“THE past is never dead. It’s not even past,” wrote William Faulkner in “Requiem for a Nun”. In his house, Rowan Oak, you can almost touch the typewriter on which he tapped out those words. It sits on a desk in his study, protected merely by a rope across the door.

Rowan Oak stands in a glade near the centre of Oxford, Mississippi. Faded signs and keen volunteers direct visitors round the property in which the writer lived for 32 years. Wonky floors, spartan bedrooms and the author’s pipe, boots and spectacles await them. Those who forget the cash for the $5 entry fee can squeeze inside anyway with the promise of a cheque to follow. After all, as Faulkner noted, “Money has no value. It is just how you spend it.”

But Rowan Oak needs more spending. Though it was restored in 2005 at a cost of $1.5m, more than a third of which was covered by the University of Mississippi, which owns the site, the house now “needs a paint job really badly”, according to its curator, William Griffith. In addition to maintenance, however, the fees collected from around 30,000 visitors a year have to pay the electricity and phone bills. “It’s a tough business,” he admits.

Securing sufficient funds to keep historic sites up to scratch is tricky across the South. Almost a third of Rowan Oak’s renovations were paid for by Save America’s Treasures, a competitive grants programme started in the Clinton years. Congress’s decision in 2011 to stop funding the programme has hurt house museums most, according to Stephanie Meeks, head of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a private charity. “It was the only bricks-and-mortar funding scheme run by the federal government,” she says.(Economist)

翻译：

威廉福克纳在《修女的安魂曲》一书中写到“逝者不殁，实未曾逝也。”在其故居“花楸橡树”，你甚至可以亲手抚摸当年他打出这些文字的打字机，它伫在书房的写字台上。

“花楸橡树”位于距离密西西比的牛津市中心不远的一块沼泽上，此处，根据褪色的标牌和热心的志愿者的指引，你可以游览这所作家曾生活过32年的居所。这里地板嘎吱作响，床铺简单朴素，作家的烟斗，长靴和眼镜安之若素，那些忘记付5块门票的人，保证之后补上一张支票，也可挤入人群探个究竟，“金本无利，使之得力，方才有益”福克纳所言极是。

但门票费远不能维系“花楸橡树”的维护开支，虽然2005维修的150万美元费用有三分之一都由密西西比大学负担，毕竟地产在该大学名下，但据管理者所言威廉所言，“它现在亟需油漆粉刷”。除维护外，每年从三万游客身上收取的一部分费用还要用于支付电费和电话费，威廉也承认“这笔收入着实难以为继”。

纵观整个南部地区，想要确保历史遗迹的修缮费用充足都不容易，虽然之前’花楸橡树‘三分之一的修缮费用都来自保护美国遗产组织，它实力雄厚，但2011年国会已决定停止资助这个始于克林顿时代的赠款项目，据私有慈善组织国家历史建筑保护信托负责人所言，房屋博物馆深受其害，毕竟那是唯一一个受联邦政府资助的实体项目。”