Culture
Partly as an excuse to fiddle with the technology, I’ve recorded an MP3 reading of some musings about being a carpenter on the Bellevue/Ocean Drive beat (available as a stream or a download).
In a recent Wall Street Journal article entitled The Most-Praised Generation Goes to Work (subscription required), Jeffrey Zaslow writes: You, You, You — you really are special, you are! You’ve got everything going for you. You’re attractive, witty, brilliant. “Gifted” is the word that comes to mind. Childhood in recent decades has been defined by…
Continuing the conversation begun in an earlier post, Rediscovering Traditional Unstructured Play for Children, here are excerpts from a related Wall Street Journal article (subscription required) entitled Helping Overbooked Kids Cut Back: …Written about and discussed for decades, the problem of overscheduled children still looms large. Many parents keep children busy believing that stimulating activities…
From the Around Town section of The Sakonnet Times (emphasis added): Theater Direct and Friends of the Arts in Tiverton (FAIT) are looking for singers and musicians to perform in a sultry, swinging cabaret to benefit arts enrichment programs in Tiverton. There are a few slots left for anyone wanting to perform with some of…
This is likely to be a very uncomfortable topic — prone to personal hostilities. Still, if my assessment has some basis in truth, it can only be for the best to put it out there in the light, rather than to endure a multiyear campaign season in which it is unmentionable. As entry, here’s a…
My first thought was that it’s things like this that provide the “smarter-than-thee” rhetorical ammunition for the ideological opponents of conservatism. Two prehistoric children play near a burbling waterfall, thoroughly at home in the natural world. Dinosaurs cavort nearby, their animatronic mechanisms turning them into alluring companions, their gaping mouths seeming not threatening, but almost…
Ann Althouse discusses a New York Times article entitled Putting the Skinned Knees Back Into Playtime in which a popular recent book, The Dangerous Book for Boys, is mentioned. David Elkind writes these words in the Introduction to his new book, Power of Play: How Spontaneous, Imaginative Activities Lead to Happier, Healthier Children: Children’s play…
The Providence Journal’s recent editorial on technology and the cultural slide has an outdated ring to it: Computers are “extending” our intelligence through a panoply of electronic devices. But whether we are creating anything of more value is debatable. We spend more and more of our lives hitting computer keys but not more time thinking,…
Michael Barone observes that George Bush has done a poor job of selling the Republican party–and by extension, conservatism–to the under-30 crowd. For instance, Barone writes, “when Bush’s call for [reforming Social Security] was opposed by Democrats, the response of young voters seemed to be, ‘Whatever.’” Barone explains why: My sense when I look at…
Perhaps this is an annual reality that I’ve just been slow to notice, but my parish priest phrased the traditional blessing of mothers during the closing of today’s Mass as a general blessing for women. He alluded to the pain and regrets that some childless women might feel at having never had the ability or…