Some days just don't get any better.

Every time we go to either a Stop & Shop or an A&P grocery store I tell the old joke "Did you know that A&P and Stop & Shop were merging;? They are going to be called Stop&P." James groans in both amusement and boredom, Katie just groans. Lucy just ignores me. Yeah, they have all heard it a million times.

Who could have asked for anything more than walking up to a Stop & Shop today and being greeted with...... just watch the video.

It's TUESDAY!

Last Saturday I sat on Santa's knee, we did not much discuss what I wanted for Christmas nor whether I have been naughty or nice, but either way Wal Mart promised a free photo if I came back Tuesday. Here it is.

All the photos were just in a pile and the clerk went through one by one until she found the one your were looking for. When I asked for a photo that was taken Saturday, the girl behind the counter asked if it was "a little boy or little girl" I was looking for. Uh, no, it is a photo of me and Santa, her expression (well really, her absolute lack of expression) was priceless.

It's beginning to look a lot like..............

Wall Mart, Santa and me. Oh, and if I go back Tuesday I can get my free picture.

Our rights back soon.....

Many years ago, before the Berlin Wall came down, I was in East Berlin. While I am sorry that the Wall, and the Eastern Bloc existed, I am glad to have seen the results first hand. Passing freely through Checkpoint Charley and various other checkpoints into and out of East Germany was something as an American that I was able to do, if you were an East German you had no such rights.

I just came back from Lhasa, Tibet and the the quote above is from our guide, "I hope we have our rights back very soon." Lhasa is currently an occupied city and Tibet an occupied country under the thumb of Communist China. The Chinese are pushing more and more ethnic Chinese into Tibet in order to overwhelm the balance of culture and society; they are forcing the use of the Mandarin language, both spoken and written, at the expense of Tibetenese; they are creating puppet government and religious leaders all the while calling their actions the "liberation" of Tibet. I have never been particularly interested in the politics of this situation but seeing the occupation firsthand gives a great deal of cause for thought.

The following video is of a group of soldiers posted at the crossroads of the "Chinese" and "Tibetan" sections of occupied Lhasa. These soldiers and the hundreds I saw throughout the Tibetan areas of Lhasa have only been at their posts since the Buddhist uprising of 2007.

As a foreigner, had I been caught shooting this, my camera might have been confiscated and destroyed, I might have been harassed or beat up, I might have been "detained" or expelled from the country. If I were a Tibetan caught shooting this I most certainly would have been beaten, arrested, imprisoned and possibly executed for attempting to spy or export "state secrets." In New York, there are many, many soldiers posted as "security"  following the 9/11 attack. The Patriot Act and other Bush era measures have severely damaged our Constitution and civil rights, I hope the United States does not lower itself to the same level of paranoia and total destruction of human and civil rights that currently exists in China and Tibet.

Some things are just wrong.

The title say it all.

Tianjin Pancakes

Food is the same all over the world. Every single culture has some form of pancake served either sweet or savory, crepes, blintzes, etc. the Chinese version is a Tianjin Pancake, a thin pancake with an egg on the outside, chili sauce, hoisin sauce, scallions and a crunchy fried noodle inside. I have only had these from street vendors or at most sold by vendors in a telephone booth sized "kitchen" with a window to the street through which they hand you your 40 cent breakfast. Warm and tasty, wish I had one right now.

Somebody did not learn their lines.

Thank god the last post is over and done with, now we can get back to frippery. In addition to the romantic dancers in the park are hoards of other groups including this skit performance, well really I don't have much of a clue what they were singing about, but James tells me the guy with the book gave me the "evil eye" when I shoved my camera in front of him. Seems resonable enough.