Greetings all, and a belated Happy Solstice.
So I’ll be honest, 2023 is proving to be a very difficult year so far. New problems keep appearing, and preventing me from doing all the things I wanted to do this year. The “monthly digest” below is actually a three-month digest, and it’s still quite slim. But nevertheless, I’ve been quietly and stubbornly moving forwards with some huge projects behind the scenes. Writing books, designing tours… it’s all happening, even if none of these things is quite at the announcement stage yet.
I do have some bits and pieces to share this month though – and at the top of that list is my imminent return to Ukraine.
Contents
Ukraine Visit
Monthly Digest
Tour Updates
Next Month
Ukraine Visit
A few weeks from now I will be heading back to Ukraine.
This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and it feels like it’s time to do it now. I will be carrying in some supplies for friends who are currently back from the front lines, and I’m also hoping to take in some donations – which will go towards community rebuilding efforts.
In case anybody wants to contribute anything, I have created a GoFundMe page where you can do just that. The page asked me to set a fundraising target, so I entered a number – and we’ve almost doubled it already. But as you can imagine, there isn’t really a limit to what’s helpful so don't let that put you off.
I have written a little bit about the context and motivation for this trip both on the GoFundMe page, and also in this recent Substack post. Later this month, once I’m back, I’ll write more about the work that these donations were able to support.
Thank you!
Monthly Digest
A Fistful of Rubles: Handheld Gaming in the USSR / Time Extension
This recent essay of mine explores the history of handheld gaming in the USSR. The full version will appear in a hardback volume titled A Handheld History: 88-95, published by Lost in Cult. However, an excerpt was featured on the retro gaming site Time Extension – and you can read it at the link.
On Meeting Dr. Emmett Brown in Chornobyl / Khans & Cosmonauts
In addition to that article, there have been a couple of interesting posts here on Substack too. If you subscribe to both channels here then you’ve already seen them, but for those who only get the monthly newsletter: here’s an article I wrote about the time we met Christopher Lloyd, of Back to the Future fame, at the entrance to the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone.
The Principality of Islandia / Khans & Cosmonauts
I have always been fascinated by the concept of micronations, and over the past few years I have been involved in a project to establish a new one. We now have over 600 citizens and in 2019 we bought land too – an island off the coast of Belize. This article details how the project started, but I still have no idea where it’s going.
Coming Soon…
Aside from all the writing I want to do – and will hopefully get to soon – I do have a few more pieces that I recently finished and which are currently sat with editors. One of them profiles the modernist architectural heritage of Sofia, Bulgaria, and another explores how video game representations of post-apocalyptic worlds vary from culture to culture. I will share links in a future newsletter as soon as those are published on their respective sites.
I have also been putting an enormous amount of time into something you won’t see until next year: last week I completed the first full draft of my next book. There is still a lot of work to do there, but this document now actually looks like a book manuscript, rather than just some crazy idea traced out in scribbled notes. I am very much looking forward to being able to share the title, and start talking more about it, in the near future.
Tour Updates
Things have been quiet on the tour front this year. I currently still have just one departure listed for 2023, which I’m leading for Atlas Obscura:
The Balkans: Landscapes and Memories of Yugoslavia
Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia
25 September–7 October
Itinerary & Bookings
The group for that one is shaping up nicely, and there’s room for maybe a couple more people before we close bookings.
I had hoped to be launching a new route this summer, but between one thing and another, 2023 hasn’t exactly gone to plan. There are three new potential tour routes I’m looking at right now – one of which, excitingly, is a collaboration with Explorabilia in Poland. I might still run one of these new tours later this year (which means I would be announcing it in the next month or two)… but at this stage, I feel my focus is mostly shifting towards setting up a strong lineup for 2024.
Next Month
So – 10 days from now I’ll be in Ukraine. My first trip anywhere for a while, and it isn’t going to be an easy one. But it’s necessary, for me, and thanks to the generosity of those who have already donated it looks as though it’s going to bring some real, material help to people who are doing incredibly important work there. Any and all contributions are welcome.
Frankly, I don’t know how I’m going to feel about taking photos there now. I will have my camera with me, and I plan to document this trip as much or as little as my Ukrainian friends and colleagues wish. I’ll let them decide what’s useful. But at the least, later this month I will share some details here about the work being done, and about what sort of contribution these donations were able to make.
And of course, as always, I have a dozen-or-more half-written essays on my laptop, so maybe I’ll get a chance to actually finish something else on that 15-hour Warsaw-to-Kyiv bus ride.
But this next month my first priority and primary focus will be Ukraine.
All the best,
Darmon.