There Are Those Of Us Who Believe

Uncontrollable Consumerism Has Become A Watchword Of Our Culture Despite Regular And Compelling Calls For Its End. The United States Has More Malls Than High Schools; Americans Spend More Time Shopping Than Reading. ... Some Of The Most Insightful Writing About The American Character Over The Nation's History Has Been About Neither Freedom Nor Democracy But About The Crazed Impulse To Acquire Things.

The Reason Child Care Is Such A Loaded Issue Is That When We Talk About It, We Are Always Tacitly Talking About Motherhood. And When We're Talking About Motherhood We're Always Tacitly Assuming That Child Care Must Be A Very Dim Second To Full-time Mother Care.

Raising Children Is A Spur-of-the-moment, Seat-of-the-pants Sort Of Deal, As Any Parent Knows, Particularly After An Adult Child Says That His Most Searing Memory Consists Of An Offhand Comment In The Car On The Way To Second Grade That The Parent Cannot Even Dimly Recall.

There May Perhaps Be A New Generation Of Doctors Horrified By Lacerations, Infections, Women Who Have Douched With Kitchen Cleanser. What An Irony It Would Be If Fanatics Continued To Kill And Yet It Was The Apathy And Silence Of The Medical Profession That Most Wounded The Ability To Provide What Is, After All, A Medical Procedure.

I Always Wanted To Be A Fiction Writer, But I Couldn't Figure Out How You Could Be A Novelist And Make Any Money, Which Continues To Be A Problem For Novelists The World Over.