I Hate… I Mean Heart Forest Kindergarten

Nothing really critical to say about this Times article on the Waldorf School “Forest Kindergarten” (“For Forest Kindergartners, Class Is Back to Nature, Rain or Shine”) in Sarasota Springs, New York, other than that’s exactly the life I want for my son, but one that for many reasons (my job, my divorce, my lack of …

Flat Daddies

Nope–has nothing to with man-breasts. Flat Daddies are cardboard cutouts of photos of dear old dad, designed for military fathers posted abroad. Now, I have no interest in making a statement about the military, heroism, public service, terrorism, apple pie, counterinsurgency tactics, Iowa, SUVs, or any of the millions of other things I associate with …

What Almost Made Me Cry Today: Weekly Review

I am an occasional contributor to the Harper’s Weekly Review, Harper’s Magazine’s online newsletter. The idea for the Weekly is that by aping the language of conventional reporting, in the hope of calling some attention to the hypocrisy of how reporting gets done (distorted third-hand news), the linguistic obfuscations involved (was Obama really “considering his …

No, Seriously, Dirt Is Good

Just a quick follow-up on my previous post on the virtues of messiness: science agrees with me! Not that I had any doubt, but according to researchers at UC San Diego, letting children play with messy stuff is actually good for their skin. Thank you, wise scientists, for confirming what I already knew: my ex-wife …