Winter 2015 January 25, Monday (History)

31 Degrees this morning, 45:12 minutes minutes walking

Supposed to be in the high 50’s to day, and the 70’s for the next several days (for a high).  Marching towards Spring!

Watched the premier  of “Downton Abbey”  last night.  (We tape it until we have time to watch it and concentrate on it.)  

It was especially interesting since I am listening to a book which has scenes in it from the same period in England and “change” was the feature in it also.

I especially like the quote where one character (on Downton Abbey)  says “things are always in a flux” and the other character says it “sounds slightly dirty” or words to that effect. 

When you think about it, change isn’t always pretty or even good, but change will happen, I think it is our response that is important. 

After it was over, they had a session on “British manners” and how by following the rules everyone knew the situation.  It may have been convenient, but frankly I’m glad that isn’t true anymore!

The manners and rules were basically a means of dealing with change or, perhaps, ignoring change. 

Reading a little bit of history, I can learn a a lot.  For example, I am reading a book about China in 1945, and I hadn’t realized that China was basically destroyed by war with Japan prior to World War II, when China and the US became allies.  

I recently noted that China was blocking some VPN access, which means I couldn’t get the normal internet access.  I’m not sure if I would have cared for that when I was there for 18 days!  On the other hand….

I still remember the Chinese city officials and how anxious they were to discuss how to deal with their desire for sustainability, how to deal with the influx of urban residents and urbanization and the rapid changes.  

These were elected and appointed officials who were dealing directly with the residents and the persons impacted by the change.  I was impressed by their dedication and desire to discuss solutions.   

One thing I am really enjoying is having the opportunity to read (or at least review) my “tu it” book list I have developed over the years.  Even if I don’t read them, I at least had the opportunity to read them and look at them.  

I will probably actually read about 50% of them, and probably will not even check out some when I have the chance to  review them some more.  (I just made a list as I went along, figuring the important thing was to note the book.)

I have a list of maybe 100 books, so it will take me awhile to get though the list!  Plus I am adding books I pick up  on, so probably I will never complete my list!  While I have more time than I used to, it still takes a lot of time to read a book and comprehend it.

I have also started transferring my “books  read” list to my computer, hopefully I will have completed it by the end of 2015.  

That’s it for now, Monday, January 25, 2015.