Dear Readers: This is not only an incredible story — a boy’s cheese sandwich is confiscated by the food police — it is also the best writing I’ve read in a long time. That’s why I just read it out loud to my husband. It begins: A Britain in which the cheese sandwich is subject to intolerance and abuse is a Britain that no right-minded rennet-lover would ever care to inhabit. It is a Britain that no one could have imagined possible. Yet the impossible has happened: staff at a nursery in Pemberton, near Wigan, have confiscated a cheese sandwich…
Author: lskenazy
Hi Readers — This comment came in response to the blog post below, regarding a Minnesota community up in arms about an Alzheimer’s facility moving in. The people there are worried for their children’s sake. Ironically, it is when we try to make a neighborhood unneighborly that we all suffer. Voila: Dear Free-Range Kids: The crucial concept here (from my perspective as a native and current Minnesota guy who has also lived in Albany, NY, DC, and Hartford, CT) is zoning and neighborhood planning. Here in MN, it is presumed that any credible, autonomous, functional person has a drivers license,…
Dear Readers: This is not only an incredible story – a boy’s cheese sandwich is confiscated by the food police — it is also the best writing I’ve read in a long time. That’s why I just read it out loud to my husband. It begins: A Britain in which the cheese sandwich is subject to […]
Hi Readers — This comment came in response to the blog post below, regarding a Minnesota community up in arms about an Alzheimer’s facility moving in. The people there are worried for their children’s sake. Ironically, it is when we try to make a neighborhood unneighborly that we all suffer. Voila: Dear Free-Range Kids: The crucial […]
Hi Readers — Here’s a heart-sinker: A Minnesota community doesn’t want a facility for Alzheimer’s patients to move in, because old people, even though supervised, might hurt — or even traumatize by their very weirdness — their kids. So much for diversity. So much for community. So much for compassion. As John Tevlin writes in this great Star Tribune column: Nearly everyone who spoke against the facility had concerns that their children might be attacked or see an elderly adult do something inappropriate. But Janelle Meyers, housing director for Prairie Lodge Assisted Living unit, also run by Ecumen in Brooklyn…
Simple as that. Read it here. And it was the insurance companies fighting each other anyhow, as it turns out, not the grandparents suing the pants off the quick-thinking girl who saved their grandchildren. And that b.s. about the girl being “too young” and “inexperienced” to babysit? That was all the insurance companies’ balderdash, too. All’s well that ends well! L
Hi Readers: Just had to pass along this story. I’m Free-Range all the way — well, most of the way — but sure am glad we live in New York City. Not a tempting bull in sight (even on Wall Street these days!). — L.
Today’s Free-Range cartoon, as seen in the brilliant Baby Blues. What a great comic strip that is! And alas, I can’t figure out how to shrink this to fit my screen here, so I will give you the punchline: “To run a background check on Amy’s parents.” (Sorry — the comic shows up full screen when I preview it, but then in real life the page cuts it off.) L.
Hi Readers — Here’s a heart-sinker: A Minnesota community doesn’t want a facility for Alzheimer’s patients to move in, because old people, even though supervised, might hurt – or even traumatize by their very weirdness — their kids. So much for diversity. So much for community. So much for compassion. As John Tevlin writes in […]
Simple as that. Read it here. And it was the insurance companies fighting each other anyhow, as it turns out, not the grandparents suing the pants off the quick-thinking girl who saved their grandchildren. And that b.s. about the girl being “too young” and “inexperienced” to babysit? That was all the insurance companies’ balderdash, too. […]