course!

gotcha!

huh? *grin*

right where I wantcha, I must add...

how'd you know I was blindfolded and nude?!?!??!

now those are talented fingers!!!

new meaning to 'touch type'

*sigh*

*lol* (stacey, he's being vulnerable again *heehee*)

*ahem* sorry to get off topic *grin* but is there a topic for desert island books? Ones which you would take with you if you were stranded and could only have them to read for months and months or years?

I started a topic for this.

Thank you very much. *hugs* It should be interesting to see what is chosen. Please participate. Your choices should be most interesting.

From: Timothy Troy, University of California Berkeley Forwarded by: David Newbury, University of North Carolina dnewbury@unc.edu Prof. J. Desmond Clark, emeritus professor of paleoarchaeology at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the preeminent paleoarchaeologist and Africanists in the world, has just shown me a copy of a March 29, 2000 article from the Daily Telegraph (London) entitled: "Last Record of African Explorers Faces Ruin." The article was written by Ishbel Matheson in Livingstone, Zambia. It reads in part: "A priceless collection of books and documents, detailing the earliest days of European exploration in Africa, is under threat of destruction. The Livingstone Museum in southern Zambia has hundreds of valuable books, written by the first missionaries, adventurers and prospectors in central Africa. But the building's leaking ceiling collapsed in recent heavy rains, and many publications were damaged beyond repair. Others need expensive conservation work to save them. Piles of ancient, sodden volumes, with subjects as diverse as elephant-hunting and native practices, have been left to dry in the tropical heat. Early newspapers, with vivid descriptions of life in what was then British-ruled Northern Rhodesia, can scarcely be opened, for fear of tearing fragile, brittle pages. Flexon Mizinga, the keeper of history at the museum, said: 'It means the whole history is wiped out. When you lose this kind ofthing, there is no replacement. You can't get copies anywhere else. These are the only copies we have. Valuable historical documents, which escaped the flood, are slowly disintegrating because the museum has no money for conservation. The original letters and journals of David Livingstone, the Scottish missionary, are the pride of the collection. He was the first European to discover the nearby Victoria Falls, and he is remembered affectionately in the area as a Christian who campaigned to stop slavery. His notebooks describing his second Zambezi [River] expedition in 1858 are stored in the museum, with those of his companions, even though the institution is ill equipped to preserve them. The journals of Sir John Kirk, a botanist, and Richard Thornton, a geologist, which record their first impressions of the African landscape and its commercial potential for the British Empire, are in battered cardboard boxes. The acidity of the brown paper which wraps the notebooks is slowly eating away the handwritten testimony of these Victorian explorers. In the museum's clock tower, amid a jumble of books and newspapers, is the work of Thomas Baines, an artist and a member of the Zambezi expedition. A beautiful first edition of his famous Victoria Falls watercolours lies on a tabletop, vulnerable to the fierce heat and high humidity of the southern Zambia climate. Kinglsey Choongo, a museum curator, says, 'The documents will not see the beginning of another century.' Family members of the early explorers and settlers gave historical items to the museum because they wanted their ancestors' contribution to this part of Africa remembered. It seems, however, that in Livingstone and Zambia the history of the whites in Africa is being erased from the national consciousness. Tim Holmes, an author, lives in Zambia and has written a biography of Dr. Livingstone. He believes the museum has been starved of funds because its collection is perceived as a relic from the colonial past.'After independence came, what Zambians wanted to know most of all, is their own history. The colonial history was seen as an irrelevant burden. But trying to ignore colonialaism is like trying to tell the history of Britain without the Romans.'It is the former colonial countries who are now trying to help the museum out of its immediate crisis. The European Union has pledged 250,000 pounds. Conservationists fear that the money is too late because so much damage has been done. Nor will it be enough for the extensive upgrade needed to preserve the collections." Dr. Clark was the director and primary curator of the Livingstone Museum in its early manifestations from 1937 to his departure for Berkeley, California in 1961. In 1951 he raised the funds needed for a major expansion of the museum complex and library in Livingstone. A modest man, Clark neverless has told me in recent oral history interviews I have conducted with him for the Regional Oral History Office of the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley, that it was he who built the magnificent book and manuscript collection for the museum's library. He personally worked with the descendants of David Livingstone and others to do so. Though now eighty-four years old, Clark can list practically every rare book title, journal and manuscript collection which is held in the Livingstone Museum library. Curiously, however, Clark's great legacy to the world will be his work as a paleoarchaeolgist in Africa. The paleolithic and neolithic archaeolgical collections at the Museum are the result of his work over the course of his years working in Central and East Africa. It was always Clark's intention also to build the museum's collections and library for the Zambian people. In the 1950s he instituted museum outreach educational programs in a concerted effort to help the local peoples learn more about their early history. Long before other museums instituted the practice, Clark designed small, portable travelling exhibitions for this purpose. Understandably it saddens him greatly to see that the museum and its resources are falling into ruin. I would hope that IFLA and its membership could rally support for Flexon Mizinga, Kingsley Choongo and others in Livingstone who are waging the uphill battle to preserve what remains of this priceless library collection. Thank you for spreading the word.

HELP! can we please do something about this background or the font? do you see eyeballs and music notes? though i like them, i can barely read what i typed or what anyone else typed for that matter. *smile* thanks!!

I see the nature background in this conference, what background are you seeing?

BODY background="/yapp-icons/chalk.jpg" anyway, it comes up with a white backgroud with purple notes and eyeballs all over it. it's one that wer made and i do adore it but the font needs to change or something....

Hmm, and you're in the book conference? I'm still seeing the nature conference. Am I in the twilight zone?

perhaps i am?

Nature conference? What am I missing? (Be kind!)

I meant the nature background, there is no nature conference.

marcia, do you see a nature background in this conference too? am i using the wrong url??? (http://www.spring.net)

(twilight zone music plays - do do do dooo do do do dooo . . . ) I'll look again.

*laugh* this is happening to me in inner too!!

OK, I'm still seeing the old gray safety paper!!

The old gray safety paper, she aint' what she use ta' be, ain't what she use ta' be . .. do do do dooo do do do dooo . . .

Silly me, I only get the default leaves. I wonder why? *boogying with you*

Is that the equivalent of a "plain brown wrapper"?

http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/read/books/19/new is what I am using.

i'm still getting the music and eyeball background!

marcia, i've sent screen captures of the backgrounds i'm seeing in here and in inner. this is the weirdest thing!

Ok looking for them. I had the same trouble with eyeball and music wallpaper on all my conferences for a while. I finally deleted music from my hot list and that cured it. I added it later and it did not recur. Very strange.

marcia has saved my eyesight! i've got the leaves now and it's much much better! lemme check inner too! (i deleted music out of my conf list)....

Yay!!! Wolfie said it worked. I am so glad I was not alone with that problem and I could help rid her of those infernal eyeballs and notes. We gotta get rid of that wallpaper in music!

you should have default leaves (that is the name of it) background in Inner too andporch and all the rest excepting Babes, food, drool and you and my conferences. Oh, and the infernal eyeballs and notes on Music - how could we forget?! Did the grey safety paper go away too?

Nope, still gray!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARCIA!!!!!!!