songs of experience

I’m back from my 3-day mountain (actually, it was foothills) getaway and one thing I didn’t do was watch TV. Instead, I read and read and read. I read what may be the best essay on marriage and family I have ever come across … “Alice, Off the Page” a personal history by Calvin Trillin. It was in last week’s New Yorker magazine (March 27, 2006) and it seems I am not alone in my assessment. When I went to search - alas, in vain - for the text (or a link) to share with you, I came across dozens of gushing reviews. Here’s one from salon.com:

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/03/24/alice_trillin/index_np.html

Go find this essay (most local libraries subscribe to the New Yorker magazine). It is well worth the effort. Here’s a little taste of the REAL THING when it comes to what we are put on earth to do:

“By now, my wife’s policy on attending school plays (a policy that also covers pageants, talent shows, revues, recitals, and spring assemblies) is pretty well known: she believes that if your child is in a school play and you don’t go to every performance, including the special Thursday matinee for the fourth grade, the county will come and take the child.”

-Shouts and Murmurs, The New Yorker

“There was no doubt about her priorities. Concerning children’s constitutional right to sit down to dinner with their parents every night, Alice tended toward strict constructionism. While our girls were growing up, she hated being separated from them; after a two-week trip to Asia when they were about 10 and 13, she decided that one week was her limit. When it came to trying to decide which theories of child-rearing were highly beneficial and which were absolutely ruinous to the future of your child - a subject of considerable discussion among some parents we knew - we agreed on a simple notion: your children are either the center of your life or they’re not, and the rest is commentary.”

from Alice, Off the Page
a personal history by, Calvin Trillin

“And we are put on earth a little space that we may learn to bear the beams of love.”
-wm blake