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How the people we meet by accident as we travel can deepen the journey
The strangers we meet on the road, and how they can deepen our journey
5 Thoughts On the Difficult Work Of Writing
“One of the things that young writers falsely hope exists is inspiration. A lot of young writers fail because they aren’t putting in the hours. …I think it’s crucial that we have some kind of rhythm. Whether you can write all day every day, or whether you can write four hours on Sunday. Whatever it…
Vagabonding audio companion: What it’s like to come home after a long trip
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How to take the attitude of long-term travel back home with you.
Meghan Daum on career-reinvention, flyover country, nuance, and Gen X
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Author Meghan Daum on career-reinvention, flyover country, and voices of generations
13 Outtakes from Chuck Klosterman’s “The Nineties”
1) On the twenty-year gap in generational nostalgia In the seventies, people lived the fifties, reminiscing over the preordained conclusion that it had been a better time to be alive (Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley on TV, American Graffiti and Grease in movie houses). In the eighties, people fixated on the sixties, and particularly…
9 Outtakes from Dave Grohl’s “The Storyteller”
1) On the joys of traveling in the United States To really see America, you need to drive it mile by mile, because you not only begin to grasp the immensity of this beautiful country, you see the climate and geography change with every state line. These are indeed things that cannot be learned from…
Prologue from Peter Whitfield’s “Travel: A Literary History”
Pascal once wrote that all mankind’s misfortunes spring from just one cause: ‘he does not know how to sit still in a room.’ I like that: it makes me less ashamed to admit that I am a poor traveler. Places interest me, but more and more often the mechanics of getting to them defeats me,…
Simon Winchester’s intro to Martin Parr’s 1995 photo book “Small World”
Blaise Pascal, the 17th century French genius who blessed the world by inventing the hypodermic syringe and the calculating machine (if such things can be counted blessings) took a singular view of man’s liking for travel. It was an ironic view, considering that he also invented the world’s first public bus service: for so far…
Five of the best Deviate podcast episodes about life-affecting personal experiences
The “deviate” aspect of my Deviate podcast gives me the pretext to veer away from travel themes and explore most any topic that interests me — and often I end up exploring affecting and meaningful episodes from my own life. I have, for example, produced episodes about my childhood fascination with the 1976 Sears Christmas…
Parents, by William Meredith
What it must be like to be an angel or a squirrel, we can imagine sooner. The last time we go to bed good, they are there, lying about darkness. They dandle us once too often, these friends who become our enemies. Suddenly one day, their juniors are as old as we yearn to be.…
9 Outtakes from Richard K. Popp’s “The Holiday Makers”
1) Vacations as we know them began in the mid-twentieth century Long enjoyed by the leisure class, vacationing was an unknown practice to most Americans at the turn of the twentieth century. Yet by midcentury, paid leave periods, carved out for the explicit purpose of giving individuals the chance to get away for a while,…