"Bobisms"

History Friday will be along a little later, but in the interim, here is a splendid story from a few weeks ago about the Tao of Bob:

MSNBC - N.Y. man's "Bobisms" strike chord in China
"SLINGERLANDS, N.Y. - Gently extolling the virtues of “learning and laughter,” an elderly upstate New York man has become an unlikely advice guru in China, a land he’s never even visited.

The simple, sincere advice of 85-year-old Bob Herman appears in two popular teen magazines in China and his “Bobisms” have inspired a book of columns published in China called “Adventures of the Mind: Wit and Wisdom with Bob.”

“I’ve never been to China, I have no Chinese friends and I don’t speak Chinese,” Herman, a former professor and economics adviser, said at his home in Slingerlands, outside Albany (read on...)

Growing up in the dark shadow of the Thatcher regime in England, Dear Abby held a similar beacon of freedom for us.