So tonight I went to my garden

[IrishAyes]

34. Maybe you felt like crying for the same reason most of us probably would;

the contrast between how the world should be and how it can be. I'm glad you were there to make friends with the lady and the kids, partly for their sake but also your own.

Although finances (or rather lack of) forced me to retire to a very cheap remote spot in the MidWest, I used to live in Los Angeles and NYC both for significant periods. What I miss most is the delightful mix of cultures in those places. When I first moved here and people would ask me about my life, if I told them about the block parties where everybody brought native dishes and so on, it invariably infuriated these xenophobes and saddened me that people could hate strangers they never even met. I truly believe it's a form of insanity.