Law, Partially

Sometimes, changes in a growing child happen in such small increments you hardly notice them. Sometimes, a change is as stark as black and white. And sometimes, along the evolving pathway, you note a benchmark against which a change becomes noticeable, whether gradual or not. The Christmas holiday marked a number of milestones, some we hope we can move past and some that we will cherish. It jolted our London routine, and now, back in London, we're still living in the aftermath. Thank you, Santa, for this bounce house (and for a fun cousin). Flopping face first into the new year like... It's natural and common that we prefer the happy memories. So when someone shows a camera to snap a photo, we all smile and pretend like we're really happy, regardless of how happy we really are at that moment. Social media is now infamous as a tool for us all to present only the happiest aspects of our lives, not to mention spin them so it all seems better than average. As I w...

Away from home, in London as we are, we celebrated some of Americans' favorite holidays: Thanksgiving and Christmas. Missing our family members, we imported different groups for these holidays. Aunt Mawti, Laura ("Auntie Biscuit"), and Erica for Thanksgiving. Nainai, Gugu, and Kevin for Christmas. Many adventures away from home ensued. To Thanksgiving The term "citizen of the world" is bullshit. Holidays easily prove this true. Away from your home country, when a holiday arises that you would have spent at home with friends and family, you will pine to celebrate like them, with wistful thoughts of home. The Thanksgiving holiday for U.S. people has very specific connotations -- celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, with visions of a well-defined (and probably mythical) pilgrim group, cornucopias, turkeys, stuffings, gravies, sweet and savory pies, etc. According to Wikipedia, Thanksgiving is celebrated a few other places but not by the majority of t...

We went back to Cedar Rapids last weekend ostensibly to celebrate Easter. We also missed the Linges because we hadn't seen them since the middle of February; everyone was excited to see Bobby. We haven't gone to church on Easter since... I can't remember the last time. It has developed into more of a celebration of Spring for us, however. We seemed to have drifted toward Paganism without me even realizing. For Sunday Easter brunch, courtesy of Aunt Marti, we had Champagne (even the good stuff, Veuve Clicquot), mimosas, bloody maries, and lots of brunch food, including the Danish pancake, ebilskiver. And now, I am growing to discover, Easter is also an opportunity to photograph our children wearing outfits celebrating Spring. Bobby with his cousin Hendrik cheesing for the camera. Bobby with his custom Easter basket, overstuffed with Spring toys, given by Nainai. I'll be up there with you soon, Hendrik, says Bob. I spent a few extra days in Cedar R...

Why do we (or anyone) travel? For Christine and me, we are just trying to satiate our curiosity. Making comparisons between places across time provides a method of organizing the knowledge accumulated during travel adventures. I was shocked and impressed to hear that the Quad Cities have a distinctive pizza style . The Quad Cities lie on the route just between Chicago and Cedar Rapids. Christine and I travel through there regularly on our frequent trips to the Linge homeland. Eating pizza while on the road is a bit tough. Pizza takes a while to bake, and we're usually too excited to arrive at our destination to wait for pizza. In addition, pizza is a heavy food that as a matter of tradition I tend to overeat. I'm usually sleepy while driving and become even more tired after eating, especially overeating. It's a shame we never tried Quad Cities pizza before because it is one of the best pizza styles in the U.S. We visited Harris Pizza in Bettendorf on Saturday. Quad ...

You may be surprised that you can study Hindi at the University of Iowa. There's actually a department of Hindi and Modern Indian Studies . Quality institutions these Big 10 schools, eh? I ran across this just because this Dr. Lutgendorf guy was quoted in a law article I read. He looks like he's probably Anglo-Indian. Anglo-Indians are (or are descended from) Britishers who stayed over when the British abandoned ship in 1947.

To my loyal readers Aunt Marti and Erica, Happy Birthday.

I made a whirlwind tour of Missouri and Iowa last week, saying bye to lots of relatives before I go to Bombay for the summer. Fayette My Great Uncle Bob is a 78-year-old retired farmer, still living in his same farm house outside of that small, small town, Fayette, Iowa. He's growing asparagus and rhubarb this summer. He's got bad knees. One of my aunts said to him, "Why don't you pick us some asparagus?" and he said, "You can pick it your god damn self. I 'bout killed myself yesterday out picking some for myself." He wasn't mad. He's just not a delicate man. When there's a lull in conversation, he says "Yup," and then repeats part of what he just said. For instance, had there been a lull in conversation after the asparagus request, he probably would have said something like, "Yup. 'bout killed my back." He's also fond of the mysterious word used by the elderly in Iowa, "pretnear." I think it's a ...