03135cam a2200349 i 4500 1710787761 TxAuBib 20241113120000.0 240728s2024||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2024019363 9781250281098 HRD 29.00 1250281091 HRD 29.00 (OCoLC)1452233257 TxAuBib rda Stein, Eliot, author. Custodians of wonder : ancient customs, profound traditions, and the last people keeping them alive / Eliot Stein. Ancient customs, profound traditions, and the last people keeping them alive. First edition. New York : St. Martin's Press, 2024. 325 pages ; 25 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Includes bibliographical references and index. The living libraries of West Africa -- Scandinavia's last night watchman -- The last Inca Bridge master -- The world's rarest pasta -- The mirror that reveals your truest self -- Asia's last film poster painter -- Where bees are a part of the family -- The only democratic job in Cuba -- The man trying to save Japanese food -- The most romantic job in Europe. "A vivid look at the ten key people who are maintaining some of the world's oldest and rarest cultural traditions. Eliot Stein has traveled the globe in search of remarkable people who are preserving some of our rarest cultural rites. In Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive, Stein introduces readers to a man saving the secret ingredient in Japan's 700-year-old original soy sauce recipe. In Italy, he learns how to make the world's rarest pasta from one of the only women alive who knows how to make it. And in India, he discovers a family rumored to make a mysterious metal mirror believed to reveal your truest self. From shadowing Scandinavia's last night watchman to meeting a 27th-generation West African griot to seeking out Cuba's last official cigar factory "readers" more than a century after they spearheaded the fight for Cuban independence, Stein uncovers an almost lost world. Climbing through Peru's southern highlands, he encounters the last Inca bridge master who rebuilds a grass-woven bridge from the fabled Inca Road System. He befriends a British beekeeper who maintains a touching custom of "telling the bees" important news of the day and crunches through a German forest to find the official mailman of the only tree in the world with its own address - to which countless people all over the world have written in hopes of finding love. These are just some of the last people on Earth still in touch with quickly vanishing rites. Let Eliot Stein introduce you to all of them"-- Provided by publisher. 20241125. jz. Cultural property Protection. Manners and customs. Rites and ceremonies.