The View from a Drawbridge

Tag: china

  • The Best of The View from a Drawbridge

    I cannot believe it, but today is the one year anniversary of my blog! What a ride this has been. I’ve managed to post an entry every single day for an entire year. I would have never guessed I’d have this much to talk about. By writing this much I’ve learned a great deal as…

  • The Bunyip and his Cousins

    Behold the fearsome Bunyip. This mythological creature was much feared among the Aboriginal people of Australia. Until recently I had never heard of this beast, but it intrigues me because it seems to be so far from even the mainstream creepy folk creature as to be unrecognizable.   As you can see from the various…

  • To War or Not to War

    There really hasn’t been a good clean war that everyone could sink their teeth into since World War II. Okay, I’m being sarcastic, but at least we can all agree that Hitler was the bad guy, and people were willing to ration their food and give up their panty hose for the cause. We were…

  • What’s Walmart up to Now?

    Okay, I’ve already established in an earlier blog entry that I’m no fan of Walmart, but I felt this new development deserved an entry, too. To further their quest for total world domination, Walmart has begun branching out. They call these new stores “Walmart Neighborhood Markets”. Basically they are grocery stores, pure and simple. One…

  • This Wondrous World

    I was surfing through Google Images in hopes of being inspired for a blog entry when I came across an amazing photo that led me to an equally amazing website called Atlas of Wonders. This site has photographs of some of the most beautiful and unexpected places on earth. I wound up searching this site…

  • “Those Towel Heads Can’t Be Trusted.”

    Yup, that actually came out of a coworker’s mouth the other day while we were discussing the Boston bombings. And I must admit I went off. I couldn’t help it. I’m so sick of the ignorance and bigotry. This is what I said to him: “Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.”                                                                  …

  • Twenty Seconds for Runan Wan: You Could Change Lives

    Update: The voting has closed. Thanks to all of you who participated! I’ll let you know if we won as soon as I know. We don’t want your money. We just want 20 seconds. Deep in the foothills of rural Yunnan Province, along the southern border of China, is the Runan Wan Primary School. The…

  • Where is China, Greenland and the Whole of Africa?

    Since I haven’t been able to afford international travel in the past several years, I travel vicariously by checking out the countries of origin of the people who visit my blog. WordPress is even kind enough to provide a nifty little world map, with the countries that have visited colored in for me. When I…

  • The Destruction of Women

    Today I came across this picture on Facebook.   A friend of mine rightly commented, “And this was before Photoshop.” Women used to aspire to have wasp waists. To heck with breathing, we wanted to be desirable! These contraptions caused deformities in ribs and internal organs, weak muscles, and respiratory problems. It also increased the…