Funfare for the Common Man

Though I don’t think it was intentional. I hope. It’s amazing, the number of words that exist in other languages that are untranslatable into English. German is especially rife with epic words that don’t seem to have a direct equivalent into English. Take Vergangenheitsbewältigung , for example: ‘coming to terms with one’s past.’ Less dramatic in size, but perhaps heftier and more foreboding in scope is Waldsterben : ‘forest-death’ (though I think it actually means the death of forests themselves, not people in forests). Either way, I very nearly succumbed to some form of Waldsterben on my recent trip into the Carpathian wilderness. 1. This is my final post about this trip. 2. This is post 7 (out of 10) of my August 2020 Challenge. 3. In my last, post-modernish post, there were no bears or boars threatening to eat us. 4. I really don’t think my wife wanted to kill me, truly, honestly, I promise. This was our 4th trip out west. All four trips have featured some sort of adventure/misadv...

Part 1: Embracing the wilderness  (And part 4 (of 10) of my August 2020 challenge) Out in the wild, cut off from the world: a treat. When you read Trip Advisor or Booking.com reviews, you probably notice lots of people complaining about bad wi-fi in their hotels.  The place we stayed in the Carpathians, in Western Ukraine, didn’t even have wi-fi. I didn’t know that before I booked it. I didn’t even check, nor did I care. When we got there and I found out, I shrugged and said ‘good!’ Less temptation. I can say goodbye to the world for 8 days of peace and solitude. No social media. No keeping in touch with people. No news. No sport. Just fresh air, hiking, relaxing, reading, eating, drinking… [Here’s the part where more socially-connected, millennial readers will say, ‘who needs wi-fi when you have a smart phone with 3, 4 or 5G?’ And I will respond ‘but I don’t have a smartphone!’ And then they will come back at me with ‘yeah, but doesn’t your wife have one?’ and I will retort w...

( © The New Yorker , 2019) ‘For all of your life, whenever you’ve had a question you have been able to type that question out on a keyboard, watch it appear in a rectangular space bordered by a corporate logo, and within seconds revel in the flood of potential answers. But I still remember when typewriters were useful, the dawn of the Commodore 64, and days when a song you loved would have its moment on the radio and then disappear into the nothing. For a young man like me, the invention of the Internet was the invention of space travel.’ ( Between the World and Me , Ta-Nehisi Coates) Early in May I wrote yet another one of my doom-laden, fear of the future, technophobia screeds, and asked for reader submissions. Well, here they are. A big thanks to those of my devoted followers who kindly took the time to indulge me and share their thoughts. I am delighted that here I am able to present a mix of views from all over the age spectrum. When I realised that I don’t have any re...