SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: In which we consider the meaning of "wild child."

With hunger at her heels
Freedom in her eyes
She dances on her knees
Pirate prince at her side
Staring into the hollow idol’s eye

This song by the Doors is 50 years old, and Jim Morrison is still very much dead, but I never really gave much thought to the concept of a "wild child" until earlier in the week, when someone came to my door in the guise of a Girl Scout selling Rice Krispies Treats, ignored the "Get Off My Porch" sign, and mentioned "wild child" as a potential topic for this very column about the wonderful world of words.

A wild child is a young person who is considered high spirited and fearlessly reckless, likely to act spontaneously, often doing things they might later regret. This is different from a feral child, which is a child who has lived in isolation from human contact from a very young age.

Back in my day, at the tail end of the crazed Sixties and amid the onset of the stoned Seventies, there seemed to be quite a few possessors of "wild child" characteristics.

As aging set in, I'd occasionally found myself lifting an eyebrow at the antics of the children (and later the grandchildren) of my peers: "Got yourself a wild child, I see. But I'm sure he/she will grow out of it."

More recently, when surveying the conceptual carnage at the New Albany Housing Authority: "He may be the head of an important local agency charged with the lives of real people, but he's still a wild child at heart."

Sons and daughters of privilege seem particularly prone to this condition. I'm not sure why, but we've all seen it. At times, they even grow out of it.

Achtung Baby: "This fun new book about how Germans raise their kids will break American parents’ hearts."

I may not have any children, but Germany's always been good to me -- and as usual, you're entitled to my opinion.

Volk Heroes, by Rebecca Schuman (Slate)

This fun new book about how Germans raise their kids will break American parents’ hearts.

In a memorable scene of Sara Zaske’s guide to German-style parenting, Achtung Baby: An American Mom on the German Art of Raising Self-Reliant Children, Zaske sends her 4-year-old daughter Sophia to her Berlin preschool with a bathing suit in her bag. It turns out, however, that the suit is unnecessary: All the tykes at Sophia’s Kita frolic in the water-play area naked. Later that year, Sophia and the rest of her Kita class take part in a gleefully parent-free sleepover. A sleepover! At school! For a 4-year-old! These two snapshots of life as a modern German child—uninhibited nudity; jaw-dropping independence—neatly encapsulate precisely why Zaske’s book is in equal turns exhilarating and devastating to an American parent.

Zaske argues that thanks in large part to the anti-authoritarian attitudes of the postwar generation (the so-called “68ers”), contemporary German parents give their children a great deal of freedom—to do dangerous stuff; to go places alone; to make their own mistakes, most of which involve nudity, fire, or both. This freedom makes those kids better, happier, and ultimately less prone to turn into miserable sociopaths. “The biggest lesson I learned in Germany,” she writes, “is that my children are not really mine. They belong first and foremost to themselves. I already knew this intellectually, but when I saw parents in Germany put this value into practice, I saw how differently I was acting.” Yes, Zaske notes, we here in the ostensible land of the free could learn a thing or zwei from our friends in Merkel-world. It’s breathtaking to rethink so many American parenting assumptions in light of another culture’s way of doing things. But it’s devastating to consider just how unlikely it is that we’ll ever adopt any of these delightful German habits on a societal level.

This is not just because Americans pride ourselves on eschewing the advice of outsiders, though that certainly doesn’t help. Our political and social institutions are so firmly entrenched that no amount of wise Germanic advice can help us. “We’ve created a culture of control,” Zaske laments. “In the name of safety and academic achievement, we have stripped kids of fundamental rights and freedoms: the freedom to move, to be alone for even a few minutes, to take risks, to play, to think for themselves” ...

This being America, of course auto-centrism plays its sad part once the family returns stateside.

For example, when Sophia starts first grade, school administrators remind parents that under no circumstances should they drop children off in an automobile. Could you imagine? I can’t. In the contemporary United States, even in larger cities (with New York being the only notable exception), school is so synonymous with the interminable “drop-off line” that its vicissitudes are the subject of bestselling mom-book rants.

In open defiance of this custom, I ride my daughter the 4½ miles to preschool on a bike—she gets pulled along the mean streets of St. Louis in a Burley trailer—only to get yelled at by moms in idling SUVs outside the school. A few weeks ago, all of us parents even got a sternly worded email from the director, chastising the few who do pick up their children on foot for blocking the valet-style “carpool line” with “pedestrian traffic.” This is unsurprising; most children in the U.S. do not walk to school, even if they live close enough to do so—to the detriment of their physical fitness, independence and joy, and of course also the environment. (Zaske experiences this culture shock in reverse when her family moves back to the U.S. and she makes the unheard-of suggestion of a solitary “walk to school day” at Sophia’s new San Francisco elementary.)

I really, really wish that stork would have been sober, and dropped me somewhere in Mitteleuropa as specified on the invoice.

"If every child on every street, had clothes to wear and food to eat -- that's a miracle."

You never know where it's coming from, or what might trip it.

Bob Youngblood was my high school English teacher. He was a mentor and a friend. He died on Friday, but because it was my responsibility to host the annual family reunion weekend, I pushed it off to the side.

First you do your job, then comes the rest.

On Saturday night, 40 of us descended on Big Four Burgers + Beer (staff was awesome, by the way) for food, drink and socializing. Most of my cousins are older than me, and many have grandchildren. Some of these kids were there at Big Four, for the most part running amok.

Often I'm a Grinch at times like this, but oddly enough, on Saturday their joyful, writhing presence seemed comforting. None of it bothered me.

Closing ceremonies for the reunion came on Sunday morning, with Honey Creme doughnuts and Quills coffee, and then a bout of yard work, and finally a chance to catch up on writing.

Looking at the photograph of Bald Knob (the future Summit Sprigs off State Street), the very first words to come into my head were "Mother Nature does it all for us," a lyric from the Queen song "online.com/en/the-band/discography/miracle/">The Miracle", off the album of the same name.

The fifth and final single was the album’s title track. The Miracle, coupled with a live version of Stone Cold Crazy (recorded in London in 1974) was issued on November 27, and reached No 21 in the UK charts. The accompanying video is one of Queen’s most endearing and memorable, and features four child look-alikes (chosen after weeks of auditions) in the guise of the Queen band members. Directed by the DoRo team and filmed at Elstree studios, the real band members were only seen in the final part of the video, when they join their younger counterparts on stage. After seeing the ‘young Queen’ performing, Freddie was later to quip “Could they do a whole tour for us?”

I wrote the article, then thought it might be nice to hear the song. It had been a while since I'd listened to it. Life is strange. You push play, and before you know it, you're bawling -- because of life, death and all the stages in between.

They're tears of sadness because Bob's no longer with us, and tears of joy at his amazing, enduring legacy.

It's crying because those grandchildren are the future, and because I hope they have a damned future.

You're reaching for the tissues because music can be so deeply redemptive, often when you least expect it.

 Thanks. I really needed that. I'm going to listen to "The Miracle" again. This time, I'm ready.

Bill Hanson, bring this 9-year-old reporter to New Albany -- only if Eastside, 1Si and CNHI agree, of course.

Note the byline.

Staff (aged 36) and agencies

Send her this way, please.

Nine-year-old US reporter defiant after critics say 'go back to playing with dolls' (The Guardian)

Hilde Lysiak, whose coverage of a suspected murder in Pennsylvania prompted outrage from some locals, says her age won’t stop her from ‘doing a great story’

On Tuesday, Hilde responded to the criticism.

“It kind of gets me angry because, just because I’m nine doesn’t mean I can’t do a great story,” she said. “It doesn’t mean I can’t be a reporter.”

In a video posted on her website she said: “I know this makes some of you uncomfortable, and I know some of you just want me to sit down and be quiet because I’m nine.

“But if you want me to stop covering news, then you get off your computer and do something about the news. There, is that cute enough for you?”

In the video she read some of the negative comments aloud, including: “I am disgusted that this cute little girl thinks she is a real journalist. What happened to tea parties?” and “Nine-year-old girls should be playing with dolls, not trying to be reporters.”

Wearing a badge reading “I love free speech”, she giggled as she read out the comment: “You are nine fucking years old. Seriously, what the fuck is going on?”

Bob Caesar: Opposes traffic calming, but wants to see kids "walking out on the street."

Way back in August of 2011, we were graced with one of those cherished reminders that Bob Caesar's thinking trends inexorably toward sheer befuddlement.

Expansion could lead to more liquor licenses in New Albany

 ... Councilman Bob Caesar said he will likely vote in favor of expanding the district, but added city planners and officials should be wary of the state’s intentions for approving the riverfront licensing program. He added that while he’s not opposed to patrons safely enjoying an alcoholic beverage, he believes the “city wants to see families with their kids walking out on the street.”

Concurrently, then as now, Caesar opposes two-way streets, which among other positives act to calm traffic, making it safer for ... that's right ... for families and their kids walking out on the street, though perhaps he meant "on the sidewalk."

That's because Caesar's jollies derive from traffic merrily racing from one side of town to the other, better to make it out the opposite end before their texting session concludes. The hypocrisy probably hasn't occurred to him, not even once.

Then again, confusion is Caesar's default condition.

“The need here is restaurants, not more bars,” Caesar said. “This was done so that restaurants could serve liquor, that’s what you want. It does no good at all to have bars that can serve a bratwurst.”

Bars without food? Even a drunkist like me finds this notion bizarre. Perhaps it depends on whether the bratwurst is locally sourced.

Baby Doe ... or the antidote to Pollyanna.

(Thanks to LP for the Twitter prompt)

I'm not going to kid you.

This story is not easy reading, but there are times when Americans need to leave behind our founding Pollyanna Principle, divert our gaze from mindless entertainment and cheap plastic baubles, and think.

Does it make your brain hurt?

So very sorry about that.

For as long as I can remember, the mantra has been repeated again and again: It's their own fault. Those among us who are impoverished or ill equipped for whatever reason to make their way in life, well, its their problem. They must get better, so as not to disturb the self-congratulatory reverie inhabited by the rest of us. Can't they just clean up after themselves and look improved?

It's a variation of the Richard Nixon's words in the movie, Where the Buffalo Roam: "Fuck the doomed."

That's one thing if you're an adult. We can coerce compliance with an endless cycle of consumer debt, further your addiction to substances ranging from meth to Rally burgers, and if that doesn't work, incarcerate you. Fuck the doomed, right?

But what about the children?

Baby Doe: A political history of tragedy, by Jill Lepore (New Yorker)

 ... More than a hundred inches of snow fell in Boston last winter, storm after storm. So the Blizzard of 1978 was on my mind when, not long after daffodils poked up through the last of the long-lingering snow, the lifeless body of a little girl was discovered in a trash bag on Deer Island, cast away.

Further background is here.

The Baylor for Mayor meme, October 22: Job losses, water parks and sheer delusion.

From September 27, 2015:

This is New Albany's economic development challenge: "Developing the Cure for Corporate Welfare."

From August 9, 2015:

Reader question: "Is there a plan to attract new employers?"

Care about kids? Then do something about rental properties in this city.

Whack-a-mole?

An arcade game in which players use a mallet to hit toy moles, which appear at random, back into their holes ... used with reference to a situation in which attempts to solve a problem are piecemeal or superficial, resulting only in temporary or minor improvement.

I googled "slumlord" and "safety," and came up with the article quoted below, among many hundreds of others. Before you read it, take stock of the reality in New Albany.

We're actually not playing "whack-a-mole" here.

While it's true that Section 8 housing is registered and regulated with periodic inspections, hundreds of other rental properties are not even subject to the most simplistic registration, much less inspection.

Year in and year out, political "leadership" in this town looks the other way. Always has. We all know it, and tend to prefer living in denial or blaming renters rather than act.

Consequently, here's my tip-off for the week to come. In this town, hundreds of children live in unregistered, uninspected and unregulated rental properties. They live there every day and night, and every week and month during the year.

Now we have a wonderful civic pool, slated to be open two months out of the year. Building it has cost the city $9 million, not counting yearly upkeep, and in order to finance it, we borrowed against future tax revenues in the expectation that property values in the pool's TIF district will rise, and so will property taxes, and the difference will pay the bonds.

In this TIF area, hundreds of children live in unregistered, uninspected and unregulated rental properties. They live there every day and night, and every week and month in the year, and the existence of a pool is doing nothing to make their quality of life cleaner, healthier or safer.

Praise water sports and parks to your heart's content. They're important. But don't suggest to me that their existence testifies to heartfelt concern for children, when children are subject to degradation that this town's movers and shakers cannot bring themselves to address with government intervention where such action might be the only way to secure genuine improvement.

And don't even dare use the words "fundamentally better" to describe a place where an issue like this is perennially ignored owing to political cowardice. A pool is not fundamental. Living conditions are.

If you cannot tell the difference, you have no business being a lifeguard, much less a mayor.

Whack-A-Mole City Enforcement Keeps Slumlords in Business, by Megan Burks (Voice of San Diego)

... Repeated requests for repairs through Shah and his managers have netted few substantive improvements, tenants said. In a brief phone call, Shah said he acts quickly when tenants ask for repairs, but failed to follow through with an offer to provide KPBS and Voice of San Diego with proof.

And stacks of formal complaints against Shah show the city’s essentially playing a game of whack-a-mole. The city’s code enforcement team knocks out thousands of isolated complaints a year, but does little to hold repeat offenders accountable.

"Why Free-Range Kids Are Healthier."

I have no children, and my childhood was spent in rural woods and fields (I became "citified" later), so there's a chance that any opinion on this subject I offer might be tainted.

Acknowledging this, it would seem axiomatic that vastly enhancing New Albany's walkability, by rendering huge tracts of our historic central neighborhoods and business districts into recreational zones, offers free-range mobility -- if nothing else.

Will the kiddos ever be free to roam again?

Does this article make sense to the parents I know?

I'm genuinely curious.

Why Free-Range Kids Are Healthier, by Erik P. Hoel (The Daily Beast)

Your kid is exactly as likely to be struck by lightning as he or she is to be randomly abducted. So why are we permanently branding parents as neglectful or abusive for letting their kids go to the park by themselves?

Trucks, speed, children and institutionalized moral cowardice.

Arranged in no particular order below are eight photos I snapped from a seat on the front porch, while smoking a cigar and drinking coffee, on Wednesday afternoon, September 24. The first four look left (east) on Spring Street, and the second four face to the right (west).

They don't do the scene justice, so I'll supplement them with background.

The rental properties across the street from our house (south side) currently house several small children, and in just a block and a half stretch on our (north) side, three new homeowners also have kids, albeit older than the ones in the rentals.

It's the most children we've glimpsed in this vicinity since moving here in 2003, and being kids, they're often out playing on the sidewalks -- and yes, there usually are adults nearby, so they're not entirely unsupervised.

The sequence below was taken in a couple of minutes. You can see a guy walking his dog, but not the children across the street on the east and west, who were out on the sidewalk just moments before the cavalcade of heavy trucks began speeding past, and to the east, during it.

I know this is tiresome, but hear it again: Truck traffic has exponentially increased, they should not be on this street in the first place, these trucks move very fast, we have lots of kids near the street, and while Mayor Jeff Gahan persists in advocating the demolition of buildings here and there on random public safety grounds, his perplexing refusal to acknowledge that escalated truck traffic, when entirely unregulated by ordinance enforcement or simple civic common sense, is just as much or more a threat to public safety is a red flag of epic dimensions.

Why is Jeff Gahan and his minions being so willfully blind to this?

Who are they serving, anyway?

Is Is it the citizenry, or Tiger Trucking?

These kids playing within yards of flashing steel, or J & J Pallet?

Why the silence, arrogance and refusal to acknowledge what their own eyes would reveal ... if they decided to climb out from behind the controlling stone wall, take the smallest look around, and actually see what's obvious to the rest of us?

We'll just wait a little bit longer for Jeff Speck's political cover, won't we? I suppose we'll have to, because we don't possess the collective cojones to take action before the Democratic Party is appeased.

Let's hope no one gets killed before it finally is proffered ... and that the prescription isn't ignored.

It's why I say, "Death to Chains."

Speaking of the monolithic corporation's early years, Wikipedia observes, "In 1986, the name of the concept was changed to Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar to reflect the (founders') original concept of a place people could call their own."

The amazing fact that ordinary Americans regularly can be duped into believing a $1.2 billion company with 2,000 locations has much of anything at all to do with their neighborhoods, or might somehow be "their own" in any truly meaningful way, says as much about PT Barnum as the study of aberrant human psychology.

However, if I were a parent, what would concern me most is not my "own" gullibility, but the way we smilingly permit Applebee's and its ilk to "own" our children through tactics like that pictured above. We might as well allow corporate America to buy up future employment rights for kids at the earliest age possible, perhaps in exchange for gift cards.

Thanks to K for the photo: "This was a paper that came home in my kindergartener's folder. It's a cruel, cruel joke ... "

Yep. It is.

Looks like children are being left behind ... by their parents?

Well, well. A legally elected President of the United States, Barack Obama, will give a "back to school" address to the nation’s youth, and this address is being denounced by our friends across the aisle as "brainwashing"?

Note: I suspect the following is not satire.

Grant Line Elementary Will NOT Broadcast Obama

I had the chance this evening to talk with Mr. Lang, the principal at Grant Line Elementary where I have three students attending. He assured me that the school will not be showing the attempted indoctrination of our youth (my words, not his) next Tuesday. This came as a great relief to me as I was prepared to take a day off of work and keep my children home so they would not be exposed to this thinly veiled attempt at brainwashing.

Have you contacted your children's elementary school? You can opt out of this ridiculous show. You can and should stand up for your sovereign rights as the ultimate educator of your children.

Again, I ask: When a right-wing fanatic begins foaming at the mouth over the impending threat of listening to the undisputed winner of a fair election, how much saliva can he lose before dehydration sets in – and who pays for the ambulance run?

It's elementary, so why can't we learn?

In response to the video taped code enforcement discussion posted yesterday, NAC friend and local activist Lloyd "Highwayman" Wimp said:

"All that was proposed sounded like the beginnings of a solution to the problem. Now let's see some action!!

We as taxpaying property owners would much prefer that the rental industry in our city police itself.

Likewise, we'd like to see New Albany's government actually govern in the area of code enforcement as well as many other areas.

Having said that, let me assure all parties that platitudes alone will not suffice as success.

You have some time to bring in some results, but the clock is running!!"

While I agree with Lloyd as I often do, I'd further remind everyone involved, myself included, which clock is actually running and to whom the timing is directed.

As part of the new administration's much appreciated attempts to meet and communicate with neighborhood groups, I had occasion to sit in on a meeting involving several neighborhood association officers and members along with S. Ellen Jones Principal Susie Reis. It was Ms. Reis, to her credit, who reminded me what was actually at stake.

After several meeting attendees related stories of deplorable rental housing and their experiences with those who own or live in such units, Ms. Reis simply stated, "You have no idea how many times I've heard these stories from parents."

I'll be the first to admit that I very much view code enforcement and rental property improvement as a necessary part of a larger economic strategy. Better housing attracts new renters and buyers and strenuous code enforcement provides security for those who invest themselves and their money in our neighborhoods. In essence, though, that's a polite way of saying we need better people in New Albany.

The "better people" process starts with education, and our neighborhood-anchoring, publicly funded institution for providing it, S. Ellen Jones Elementary, is hampered more by irresponsible landlords than is any other plank of revitalization.

Simply put, we cannot expect to prepare children for a productive life and civic involvement when returning home from their lessons each day means facing mold, vermin, lack of heat, and faulty wiring egregious enough to kill their families on any given day. We cannot expect them to be excited about opportunities while proving to them, day in and day out, that life is about suffering and being an adult is about turning away from it unmoved and unmotivated.

Perhaps it's maudlin to say so, but code enforcement and its mechanisms aren't about property values or property taxes or having to live with decreases or increases in either. They're about children, what we as citizens are willing to let them endure in the name of business, and which excuse for doing so we'll come up with next.

There are no good ones and no good people make them.