Book It!

The Moslems called my tribe “The People of the Book”.  So be it.  They may have meant it as a slur…I take it as a compliment. 

The history of communication led us from scratches on a clay tablet to a papyrus page of notations to a parchment scroll containing universal wisdom to a hand copied portfolio of pages guiding the perplexed to a book to electronic signal pulses beeping out S O S to a voice asking “What Number, Please?” to sound preserved on vinyl to Memorex to switching 1’s and 0’s to light bearing cables to wireless beams of energized particles…or, something like that.

The wonders of wireless access to the Internet aside, the Book is what does it for me.  I own too many to count, most with god’s name written within: Adonai, Chagall, Einstein, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Marx, Freud and ben Maimon.

So my camera is programmed to operate like a dowsing rod pointing in the direction of underground water whenever it notices a book.  I trust its powers of observation when a book is near.

For example…