News & Articles

When starting on extended travel following (more than roughly) Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad I strove to ignore some of Twain’s more blatant habits.

I didn’t mind his stance on not describing famous places Twain viewed as adequately covered by many others. That made ample sense to me.

And I mostly resisted the temptation to onload on the class of tourist annoyances known as tour guides.

I personally cringed hearing littoral features called literal, but taking inflection and accent into account, I could set my linguistic prejudices aside. And mostly did. Mainly.

But now in calmer and distanced mood, I read some of Twain’s comments in the vein of being too true.

How, after all, and after months of repeat evidence could I disagree with Twain’s reflection that world travel was one of the main ways an ordinary American could transform themselves into a consummate ass.

Keep in mind that in Twain’s era ass was less an anatomical expression than transportational.

An ass, consummate or otherwise, was a beast often used to pull carts. With a reputation for mean and stubborn behavior, the ass (or, if you like, jackass) was not a critter to be ridden, at least not if anything better was available.

Twain was known to say that many a two-legged ass could gaze long and lovingly into a mirror and not see their astonishingly long ears. Seemed true long ago and maybe remains so to our day that a two-legged human ass is so happy with itself that no matter how asinine (again, a term not meaning burro or mule) the attitude or behavior those long floppy jackass ears will remain invisible to the real and present ass.

How often (a rhetorical question) did I see the fact of past travels be posed as a virtue or feat of personal accomplishment?

I wonder, and maybe you’ll know, how much use or relevance it would be if I were to infer or suggest my having been a thousand times to Tofte would add special worth or value to anything I said.

And yet, one of those beings with invisible floppy ears would act as if three, four or six times to Singapore was a personal credential of worth.

Well, well, just how close is that to Twain more than a century ago saying travel was a way for a decent, ordinary person to become a preposterous (I’m substituting for consummate) ass.

It’s funny, and sad, that presumption is too often the jackass way. I mean, there could be interesting human exchanges but instead people elect to boast and preen. Attitude is not and never will be accomplishment.

Among those with invisible floppy ears, presumption seems a fairly common attitude.

Plus, I can all but guarantee a floppy ear attitude of anti-Americanism will jump out at Americans for being Americans who are assumed (ass in assumed in not always innocent) to be untraveled, common, ill-educated and inferior.

If you’re from a smaller English speaking (seems a common thread) nation there appears a sense of resentment (not restricted to floppy ear folk) at not being (or able to be) prime movers.

If you were from a nation with limited industry and scattered agriculture and sometimes harsh geographical conditions it appears a way of dealing with this inferiority (I know, many of you will recoil at the term) is to castigate those coming from places not stuck with those limitations.

Almost bet that a too-often NZ response to Yanks is condescending or (worse in my opine) condemning. It’s our fault. (The presence of Trump has made this delicious option almost irresistible to many.)

And indeed, it is our fault for doing things other nations are not capable of doing.

We don’t send groups of police to supervise vehicles and visitors to national parks. Is it safe, sane or sensible to say you might have to be a floppy ear to support domestic, home grown over-policing and then point accusatory fingers at others who (like me) were not making a fuss about practices seen and presumably legal in (as handy example) NZ.

I admit having some issue with NZ for insisting I have a NZ visa before going to Hawaii. Was that or was it not NZ overreach? What do you think?

I can explain it and certainly complied because I had to, but still struck and strikes me as questionable. No, I amend that. It’s understandably objectionable.

Not that here in Yankland we’re immune.

Take a guess how many times I’ve lately been asked about hantavirus?

Come off a cruise and it’s auto expected you’re viral. (In this case I use viral to mean a composite of infected along with well informed.)

Turns out, however, I know someone who was infected with hantavirus. More than 20 years ago.

Also the only person I know who was bit on the ass (I had to get back to that, didn’t I?) by a cougar I could, to avoid confusion but miss a chance to amuse, have said was a puma.

The virus lately come into public consciousness is not new.

In fact, and seeing as how world travel is part of the concern, travel has long, very-very long, been an element of world health concern.

Seems to me that a while before hantavirus there was the black death even then associated with transmission via ocean travel.

Much nearer in time is the Spanish Flu in WWI where large numbers of people moved around and made the transmission of disease more likely.

And much nearer yet, AIDS and Covid were spread in part by the speed and ease of travel.

Do I condemn travel?

That would have as much substance behind it as referring to how many times I’d been to Singapore.

We are not going to stop travel or eliminate disease or address legitimate concerns or problems by accusation or hard assertion.

Might be safe to say (see if you concur) that people making accusations will look in the mirror and not see their long floppy ears, or if they do will think them astonishingly beautiful.