What happens when one person moves on her own to an unknown major city is a fascinating way to observe (and hopefully help fix) things that are broken in our urban systems. Newcomers have to go through a period of fairly stressful learning and adaptation to the new city. Any system that is not welcoming [...]
As a quick followup to my previous entry on The Myth of Travel, a quote from John Ruskin which I picked from the last chapter of Alain de Botton’s excellent The Art of Travel: No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, happier, or wiser. There was [...]
Before the 20th century, travel was slow: months on a boat or on roads. Travel was the hardships of migration for most, formative fun for the well off, and adventure for novel heroes. Then came a century of wars and population displacement. But between those wars, a few strange things happened. The 1930s saw the [...]
I learned a second language at age 9. A third and fourth at 13. I was not particularly fortunate, or living in a very international family or region. This was pretty much what every little European went through at the time. Back then, we had pen-pals from England. They had a different language, a different [...]