George Bernard Shaw said that the United States and
United Kingdom are "two countries divided by a common
language". A similar comment is ascribed to
Winston Churchill.
Well, not necessarily. Except for the occasional
extra letters in some similar words, we all seem to
communicate quite well. In the age of the
Internet, we tend to even borrow more from each other.
We are sorry about
Madonna coming over and using phrases like "bloody"
and "bullocks". Fortunately, we think the folks in
the UK liked
Renée Zellweger's
accent in
Bridget Jones' Diary. I am sorry though
that U.S. Book Editors made
J. K. Rowling use the name "Sorcerer's Stone"
instead of "Philosopher's Stone" in the American release
of the first Harry Potter book. I feel that the
young minds of America could have figured it out, but
that's marketing for you.
One other thing we shared
in our colonial past was our web site Founder, Mr.
Franklin. As the United Kingdom version of Poor
Richard Web Press is also known an Big Ben Books (www.BigBenBooks.co.uk),
I am hoping that our compatriots in the United Kingdom
do not take offense as to the obvious reference to a
famous London landmark. However,
Ben Franklin,
at one time, was himself a London landmark
He seriously considered at one time making his
home in England, where his scientific attainments, his
brilliant mind, and his social gifts of wit and urbanity
had gained him a high place.
Ben Franklin, like the
large timepiece near Parliament was also concerned with
time. Many of the bits of wisdom he shared with us
in the
Poor Richard's Almanack and other writings deals
with the significance of time in human lives, and of
course, "time is the stuff life is made of".
So here is to the official
opening of Poor Richard Web Press UK Bookstore a.k.a Big
Ben Books.
