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
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Charles Olson
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