View from London

I think this most recent trip to and through London was my sixth or seventh to the city on the Thames. It is a ridiculously expensive place to visit, and I assume live, made even more so in this season of serial domestic mis-governance by the great shrinking dollar. I've read all the reasons why the dollar needs to be cheaper in relationship to the other significant world currencies, but the effect is stunning when you pony up $6 for a grande soy latte at the Starbucks I visited in Piccadilly.

London is a wildly diverse, cosmopolitan city that is bounded and spanned by street names, circles, parks, buildings, busses, cabs, post boxes, phone boxes, Bobbies, Bobby hats, and all the rest that signal history and mystery amidst the smash up of world culture.

The most recent dust up in the home isles is the pending disappearance of the 12 inch high hat the Bobbies have worn for the past 100 years in favor of something shorter, lighter, and made of plastic. There are good and sensible reasons for undertaking such a change, but the hue and cry from