Read on the street 25 July 2020
As lockdown restrictions ease – something we all have a responsibility to keep going by sticking to the rules – it’s understandable that people want to get away for a holiday or short change of scene. Or just fantasise about where we might go one of these days.
So this week’s theme is travel, but in its widest sense. Travel to other places, even another planet. The business of travel. The future of travel. Travels in how we think, and a travel back in time to learn more about a previous global pandemic.
Travel may well broaden the mind, but reading and listening to new content most definitely do.
Whether you’re staying put just now or venturing elsewhere, I hope you find something fresh and stimulating in the material below.
Stay safe, follow the rules, and have a great weekend.
The staycation revival
Blue Ribbon wafers, Orange Maid lollies, Viscounts and Breakaways – exquisite pleasures of childhood for many of us, made only more glorious in this description of a staycation in Cumbria. After months of being cooped up, this piece reads like a lovely stroll down memory lane. Maybe, just maybe, a blast from summers past (packed lunches, damp sand, the works) is exactly what we need.
Read in The Guardian.
The future of travel
This series of interviews in Forbes with travel industry leaders doesn’t shy away from the bad news, and many of the figures are grim. For example, we learn that 100 million travel-sector jobs have been eliminated or will be in the coming months. Yet there are also grounds for some optimism, and the piece concludes that “there is a distinct sense of hope and wanderlust in the air”.
Read in Forbes.
A space odyssey
Space may be the final frontier, but the boundaries of its exploration are being stretched on earth too. For older generations, brought up to think of space as being the province of the United States and Russia, last week’s launch in Japan of the United Arab Emirates’ spacecraft al-Amal (“Hope”) shows that there are new kids on the launch pad. The hope it carries is that a new generation of young Arabs will be inspired to pursue careers in the sciences.
Read in National Geographic.
A journey in time
We are all now more aware of the 1918 pandemic, for obvious reasons. But did you know that the effects of the 'Spanish' flu helped lay the foundations for the second world war, turn Ghandi from a recruiter for the British Army into a fully fledged campaigner for Indian independence, herald the end of Vienna as the home of the European artistic establishment and propel wireless radio into the mainstream? We didn’t either, until the latest episode of RadioLab explored the hidden impact of the century-old disaster, and the journey it took the whole world on.
Listen at WNYC Studios.
Aviation's prospects for recovery
The pandemic has hit the aviation industry harder than most, and this piece in The Conversation looks back at previous crises to help assess its prospects for recovery. The European aviation sector directly employs two million people, and the article makes the case for airlines to pursue alternatives to redundancy, such as work-sharing, temporary pay cuts and furlough.
Read in The Conversation.
The journey within
We are all sometimes guilty of over-indulging in memories of things and events past; especially in today’s times. From Hofer’s view of that feeling as a “cerebral disease of essentially demonic cause” to the “existential buffer” that it represents to us in these strange days, let this piece take you on a journey through the historical understanding of this most bizarre of feelings: nostalgia.
Read in National Geographic.
Let's go!
A piece to blow the cobwebs away. Founding partner Malcolm Robertson records a beautiful experience (albeit one that’s hard on his knees) of father and son getting up at the crack of dawn to bag a Munro – or four. Let’s go!
Read on Medium.
Written by Kevin Pringle, partner