Winnie loves to grow things. Calling her a “natural gardener” may be a fair statement even though she did grow up in a small farming village. Having seen the village she grew up in with it’s wonderful small vegetable plots surrounded by hundreds of acres of rice fields, I’m not too surprised she’s good with plants. But she really does love to grow plants and work in gardens.
She is also extremely resourceful.
An editorial in today’s local newspaper, coupled with a news story, has gotten me to thinking about the old-fashioned “Mom and Pop” shops. If you look around, you might think that those type stores, small specialty outlets run by a single family, famous for knowing their customers and offering great service, were going the way of the dinosaur (and gas guzzling monster trucks).
In reality, if you look around you might recognize that those “Mom and Pop shops” have morphed into something bigger and better. They’ve become the new age of Internet shopping.
Among the souvenirs Winnie brought back from China on her recent trip was an 11-disk set of DVDs containing the Chinese classic series “Journey to the West.” Now, as part of our evening routine whenever Winnie and I are both home, we watch one or two episodes. Although it’s only in the Chinese national language (no subtitles) I am able to mostly follow the action with Winnie’s help explaining the dialog. Watching these series has becoming a lot of fun.
My writing has been light lately, and there’s actually a good reason for this; a better reason that just not feeling like writing. I finally finished rebuilding my boat “Sea Dreams” enough that I could get her back in the water, and that event has pretty much taken first priority.
Winnie returned home in Virginia from her month long visit to China Sunday morning. She reports she had a nice visit traveling around different family in different towns around south-eastern China. However, her flying experience coming back to the U.S. left something to be desired.
It’s been a fast month. Spring is officially here and not a day too soon. It’s still not nearly warm enough for my liking but every day gets better. The boating season has begun, but my boat is not ready for the water. Beyond all that, Winnie’s gone to China trusting in me to keep her plants alive until she returns.
She is a very trusting soul indeed.
Once again, I’ve had an interesting on-line “debate” in our very own “The Potomac News.” This time, the issues was global climate change. The letter to the editor (LTE) that started the debate was titled “Global warming: Another big, fat lie,” which is a fairly neutral title that gives one no hint of the general tone of the letter.
After nearly three years and many adventures in the New World, Winnie left today to go visit her family. One catch with marrying a person who lived halfway around the planet; going to visit family takes a lot of planning.
I’ve made a point of getting a Letter to the Editor (LTE) of our local newspaper published at least once each month since last summer. Over these past months my writing has evolved from simple rebutting of our local Conservative columnists to writing on original topics. Part of the change from rebutting columnists is that the newspaper has introduced commenting in their on-line version. This on-line commenting is moderated but apparently only filtered for obvious spam, as evidenced by the range of opinions that actually gets posted.
A comments thread I participated in became extremely amusing to me extremely fast today. Unfortunately, it is also a sad example of what now-a-days passes for “educated discussion” on immigration in this Virginia county of Prince William.
Happy 4th of July!
It’s the 4th of July again. Just another great day for kicking off the summer season with fireworks, Bar-Be-Ques, picnics at the parks or beaches, or just hanging out with family and friends. Oh, and it’s also the day we celebrate the official birth of our nation.
Opinions & Commentary
Celebration Fourth of July