A n n a r c h y

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‘What Happened to Your Nose?’

January 31st, 2009 · Comments

It’s usually children and foreigners who ask: those who have no sense of propriety or privacy, or those who consider Westerners too uptight about all the wrong things, and, paradoxically, not uptight enough about others. The waiter at the Indian restaurant sympathetically gestures toward his own, toast-colored nose and inquires in heavily accented English, “Oooh… [...]

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Tags: Family History · Politics & Society · Social Media · Teenagers

Evergreen Christmas

December 24th, 2008 · Comments

1970
It’s four days before Christmas, and my father finally retrieves from beneath the cellar stairs the huge Sears box that houses our Christmas tree. The tree is heavy, its metal trunk solid and plumed with thick branches trimmed with rough-cut green cellophane that simulates pine needles.
It’s the only Christmas tree I’ve ever known, and when [...]

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Tags: Children · Family History

Innocents At Home

December 11th, 2008 · Comments

It snowed the other morning north of Boston. It was the first, early snowfall of the season, if you take a very literal view of the term “snowfall,” because the flurries that fell didn’t amount to any real accumulation. They stuck tentatively to the ground, in clusters, like they were as surprised to be [...]

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Tags: Media · Politics & Society · Pop Culture · Teenagers

Korean Otters

April 30th, 2008 · Comments

My friend Maryse called me the other day with a question, she said, about her daughter Laurie-Maude, who is in the same grade as my daughter Caroline. It was Korea Day at school, she said, and Laurie-Maude wanted to dress as an Otter. “How do Otter’s dress?” Maryse wanted to know.
At least, that’s what I [...]

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Tags: Children · Family History · Women

What Is a Friend?

March 16th, 2008 · Comments

My friend and colleague Shelley and I are taking our two girls to a company “junket” we’ll both be attending next month in southern California. (We’re calling the two of them the MarketingProfs “Web 3.0″ team.)
The girls are 9 and 11 and live, respectively, in Texas and Massachusetts. Kinsey (the 9-year-old) and Caroline (age 11) [...]

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Tags: Children · Social Media · Technology

A Virgin in Hollister

January 25th, 2008 · Comments

Being a parent for the better part of two decades, I’ve gotten used to accepting the fact that my kids are attracted to things that I don’t like.
When my son Evan was about four, he was shopping with me in a second-hand children’s shop. Rummaging in the forgotten bits at the bottom of one of [...]

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Tags: Parenting · Pop Culture