What Happened to Telling Children to Go Outside and Play? I was 25 when I became a mother, and perhaps I was still somewhat naive. Yet nothing, not even my early science-fiction addiction, prepared me for the bizarre complexities of parenthood. I’m not talking about the sleepless nights, the confusion of soothing a crying infant, or …
Immunologist Mary Ruebush, PhD wrote a book called Why Dirt Is Good: Five Ways to Make Germs Your Friends. My favorite Ruebush quotation so far is: “Dirt is good. If your children aren’t coming in dirty every day, they’re not doing their job.” Her point is that all this rot about antibacterial soaps and compulsive …
Beaver is out and Blog is in. Another loss for team nature was the decision by the publisher of the Oxford Junior Dictionary to replace dozens of nature-related words like “beaver” and “dandelion” with more relevant words like “blog” and “MP3 player.” As noted wildlife artist and conservationist Robert Bateman observed, “If you can’t name …
“What’s becoming of our children?” people are asking each other. When I was 10, I donned the massive headphones of the 1970s and listened to Simon and Garfunkel sing about a boy sitting on a ledge. I assumed the eerie refrain, which reeled itself deep into some secret passage of my brain, was the voice …
