Kid World Lost

"Nothing has changed more for the worse since the '50s than childhood. The lives of children were, Bryson remembers, 'unsupervised, unregulated and robustly' physical. 'Kids were always outdoors - I knew kids who were pushed out the door at eight in the morning and not allowed back in until five unless they were on fire or actively bleeding.'"
-George Will on Bill Bryson's book The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir

Whither go California...

"California between 1955 and 1970 was a magical place, full of can-do idealism about the UC system, and its new campuses at Irvine and Santa Cruz, the freeway systems like the new I-5 north-to-south route, and modern airports at LA and SF, the dams and hydoelectric grid, the part-time state Legislature, and the commitment to the melting pot. These days we can hardly add a third lane to a highway someone else built, and talk about blowing up dams not building them. LAX is a disaster; so is UC Merced. And what we used to invest in infrastructure, we now pay out in entitlements and then borrow for minimum maintenance on what our grandfathers created.

And the most disturbing fact? That such a lapse is no accident, but simply a collective reflection on my own generation. After all, when I compare my parents and grandparents–their hard work, self-sacrifice, courage, suffering, and investment for others-to the record of their own progeny, then sadly it all becomes clear. And I am sure other Californians can do the same: ponder their grandparents’ lives versus their own, and then, presto!, comprehend the fate of their state the last fifty years."
-Victor Davis Hanson