I like Groundhog Day because it’s a beautiful reminder that any old pudgy rodent is as good as the smartest human / computer combination at making forecasts about the future. More than Thanksgiving, it’s the holiday that forces some humility upon us.
Shuhari: The Three-Step Japanese Path to Lifelong Growth and Success by Nobuo SuzukiThe Langar Hall (found in Punjab, Haryana, and wherever else Sikhs are found) is an excellent tradition. They are places that serve free communal meals every day. It’s not like a soup kitchen that attracts only poor, nor is it like the many institutions that make meals (implicitly or explicitly) only for one particular ingroup (e.g. members of a particular religion.)
My wife and I once had tea in Nagaland with men who’d been cannibals in their youth, but they weren’t anymore (and — in point of fact — probably didn’t have the teeth for solid food anymore,) so I don’t think that counts.
For the most part, I don’t think of customs as being more or less interesting, just — sometimes — unexpected. I’ve noticed that most people see cultural customs as the strange behaviors other peoples do, while their own culture’s customs are largely invisible to them (i.e. “That’s just how things are done; it really couldn’t be done any other way.”) So, I guess it’s been most interesting, having returned from living abroad for more than a dozen years, noticing just how many strange and baffling things Americans do.
bedraggled buildings:
nature digests what it eats
ever so slowly.
saplings sprout
from the ornate trim
of a once-grand mosque.
Gator rests on stump.
but my mind cannot rest.
it's not "gator"
and "stump" in the same place,
but in the same sentence.
The American Claimant by Mark Twain
through the paifang*,
you leave your city,
but you're not in China.
*A paifang (牌坊) is the gate over a street or road that denotes the bounds of a Chinatown.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 