Am I an Elitist?
A year ago we moved to a beautiful northern Michigan Peninsula surrounded by lakes. Living in our Cape Cod-ish house has been largely uneventful, no bears, no wild-eyed men with guns asking directions to our governor's summer house, nothing to make us regret the decision to leave Chicago and settle in this small, bucolic town where nearly everyone is related (year-rounders) or at least knows whomever you are currently making snarky remarks about. You must be as careful as King Midas when you want to share that you don't like someone, or you're tired of people promising to invite you over and never doing it, or you can't believe there is no decent coffee shop that remains open after three o’clock in the afternoon (one in the winter).
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How to Talk to a Teenager: Just Don’t
If you have to talk to them, be extremely careful. Under no circumstances should you attempt to approach them without a clear indication that you accept you are an alien. You are not of their tribe. You are not sentient to their customs, traditions, gestures, or language. Don’t use terms like “treated,” “sweet,” “bling bling,” or “phat”. This behavior will risk instant exile. You are a stranger in a strange land. Don’t make eye contact, do not touch any of their possessions, don’t comment about their clothes, hair color, make up, the smell in their room, the lack of lighting or fresh air, or whether the tattoo of an eye covering most of your daughter’s lower back is, in fact, permanent.
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War is an Abstract
I grew up watching the news on television. Walter Cronkite explained that the footage from Vietnam told a story of chaos, cruelty, heroism, and loss. One of the English teachers from the school I would eventually attend held a weekly candlelight vigil in our town for her only child, a Yale student who was killed in Vietnam in 1967. When I asked my mother why she kept protesting the war that had stolen her son, my mother sighed and said, “What else can she do?”
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