When I Was Born, My Father Was

Ineluctably, The Insults Inflicted In One War Call Forth New Wars Of Retaliation, Which May Be Waged Within Months Of The Original Conflict Or Generations Later.

The Urge To Transform One's Appearance, To Dance Outdoors, To Mock The Powerful And Embrace Perfect Strangers Is Not Easy To Suppress." --barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing In The Streets, 260.

At Issue Is Not Only Knowledge Of The World But Our Survival As Individuals And As A Species. All The Basic Technologies Ever Invented By Humans To Feed And Protect Themselves Depend On A Relentless Commitment To Hard-nosed Empiricism: You Cannot Assume That Your Arrowheads Will Pierce The Hide Of A Bison Or That Your Raft Will Float Just Because The Omens Are Propitious And You Have Been Given Supernatural Reassurance That They Will. You Have To Be Sure.

Even Healthy Families Need Outside Sources Of Moral Guidance To Keep Those Tensions From Imploding--and This Means, Among Other Things, A Public Philosophy Of Gender Equality And Concern For Child Welfare. When Instead The Larger Culture Aggrandizes Wife Beaters, Degrades Women Or Nods Approvingly At Child Slappers, The Family Gets A Little More Dangerous For Everyone, And So, Inevitably, Does The Larger World.

Crime Seems To Change Character When It Crosses A Bridge Or A Tunnel. In The City, Crime Is Taken As Emblematic Of Class And Race. In The Suburbs Though, It's Intimate And Psychological, A Mystery Resist To Generalization, A Mystery Of The Individual Soul.