Baby I and Woolworths

Well yes, and it is Friday again. Annabel, who I met in June, is cute as a button and belongs to Tim and Kitty. Thank goodness for love and our future because right now the news bleek. In the US, it is the auto industry, who I do not hold my sympathy for, not receiving a bail-out. I mean, the Big Three sued California for trying (responsibly) to raise MPG to 22 by 2016; this despite China's minimum >30 - in a stroke, Detroit ceded the world's larget car market. Idiots. I have openly hoped for the Japanese to put GM, Ford and Chrysler of their misery via buying them and rationalising their bunk. So yesterday the Republicans deal another thumping blow to them and Bush (and Obama) and now Chapter 11 looms for Christmas. In Britain, Woolworths goes tits-up and the >800 retail chain has a liquidation sale - on our high-street, the line went around the block to buy their crap. Without them, a hole opens: where else can one find similar volumes of hard-candy endearing to the neighborhood kids? I am reminded of the pharmacy in Berkeley on Salano Avenue where Grace would buy needles, yarn, aspirin and the like. There was a book selection which I checked-out for Star Trek and crime volumes - you bet, pulp fiction. By age nine or ten I loved this stuff (before, it was the book-covers I valued especially shots of the Enterprise phasering Klingons). So yes, the high street has changed in my lifetime. Gone are the local cinemas, ice-cream parlors and drug stores. Woolworths has been around since 1909, to be replaced inevitably by a Starbucks or other modern franchises. Darwin comes to mind.