Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2026/03/09/nihao-baghdad/
The Little Chinese Everywhere lady who makes video blogs about traveling around the overland silk road had to evacuate Iran when the Americans started bombing there. She just posted a video from Baghdad.
She asked her local friend of a friend guide how things were going. He said the economy is about the same as 15 years ago, but they are much safer now. You can see that it’s not prosperous. In Baghdad itself, there are apartment buildings that are empty since the war. The guy explained that there are absent landlords who haven’t been looking after things. You can see the bullet holes still in the facades. On the street, all the prices are cheap.
The locals are extremely friendly. All the street food vendors didn’t want to charge their international guests. It reminded me of Jordan. When I traveled to Jordan 25 years ago, the locals were extremely friendly. They would see me in the streets and call out “helloooo! Welcome in Jordan!” But what is different in this video is that all the kids would call out to the Chinese lady “nihao” “nihao” “nihao” and I found myself wondering if they would be quite as friendly to an American anymore. Probably. It is in the nature of people to welcome guests.
I was glad that she encountered guys who had been to China. In one market stall were folks who imported goods. In a restaurant she encountered a group of guys who had been to China to study civil engineering. I found myself grateful that there is a world power that is welcoming people from around the world and helping them to build up their own countries.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2026/01/18/fifty-years/
When this post is published, I am fifty years old.
Go me!
Thanks, Mom!
This website is about thirty years old.
Go World Wide Web!
Thanks, Sir Tim Berners-Lee!
I have spent just over half my years in California versus Illinois. It is where we raise our kids, and where we own our home. Chicago and the Midwest will always hold a special place in my heart, but I have become one of those sunshine people who are just an earthquake away from sliding into the ocean.
Go Bears!
Thanks, California!
Our marriage, like our older kid and our mortgage, not to mention our cats, and my current job tenure, are all just over a decade old. (And the younger kid is closing in!)
I recently heard it said that your first decade is the happiest. But my forties have been really great as well. What makes a good childhood — being surrounded by loving people who support your growth — can really come back to you when you work to be a good spouse, a good parent, a good friend and a good citizen.
I am a very fortunate person.
Go Family!
Thanks, My Sweetheart!
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2026/01/17/a-man-becomes-his-attentions/
Along the Leestown Road, near an old whitewashed springhouse made useless by a water-district pipeline, I stopped to eat lunch. Downstream from the spring where butter once got cooled, under peeling sycamores, the clear rill washed around clumps of new watercress. I pulled makings for a sandwich from my haversack: Muenster cheese, a collop of hard salami, sourdough bread, horseradish. I cut a sprig of watercress and laid it on, then ate slowly, letting the gurgle in the water and the guttural trilling of red-winged blackbirds do the talking. A noisy, whizzing gnat that couldn’t decide whether to eat on my sandwich or my ear joined me.
Had I gone looking for some particular place rather than any place, I’d never have found this spring under the sycamores. Since leaving home, I felt for the first time at rest. Sitting full in the moment, I practiced on the god-awful difficulty of just paying attention. It’s a contention of Heat Moon’s — believing as he does any traveler who misses the journey misses about all he’s going to get — that a man becomes his attentions. His observations and his curiosity, they make and remake him.
William Least Heat-Moon
Blue Highways
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