The complicated truth, or one of the major complications, is that we, as well as the young, are living much of our time in a 'virtual' landscape. A kid comes home and plunges into video games, the computer monitor, the cell phone, Blackberry texting, etc. The local hospital says they get a large number of folks who have injured themselves (head injuries, often) while walking - that is texting and tripping over curbs, walking into lamp posts, etc. Sure it is similar for cars.
Seems nobody is 'totally here' anymore. Or we haven't been able yet to figure a healthy relationship between the 'real' of the virtual and the 'real' on the ground!
Like seat belts for cars, I assume - once enough damage is done - there
will be correctives - 12 step programs et al! If not already.
Additionally, particularly in terms of suburbs, gates communities, even urban condo complexes, these places are not people or kid friendly. Their landscapes are so over-managed - no empty lots with free growing grasses and/or weeds and dirt mounds, etc. No real creeks. It's hard for either old or young to feel imaginatively implicated - spontaneously or otherwise - in these places. Unfortunately much of the 'civilized world' resists these Third Landscapes, as these kinds of spaces are called. Instead we are given neighborhoods, particularly in the suburbs, that are totally under control, or, alternatively, untouchable, highly restricted wildnerness areas which are not to be creatively 'tampered' or played with - such as the once empty lot in the neighborhood.
Stephen
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
--- On Thu, 4/1/10, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: was: oxford prof of poetry? now state of the world
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Thursday, April 1, 2010, 10:11 AM
When in point of fact the cities in North America are now safer than
they ever were, except in poor neighborhoods, where the kids still
play in the streets. Certainly that quiet San Diego street of single
family houses in a quiet neighborhood of same presented few dangers
beyond the threat of earthquakes. Part of the disjunct, I assume, is
the constant barrage of the nightly news. But I'm guessing that it's
also because in the middle class now both parents work, rendering the
street a mysterious place to them.
It's sad to see so old a culture die. I don't know any better than
anyone else what impact that will have on future lives.
Best,
Mark
At 01:00 PM 4/1/2010, you wrote:
>People will make the argument today that it's so much more dangerous &
>therefore they cant allow their kids to play alone out there in the
>possible fields nearby, or an empty lot, or just on the street (see
>Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude, eg), but is it so? I remember, as
>you do Mark, the fun & the dangers, even for a kid with glasses who
>read too much like me. But we also didnt have all those temptations
>away from that world outside, where we could invest our imaginations,
>that surround the kids today.
>
>As to the dismantling of the social safety net, well, the
>multinational corporations, which apparently are simply ordinary
>'citizens' like you & me, have their own take on that. They the people?
>
>Doug
>On 31-Mar-10, at 4:51 PM, Mark Weiss wrote:
>
>>There was an article in the NY Times recently about the death of
>>child culture, at least among the middle class. When I was a kid we
>>played outside without adult supervision. Now parents make playdates
>>for their kids and send them to afterschool play groups, and endless
>>hours of solitary time is fed to the computer. It wasn't until I'd
>>been in the house I rented in San Diego for seven years, when I was
>>invited to a neighbor's barbecue, that I realized that children
>>actually lived on the block.
>
>Douglas Barbour
>[log in to unmask]
>
>http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
>
>Latest books:
>Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
>http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
>Wednesdays'
>http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
>
> The secret
>
>which got lost neither hides
>nor reveals itself, it shows forth
>
>tokens.
>
> Charles Olson
Announcing The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry (University
of California Press).
http://go.ucpress.edu/WholeIsland
"Not since the 1982 publication of Paul Auster's Random House Book of
Twentieth Century French Poetry has a bilingual anthology so
effectively broadened the sense of poetic terrain outside the United
States and also created a superb collection of foreign poems in
English. There is nothing else like it." John Palattella in The
Nation
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