Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri
Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary
Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net
Recent Posts
- Try
- Becoming Brenda Starr
- Off Beat
- Scattered
- That’s It
- So I’ve Finally Signed With An Agent. Now What?
- The Spoon
- Sciatica
- Sweetheart
- A Woman’s Train of Thought Has No Caboose
- However much we own, we are all still living on borrowed time
- After all, when restaurants shrink portions, they don’t shrink prices.
- As with everything in life, balance is key.
- Slow down, you move too fast…
- Yeah, I know. I have issues.
Syndicate
E me at katy @ ngenius.com
Freedom
Doug and I are in the St. Louis area, looking forward to the wedding of a dear friend’s daughter tomorrow. In the meantime, though, we decided to avoid the traffic and stay in the outlying historic town of St. Charles, in a beautiful inn right on Main Street.
I can’t tell you how much I love this place. From our hotel, we can walk two blocks to all the beautiful shops—-wine shops, an Amish store, art galleries, etc. I don’t know why I named the wine shop first, except to say that it took a wee little bit of wine tasting to recover from the Celtic shop.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never been in a store that mixed Irish, Scottish, English and Welsh in one space. Hey, I’m equal parts Scottish and Irish. My dad (who’s responsible for this mess) never failed to point out that my particular heritage meant “you’ll always beat yourself up coming and going.” So true!
Anyway, in the so-called Celtic shop, little claddagh rings and tri-colored Irish flags were shelved next to tiny British soldiers and it just kind of made me shiver a little, that’s all. I mean, it’s not like in real life these countries exactly have a history of getting along. Scotland and Ireland have spent much of their existence fighting for independence from England.
(Wales has…given us Tom Jones. I am very extremely thankful for Wales.)
Today I, a British citizen, can’t help but think about how the English really had to screw things up big-time in order for the colonists to take the huge step they did in July, 1776. I, an American citizen, am of course amazed and grateful for the independence this country enjoys. But I think I can understand a bit of how so many colonists, themselves English citizens, hesitated long and hard before turning on their mother country.
To think that an enormous British blunder resulted in this great experiment called the United States of America is a source of joy on a day like Independence Day.
Whether that freedom should extend to the right to confuse the heck out of me in a Celtic shop, I honestly can’t say.
But, hey. This is the land of opportunity. The wine tasting’s just across the narrow brick road.
- I am soooooo jealous. St. Louis is my most favoritest ;) city in the whole wide world. (But you're right on about the traffic.)
My novel is set in St. Louis. The hero grew up on the Hill. I love that place. It's like home.Posted by Kathryn on 07/07/08 at 03:33 PM
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