‘Whatever you do—hang on to your childhood!’ He was true to this in his fashion, both in ways that delight me and in ways that do not. He loved the idea of a birthday celebration, being lavish about it, reminding people that they were once unborn and are now launched. This is bighearted, and we might all do a bit more of it. It would help me to forgive, perhaps just a little, the man who helped generate the Hallmark birthday industry and who, with some of his less imposing and more moistly sentimental prose scenes in A Christmas Carol, took the Greatest Birthday Ever Told and helped make it into the near Ramadan of protracted obligatory celebration now darkening our Decembers. -
Christopher Hitchens writes about Charles Dickens in his last Vanity Fair column
posted by beisny
on Jan 7, 2012 -
8 comments
The decline of play. As a society, we have come to the conclusion that to protect children from danger and to educate them, we must deprive them of the very activity that makes them happiest...
posted by bitmage
on Oct 13, 2011 -
115 comments
"
In the course of researching my book The Emotional Life of Nations, I discovered that just before and during wars the nation was regularly depicted as a Dangerous Woman. I collected thousands of magazine covers and political cartoons before wars to see if there were any visual patterns that could predict the moods that led to war, and routinely found images of dangerous, bloodthirsty women."
Sociologist, political psychologist, and founder of The Institute for Psychohistory
(no not that one) Lloyd deMause has written eight books and 90 articles on the link between warfare and parenting practices. With thousands of references to psychological and anthropological studies, deMause makes the case that outbursts of nationalist violence are reenactments of childhood experiences common to large groups.
His book
The Origins of War In Child Abuse is available as
a ten-part, free audiobook; read by
Stefan Molyneux.
[more inside]
posted by clarknova
on May 3, 2011 -
151 comments
"We were wondering if you would petition to be emancipated," he said in his lawyer voice. "What does that mean?" I asked, picking at the mauve paint on my hands. I later discovered that for most kids, declaring emancipation is an extreme measure -- something you do if your parents are crack addicts or deadbeats.
"You would need to become financially independent," he said. "You could work for me at my law firm and pay rent to live here."
This was my moment of truth as an objectivist. If I believed in the glory of the individual, I would've signed the petition papers then and there. But as much as Rand's novels had taught me to believe in meritocracy, they had not prepared me to go it alone financially and emotionally. I began to cry and refused.
posted by fernabelle
on Apr 15, 2011 -
102 comments
Past, I'd like to introduce you to the present. "Letters Home relies on contributions. We are nothing without readers who are willing to share their stories or respond to others. We don’t think we’re alone in wondering what’s happened to our childhood homes since we left. Or in wanting to share an important event that occurred there – from a birthday party to a marriage proposal, a secret revealed to a lie concealed.
Write a letter to the present occupant (even if it’s still family), the owner of the store that now stands on that lot, whatever or whoever might be there now, and share your memory. Ask them to respond with their own story and photo. Their letter and photo will then be added to your post."
How Letters Home works?
posted by Fizz
on Oct 14, 2010 -
10 comments
Web of stories - "There are few things more interesting or more pleasurable than to watch someone tell a good story. And one story always leads to another."
posted by unliteral
on Aug 24, 2010 -
5 comments
A second
Edgar Oliver story
was posted [mp3] on The Moth Podcast yesterday. Recorded in January, 2006, he calls it The Apron Strings of Savannah but the Moth people call it The Story of How Edgar Became Edgar.
posted by morganw
on Dec 15, 2009 -
8 comments
Do you let your small children run around
naked? "The sexual component of nudity — and a fear of pedophiles — is what makes some adults object entirely to letting children be naked. Jenny Louie said her husband is so uncomfortable when their 4-year-old daughter, Rebecca, is naked that, even if she is alone in her bedroom, in Los Angeles, he will immediately close her shutters."
posted by Xurando
on Jul 16, 2009 -
190 comments
"... [M]any of us who were
raised in the 1950s, '60s and '70s are survivors.
We were tiny daredevils: sun-blasted, pocket-knife-carrying, bottom-spanked, cow eaters. We ran the streets armed with BB guns, boxing gloves and bottle rockets, wholly unprotected by bike helmets, sunscreen or Amber Alerts. Our houses were filled with the blue cigarette smoke of our cocktail-drinking parents and we believed it wasn’t supper without a mountain of red meat."
[more inside]
posted by ericb
on Jul 6, 2009 -
157 comments
Kinda sutra - a charmingly animated short in which people talk about childhood misconceptions about sex and childbirth. More on childhood sex misconceptions from Dan Savage
1,
2,
3. (pretty tame clip, but possibly NSFW)
[more inside]
posted by madamjujujive
on Apr 13, 2009 -
55 comments
Where has all the pubic hair gone? After sweating through the [eight-year-old girl's] eyebrow wax, Engle [...] was directed to give her pint-size client a … bikini wax. “But … there’s nothing there, right?” I ask Engle. “I mean, at eight? Am I forgetting something?” “Nope,” she says. “There’s not. Doesn’t matter. That’s when the mothers are starting them these days.”
posted by desjardins
on Apr 4, 2008 -
207 comments
"How I Became A Programmer" veers between linear biography and brain dump. The piece meanders through its theme, stopping along the way to flirt with word origins, family politics, the senior prom, Japan, airlines and military recruitment. Reading it, I felt trapped inside inside an extremely quirky -- yet recognizable (in a too-close-for-comfort way) -- mind. About half the time I yearned to tell him that he needs an editor; the other half, I was grateful that he didn't have one. Mostly, I'm amazed he HAD a date to the senior prom!
posted by grumblebee
on Aug 18, 2007 -
52 comments
Virtual Space Mountain! Wheeeee!
(Click on the second video where you sit in front. What are you, a wuss?) Real video just
can't do Space Mountain justice, but it does a pretty good job of capturing some other rides. Feel like revisiting some original Magic Kingdom rides without leaving home? Well here you go...
Pirates,
Mr. Toad,
Small World,
Haunted Mansion,
Tiki Room,
Thunder Mountain,
Star Tours,
Indiana Jones,
Alice in Wonderland,
The Jungle Cruise,
Matterhorn,
Roger Rabbit, the late
Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse and a bunch of people covered in lightbulbs dancing to
the world's most excruciatingly annoying synthesized music. During your virtual day at the park, please just remember to watch out for Goofy. That dude is nothing but a
messed up troublemaker.
And don't forget... the parking trams do not go to aisles B as in Bambi & C as in Cinderella.
posted by miss lynnster
on Mar 26, 2007 -
23 comments
Graduates of the "school of hard knocks" flunk real life. A study from the University of Leicester says that, contrary to popular expectation, unpleasant and traumatic life experiences don't make people suspicious and shrewd -- quite the opposite.
Many people who've had a tough life actually turn out more gullible and easily swayed:
"This is because the person may have learned to distrust their actions, judgments and decisions due to the fact that the majority of the time their actions have been perceived to invite negative consequences"
The counter-intuitiveness of this finding fascinates me.
Wait. Maybe I shouldn't be taking it at face value...
posted by AmbroseChapel
on May 27, 2006 -
50 comments
Avocado Memories. It's more than a photo collection and group of essays about his parents' failures with interior decoration; it's a nostalgic website brought about by Wes Clark's impulse to let his children know what it was like
growing up during a more innocent age.
posted by debralee
on Jun 17, 2003 -
9 comments
Let's talk about childhood toys. A wander down memory lane, past care-bears and etch-a-sketches and barrel-o-monkeys. Warning: this site resulted in the bidding up of auctions for
Weebles "Tree House" action sets. I'd forgotten how marvelously upright they remained until I whipped their little egg-like bodies out of a second-story window onto concrete. What was your favorite childhood toy? Do you still have it, or do you have the sudden need to re-acquire it?
posted by answergrape
on Mar 21, 2003 -
47 comments
