Postcards: Happy Independence Day

We hope you enjoy this sovereign holiday as we return to the markets tomorrow.

Dear Fellow Expat:

As I come to the end of COVID, my family is paying attention to me again. My daughter - who suddenly looks a year older after our travels to Europe - just came into the bedroom and asked me a question I wasn’t expecting…

“How much do I sell my lemonade for?” she asked.

It seems that she has been talking about small businesses in the last four days of my absence.

But there hasn’t been a guiding hand to explain profit margins, marketing costs, inputs, and “location.”

Amelia doesn’t have any lemonade for mass production. She planned to take a half bottle of store-bought lemonade and start slinging it on the street corner. You know, like a bunch of loose cigarettes. In the mean streets of Timonium, Maryland, full of people who’d probably call the cops if she is out there too long, the sale of Tropicana lemonade without a permit probably won’t fly.

So - we have to do this the right way.

My wife recommended that Amelia set up a stand by the neighborhood entrance. But there’…