Shaken, Stirred and American

Anybody that knows me will tell you -- I’m not a party animal. I’m not even particularly sociable. That makes the fact that I had such a great time at yesterday’s Fourth of July party rather remarkable.

It was your typical Fourth of July party -- cooking on the grill, coolers full of beer and Cokes, hanging out by the pool -- but it wasn’t. It looked more like a meeting of the United Nations. I’m sure there were others I missed but I got to talk to people from China, England, India and France. Too bad “Vic” had to move away. Otherwise, I could have added in Benin and that surely would have sent you searching for a map.

We Americans have this horrible habit of renaming people. If we can’t learn an unpronounceable name in 30 seconds we just make one up. I’m sure my new Chinese friend “Leon” (that’s Southern for Liang) is plotting his revenge. He’ll probably start introducing me to his fellow countrymen as “Dung” Brown.

It struck me that everyone’s country -- or at least their culture -- was much, much older than ours. Americans think of England as old. While cruising around the internet, I found this:

”Patna is the capital of the Indian state of Bihar, and one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the world.”

“The city has been known by various names during its more than two millennia long existence —Pataligram, Pataliputra, Kusumpur, Pushpapura, and the present day Patna. ”

“From a scientific history perspective, it would be appropriate to surmise that the history of Patna started around the year 490 BC....”

A Chinese monk Fa Hien mentioned the place some 900 years later -- around 400 AD. Just as a frame of reference, William of Normandy (France) conquered England at the Battle of Hastings over 600 years later -- in 1066 AD. All that makes 232 years old seem rather young doesn’t it ?

As hard as it may be to believe, I actually started this blog entry so I could mention the juicy gossip I heard at the party.

Alex Allan, Britain's leading spymaster, gravely ill in hospital

The governments are denying it but the British papers are having a field day speculating that it was an assassination attempt by Russia. It’s the talk of the town --- errrr, world. Well, at least a large portion of it.

Don Brown
July 5, 2008