Recently I spoke with Nathan James Thomas, editor of the excellent online travel magazine Intrepid Times, and our conversation is now available: https://intrepidtimes.com/2026/07/thomas-swick-on-why-bad-travelers-can-make-the-best-travel-writers/
We talked about my memoir, Poland (where Nathan now lives), unsung places, and travel writing, including the reason bad travelers often make good travel writers.
Yesterday morning I woke up in room 260 at Holy Cross Hospital, having reported to the emergency room the previous afternoon with afib. The emergency room, at least on a Tuesday afternoon in July, was nothing like the one on The Pitt. (For starters, the waiting room was empty.) I asked my nurse if he watched the show and he said he did, and found it the most realistic of the medical shows. His only complaint was that none of the characters had a sense of humor. I thought of Santos, who is sometimes given a funny line, but it is often mean-spirited. It was nice to know there’s joking – probably even some gallows humor – in our local ER.
Sunday afternoon C-SPAN3 showed highlights from past White House Correspondents’ Dinners. I was struck by the congeniality, the way that, for one night, a shared sense of purpose, and humor, and humanity transcended politics. This of course is impossible with Trump, who has no sense of humor and whose humanity doesn't extend beyond himself.
Yesterday, CBS Sunday morning featured a piece on Tadeusz Kosciuszko and his contributions to the American Revolution. At one point the camera lingered on a large portrait of the Pole, which I knew was hanging in a room in the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York City. It was the room in which I spoke about my memoir this past September. My talk, for anyone interested, is available on YouTube.
"A plague of tourists is afflicting the world. It has dropped hordes of the problematic into the lap of the precarious. It has reduced air travel to a demoralizing form of mass transit and caused cruise ships to balloon into seagoing amusement parks. It has turned ancient cities into mobbed enclaves and tranquil islands into party zones. It has clogged boulevards and thronged squares and overrun beaches. It has produced long lines at heritage sites, art museums, car rental counters, taxi stands. It has loaded historic centers with Airbnbs, creating soulless neighborhoods of transients while displacing families ensconced for generations. It has filled grocery stores with foreigners in shorts searching for their favorite breakfast foods. It has, in some places, replaced the grocery stores with souvenir shops. It has made the Irish pub a global institution.
"It has spawned the neologism 'overtourism' and the oxymoron (according to Richard Leakey) 'ecotourism.' It has tried the patience of flight attendants, market vendors, bus drivers, tour guides, park rangers, police officers, and waitstaff worldwide—not to mention daily commuters and people wanting a quick cup of coffee. It has drenched cobblestone streets and dusty lanes in the aromas of pizzas, burgers, and fries. It has put the fries, even in Italy, atop the pizzas."
I wrote that lament in 2019, in Literary Hub, and followed it with a solution: Travel to unsung places.
We’ve cancelled our August trip to Poland, which is very disappointing. But yesterday in the kitchen I flipped the page of our vintage travel poster calendar to peek at August and found a beautiful European street scene – perhaps the prettiest poster of the calendar’s 12. And I thought: At least now I’ll be able to look at it every day of the month.