For lunch today I drove a bit out of the way to see the San Jose Assyrian food festival. San Jose has a lot of these little minority/food festivals, and previously my wife and I had made it to the Greek festival, and the Portugese festival (which was actually almost exclusively people from the Azores).
This one was much smaller than the other three, but the food was exceptional, as was the conversation. Almost as soon as we sat down the man sitting next to us started discussing how his family barely escaped from Stalin, and the general experience of being from a people without a country. Then he gave some of his thoughts on colonialism and contemporary politics. My favorite of which was:
Britain is like an old lion. When you have a young lion, no one can beat it. Except maybe a tiger, and that’s why you don’t see them together often. Now Britain is an old lion. Dying.
America is an interesting place.