Billy wrote on July 24
Dear Good Friends All, Just want to let you know that most of my time today is spent on peddling Friendshipology and Compassion This has been most Gratifying ! Love to have you write something for my <https://friendshipology.net> even as you may already have done so ? Cheers ! Billy – Ming Sing Lee
Instant reply from Prof. Joe Mcbride- U.C. Berkeley
Dear Billy, Glad to hear from you as usual. Attached is something you might want to consider for your articles for Friendshipology. Stay well, Joe
Maintaining & Rekindling a Friendship – by Joe McBride
Maintaining a friendship sometimes requires a special effort, especially when a friend is not close by. Zemin Wu is a friend of mine who lives in Hefei, China. I first met him on a trip with Billy Lee about 25 years ago to explore potential research projects that could improve the environments of cities in China. Zemin was teaching in Hefei at the time, and we immediately hit it off. Our friendship developed as we explored different urban forest designs that could reduce air pollution in the city of Hefei. Our contacts extended over a three-year period as I travelled to Hefei and Zemin came to California. Subsequently, our contact in person and via email diminished to annual email New Year greetings.
One year I added to my annual New Years email a watercolor sketch I had done to let him know that I had taken up watercolor sketching in my retirement.
Zemin responded with an ink sketch of horses he had recently done.
Discovering a common interest in sketching rekindled our friendship. It was this mutual interest that
sustained and reinvigorated our friendship. If you have an old or distant friend, see if you can identify
a mutual interest that could rekindle the friendship.
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