I saw a comment that he has become the Ted Baxter of politics.
Love it.
Wash: Well, I wash my hands of it. It's a hopeless case. I'll read a nice poem at the funeral. Something with imagery. Zoe: You could lock the door and keep the power-hungry maniac at bay. Wash: Oh, no, I'm starting to like this poetry idea now. Here lies my beloved Zoe, my autumn flower, somewhat less attractive now she's all corpsified and gross...
'Shindig'
Natter 70: Hookers and Blow
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
le nubian - Sep 24, 2012 3:04:26 pm PDT #23332 of 30001
"And to be clear, I am the hell. And the high water."
Consuela - Sep 24, 2012 3:16:54 pm PDT #23333 of 30001
We are Buffistas. This isn't our first apocalypse. -- Pix
Kids aren't allowed to walk home by themselves? When I was in elementary school, I think the only parents who picked up kids to walk them home were the parents of kindergarteners who had no older siblings, and even then, most of the ones who didn't have to cross any streets alone walked by themselves after the first few weeks of school
Things have changed a great deal in the last couple of decades. Parents who let their kids walk or bike to school are cited for child endangerment. The NYC couple who let their 9-yo kid travel alone on the subway (he'd lived in the city all his life and was familiar with it) were vilified heinously.
When I was 9 or 10 I was riding my bicycle with my siblings three miles into The Center Of Town, where we would buy ice cream and hang around by the train station. (It was a small town, and there wasn't much to do.)
Hil R. - Sep 24, 2012 3:26:00 pm PDT #23334 of 30001
Sometimes I think I might just move up to Vermont, open a bookstore or a vegan restaurant. Adam Schlesinger, z''l
In the town where I grew up, and where my parents still live, plenty of elementary school kids walk or bike to school by themselves, but the only major road to cross has a crossing guard, and I don't think that anybody lives more than about 3/4 of a mile away from the school. There's also a railroad crossing to cross that I know terrifies some parents, but I've never seen an elementary-age kid do anything unsafe there. It's the high school kids who try to cross when the gates are down.
The elementary schools also still let kids go home for lunch if they want to.
Jesse - Sep 24, 2012 3:33:21 pm PDT #23335 of 30001
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.
Yeah, when I was a kid, there were crossing guards -- older kids at the smaller streets.
Jesse - Sep 24, 2012 3:34:27 pm PDT #23336 of 30001
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.
Of course, I also took a public bus home from day camp by myself when I was like 6.
sarameg - Sep 24, 2012 4:09:08 pm PDT #23337 of 30001
Starting at 10, we could take the bus to the mall (it was a WHOLE QUARTER!) I think mom walked us to kinder but not after that. I know I was sometimes home alone from when I was 9. Rule was we could ride bikes around the neighborhood but not cross the 3 main busy streets until we were 12 and more road savvy, and only with permission. I remember walking to the Gulf gas station to buy soda, only a few blocks. We also used to walk to the 711 and TCBY about a mile away. That was definitely 5th grade.
Summers we got the ok to ride our bikes across Alameda (one of the 'busy' streets we had to cross it for school. At the time one wide lane each way, 30 mph limit. It's 4 lanes now....) to get ourselves to swim lessons. With a stop at Sonic afterwards for floats. Still within a couple miles.
Actually, a couple of the kids I grew up with in the neighborhood have since bought houses there (next door, the house she mostly grew up in, as did her mother, that her grandparents had built! And she's not the only 2nd or 3rd gen owner.) Their rules are fairly much the same as ours were. The neighborhood is really stable. The Miller house is still called that by people who moved into it decades after Mrs. Miller died.
Jessica - Sep 24, 2012 4:09:43 pm PDT #23338 of 30001
And then Ortus came and said "It's Ortin' time" and they all Orted off into the sunset
At our school, the 3rd and 4th graders are allowed to walk home by themselves if you sign a form, but when Dylan's in 3rd grade, Aeryn will be in pre-k, so unless they have wildly different dismissal times it wouldn't really make sense for us.
Amy - Sep 24, 2012 4:20:18 pm PDT #23339 of 30001
Because books.
We had neighborhood schools where I grew up, so there were no major/busy roads to cross, and at some of the other intersections were adult crossing guards. Everyone walked, kindergarten on up, and we also walked home for lunch and back again, unless you had no parents home during the day.
But we also were out riding bikes around our neighborhood all day in the summer, and we just knew to be home at dinner time. No way could a mom have found us at a particular moment -- we were all over.
sarameg - Sep 24, 2012 4:22:00 pm PDT #23340 of 30001
We could walk home in kinder, parent discretion. Lots of kids had older sibs or just older neighborhood kids who were charged with that duty. And Mrs. Eubanks was always out on her porch on the corner at dismissal times. She bandaged many a skinned knee broke, broke up spats. And we thought she was MEAN. She was just no nonsense.
There are a lot of young kids around here fairly unsupervised. I'm sure the presence of the Y draws some, but the Y also fills an existing need. Now some of them, there's a clear bit of parenting-issues going on, but others remind me very much of us when we were little.
Amy - Sep 24, 2012 4:25:32 pm PDT #23341 of 30001
Because books.
We could walk home in kinder, parent discretion. Lots of kids had older sibs or just older neighborhood kids who were charged with that duty.
Yeah, I always walked with Charlie, when he was really little, but at lunchtime I was too cool to wait for my dawdling little brother, so he was usually ten minutes behind me.