Aging on the Run: Travel Blog
In October 2023, my spouse and I retired and sold our house in Minneapolis, MN. USA. Since then, we have been traveling the world. I write a blog about each place, with a historian’s eye and an internationalist lens, wondering how memory can liberate the present.
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A River Needs No Flag
During fourteen months of touring on a bicycle, I observed the way people were tied to place. The love of a hill, ravine, lake, field, city neighborhood, prairie, mountain or forest, seemed bone-level. People showed us this love by showing off their places, wanting us to see their communities through their eyes.
This love of place does not require armies or borders.
Homeland that needs security is manufactured, needing recruiters, slogans, flags and songs to make it real, convincing us we need ICBMs or drones. A river needs no flag. Nor does the culture that develops on its shores. It just needs people to love it and share how it is like no other.
Super Spreading Social Justice
I have been thinking about super-spreader events.
Not the kind that makes hundreds of people sick, but the kinds that transform lives in a good way.
An early one that changed me was the 1979 Take Back the Night March in Minneapolis. The event consisted of a rally in Loring Park and a march down Hennepin Avenue. I was scared to go. I thought we would not be safe marching down Hennepin. My experience with that thoroughfare had been a gauntlet of taunts and grabs.
I was scared, but I went, by myself.
At the rally, organizers circulated with sashes for us to wear, screen-printed with the words, “I survived a rape,” or “I survived an assault.” We chanted slogans and heard speeches that preached that it is never our fault, that we don’t deserve to have these tortures happens to us, that we are strong, that we deserve to walk and dance and sit and be in the night without fear.
Welcome!
In October 2023, my spouse and I sold our house in Minneapolis, MN. USA. Since then, we have been traveling the world. I write a blog about each place, with a historian’s eye and an internationalist lens, wondering how memory can liberate the present.
A River Needs No Flag
During fourteen months of touring on a bicycle, I observed the way people were tied to place. The love of a hill, ravine, lake, field, city neighborhood, prairie, mountain or forest, seemed bone-level. People showed us this love by showing off their places, wanting us to see their communities through their eyes.
This love of place does not require armies or borders.
Homeland that needs security is manufactured, needing recruiters, slogans, flags and songs to make it real, convincing us we need ICBMs or drones. A river needs no flag. Nor does the culture that develops on its shores. It just needs people to love it and share how it is like no other.
Super Spreading Social Justice
I have been thinking about super-spreader events.
Not the kind that makes hundreds of people sick, but the kinds that transform lives in a good way.
An early one that changed me was the 1979 Take Back the Night March in Minneapolis. The event consisted of a rally in Loring Park and a march down Hennepin Avenue. I was scared to go. I thought we would not be safe marching down Hennepin. My experience with that thoroughfare had been a gauntlet of taunts and grabs.
I was scared, but I went, by myself.
At the rally, organizers circulated with sashes for us to wear, screen-printed with the words, “I survived a rape,” or “I survived an assault.” We chanted slogans and heard speeches that preached that it is never our fault, that we don’t deserve to have these tortures happens to us, that we are strong, that we deserve to walk and dance and sit and be in the night without fear.