pseudopodium
. . . Benton County

. . .

Benton County News: "World-Wide" Web? I don't think so, pal. Not without Foley, Minnesota, it's not.

Luckily for our favorite domain-prefixing acronym, this chink has now been daubed through a generous donation of a full run of the Benton County News to the Hotsy Totsy Club by Asian Art Museum curator Kristina Youso.

In Youso's honor, our first news item is "Music Bridges Cultural Gap":

A year ago July 4th, the Chinese Boys Choir performed in St. Cloud. That performance marked the beginning of a year of planning to bring to pass a cultural exchange between Minnesota and China. The exchange involved folks a lot closer to our hearts here in Foley than just saying "Minnesota".
...
"We were quite a site," Mel said, "traveling in these large air conditioned buses." Nearly 7.4 million people live in the city of Beijing. (The population of the entire state of Minnesota is only 4.6 million.) There are people everywhere. Mary Ann commented, "There was no translation for the words "excuse me". There are so many people trying to move on the sidewalks that bumping into each other is just normal and people didn't say 'excuse me'."
...
The Haucks watched ditches dug by hand, not backhoes, and they saw no semi-trucks.
...
"The meals were just wonderful," Mel said. They did not drink the water, though.
...
The Hauck's felt very safe on the street in the evening. It was explained that there is no civil justice system in China. When someone commits a crime against someone, they are simply taken before a group of people and a sentence is meted out.
...
The 30 hour trip home was a long and tiring one, but, in visiting with the Hauck's, you would know the chance to share in this cultural exchange was well worth it.
 
"After a performance, concert goers rushed the stage
to have their photo taken with blonde American."
"It was better if we didn't ask what we were eating."

 

Copyright to contributed work and quoted correspondence remains with the original authors.
Public domain work remains in the public domain.
All other material: Copyright 2015 Ray Davis.