Random corrigenda, cont'd.: The passport-sized booklets being waved around at the curtain calls in the country to the W/nw during the recent student-led protests were not in fact passports. Some leveret-chasing down rabbit holes with artificially intelligent Gurgling last night revealed that they were academic indexes. (As it is multiple physical objects, indexes, not indices. Indices would be indecent.) Apparently, in this country (and in nearby others, perhaps), the students carry around a small album within which each professor, at the end of a course, manually inscribes the course name, the grade, and their own signature. And the students carry this booklet around for the rest of their lives as academic citizens, using it to establish identity. (Obviously, the professoriate is much more respected there, and the entrance into same is more carefully guarded by the society at large. I can imagine my own version, in which a few pages would need to be ripped out -- not for the grades, but for the traces of the individuals.)
Some interesting minutiae as to their use in curtain calls: apparently, the visuals were more important than the status of the book as a personally meaningful device, as I noticed that they seemed to be haphazardly handed out in the wings, and occasionally, presumably when the count was wrong, two people would hold up a single book. Also, the leading actor at one of the theatres made it clear that he didn't take one, but enthusiastically applauded the others -- perhaps not a university type.
Apparently a long-time icon of the protest movements in this country -- in fairness, to a wandering reine tor, they looked very much like passports.
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Interesting -- on the stone mountains, where there is an indentation running down the peak that becomes a stream or rain drainage, where the land levels out a bit, the alluvial soil deposit at the base takes on a circular shape. (It naturally extends downhill in the center, and is bounded by the angled indentation on the uphill side. This forms a natural circle beneath a stone rise on one side that would allow sufficient seating for a large crowd. Perhaps the most primitive form of theatre, with the ritual altar placed at the center of the circle?