Walking with Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was an inveterate walker, going for hours every day at a brisk pace, usually alone. “He did so because walking time was thinking time, or perhaps more accurately dreaming time.,” writes Luke McKernan.
Dickens walked in the day and in the night. He once got up at two in the morning and walked 30 miles to breakfast.
Today, McKernan lives in “the heart of Dickens territory,” Rochester and the Medway towns in England.
The high street businesses alone bear witness to the Dickensian connection: they include Tiny Tim’s Tearooms, Fezziwig’s, Mr Tope’s, Ebenezer’s, Pips of Rochester, Sweet Expectations, and the inspired A Taste of Two Cities. In days past we have had Hard Times the antique shop, and – believe it or not – the Havisham Wedding Centre, which perhaps not surprisingly went out of business.
Richard Kind Is Glad He’s Not That Famous — Fresh Air. An interview with a brilliant comic character actor whose face and voice you recognize even if you don’t know his name. He is a treasure.
“So the president of the United States proposes, on camera, to deport Americans to foreign concentration camps.” — Timothy Snyder
Unions need to be ready to strike. It’s the source of their power. “When radical things happen, only fools do not become more radical.” — Hamilton Nolan
The unbearable lightness of Korean cute — Chris Arnade walkingtheworld.substack.com
“ICE is making arrests wearing masks, not showing ID and grabbing people off the street into unmarked vans. Straight up Gestapo shit…. I can’t even count the number of actions Trump has taken which should lead to impeachment.” ianwelsh.net
Blue Cross of Louisiana doesn’t give a shit about breast cancer: The insurer pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars in payments for breast reconstructive procedures that it previously approved, on the Orwellian rationale that just because they approved it doesn’t mean they agreed to pay it. pluralistic.net
We just had an earthquake. 5.2 magnitude about 32 miles from here (near Julian). Bigger and longer than any I’ve personally experienced. No damage or injury in and around our house.
ME DURING AN EARTHQUAKE: “Um, I think we’re supposed to go outside? I’ll just get my coffee first.”
Cory Doctorow: Instead of retaliatory tariffs, US trade partners should repeal anti-circumvention laws that protect US tech monopolies. “Indeed, repealing anticircumvention is a frontal assault on the firms whose CEOs ringed Trump on the inauguration dais.” jacobin.com