Samantha Contis for The New York Times ©

Click the image above for a profile of an amazing entrepreneurial conservationist.  The New York Times continues to demonstrate its subscription-worthiness.  The key line in the profile, which we can relate to both in principal and practice:

Barrett, who is 61, has dedicated his life to unlocking the mysteries of paper, which he regards as both the elemental stuff of civilization and an endangered species in digital culture. For his range of paper-related activities, he received a $500,000 fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation in 2009. “Sometimes I worry about what a weird thing it is to be preoccupied with paper when there’s so much trouble in the world,” Barrett told me, “but then I think of how our whole culture is knitted together by paper, and it makes a kind of sense.”

While the story is more about the craft of paper-making, there is a subtext about the market for such conservation capabilities.  Cultures demand, eventually, the protection of their founding documents.  And they want it done right.  And this fellow does it.  See the story’s accompanying slideshow here, and be sure to click through to the 11th slide, a luscious one.