esperanto
Ekde la okazaĵoj de la somero, mi apenaŭ ion faras per Esperanto. Mi ne plu instruas Esperanton. Mi ne plu estas retpaĝestro de E-USA. Mi ne fariĝis komitatano de UEA. Mi ne plu blogas Esperante. Mi ne plu legas Esperanto revuo, nek Usona Esperantisto, nek Literatura Foiro -- mi ne plu legas revuon kiu ne ofertas retfluon. Nia loka grupo plimapli disfalis. Preskaŭ la nura afero kiun mi daŭre faras estas verki hajkojn. Same kiam mi estis doktora studento, mi ankoraŭ dediĉas almenaŭ kelkajn minutojn tage por pripensi Esperante kaj kapti momenton en poezio.
Esperanto-USA nenion faris dum la aŭtuno. Nia nova prezidanto tute ne gvidas. Li unufoje, iom mallerte provis puŝi la organizaĵon kaj, kiam ĝi ne agrable respondis, li ĵetis la manojn en la aeron kaj forfajfis la tuton. Nenio okazas.
Ĉu mi entute kabeos? Nu, verŝajne ne. Mi re-membriĝis al E-USA kaj UEA. Mi donacis iom da mono por subteni la Novjorkan Oficejon de UEA. Mi verŝajne partoprenos la Landan Kongreson. Sed mi malmulte plu interesiĝas pri aktivismo. Post kelkaj monatoj for de la movado, mi havas alian perspektivon. Ne mankas al mi la bataloj, la plendoj, kaj la senĉesa disputado. Mi uzas la tempon por laboro kaj familio -- kaj aliaj hobioj -- kaj tio estas vere kontentiga.
Since getting dumped as webmaster for Esperanto-USA, I'm realizing how much time I was spending on supporting/maintaining the website there. I was probably spending at least an hour a day to read everything, post a blog post or story, write a couple of comments, approve/reject comments, write a new poll, check logs, etc. And that's not counting the big efforts I would make periodically to update the software or roll out a new feature, which would cost five or ten hours.
Now, I'm trying to just not go and look. I did look a couple of times: there were dozens of unmoderated comments and evident signs of neglect. Sigh... Well, it's just not my problem anymore.
Instead, I'm using the time on other things: I have more time for stuff at work and more time for my North Star Class. And for my boys. And bicycling. I have to admit that my experience isn't encouraging me to spend my time on other Esperanto activity: I'm just doing less overall.
Since I'm not teaching this semester, I'm finally finding time to fix things that have been bugging me for a year or more. One of my key goals is to provide better oversight of the BCRC staff and provide the tools necessary for them to be fully engaged. I migrated the BCRC staff manual to a place where the staff can help update it. I added a block to reflect comments posted in my BCRC blog on the BCRC homepage. When we added the "Alumni" menu several months ago, it broke the navigation block in the footer. Today, I finally got around to finding and fixing the CSS rule that distributed those pieces of content so that they would all fit. I set up printing on the new advising computers. And while I was doing all of this, I began finally updating the 10.4 radmind image that has been gradually decaying for 2 years. Hopefully, if I can get the image up-to-snuff, we can actually make the old PowerPC machines we have sitting around actually useful again.
On August 28th, I received an email from the new president of Esperanto-USA informing me that I was being replaced as webmaster. I was somewhat surprised at this turn of events, but have done what I can to help the new webmaster get up-to-speed with the website as it currently stands and to outline what I had identified as next steps.
My vision for the website has been to make it the repository for information about Esperanto-USA and its activity -- the primary goal being that people visiting the site see evidence that the organization is alive and active. For that reason, I have avoided creating "silos" where people go for different pieces of information that are disconnected from the main site (where the evidence of the other things going on would be absent).
I've also tried to prevent proliferation of individual sites so that most/all of the management of the site mostly is done through Drupal. I've avoided creating shell accounts for people and having to deal with managing file uploads, unix permission issues, etc -- not because they're necessarily any harder than doing it through drupal, but to avoid multiplying the amount of work that the sysadmin will have to do (ie manage drupal plus manage unix users and understand the potential interactions between the two -- or even worse, understand other CMSes). But note that there are a few, e.g. http://esperanto-usa.org/lk2011 And, as I say, because I want people visiting our site(s) to be exposed to our current activity, and not just the silo that brought them there.
One of the most successful things we did was when Robert Read organized and hosted a "LAN party", where we got 6 or 7 people together in one place to work on the website for a whole weekend. That's how the old pages got migrated (however inexpertly) during one frantic weekend. It might be worth repeating that somehow, when you know what you want to do.
In 2011, I had proposed a thread of the Landa Kongreso to be about updating the website: basically, I envisioned (1) a talk/forum about the website and services available/needed, (2) training sessions on how to get involved and contribute, and (3) a room through the whole congress (staffed by me) with a few computers where people who wanted to work on things could sit together and actually get work done. Unfortunately, when the date of the LK was arbitrarily changed, I could no longer participate. Maybe someone will want to organize this at the next LK.
The key things that I thought that needed to be done were these:
(1) reorganize navigation (less flat, more deep). We have too many top level categories that aren't really parallel and each is only one level deep. We should probably have fewer top-level menus and make them two levels deep, so people can burrow down more quickly to what they're looking for.
(2) combine and update pages. We have too many pages, many of which are similar to one another -- and most are out of date. While updating the site, we should try to merge similar pages together into a single page, to simplify the site and make them easier to maintain/update.
(3) fix, extend taxonomy. The taxonomy system is turned on and allows people to enter terms. Unfortunately, most people don't understand how it works. But we have a big repository of terms that people have used. We should probably migrate those terms into a system where we have a fixed set of terms that people are required to select from when posting stuff. I think a better taxonomy system would make it easier for people to find information and navigate the site.
(4) create landing pages for each of the funds. These would probably be "views" in Drupal parlance, and would each have a summary of a fund, a way to submit requests from a fund, a "feed" of articles (stories and blog posts) that were tagged as being about the activity of a fund, and a link encouraging people to donate to a fund -- maybe even building a purchasing system into drupal so that people didn't have to leave drupal to donate. On the "estraro" side, we would ask fund administrators to post updates about each time the fund did anything -- maybe with an admonition that funds that do nothing for an entire year will be discontinued and rolled into the general fund. It's stupid that we have funds that don't do anything: we should get rid of those.
There are some other resources of which you should be aware. This URL: http://esperanto-usa.org/chkmem.php is a script I wrote that checks members one by one to see if they're a dues paying member and adds the "member" role to them in Drupal if they are. It doesn't remove members who are no longer dues-paying: we have no mechanism to do that.
There are also google adwords and google analytics accounts for Esperanto-USA. You probably need to ask Tim Westover to add you to those, if you're not already in there. We could do a lot more with both of those. Tim used to do a lot, but hasn't been active for a couple of years and no-one else has filled in.
There is also the "retpagxestroj" mailing list. This is a list maintained at dreamhost. You should add yourself to that. You can leave me on or take me off, as you like. The people who are on the list are all endowed with administrative access at the website. There are also a few more people who have administrative access: I was pretty liberal in giving it, thinking that more hands are better. Administrators can do pretty much anything at the site, though, and, although it hasn't been misused you might want to think about it because it's a bit risky -- you may be more risk-averse than me.
The bookstore is its own thing -- it was set up and is maintained by Bill Harris. There are really attractive skins for zen-cart -- the one we're using is pretty ugly and clunky looking. It might be worth spending a few hundred bucks to buy a prettier skin so that the bookstore looked more attractive. Attractive sells. The bookstore needs more reviews -- there's a mechanism for users to write and submit reviews, but there are hardly any reviews in the bookstore.
We're currently using Drupal 6, which is now the legacy release of Drupal. It will continue to be supported until Drupal 8 comes out -- probably sometime next year. When that happens, we ought to be ready with an upgrade plan -- or some kind of plan.
The New York office of UEA is interested in switching to Drupal. I had asked the board to consider whether we should host their website if they were willing to share the cost of hosting (for maybe $5/month). It is simple enough to to set up separate sites that use the same codebase (t.e. "multisite"). That question has not yet been answered.
For a long time, there's been discussed about whether we should translate at least some of our webpages into Esperanto. The majority are only in English. The i18n and l10n modules are installed, but we mostly aren't using them, In my opinion, we don't have enough human resources to keep the English pages up-to-date and it doesn't make sense to double the amount of work. If you want to use the system I've found that it works reasonably well, but it doesn't play nicely with the book module. You will want to move pages that you want to translate from book pages to regular pages.
Finally, the last item I covered when I did my talk at the LK in Washington -- and which I had warned the estraro about -- was that someone needed to be thinking about finding a replacement for me, since I was the only one who understood Drupal well enough to manage and support the site. Evidently, that problem now has been solved. :-)
To be summarily dismissed wasn't really how I was expecting things to turn out, but it was time -- past time -- that someone else took over. I'll enjoy watching from the sidelines.
As a beginner, one of my earliest experiences with actually trying to use Esperanto was quite negative. In the letter I sent to the US chief-delegate of UEA, explaining why I wanted to become a delegate, I said that I wanted to drive Esperanto out of California. That's not what I intended to say, of course. I intended to say that I wanted to expand Esperanto out from California, where it was particularly strong, to the rest of the country. I got a scathing letter in return that railed at me for suggesting such a thing. I had had enough other positive experiences with Esperanto that I wasn't completely turned off. I continued studying Esperanto and did eventually become a delegate. But I learned an important lesson.
The lesson that I learned is that there are malicious people everywhere. Like the kid I know who got beat up at a Quaker retreat, I learned that just because someone is learning Esperanto doesn't make them an altruistic believer in peaceful dialog.
I worry, however, that I learned the wrong lesson.
In dealing with people from other countries, I have found that experienced Esperanto-speakers are generally careful about jumping to conclusions about what other people say. When someone says something that seems surprising or outrageous, experienced speakers generally understand that it's a good idea to reserve judgement until you probe a bit more for meaning. They know that many Esperanto-speakers speak the language with only the skill of a komencanto or progresanto.
At the same time, in spite of the obvious collapse of the entire organized Esperanto movement, in every Esperanto-organization to which I've belonged, there has been an underlying element of hostility and animosity toward anyone that tries to introduce change. Humphrey Tonkin, in various places, put it this way:
No sane person, who saw close-up the internal battles in the heart of the Academy of Esperanto during the last four or five years (like every other member, I consider myself the only sane person in this important body), could avoid the conclusion that many of our people did not learn even basic lessons of interpersonal conduct, or, that they learned but ignore them, because their only means of validating themselves is through creating maximum confusion and conflict among others.
We have similar issues in my local town government. It's a saying in English that "Eighty percent of success is just showing up." A corrolary is that crazy people, who have nothing better to do than to stir up trouble, always show up for everything. In Esperantujo, this problem is particularly acute, because our community tends to be desperate for "new recruits" and, hence, our standards for accepting new members tends to be quite low.
Furthermore, Esperanto-speakers are individualistic and iconoclastic. They don't just go with the flow -- if they did they never would have learned Esperanto in the first place. Last year, in comments to the article I wrote Supreniro kaj malfalo de Esperanto , I wrote this:
In my experience, leading an Esperanto organization is very difficult because esperantists are nowhere near agreement -- neither regarding goals nor means. It's more difficult than herding cats. It's like trying to herd together a sloth, a swallow, a porcupine, a hedgehog, and a slug. The sloth wants to sleep. The swallow is gone. The porcupine throws quills everywhere. The hedgehog rolls up into a ball. And the slug just goes his own way paying no attention to the others. Anything you do as leader will raise a chorus of unhappy -- even angry -- voices. Only if you do nothing will the fewest number complain.
This problem is that leaders get worn down and quickly discover that the strategy of doing nothing is the only way to avoid the shouting. This problem is endemic in all our organizations. Or leaders give up and leave the organizations to the crazy people. The crazy people keep showing up -- because they're crazy and don't have anything better to do. Which leads me to what really worries me.
First, I worry that I'm one of the crazy people. Certainly, almost anyone who doesn't speak Esperanto already thinks I'm crazy because I waste any time at all on a dead language -- let alone trying to grapple with the community of crazies to build a better organization for it.
What I worry about most, however, is that the problem is actually with Esperanto itself. Maybe we imagine that Esperanto works better than it actually does. Maybe the reason that our organizations fail is because we actually can't communicate effectively using Esperanto. Anyone watching the Esperanto movement from the outside would have to be REALLY BATSHIT CRAZY to think that our organizations demonstrated the kind of capacity for intercomprehension that you'd want for, say, the United Nations. And I worry that this is the lesson that I maybe should have learned all those years ago.
Convince me I'm wrong.
(This an English translation of an article that appeared as La Malĝusta Leciono at Libera Folio.)
This morning, I read Fukushima workers face “nightmarish world of high radiation, difficult terrain” which includes a depressing video filed by John Sparks with Channel 4 News.
There is, of course, the depressing story about corporate deceptions regarding the true state of the situation. And how the operation is being managed by 600 subcontractors that mostly don't seem to know what one another are doing. But I was struck by this statement regarding the language barrier:
Communication on-site is difficult. With about 30 foreign experts in charge of key bits of equipment, there's no common language. And the masks make it that much tougher. Sometimes the workers take them off to speak to each other.
"Few of us speak English or French, so the language barrier is higher than expected. We talk to them through translators, but we know we're being exposed to radiation while we do it."
This is exactly what Esperanto was intended to fix. Instead of empowering everyone to be able to seamlessly communicate with everyone else, we have ended up with English as an international language -- which works pretty well for big businesses and corporations to make money, but doesn't really solve the problems that people have on the ground. It's depressing that, 125 years after a workable solution was unveiled to the world, we still have a real language barrier that is killing people.
After 20 years of speaking Esperanto, I've finally come to the Universala Kongreso, the pinnacle of Esperanto meetings. It's been great so far. I wouldn't use superlatives, like "amazing, incredible, unbelievable" or anything. But I'm enjoying myself very much. I've posted a quite a bit about in Esperanto, but here's some stuff in English about what I like and don't like about being in Copenhagen:
Like: You don't have to tip and taxes are included so you can actually see how much something really costs.
Don't like: Everything is really expensive. Really, really expensive. A bottle of Coke is 28kr, which is nearly 6 dollars. A bottle of beer is like 8 dollars.
Like: Public transit goes everywhere and is largely uncontrolled, so you can just jump on or off, rather than having to go through gates or interact with guards.
Don't like: The public transit system is really complicated: there are S-trains, the metro, and buses, and different zones and you have to buy a ticket for the number of zones you'll cross. Then the ticket is good for only a certain period of time. And people talked about getting a card you can use in an unrestricted way for 7 days, but they didn't have that in the machine, but they did have a card you can use for 10 trips, which you have to get stamped in a little yellow box before you get on the metro. Or train. Or bus. Because all of the tickets are sort of interchangeable. But not really, because sometimes you *are* supposed to buy different kinds of tickets.
Like: Everything is in English. All of the signs in the airports (both in Copenhagen and Reykyavik) were both in English and another language that has lots of G's. In the hotel, the signs are mostly only in English: Reception, Breakfast, Conference Room, etc. without even the pretense you're in a foreign country.
Don't like: Everything is in English. It's hard to keep thinking in Esperanto when the BBC is blaring in the background during breakfast and when you have to address the waitress in English. OK. I lie. It's really great. It makes it really easy that they have English menus and every person you meet can understand and respond in basic English. It's creepy, but great.
Like: Wireless network connectivity. It's wonderful to be able to check my email and twitter feed or post to my blog in the hotel and kongresejo for free.
Don't like: Stupid CDMA phones that don't work overseas. And the hotel wireless network that has been misconfigured or broken (or up and down and up and down like it is today) much of the time. And the for-pay connectivity that they want to sell you at the airports in Copenhagen and Reykyavik. Stupid blood-sucking vampires.
For the record, I am not a bus driver. While walking back to the hotel the other evening, some kids rode by me on bikes and one shouted, "Hello, bus driver!" (in English, of course) I thought this was a charming way to great international visitors to Copenhagen, if a bit mysterious. I told several people about it and we wondered what it all meant. Yesterday, we noticed that there is a large contingent of kids here with some kind of specialized little bikes and a girl rode down in the elevator with me (and her bike) wearing some kind of team uniform. I asked where she was from and she said South Africa. Then she told me I was the bus driver that brought her from the airport. I assured her that I was not but this, evidently, was the source of the mystery: I have a clone that drives the bus from the airport.
Shortly after I wrote my last article at Libera Folio, I realized another article I wanted to write. Unfortunately, it was too late: I had to get back to work and work like a dog for weeks to manage the server migration for my facility and get resources built for the spring. But I had my notes and I kept seeing more thing to stick in the article. I just needed an hour or two to actually pull it all together. With the few minutes I had yesterday morning, I finished drafting the article and sent it off to Libera Folio. It should appear in the next day or two. (I'll link to it when it comes out).
The basic idea is a simple one: when the media covers Esperanto, they talk about "Esperanto was..." or "Esperanto might have been..." They rarely talk about "Esperanto is..." and never talk about "Esperanto will be..."
Esperanto is strong -- it's probably never been stronger. The internet has provide a fertile ground for Esperanto take root. There are more people learning Esperanto now than ever before. Does that mean that Esperanto will suddenly become "the second language for everyone"? No, it doesn't. But Esperanto isn't going away. Everyone (who matters) is learning English now. But English isn't replacing anyone's native language -- each generation will have to choose whether to learn English. Or not. With the rise of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China), and a multipolar world, it may be that in many places, people decide that learning Portuguese or Chinese makes more sense than English. As the world becomes multilingual, the idea of a neutral International Language might come up again -- and Esperanto might make a lot more sense with 100 years of history behind it. And a dynamic, vibrant speaker community already in place.
I have a new article up at Libera Folio. I saw a note by Renato Corsetti at La Ondo which was talking about the failure of UEA to change with the times. I wanted to expand on a few of the points and drafted a note for Libera Folio. It's wonderful to have the help of other smart people in drafting an article: Istvan Ertl corrected the grammar for me. And Kalle Kniivilä came up with a great title and nice introduction (in which he called me a "konata usona esperantisto"!)
For several weeks, I've been working on a secret project which I can finally reveal today: I've published a book! Today, you can order Poŝtmarkoj el Esperantujo, a book of my original haiku with associated artwork in the original Esperanto with English translation.
I checked with a couple of likely publishers to see if someone else wanted to publish it for me, but there's almost no money to be made publishing any kind of poetry -- let alone obscure Esperanto poetry by an unknown author. So I just published it myself.
It was fascinating to go through the process of laying out the book, playing with the typography, and ordering a proof. To actually get the book in my hands was a wonderful experience.
As a kid, I was always fascinated by postage stamps. In this project, I took some of my best photography and got to turn it stamps! For a long time, I dreamed of being a serious photographer. I learned, eventually, that I was never going to be more than an amateur, but it's amazing now what you can do with software -- way better than a dark room ever was.
I did the whole project using Free Software: the illustrations were created with GIMP and Inkscape and the book was laid out using Scribus. I used Createspace to publish the book because they seemed the one that was most focused on enabling people to build the pieces themselves -- the other services I looked at were more focused on having you submit your content in some kind of web-based wizard, that would magically mangle your content into a slick looking book. I wanted to get my hands dirty (in a pixel-stained-technopeasant sort of way).
Maybe in another year, I'll have enough haiku to publish another book. Or maybe I'll make some other kind of book next time. If you make the interior just black-and-white, it's amazing how cheap it is. With full color, I managed to keep the price per book to just under $10 (I make $0.14/copy!) And so if a million people buy my book, my royalties would make me a hundred-thousand-aire! (Before taxes, of course. :-)
Lucy and I had a nice time at ARE again this year. Beautiful weather and good autumnal color.
During the first evening, we had the "amikeca vespero" where we played meet-and-greet games to get to know one another and then went out to a bonfire to tell stories in the dark.
I wore my black trenchcoat and top hat, which generated commentary from many people. One woman asked "Who are you?"
"Doktoro Brewer," I replied.
Then she asked "Who's that?" to which I replied by handing her my business card. It was as succinct an answer as any I could make.
Among my varied accomplishments, I can now add that I am an award-winning author of Esperanto-language haiku. And I get a pound of free Raos Coffee!
I have been writing a lot of haiku lately and posting them to my twitter feed -- partly for napowrimo and partly just because. Twitter is perfect for haiku: the shortness and the empherality of the medium. (Although I am informed that the Library of Congress is going to archive all twitter posts.)
In any event, I was primed when I saw that Raos was having a contest and I submitted two haiku:
vintra dimanĉo...
paruoj manĝas semojn
mi trinkas kafon
a wintry Sunday...
chickadees eat their birdseed
I drink my coffee
and
unua kafo
kaj varma kaj vapora...
atendas ĵurnal'
today's first coffee
hot with the steam still rising...
the newspaper waits
They haven't said which one they liked better. I had also written this haiku years ago, thinking about Raos:
homoj kaj birdoj...
la frumatena
babilad'...
ĉe la kafejo
people and songbirds...
early morning conversations
at the coffeeshop
Philip is just a little jealous. :-)
I spent most of the day today relaxing with a smile on my face from the great time I had yesterday. Sally Lawton and I left very early on Saturday, drove to New Haven and took the train into NYC for the day. Everything went about a smoothly as could be imagined and we had a great time. Our train was delayed a bit due to a signaling problem, but that just meant that we met up with Jakobo in Grand Central Station and could share a taxi in the rain to the UEA New York office by the UN. That's where our adventure started.
I think most people in the US would be astonished to discover there was an office at the UN for the World Esperanto Association. It's not much -- just a desk in an office shared with 4 other non-profits. Neil Blonstein has been running the office since the autumn, taking over after the previous person had to step down due to health. We signed the guestbook and looked through the past 30 years of signatures to see what names we recognized -- a who's-who of Esperantism.
After taking a group photo in the office, walked back to Grand Central Station in the rain and got a cup of coffee while we sorted out what to do next. Eventually, we decided to navigate to the place where we were supposed to meet people for lunch. We got to Zaro's a bit early for lunch, but that gave us plenty of time to get situated and chat with folks. There were maybe 12 or 15 of us in all. We had a cheerful lunch chatting happily. Eventually, we decided to push on to the Natural History Museum for a while in the afternoon. There seemed to be big crowds and it took us a long time to navigate there. We walked around for a bit in the museum and eventually ended up having a soda in the food court.
For dinner, we had planned to go to the Esperanto Cafe -- a well-known restaurant in Greenwich Village. We got there in good order, but found it full with no-where to sit. After I looked at the menu, I suggested we go across the street to the Mexican restaurant. They had a fabulous spot right at the front with a two couches right in front of a big window. We could watch people go by, keep on alert for people to arrive at the Esperanto Cafe, and stretch out and relax in comfort and style. We got some margaritas and appetizers. Mauro said he'd never had Mexican food before. I asked him if he knew what a margarita was. He said, "Yes, I know what Margherita is." I pointed out that a margarita was something else.
Eventually, Sally and I got Neil to lead us back to the right subway station and we arrived at Grand Central Station. Checking the departures, it looked like we had missed the earlier train to New Haven, but we rushed to the track anyway just in case. The train was still there and, when we arrived, the conductor said they were pulling out in about 20 seconds. We just made it.
It was a fabulous day in Esperantujo and I've spent the whole following day basking in the good spirits I have from the special connection that Esperanto brings to my life. There's something special about Esperanto. When Jakobo mentioned to folks he was thinking about staying over, one of the other esperantists said, "I'm leaving to spend a few days with my fiancee, but here's my key -- you can just stay at my place." It's really something the invisible bonds that tie people together. They may be invisible, but if you could feel the bonds that Esperanto makes, they'd be warm and fuzzy.
In response to my post about why to participate in the Landa Kongreso, someone asked what it was really like, so I wrote a kind of rant about the Landa Kongreso -- I called it Limako's Guide to the Landa Kongreso.
Everyone is trying to print posters and so today the cutter broke on the poster printer. The guide to the poster printer, of course, doesn't even have the cutter in the index. They have one reference to some manual cutter that other models of printers have. Sigh... We ordered a couple and now have to hope that they'll come with some guide that explains how to install them.
I've been just flat out for the past several days. Lobbying at the State House yesterday. This morning, working in ISB, presentation to sysmanagers, more ISB, then poster printing. But being needed does make me feel appreciated. Lots of people today thanked me for my efforts in helping them make stuff happen.
Great Esperanto meeting tonight. I love having a local group to meet with and chat in Esperanto. It's the best.
A few weeks ago, I was searching the catalog at the Jones Library and, in searched C/W Mars, found an Esperanto book I'd never heard of before. It's called "Kavaliro en Tigra Felo" (or Horseman in a Tiger Skin). It was for "in-library use" at the Williamsburg library. I was puzzled that they would have a book like that, so I wanted to go take a look at it. On Saturday, Lucy and I drove over to find out more.
We learned that an exchange program had brought a group of librarians from Georgia (the country), who donated the book during their visit. It's a 300 page epic poem about a king and his daughter's suitor who meet a horseman wearing a tiger skin and the suitor goes on a quest to track the horseman down. It was a delight to read: as interesting to read as the Odyssey or Gilgamesh.
I couldn't read it all, but I read for an hour or so and took some pictures. There was also an interesting story at the end by the translator, about why he believed the story should be translated into Esperanto. I wrote a longer blog post about it at E-USA.
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