Socialization

"If children do not dip their toes in the waters of unsupervised social activity, they likely will never be able to swim in the sea of civic responsibility. If they have no opportunities to dig in the soil, discover the spiders, bugs, birds, and plants that populate even the smallest unpaved playgrounds, they will be less likely to explore, appreciate, and protect nature as adults. "

http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/05-5om/Monke_FT.html

What crap. Why should "recess" be the only opportunity for social interaction or physical activity?

"WHEN I WAS GROWING UP IN RURAL IOWA, I certainly lacked for many things. I couldn't tell a bagel from a burrito. But I always and in many ways belonged. For children, belonging is the most important function a community serves

Substituting the excitement of virtual connections for the deep fulfillment of firsthand engagement is like mistaking a map of a country for the land itself, or as biological philosopher Gregory Bateson put it, "eat[ing] the menu instead of your meal." No one prays over a menu. And I've never witnessed a child developing a reverence for nature while using a computer.

This shift toward remote control is akin to taking the child out of the role of actor and turning her into the director. This is a very different way of engaging the world than hitting a ball, building a fort, setting a table, climbing a tree, sorting coins, speaking and listening to another person, acting in a play. In an important sense, the child gains control over a vast array of complex abstract activities by giving up or eroding her capacity to actually do them herself. We bemoan the student who uses a spell-checker instead of learning to spell, or a calculator instead of learning to add. But the sacrifice of internal growth for external power generally operates at a more subtle level, as when a child assembles a PowerPoint slideshow using little if any material that she actually created herself."

What are you sniggering at?

Adam McCune, describing with characteristic panache, the progress of his next film:

"Yes, all I have to do for that scene is show two imaginary friends walking away from two people"

"I decided to use all caps because that is what they did in Lord of the Rings"

further McCune Watch update: he now wears his hair in a 1" ponytail/tassel

Also, on the way back from work I passed high school football players wearing purple jerseys: one, though, had orange polka-dot zoobas as well.

Which is still nothing compared to the synchronized "running and leaping and praising God" that Baxter once witnessed, but it was enough to make me smile the rest of the way home.

Meow

Oy. Googling yourself can be embarrassing. Googling former penpals, on the other hand...

It turns out my junior high penpal has posted a movie review I gave her years ago on her website. Browsing around, I find she's been busy: with help from her periodical publishing parents, she is living out her dream of becoming a professional writer without having to go to college or read books with difficult vocabulary. Proving she's fulfilled each of those goals, her online store lists her favorite authors as "The classics, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and C.S. Lewis."

At the risk of exposing my own fatuous nonsense that is being hosted there, here's a link to her site: http://www.charitysplace.com/review/charitybishop.htm

Anyone who has a soft spot for the fictional offerings of Mr. McCune should check out her novels.