Word: woodenness
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...flood flattened one house in Ber last October, obliterating more than 700 manuscripts. Mahmoud says his family's collection of thousands of manuscripts include many with termite damage. One of his sons, Omar Ag Mohammed, shows me about 30 of the books, which are kept stashed in a rickety wooden closet in his small house. The most cherished volumes are not here, but buried in the desert. "We use ashes to protect them from the termites," he tells me. "Then we build a dome on top of them, so we know where to find them...
There are aerial pleasures to be had, too. The Tree Top Walk takes you into the forest canopy on wooden bridges and offers two observation decks: a natural high, like much else at O'Reilly's. For more information, see www.oreillys.com.au...
...these is the Smokehouse, www.thesmokehouse.com.my/ch.htm, built in 1939 and a surreal dream of English suburbia, with its impeccable lawns and heavy wooden beams. Originally created as a getaway for safari-suited colonials stationed in what was then called Malaya, the Smokehouse remains steeped in another era, in good ways (antiques, cozy nooks and crannies, double scotches by the fireplace) and bad (shabby rooms, peeling paint, awful food). The hotel website even refers, rather sniffily, to "electronic mail." There's something very old-school British about all of this, of course. Lovers of luxury may be disappointed, but children...
...Iraq war in the 1980s as a religious youth group that sent its members to sacrifice themselves by clearing land mines, has now become Iran's Big Brother, mafia, and neighborhood hooligans all rolled into one. During the street protests, they barged through the crowd Mad Max-style, brandishing wooden batons. Now they are playing more of an intelligence-gathering role, and consequently they have become much harder to detect. In recent weeks, many have shaved their telltale beards and shed their secondhand clothes; one group of Basiji recently spotted in north Tehran wore collared shirts, snappy dress shoes...
...Wang Baoguo, CEO of the Hangzhou Dafeng Furniture Co., securing two loans via Alibaba has meant gaining the cash to buy raw materials at lower cost. The seven-year-old company employs 150 people and manufactures wooden home furnishings. But despite its experience, Hangzhou Dafeng has traditionally avoided pursuing credit through traditional channels. "A small start-up company like ours doesn't remotely qualify for loans under the banks' criteria, so I didn't even bother to try," says Wang. Through the Alibaba program, the company was approved for a $100,000 loan. After repaying that, it applied...