Funfare for the Common Man

We’ve made it to the end: Part 10 (of 10) of my August 2020 Challenge.  Where do we go from here? If you’ve missed any of the previous 9 parts, a recap: Part 1: A decade in quotations: Part 1 (of 10) of the August 2020 Challenge Part 2: My readers ask, I answer: Reader Mailbag, part 1 Part 3: We live in a haunted house Part 4: The Joy of Getting Away From It All Part 5: Looking for truth in all the wrong places Part 6: From the wilds of Western Ukraine to the wild 1970s Soviet Union: Yaremche v Tiraspol Part 7: My wife tried to kill me: [mis]adventures in the Carpathians Part 8: Why my language skills suck: Part 1 Part 9: Why I speak such lousy Ukrainian – even after 10 years in Kyiv So what comes next? First, a quick English lesson: the past simple versus the present perfect. This should be easy for most of you. Compare: This pandemic period was difficult. This pandemic period has been difficult. Are they both correct? No. In the first example, the use of the past simple – was ...

“Having lived long, I have experienced many Instances of being oblig'd, by better Information or fuller Consideration, to change Opinions even on important Subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow the more apt I am to doubt my own Judgment, and to pay more Respect to the Judgment of others. The Opinions I have had of its Errors, I sacrifice to the Public Good.” (Benjamin Franklin, in his final remarks at the United States Constitutional Convention, 1787) Even though Franklin disagreed with much of the Constitution, he put his full support behind it. He realised in his advanced years, having accumulated over 80 years of wisdom, listening to others with an open mind, and not trusting too much in his own genius, that there were far greater considerations for the fledgling country than merely his own views. Benjamin Franklin is one of his history’s great statesmen. His autobiography is one of the most illuminating and r...

This is a direct nod to Barry Ritholz, one of my everyday go-tos for his Daily/Weekend Reads ( The Big Picture ). Though they are mainly and ostensibly about business and finance, there are very often some fascinating links to a wide range of articles about much else besides. I’m still ‘in between’ ideas for posts – I’ve got 3-4 bubbling away on the backburner – so for now, I thought I would share a few of my own random observations. Except that I have to be really pedantic and pernickety to start off with – these are anything but ‘random’. Arbitrary, perhaps, but more like inchoate. Or half-baked. But I’ve put at least some thought into them, and they are things that have been floating about in my head for the past week or two (or three or…) Here’s his full list: Ritholz’s Random Lockdown Observations I’ll quote just two of my favourites, one to get the ball rolling. ‘There are two kinds of people during this lockdown: Those who are having a bit of fun with it, and those with kids. No...

9pm every night, after the little one is tucked in for the night With apologies to Gabriel García Márquez After last week’s heavy theme of the [potential] doom and gloom of the future, this week will be a different kind of heavy: heavy on links, light[er] on commentary.  If there’s one thing this quarantine is doing to people – me, especially, but if Twitter is anything to go by, many of us – it’s sending us down all sorts of nostalgia rabbit holes. You know, I’m not really sure if we can go down nostalgia rabbit holes, but you get the idea. I’ve been down this…road before, just a fortnight or so ago with my ‘Mixtape’ post. That, along with some comments from old friends, has really kicked the music nostalgia urge into overdrive, and I’m trying to put together a music-themed post. But I’m struggling to find the right angle. So in the interim, let’s focus on links and love.  As in, this is about the point in the quarantine, if you haven’t reached it already, where tempers are r...