http://www.harpers.org/media/pdf/dfw/HarpersMagazine-1996-01-0007859.pdf

It’s usually called “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again"; I think that’s what it’s called in the printed anthology as opposed to when it first appeared in Harper’s.

What you had to say about the lure of commercials actually bears out when the boffins take an analytical approach to what gets and holds kids’ attention. That’s why Sesame Street has commercials for the letters and numbers because those are the parts that kids actually watch the keenest, the information most likely to sink in and thus the best opportunity to reach and teach them. When I trained to be a recreation unit supervisor as a teenager, one of the tricks of the trade was to get kids in our care singing the jingles from commercials because even if they were new to English, they would likely know the words and melody.

Also, tangential to your discussion of the mosquitoes, what came to mind was how we forget that malaria, once rampant in the European Mediterranean countries, can be erased as a problem. It was once a risk of living in the US South as well. As badly bitten as you were on that holiday, malaria wasn’t a worry.

Keep up the great blogging.

Lorraine

I remember little fans that rotated, and had no protective grill. I also remember an industrial size fan for the kitchen, that had a homeade covering of something similar to chicken wire. Oh, the memories . . .