Via Instapundit comes the tragic lament of "Rebecca Chapman, who has a master of arts in English and comparative literature from Columbia University" and who "hit bottom professionally last summer when she could not even get a job that did not pay."  In the company of "Willie Osterweil, 25, an aspiring novelist who graduated magna cum laude from Cornell in 2009," and "Rachel Rosenfelt, 26, who graduated from Barnard College in 2009," and other like-minded young'uns, she formed an echo chamber for the palaver of "overeducated, underemployed postgrads willing to work free to be heard on subjects like Kanye West’s effect on the proletarian meta-narrative of hip-hop."

This meditation on optimism from the NYTimes comes on the heels of widespread mockery from rightward pundits of poor, dream-chasing Joe Therrien, who only wanted to be a puppeteer and is now regarded in some quarters as a misfit toy. (Note, though, that Michael Barone, a man of dexter sentiment, defends Therrien, noting that "he presumably felt that he could be a good enough puppeteer to make a living at it and could find a job doing so. That’s the sort of thing the late Steve Jobs told Stanford graduates that they ought to do." The Anchoress also has a thing or two to say in defense of pursuing puppetry, if not paper.

The broad cultural question at stake is whether China has the right idea: to phase out majors and programs that consistently produce graduates who prove unemployable on the basis of their education.

The issue, as always, is the legitimacy and scope of state subsidization. What stake does the government have, in behalf of its citizens, in perpetuating the production of puppeteers (taken as a proxy for the entire class of overrepresented, underemployable domains of interest)?

It's by no means a new theme. Roll back a hundred thirty-odd years, and you'll find Thomas Henry Huxley and Matthew Arnold arguing against and for the humanities with greater eloquence and insight than any of today's pundits. Later, Dewey wanted to regress toward the mean for the sake of making or half-baking a compliant, progressive workforce. His ideas still prompt controversy among Arnoldites, even if Huxleyites and cynics regard the issue as moot.

Do we want to be pragmatic above all else? Is it unwise for the ideal to temper the real? Folks who discern that they're puppeteers or poets, calligraphers or critics, artisans or artists, shouldn't bear blame and suffer disdain for rolling the dice on their dreams. They only merit mockery when, failing, they whine about how their society's public policies didn't long indulge them.

The pursuit of a culture of literary salons is not a path orthogonal to hard-nosed capitalism; when successful, it's a symptom or index of thriving capitalism. And although taking the risk when times are lean may be ill advised, the humanistic goal of chasing a cultural dream isn't inherently wrong or risible. To the contrary, the humanistic goal is the point not only of the risk, but of capitalism itself, rightly construed.

It's been a productive month from a work standpoint, but blogging has suffered.  Here are some of the things that I meant to write about, but couldn't in October 2011:

1) My dog Tanner ran off at the beginning of the month, and was on the loose for 48 hours in a busy downtown area of a mid-sized city.  Tanner is a lovable, goofy spaz.  How he didn't wind up as roadkill I still don't know.  I was going to write about the idiocy of strangers (the lady who caught him, called us to let us know that (I was 200 miles away and driving home), then left a large, athletic dog in a yard with a 30 inch fence he easily jumped), the kindness of strangers (another lady caught him and walked him a mile to our house), the power of social networking on the local level (he was returned to us because a Facebook post I wrote was widely circulated by friends and friends of friends), and the weird attachment some of us feel for other species.

This is Tanner:

2) I'm attending a zombie walk tomorrow, with Tanner.  The photo above shows his zombie costume last Halloween.

3) The photo I didn't get to take, because it would have been dangerous to do so in traffic: a large truck with the logo AMERICAN SAFETY being hauled from a wreck by an even larger truck.  Whoever hit the AMERICAN SAFETY truck scored a bull's eye, directly over the words AMERICAN SAFETY.

4) The photo I did get to take:

Feel free to caption it.

5) The wife passed out and broke her nose last Friday.  I have a nice photo, which I won't post, and a lot of choice thoughts about hospital protocol, which I've already written about. Why do doctors say "syncopal episode" to people who've had concussions when they mean "fainting"? Are they trying to justify their fancy eddications, or just to piss off the guy in the room who does know what "syncopal episode" means, because he didn't suffer a concussion from falling on concrete?

Is there anything you meant to write about this month, but couldn't get around to?  If so, feel free to write a digest version in the comments.

The greatest fear I felt on September 11, 2001 was not as a citizen, but as a new father. My fears about that day — and about its legacy — remain centered on my children.

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Katrina, my dad, and the kids took me out to dinner for my 42nd birthday last night. I was forced to wear a big stupid sombrero at our favorite dive while the staff (who has seen our kids come home and grow up) sang for me. It was OK. As part of the festivities, the kids demanded — as they do these days — that I tell various classic family stories that have now passed into myth and legend: the story of Ken, the shovel-nosed shark, and the boat wreck; the story of Poppa, Nana, and the ill-advised twilight hike; the story of Ken being set loose in Mainz to fend for himself by two parents who had discovered a particularly good Reisling, and so on.

On the way home, Abby and Elaina demanded the much loved story of Sig and the skunk. It was just long enough for the drive home. "You have to write the story down," said Abby, "so we can read it whenever we want."

And so I did.

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Spare a thought for Lab Rat and Stingray, authors of the excellent Atomic Nerds blog, who've been forced from their home by the wildfire in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

I live in a hot, wet part of the country where hurricanes pose a much greater danger than fire, but my friend Ken wrote a series of posts on his own experiences with wildfire two years ago.  Here's hoping that, like Ken, Lab Rat and Stingray are able to return home safe and sound.

Saturday, as usual, I took the kids for breakfast at our favorite diner, Rocky Cola Cafe in Montrose. Elaina wanted cereal; Evan and Abby ordered their standard — "Carly's Favorite", a barrow-sized mound of hash browns topped with bacon and cheese. It's implied, but not stated, that this breakfast item is a memorial, and that Carly has died of a massive myocardial infarction.

While we waited for our heaps of carbs, Evan entered his trance-like Nintendo DS state, and Abby and Elaina busied themselves playing with various toys they brought, including a My Little Pony and a Littlest Pet Shop stuffed with tiny plastic pets.

I was benevolently ignoring the kids, reading Fark on my iPad and drinking coffee, when the girls' dialogue began to get louder.

Abby [8]: . . . an' . . . an' . . . an' . . . these cats and dogs are all fighting, and the Little Pony has to convince them to be friends!

Elaina [4]: YEAH! [ed: to convey approximate volume of Elaina's indoor voice, imagine all of her dialogue is typed in 38-point boldfaced red font]

Abby: Little Pink Pony is going to tell them not to fight!

Elaina: YEAH!

Me: That's sweet. [ruffling Abby's hair fondly]

Abby: [making the freakishly outsized pony bounce up and down violently near the plastic cats and dogs] "Kitties and puppies! Don't fight! Don't go to war!

Elaina: WAR!

Abby: . . . .because if you go to war, so very many of your people are going to die!

Elaina: YEAH! DIEEEEEE! [smashing plastic cats and dogs in brief but entirely credible simulation of probable effects of war]

Me: Uh . . . .

Abby: They're going to die, all the puppies and kitties and turtles and fishies and birdies, and everyone is going to be so sad and go BOO HOO!

Elaina: SAD! WOO HOO!

Me: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

Abby: [still stomping the pony up and down vigorously, now into the creamer dish]: So if you don't all want to die TODAY, and get BURIED in the GROUND, you have to be friends! Okay?

Elaina: OKAY!

Evan: Daddy, is Littlest Pet Shop supposed to be violent?

Summer!

When I was a kid, summer was a magical time of freedom. I'd lurch out of the house rubbing my eyes with the birdsong at dawn and not return until dinner, filthy and tired and delirious with possibilities fulfilled. My parents would have a basic idea where I was — going to Eric's or Brian's (to start, at least) or to the movies — but they would not know with a GPS-anklet level of specificity. I walked through wild chaparral canyons and hills to friends' houses, rode my bike to the little one-screen movie house and ice cream shop miles away in Montrose, and roamed the horse trails of Flintridge, dodging piles of horse crap and playing militaristic versions of Calvinball with hooting friends. Physical activity that made me whine during the school year (like walking uphill a mile and a half to get home, alone, from first grade on) suddenly was all part of the fun. I might occasionally check in with mom by phone, as a courtesy, but in the days before message machines or call-waiting or cell phones, who could blame me if there were great, sprawling blocks of time when I was untraceable?

Now, of course, I'm a parent of young kids, living just a couple of miles from where I grew up. Would I let them roam the hills I grew up in unsupervised? Would I let them flit from one friend's house to the next, unscheduled, driven by whim and by whose Atari was working that week? Would I let them ride their bikes a mile to the boulevard for a candy bar? Hell no. Because I have caved fully and completely to the relentless message of the media, the government, and the people-who-know-such-things: my children are on constant peril.

I'm dwelling on this sad fact this week because of this maddening story over at Free Range Kids, the excellent site I first mentioned three years ago. Blogger Lenore Skenazy describes how a mother was admonished by police that letting her kids play in the neighborhood the way I used to play — indeed, the way kids have played since before anyone could remember — is illegal:

Dear Free-Range Kids: Our kids have always been “Free -Range.” Unfortunately, today, someone called the police because of the “unsupervised children” running around the neighborhood. My son is six (seven in September), and we allow him to ride his bike to friend’s houses up the street (we live in a small, three-street neighborhood far from any major roads), rollerblade down the road, play with friends in the little patch of woods across the street from our houses, play in sprinklers with the neighbors, etc. There are constantly kids running around our neighborhood, playing with their friends — kids of all ages.

The officer said that kids under ten, by law, are not allowed outside, unsupervised except in their parents’ yard. The officer did not come to our house, but visited the mom of two of my son’s good friends. The people who called reported that all the way back in the winter, a “whole bunch of unsupervised kids were sled riding down the hill” that is across from our townhouse units.

This cop might be all wet about the laws of his state or locality. But the sentiment he expresses — which would have been reviled and regarded as un-American fifty or even thirty years ago — is now mainstream. The media pummels us with stories about children in peril. Politicians snatch low-hanging fruit by demanding more and more and more laws protecting children. Schools and other institutions, rocked by frivolous lawsuits and by the collapse of personal responsibility, ban anything that might lead our little special snowflakes to skin their knees. And so we fear — and we deny our kids the sort of freedoms that we enjoyed.

Our fears are largely spectral — or, at least, vastly exaggerated. We're led to believe that every shrub hides a lurking child molester. Yet all reliable statistics indicate that such crimes against children have steadily declined (not to mention the fact that children have always been at greatest risk for abuse at home, not running around in the wild). Morons driving badly are still a danger, but not more to kids than to adults, and not more now (when they are distracted by texting) than they were back in the day (when they were distract by jamming the 8-Track into the player). Our parents weren't careless, nor were they made of more fearless stuff — they simply weren't bombarded with the daily message of danger, danger, danger. If the Leave It To Beaver/Norman Rockwell vision of America glossed over many ugly truths, at least it did not send the insidious message that little Cindy and Bobby would be kidnapped if they rode to the park and decapitated if they used an off-brand pool toy.

Why should you care? Well, you should care because the danger danger danger drumbeat and our capitulation to it is part of the process of making us more dependent upon the government, more subservient to authority, more willing to let the state use kids as an excuse to tell us what do to in an increasingly wide and unprincipled array of circumstances. Accepting that kids' lives must be heavily structured normalizes the idea that all of our lives must be structures. And it's self-sustaining. We crank and rant about youth being the slackoisie, but can you really blame them? Kids raised in the whiffle life are taught dependence and fear, not self-reliance and self-assurance. Do you think those kids are going to grow up and vote for more personal freedom and liberty when you're an old crank? Or are they going to look to the Nanny State, lovingly embodied by their own dear parents, to tell everyone what to do, just as it has always told them? Can you expect them to respect your desire to wander where and how you please, when they've always been taught they mustn't do that because it's dangerous? Sure. Good luck with that.

Now excuse me — my kid has a scheduled playdate.

Edit: Forgot to note that the Free Range Kids story was courtesy of Walter Olson.

As a rule, I don't sing where people can hear me. It's a vestige of humanity that I cling to, along with liking dogs and despising the Yankees.

If I'm in my car, however, all bets are off. Can you hear me from the next car over? That's your problem. I know it's bad, but try not to drive into a bridge abutment, please.

My habit of singing in the car — together with my awful singing voice and my eclectic taste in music — has led to awkward moments. Take for instance the time one December when a neighbor pulled up next to me at a stoplight and caught me singing along with Handel's Messiah, specifically the part that quotes Isaiah 53:6. Since Messiah is an oratorio, bits and pieces repeat quite a bit. So the neighbor pulled up to witness me singing this at the top of my lungs:

All we like sheep
All we like sheep
All we like sheep

Which comes out sounding like "Oh, we like sheep!" The light turned green before she could hear the next verse, "have gone astray," which takes the quote firmly out of the bestiality-celebrating context. Her expression suggested that her children would not be trick-or-treating at our house any time soon.

Anyway, I'm not new to humiliating myself by singing in the car. But I got a new car last week, and with it a new way to humiliate myself.

The car has a high-tech stereo system that offers, among other things, a way to connect and control one's iPod or iPhone or other overpriced Apple device, a hard disk drive on which one can store music, and most dangerously, a voice-recognition system to instruct the car which music to pay.

Here we encounter my problem. My wife enjoys country music, which tends towards songs with simple words in the title like lost and truck and dog and beer and tractor, arranged in simple declarative statements and the occasional plaintive question. My tastes include some modern stuff, but runs mostly to classical music, particularly opera.

The designers of the voice-recognition system on this car apparently did not foresee that someone would be trying to tell it the names of operas, or bits therein, in their original language. The car responds by suggesting other songs, apparently at random, or possibly in an ironic way to mock me.

I have tried better enunciation. I have tried varying among Italian and German and French operas. As in all difficult foreign language situations, I have tried raising my voice and, eventually, losing my composure.

As a result, these are some of the things I have spoken in an unkind tone of voice to my car this weekend:

"No, NOT JOHNNY CASH. What about LE NOZZE DE MOTHERFUCKING FIGARO sounds like Johnny Cash to you, bitch?"

"JESUS CHRIST, you piece of shit, how do you get from TANNHAUSER to the Beach Boys? They don't sound alike at all. PET SOUNDS DOES NOT HAVE FALLEN KNIGHTS HELD AS SEX SLAVES TO GODDESSES."

"dongiovannidongiovanniDonGiovanniDonGiovanniDONGIOVANNIDONGIOVANNIDONGIOVANNIDONGIOVANNIDONGIOVANNIDONGIOVANNI I'M GOING TO KEEP SAYING IT UNTIL YOU GET IT DAMN YOU TO HELL!"

And so on.

I try not to do this at stoplights, but I've seen people on the freeway staring at me, so I may be getting kind of loud.

When I use the dial on the stereo to select particular music manually, the car reads it in a monotone bereft of all pronunciation beyond a faint dull twang, sounding like a cross between a circa-1980 voice synthesizer and a teen who has just been asked how school was that day. When I revert to trying to select music by voice, the infernal thing stubbornly reverts to suggesting completely inappropriate alternatives, using a tone of voice that conveys why don't you pick something a little less pretentious, asshole?

It's possible I'm not ready for the digital revolution.

I could go into iTunes and rename all the operas by their English translated names, and even rename all the tracks. BUT THAT WOULD BE SURRENDERING.

Last night I was driving Evan (10) and Abby (8) home from dinner.

EVAN: Daddy, quiz me on science stuff.

ME: Uh, okay. Here's one you didn't remember before. Who invented the light bulb?

EVAN: Uh — Einstein?

ABBY: Howie Houdini!

EVAN: I don't like that one. Ask another one.

ME: Okay. What is Einstein famous for?

EVAN: He talked about science and the universe and . . . and . . . what he said was important for knowing things in science, and the universe, and how science works in the universe, and stuff.

ME: You'll have to learn to bluff better than that, padwan.

ABBY: Ask another question!

ME: Okay. Who was the second president?

EVAN: GEORGE WASHINGTON!

ABBY: Howie Houdini! Harriet Tubman! SACAJAWEA!

ME: Bzzz. Wrong. Okay. If the president dies, who becomes president next?

EVAN: The vice-president!

ME: And if the president and the vice-president die, who becomes president next!

EVAN: Uh . . . the last president before that?

ABBY: SOME RANDOM GUY!

Evan: The last person who ran for president and lost?

ABBY: ME! HOWIE HOUDINI! A MONKEY SCRATCHING HIS ARMPITS!

ME: We may need to find you two a trade.

THE LAWS OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND, it turns out, are actually laws. Not guidelines, as some would have us believe. If you're willing to pay for health care, you'll get health care. If you want to pay for bureaucracy and rent-seeking, you'll get …

BLOGGING WILL BE LIGHT for the next thirty minutes.  I have to take a phone call.

HEH: Freewalling