i sometimes spend a little time in the archives and special collections of the owen d young library at st. lawrence university. there's a small book in the collection that i visit.

it smells of smoke and the desert and places far away, and i can't read the text. but i can look at the pictures. and touch the wonderful, thick thick vellum pages,

the broken and mended front cover.

there is one mend in a text page: front

and back

this wonderful book has details that keep me looking:

this is the back cover

an ingenious way to strengthen the sewing, also to retard the back cover from breaking.

the librarian, mark mcmurray, asked me to include this citation: "Ethiopian Book Collection, Mss. No. 120, Special Collections, Owen D. Young Library, St Lawrence University, Canton, NY". mark also runs caliban press in his "spare" time.

my second shifu book, this day, also lives in here. it, too, has an old style binding, and the cover, not the pages, is vellum, dyed a soft green.