July 2012
5 posts
5 tags
Citizens Without Frontiers
As I get ready to tackle a chapter for The Modern Nomad book that questions what that worn-out word “community” really means, I am draw to Engin Isin’s ideas about what migration does to one’s notion of citizenship. Isin is director of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance at The Open University. “In a way, boundedness is the very condition of...
5 tags
Flame Thrower
Photo by Kristian Schuller, via The Nomad Chronicles. First published in Beware magazine.
9 tags
Into the Wild
[Revellers at Wilderness Festival, via wildernessfestival.com]
As the London 2012 Olympics arrive in my ‘hood of Hackney, I’m reminded of something the British-born author Jonathan Raban once wrote in Granta: The English are “born into a casual phlegmatic acceptance of astounding alterations to the landscape.” It was what he described as second nature, kind of like nature...
6 tags
Packing Notes, or Meditations on Travelling Solo
[Adolf Konrad’s illustrated 1963 packing list from the exhibit “Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists’ Enumerations.” Via The New York Times.]
I pack:
Passports (Canadian and European)
Photocopy of my citizenship papers (Britain)
Photocopy of my birth certificate (Canada)
One or two or three books (paperback, not eReader)
...
7 tags
Nomads Don't Have iPads*
[Zunn Taiga, Mongolia, 2007]
Maria Popova’s Brainpickings is always fascinating, but for the sake of productivity I try to occasionally shut down my computer and smell the English roses here in London. So I was glad my friend Allan Casey–author of the lovely book Lakeland–tipped me off on a post about a new tome on nomads. Described by Popova as a “visual anthropology,” this...
