I'm falling into a pleasant and familiar rhythm here in the dog days of summer. Quiet mornings mostly online (I try to keep up with China news too so a more varied diet than before); leisurely meals with my parents; a stroll downtown to Starbucks, noticing small beauties along the way, like the Monarch butterfly at right or the exotic succulents below; a swim with my father before dinner. And I'm reading a half-dozen books at the same time, each
loosely connected to a different "research project" (sic!). Mike Rose's Lives on the Boundary, Seligman et al's Ritual and its Conse-quences, Peter Hessler's Country Driving, Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora, and a brilliant disseratation about Christian studies in China: blissful break!