"There was the button that produced literature. And there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends."

"The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.... The clumsy system of public gatherings had been long since abandoned.... Seated in her armchair she spoke, while they in their armchairs heard her, fairly well, and saw her, fairly well.... Her lecture, which lasted ten minutes, was well received.... Then she fed, talked to many friends, had a bath, talked again, and summoned her bed.... She made the room dark and slept; she awoke and made the room light; she ate and exchanged ideas with her friends, and listened to music and attended lectures; she make the room dark and slept.... And of course she had studied the civilization that had immediately preceded her own — the civilization that had mistaken the functions of the system, and had used it for bringing people to things, instead of for bringing things to people. Those funny old days, when men went for change of air instead of changing the air in their rooms!"

Wrote E.M. Forster, in 1909, in "The Machine Stops" (commission earned).

This was the book he wrote between "A Room with a View" and "Howards End," and it seems to presage the web, A.I., and social media. That seems odd, but my understanding is that he, like many others, was reacting to "A Modern Utopia" by H.G. Wells. 

Here's a book I read a while back, "The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984." It tells the story:

"That [burned Limoges] City Hall is at the epicenter of generations of struggle. It's not connected to how I fancy croissants and brie..."

"... and red wine but all I can find now is kebab in a shop blaring rap.... We should be alert to how the history of struggle is obscured by the reactionary and racist commodification of nostalgia and tourism."

"Interacting with the horses 'helps us attune to energy, ours and theirs, and seems to create a sense of safety — not just in the head, but centered, felt, and grounded in the body....'"

I'm reading "6 Horse-Centered Retreats That Go Beyond Trail RidesI/n new programs, interactions with horses go beyond riding to meditation, yoga and therapy that practitioners say can help restore life balance" (NYT).

Top-rated comment over there: "You can go to all these wildly expensive resorts and the actual horse encounters are extra? Go to a stable somewhere and volunteer to muck out stalls."

Yeah, take a workation. Oh, no, I can't use "workation" to mean a vacation that consists of doing some romantic form of work like operating a horse-drawn plow or candlemaking or pottery. That particular portmanteau is already being used to mean continuing to do your regular work remotely, in some nice vacation spot.

Meanwhile, there are these elaborate fantasy vacations. Go to the link and see photographs of people lying down while a horse more or less kisses them. I can't imagine going all the way to, say, Indonesia, to submit to the ministrations of a horse. It's presented as therapeutic, but there you'd be, expecting luxury and spirituality, surrounded by other people with the same expectations and dependent on a business that strives to give you what you paid for. 

Tourists salvaging what they can of their Paris trip? Or are these locals? I'm guessing locals. They're smoking!

A striking contrast on the streets of Paris: A couple sits sipping drinks at an outdoor café as flames burn just steps away. The moment was captured Saturday near the Arc de Triomphe, on the outskirts of rioting that erupted during demonstrations over rising prices, inequality and public spending. Video shows the pair continuing their conversation as a burning trash bin lights up the background.

— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 19, 2026

ADDED: For me, a longtime connoisseur of travel critique, this video shows us a stark version of what is nearly always the case. I'm guessing these are, in fact, local residents, because they're smoking, but if they are tourists, they are doing what I think tourists more or less always do. They have a fantasy of a place and they believe they can go to that fantasy and they perform the mental labor of believing they have entered into the place they imagined. They screen out or rationalize the contradictory material and they determinedly live out their dream. 

Reminds me of that old Charlie Kaufman movie, "Synecdoche, New York," where a woman takes a real-estate tour of what is her dream house. The house is on fire, and she buys it and lives in in... dies in it:

ADDED: Protesters pop the bubble of tourist's fantasy of communing with the Mona Lisa:

"Like many of the earliest competitive eaters, Mr. Janus stumbled into the sport. He was working as a day trader in Manhattan..."

"... hating the stress of his job. One day he went looking for a way to relieve the pressure and found it in a St. Patrick’s Day eating contest — corned beef and cabbage.... 'He brought this unique level of thoughtfulness and earnestness to competitive eating,' Jason Fagone, the author of 'Horsemen of the Esophagus: Competitive Eating and the Big Fat American Dream' (2006), said in an interview. 'He took this thing that a lot of people just throw off as a joke, and he took it seriously.'... After he took up competitive eating, he began working nights at a pizza parlor, and eventually quit day trading to make pies full time. He never earned enough money in the sport to live off it exclusively — at the time, no one did — but he also insisted that money didn’t interest him. 'It’s never been about the cash; it’s always about the adventure.... One of these contests recharges me more than a week at the beach ever would.'"

From "Tim Janus, One of the World’s Greatest Competitive Eaters, Has Died/He brought rigor and strategy to the sport, rising to No. 2 in the world and eating 141 pieces of nigiri in six minutes in the process" (NYT).

He died at age 49 — and not of overeating. Of lung cancer.

(If that makes you think about the Pope, here's a BBC article about the Pope's lung cancer. He seems to be doing well after the removal of the lower lobe of his right lung. There are photos of him celebrating mass at the hospital, after the surgery.)

I'm giving this post my "sports" tag, but is this a sport? I want to say that it is. Grok agreed with me, here.

"The color, I think, for many people maybe has been drained out of life..."

"... and when they were to point at it, maybe, if the reality is, yeah, dude, you're distracted all the time, and you scroll easily forgettable largely gray homogenous slop on a daily basis and your body is made out of everything you put in your mouth and your brain is made out of everything that you put into your eyes and ears you think about what that consumption pattern is like you are basically feeding yourself fast food for your amygdala on a daily basis...."

Said Chris Williamson on the new episode of the "Modern Wisdom" podcast, titled "Why Life Feels So Dull All The Time (and how to fix it)."

He's talking with Robert Greene, who has a new book called "The Law of the Sublime" (commission earned). Maybe he's got the answer to our problem of colorlessness. 

Williamson prompts:

"I hate travel. Just the slog of it. I like sleeping in my own bed."

Said Grace Coddington, quoted in "At Home: Grace Coddington/Inside the fashion stylist and creative director's ‘very catty’ East Hampton retreat" (NYT).

That's a gift link — like all NYT links — so you can see the very bed where she prefers to sleep and lots of other rooms in the cozy, catty house. The cattiness is in the artworks, not a lot of real cats, though there is one real cat, seen in 2 of the photos. I really like this house, especially with its tiny guest cottage, used as an office.

Speaking of travel — I'm a connoisseur of travel critique — I wanted to show you...

"For nearly 28 years Karl Bushby has been walking around the world with two rules: no transport and no going home to Hull unless he arrives on foot."

"On Monday afternoon, for the first time since 1998, the former paratrooper, now aged 57, stepped on to British soil after swimming the Channel. Bushby started his epic trek in Chile on November 1, 1998, shortly after leaving his mother Angela’s home in east Yorkshire. Since then, he has traversed the Darién Gap as fighting raged between the Colombian government and Marxist guerrillas; covered the frozen Bering Strait on foot; and become the first person known to have swum 184 miles across the Caspian Sea....He swam on his back the whole time as he is 'not a swimmer' and it is the 'most energy efficient way.'..."

From "Adventurer sets foot on British soil after 28-year walk home/Karl Bushby arrived in Kent after swimming the Channel for the final stage of a 30,000-mile journey from Chile back to Hull" (London Times).

How does he pay for this lengthy adventure? "Werner Herzog is directing a feature-length documentary about Bushby’s journey, titled Walk of Life, co-produced by Westward Productions, which has been supporting the adventurer for the past 16 years."

When the problem and the solution to the problem overlap this much, you have to be willfully blind not to see.

I'm reading "Travelers Are Reckoning With the Ultimate Disrupter: Climate Change/Once dismissed as occasional inconveniences, climate-related disruptions are now an inescapable fixture of summer travel. How will travelers respond?" (NYT):

The main "climate-related disruption" in question is that it's terribly HOT in the summer. The travel experience is BAD and, conveniently, the traveling is a cause of the heat. It's a big carbon footprint. So the thing that's not good anymore is exactly the thing you shouldn't do. 

"[T]he area around Mont Blanc in the Alps is tainted by 'toilet paper under every stone' and SUVs transporting luggage from one stop to another, according to officials."

"This week, new rules were announced designed to limit the number of people walking around western Europe’s highest mountain. Officials also want to ensure that those who do come are genuine backpackers rather than tourists sending 'pink wheelie suitcases and make up-bags' on ahead of them in vehicles, according to Jean-Marc Peillex, chairman of the Federation of Districts of Mont Blanc Country.... 'The word Mont Blanc makes people’s eyes sparkle all over the world,' he said. 'If you sold air from Mont Blanc, you’d make a fortune. I think you could even sell dog poop from Mont Blanc and people would buy it.'... Peillex said hikers were being forced to walk less than a metre apart on some days. 'All they see is the bottom of the person in front of them,' he told Swiss television...."

From "France declares ‘serious hikers only’ on Mont Blanc trail/Walkers must book accommodation in advance and carry their own backpacks under new rules designed to protect the increasingly crowded Alpine circuit" (London Times).

4 videos, arranged in order from wholesome to surreal.

How kids act when teachers do normal things:

"To reach Kennecott, about seven hours east of Anchorage, you’ll need to take a long drive on paved highways followed by a 59-mile foray on a remote gravel road with no gas stations."

From "After the Gold Rush: 5 Ghost Towns to Explore This Fall/These mostly abandoned wilderness outposts, resplendent in their solitude, invite curious visitors to imagine what life was like during the boom times" (NYT gift link).

I don't know, what do you do for vacation? This appeals to me, and I almost never go anywhere.

"On the cusp of mating season, the antlers were signaling to other reindeer: 'Ladies, I am ready to reproduce,' and 'Gentlemen, step aside.'"

"He posed in profile before striding down the far side of the slope, leaving us to revise our view of reindeer: not holiday mascots, but bosses of the tundra."

From "Where the Reindeer Roam: Trekking 67 Miles in Arctic Sweden/On a hike along the Kungsleden Trail, or 'king’s trail,' in Swedish Lapland, a writer encounters majestic animals, challenging terrain and communal moments of sheer wonder" (NYT gift link (with nice pics)).

"Global spritz mania means that tourists demand the drinks even in formerly spritzless regions like Sicily..."

"... which is a bit like expecting a Creole restaurant in the French Quarter to make you a Rochester garbage plate. In Venice, where the spritz was invented and long seen as a working-class drink, it has been repositioned as a glamorous society accouterment. This historical revisionism irks some locals. 'It was drunk by gondoliers and prostitutes,' said Marco Salvadori, a Venice native who made drinks at Harry’s Bar for years. Mr. Salvadori is pro-spritz, but remembers when Harry’s and other elite bars and hotels would not deign to make them. They’ve since surrendered...."

From "What the Bartender Really Thinks About Your Spritz/You might expect the fizzy summer drinks to be a downer for the people who make them by the hundreds. But think again" (NYT gift link).

Are tourists hoping to emulate the social elite of the places they visit? Take Venice. I'd imagine the vibe of the old gondoliers and prostitutes would suit them just as well. I don't know. I don't travel too much, but when I do, I don't indulge in fantasies of oneness with the locals. So much mental work involved in that, and what does it get you? Or do you think that if you drink the right drink the fantasy will open itself up to you. But it's not the right drink, the article tells you. The bartender is laughing at you (but happy to take your money for a drink made in 2 seconds). Well, then, everyone wins. Everyone is happy, more than happy, including me, standoffish me, just writing a post about tourists who order spritzes in Sicily and Venice. 

"Why you should never walk barefoot on a hotel carpet."

Headline at WaPo (free link).

[H]otel carpets are often flecked with food debris, dead skin cells and dust that engender mites, bacteria, mold, allergens and other microorganisms.... Guests’ in-room habits, such as eating takeout, brushing their hair or scratching an itch, contribute to the carpet litter. Shoes also drag in an array of vile material, including fecal matter picked up from places where dogs and humans do their business, such as sidewalks, parks and public bathrooms. Guests will disperse the excrement and other organic bits on their journey from lobby to hallway to room....

A comment from over there: "Another WP fearmongering article afraid of imaginary hazards. Yes, the carpets are germy, but so is everything else. Has anyone ever been harmed?" 

That reminds me, I was just about to blog this other WaPo piece, "Why we should stop eating lettuce, cyclospora or not/Lettuce makes us sick, wastes resources and has minimal nutritional value. Why are we still consuming it?"

"More visitors are giving up on summer holidays in cities that feel like saunas and booking 'coolcations' in Iceland, Norway, or Denmark...."

"A 2023 European Commission study forecast 'a clear north-south pattern in tourism demand changes' that 'becomes more pronounced for higher warming scenarios,' signalling growing economic consequences for Madrid, Lisbon, Athens, and Milan. 'Travelling to European cities is about cultural experience,' Daniel Scott, a scholar of tourism at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, told me. 'Whether it’s Paris, Barcelona, or Rome, you amble around, sightseeing, street shopping, taking a riverboat tour, going to a museum, a restaurant, a café. Most of that time, you’re outside.' Climate change increasingly turns pleasure trips into exercises in escaping pain. 'When I’m in Europe, I always notice how many people crowd under trees and shaded areas,' Scott said. 'But at some attractions, like the Acropolis, there’s no way to avoid the blazing sun. On especially hot days, they’ve got the Red Cross giving out water, medics pre-positioned because they know many people are going to be in trouble when they come down.'"

From "The End of the European Summer/As extreme heat overwhelms the Continent’s great cities, they are racing to transform themselves for a climate that they were never built to withstand" (The New Yorker).

"In the exhilarating case of Madison, it’s important to pursue the frenzy, merge with the frenzy, ingest the frenzy."

"The frenzy beckons along State Street, the central nervous system of the city and the 50,000-strong university, with main quadrangle Bascom Hill at the end opposite the state Capitol. The frenzy churns up and down the streets and boulevards leading up to kickoffs, the multistory bars packed with people and red. It’s present in bits in the breakfast line at the famed Mickie’s Dairy Bar, or the doughnut line at Greenbush, or at State Street Brats, or the Memorial Union Terrace of the main student union. It’s bubbling at the Dane County Farmers’ Market, and it’s roaring at the frat houses near Camp Randall Stadium, where the inspiring sights might include a beer bong on the second floor delivering the nectar to a drinker on the ground. It reaches its peak, though, at the end of the third quarter.... If one seeks bouts of quiet, as unfitting as they can seem, there’s a daydream of a lake (Mendota), the Lakeshore Path, the city’s welcoming capacity for cyclists or the privilege of a lakefront room at the Edgewater Hotel...."

The Washington Post puts Madison first, in "The 10 best college football towns in America" (gift link).

Here's the daydream this morning, video'd by Meade:

 

"Every summer, my husband, my daughter, and I stay with my mother out East so my child can spend time outside the city in an area I remain attached to from my childhood."

"Without my mom’s generosity, we could not afford to be there. I realize that having access to all this when I haven’t made the right career choices, shorted the market at a moment of crisis, or robbed a bank to be able to afford my own Hamptons house is deeply fortunate. And yet, as I’m often reminded during a flare-up with my mother over how to properly cut a $13 Il Buco filone (apparently, I saw bread too 'wavily' and ruin the rest of the loaf for straight-slicers), Chekhov’s greatest dramas were multigenerational tragicomedies set in country homes."

Writes Lucy Boyle, in "'I’m Sorry You’re in This Beautiful House We Pay For!'/There’s a glut of middle-aged children living with their parents in the Hamptons for the summer" (New York Magazine).

I'm interested in this tale of petty woe not because I've ever stayed at any beach house owned by my parents — I have not — but because we — in the midst of our summer here in our year-round home — took the half-hour drive out to the American Players Theater last week and saw "Uncle Vanya."

The troubles in "Uncle Vanya" were nothing like what we're seeing with these "middle-aged children" in the Hamptons. They're irked by rules about using coasters, taking out the trash, and not stealing things. Boyle gets a psychotherapist to analyze the parents: "When the house is full of the grandkids and the grandkids’ and kids’ friends, they’re kind of in the background. One way they can become the foreground and say ‘I am here’ is to foreground their ownership and possession.'"

David Sedaris wants to go to the Post Office.

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ADDED: This reminds me of my favorite passage in my favorite movie, "My Dinner with Andre," quoted numerous times on the blog, such as here, in 2013, in "What do you think the difference is between a tourist and a traveler?":

"Ludovico Mazzarolli, a constitutional expert, told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera that a €50 ticket would exclude visitors unable to pay and violate the Italian constitution’s insistence on free circulation within Italy."

From "Venice mayor faces backlash over ‘barbarous’ entry fee increase/Plans to curb overtourism in the lagoon city by increasing day tickets to €50 face opposition after lower prices failed to change visitor behaviour" (London Times).