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Weekly Wanderings: November 17, 2024
@mauracunningham (2010-2024) I deactivated my Twitter account this morning. It finally felt like time: I hadn’t posted there in months, and the post-election surge in Bluesky users has created a critical mass of other historians, writers, China folks, Ann Arborites, and Phillies/Flyers fans—the people I most want to connect with. Time to officially move on.…
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Bookshelf: Her Lotus Year
After the relationship between American two-time divorcée Wallis Simpson and Britain’s King Edward VIII became public knowledge in December 1936, rumors about Simpson’s past flew thick and fast. One alleged source was the so-called “China Dossier,” a British government file (likely apocryphal) said to include prurient details about the year Simpson had spent in Hong…
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Weekly Wanderings: November 10, 2024
What a week. I don’t have any deep insights or grand analysis to share about the election. Since Wednesday, my inbox has been filled with newsletters and articles titled “What did Harris do wrong?” and “What this election means for America” and so forth. I’ve opened all those emails and mostly skimmed over them before…
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Weekly Wanderings: November 3, 2024
I thought about putting together a full post for today’s Weekly Wanderings, but let’s be honest: there’s only one big story this week. Everyone’s attention is trained on Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election. Most of us are either devouring every scrap of news about the latest shifts in polls, or doggedly avoiding social media and news…
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Weekly Wanderings: October 30, 2024
Thanks for joining me this week. #AsiaNow Author Interview Recommendations China Stories Emily Feng, “An opera troupe in Taiwan is preparing a lavish performance for the gods” The journalist’s report centered on the Franklin County Jail, a three-story, brick structure with six steel cells that had been “properly condemned” by the state commissioner of prisons…
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Weekly Wanderings: October 20, 2024
When I turned 39 in October 2021, I decided that I would celebrate my 40th birthday the following year by finishing the Detroit Half-Marathon. I had done a large number of 5K and 10K races by that point, and practiced yoga since moving to Ann Arbor in 2016, so I felt like a race of…
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Bookshelf: Indonesia Etc.
In late 2011, Elizabeth Pisani set off on a yearlong trip throughout Indonesia. This was no Eat, Pray, Love-style journey: Pisani wasn’t going to the archipelago in search of herself. Instead, she was looking for Indonesia. Pisani, in many respects, already knew the country. She had been stationed in Jakarta as a journalist for Reuters…
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Bookshelf — Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World
Walk up the stairs to the “goblet” level of the National Monument in Jakarta’s Merdeka Square and you’ll enter the Hall of Independence. On a Sunday afternoon, the room is filled with people seated on all levels of the risers that ring the hall’s exterior. Adults chat or look at their phones, while kids dash…
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Pre-Departure Reading: Indonesia
Welcome to Indonesia Week here at The Wandering Life! I traveled to Indonesia for the first time in early July, spending a week there for the AAS-in-Asia conference held at Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta. My trip was, of course, very short, and I only made two stops, in Jakarta and Yogyakarta (pronounced “JO-Jakarta,” often…
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Weekly Wanderings: October 13, 2024
What a week. I try to think of everything that’s happened around the world in the past seven days and it feels like a grim verse from “We Didn’t Start the Fire (2024 Version).” I can barely keep up with the news, let alone read in-depth stories about it. And, in some ways, I just…
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Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 