Category

It takes a village

• 04.30.09
  The dangers of free-ranging
  It takes a village (1)

  Because of what happened today, I meant to include more in that last post about Free-Range kids. I'll put it here instead. Today just before I was about to tell my wife about Free-Range Kids and some of the recent discussions there, she told me some bad news. There had been a murder yesterday at Galesburg, on Miller Drive near the Shell station. It seems that a 67-year-old man (she said 70 when she told me about it) shot and killed a teen-age girl who had been doing some work at his house. ...
  
  
• 04.30.09
  Butt out, butt in
  It takes a village (0)

  I'm trying to play matchmaker between The Front Porch Republic (mostly guys, as far as I can tell) and Free-Range Kids (mostly mothers). On the political spectrum it seems that the Front Porchers are a little more conservative, and the Free-Rangers are more liberal. This, btw, is one of the rare places where it's not completely ridiculous to say liberal rather than leftish. But the important thing is that both of these groups are bridging across these political divides over topics that are far from superficial. And both are subversive of the established order. I just ...
  
  
• 04.09.09
  Front Porch Republic
  It takes a village (1)

  The article that inspired the name for the new blog, Front Porch Republic, tells of a 1975 essay titled "From Porch to Patio". It explains how homes used to be built with front porches where people could interact with their neighbors. Now we more often have patios in back. They are more secluded and private--places to avoid interactions with neighbors. I wasn't looking at front porches in particular when I stopped to take a photo of this house. It was on a bike ride I did in April 2006, between Auburn and Tuskegee, Alabama. It ...
  
  
• 12.05.07
  Unfixed intelligence
  It takes a village (0)

  I often speak of intelligence as something malleable. I do it on purpose, realizing it will annoy those who buy into some of the orthodoxies of the education establishment. I will talk about how watching television will make you dumber. Not that it will waste your time, or that you won't learn anything from it, but that it will make you dumber. Or how studying some difficult subject will make you smarter. I don't just say you will know more. I say it will make you smarter. Another example: I say a lot of our leftwing friends destroyed ...
  
  
• 10.09.07
  It takes a village
  It takes a village (0)

  The moonbats are up in arms over the wingnuts' investigation into the actual circumstances of the exploitation of Graeme Frost for partisan political purposes. But this is what happens in village society, as in "It takes a village." That's what it means to have a village raise a child. What s/he does is everyone's business.