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This blog has just received the ultimate accolade. My technical editor informs me that China has blocked access to this blog. I know I say a few things that are not totally nice about everybody. But I never imagined that what I write could pose a threat to the stability of so great a nation as China. Maybe my comments about the number of accidents in their mines set them off. Or maybe it was my statement that if Chinese miners belonged to trade unions maybe fewer would die. Oh well, it is always easier to censor, than to change a system, or save a life. The good part about this ban of my blog in China is that I never have to be polite to those who urge on me “understanding” of the greatness of socialism, the Chinese culture, or of Castro and his antique buddies.
PS. After first posting the above, I was told that all of WordPress is blocked by China. Now I am even prouder to be part of a free community feared by oppressors.
How can you not love a city where you can do the following? Down the hill from home beneath a weak sun and through pusillanimous snow, tossed around like confetti at a desultory wedding, to an ugly shopping center. You know the type: cheap concrete bricks bespattered by beautiful graffiti, and down ill-formed stairs of dirty tile to a library of grubby-fingered books. Hence to a back room called, grandly, Meeting Room 191.
After setting out old metal & plastic chairs & tables, we settled down with a pile of colored paper in front of us. A fat lady (and most Canadians are not fat, so she sort of sticks out) announces that for the next hour we will have an origami lesson.
