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Notes from Farther Afield

At the Pocahontas Island, residents are worried that this 200 year old historical black community will disappear off the maps. I couldn't find it on Google Earth.

Speaking of disappearing, the historic Fort Pitt is being buried under a Mall or maybe a parking lot. Either way, don't despair, as the historian quoted in the article is particularly cheerful: "Muller said there are many examples of historically significant things being buried and later unearthed. For example, in the 1980s, archaeologists working on a highway project in Pittsburgh unearthed perfectly preserved wooden doors that had been buried when a canal was filled in to make room for the railroads more than 100 years earlier, he said." See? We can dig those parking lots up later to find signs of the French retreat.

And if we do end up with a mall, there will be tours.

Gandhi Ji is having a renaissance in India - due, in large part to a hit bollywood movie. I realize that this sentence should properly be explained by a 3,000 word post, and maybe it will be on Monday. In the meantime, you can read Khuswant Singh's review of a new book on Gandhi Ji - by his grandson: Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, His People and an Empire.

Biography seems perfectly fine on the Amazon/NYT charts but I don't see many dissertations in the UMI during the last five years that look biograph-ish. My own, dissertation, i.e., is a historiobiography. w00t.