Funfare for the Common Man

REUTERS/Olga Yakimovich (Courtesy Business Insider) Which variant suits the title best? Will this be just one of many revolutions? Is this it, the revolution, the one that finally institutes change for the better? Or is this meant to be an academic treatise in the guise of On Liberty (John Stuart Mill) or On the Pleasures of Hating (William Hazlitt). I’ll set semantics (and my cat, who every time I sit down to write does her damndest to prevent me from doing so, walking all over and then sitting on the keyboard, pawing me, etc – perhaps she’s trying to tell me something? Don’t bother writing a thing you idiot!) aside and share some more personal reflections. (Disclaimer: if it’s unclear I am no way trying to offer up merely an irreverent view of events.) January 1991: Operation Desert Storm and the first Gulf War kicked off, and for the first time, perhaps, at least as far as I can remember, we had war being played out in real time, on television, to a worldwide...

  © Julia Melnichenko (Note: I wrote the bulk of this over 2 weeks ago and it’s been festering on my computer ever since. I either forgot to post it, or wanted to tweak it a bit, which I haven’t, except for the cat/football stuff at the end.) ‘Now all this is recorded, not to show what a devil of a fellow I am…[but] all this feverish gumping from place to place would be justifiable, and indeed admirable, if each excursion, besides providing one with different decorations, did actually give one a different atmosphere.’  Evelyn Waugh, Labels I’m flattered to have received a few notes from well-wishers inquiring about my well-being in wake of current goings-on in Kyiv. A couple of you have even asked whether I’d care to weigh in my thoughts. I haven’t got that much to say, really, but for the sake of satisfying the handful of you who’ve enquired, so be it. For the most part, events on the ground haven’t really touched me that much, which is all the more m...