Teenagers can work, think, fight and love.

"Teenagers can work, think, fight and love. The law prohibits all of it." - R. Cort Kirkwood

Kirkwood writes an article "Adolescence: A Heresy" arguing that modern society makes our teenagers into adolescents - essentially, big children - instead of making them into responsible adults. Reviewing Roger Epstein's book The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen. Epstein, an expert psychologist, says that our society is preventing children from becoming adults.

We put our children and even young adults into strictly regimented factory schools (including Sunday schools). We keep children away from adults, don't expect adult behavior or responsibility, even prohibit it: teens can't work or drive until 16, can't marry or enter into a contract or smoke until 18, though in past societies such actions were common. All they're allowed or expected to do is go to school, consume food and entertainment, and have no-commitment sex. No wonder they rebel. Teens are capable of far more, as Kirkwood tells us:

At age 14, Andrew Jackson fought in the American War for Independence, was captured by the British. He was also orphaned. David Crockett, hero at the Alamo, struck out on his own at age 12 and returned home four years later a full-grown man. Audie Murphy, who left grade school to support his 11 brothers and sisters, won 33 combat and other service decorations during World War II before he was 20. And David Farragut, chief of the federal navy during the War of Northern Aggression, commanded his first ship at age 12.

Kirkwood is author of Real Men: Ten Courageous Americans to Know and Admire

Honey more effective than cough drugs

ABC news reports that a spoonful of buckwheat honey before bed treats coughs better than over-the-counter medication.

The article notes that honey is inappropriate for children under 1 or 2 years old, but cough and cold medicines are inappropriate for children under 6.

Music and dance

Daniel J. Levitin, professor of psychology and music, writes in the New York Times (login required) about the relationship between music and dance. Apparently, the way we do music today, segregating those involved into performers and a passive audience, is counterintuitive. He tells us that Children (see also the Joshua Bell experiment) naturally participate in music, and even when adults are quietly sitting and listening to music, the parts of the brain that control and coordinate the muscles are active. Classical music in particular expects its audience to be passive, and I would suggest that this is part of the reason that classical music is less popular than modern rock and rap-related styles.












I love dancing to any kind of music, and I hate concerts with seating. At a recent Nickel Creek and Fiona Apple concert, with a particularly danceable style, I couldn't stand sitting still during the first half of the show. Finally in the second half, I left the seats and danced on the side lawn under some trees. I couldn't hear the music as well, but it was worth it.

The most profound fact: "Even today, most of the world’s languages use a single word to mean both music and dance." Let's go to more concerts with dance floors and participatory activity.

How to find participatory concerts:










Style is the most important indication of how much you can participate. Folk music and rap (which, in its less commercial forms, is an urban folk style) tends to be more participatory. Blues, jazz, country, and rock and roll skew folk and attract more participation than classical music. "Indie" music, with its younger audience and its relation to folk, attracts less participation than I think it should, perhaps because it is often quiet and introspective, emphasizes the lyrics more than the sound, or attracts more intellectual/high-class, college-types. Perhaps I've just gone to the wrong indie concerts.

Smaller is better. Small music clubs generally have open seats; larger auditoriums tend to have seats. There are exceptions: Detroit's State Theater (now the Fillmore) has no chairs on its main floor, while the intimate floor of the Ark, a folk venue, had chairs out when I attended. High prices, such as classical concerts and big classic rock names, tend to draw an audience that skews older and upper class, which believe in staying still and acting dignified. More significantly, the high prices seem to indicate an experience that is valued more for its audiovisual experience than participation. Free, open-air venues, which eliminate concerns about space and seating, are the best, such as the lawn in front of a jazz band at the farmer's market. I particularly recommend large music festivals such as the Warped Tour, with a variety of independent and alternative rock acts from punk to acoustic to ska. They feature large, open-air audience spaces that invite singing along, crowd surfing, and great dances such as moshing.

link to "Dancing In The Seats" article

Loving music: children vs. adults

The Washington Post wondered - what if one of the greatest musicians played some of the greatest music on one of the greatest instruments - in the middle of the DC metro? The most interesting response to Joshua Bell's amazing performance wasn't that of the adults - it was the children. And the most disappointing response wasn't those who walked away of their own accord, it was the parents who pulled the children away.

The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother's heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. It may be true with music, too.

There was no ethnic or demographic pattern to distinguish the people who stayed to watch Bell, or the ones who gave money, from that vast majority who hurried on past, unheeding. Whites, blacks and Asians, young and old, men and women, were represented in all three groups. But the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.

Other sad tales:

A hundred feet away, across the arcade, was the lottery line, sometimes five or six people long. They had a much better view of Bell than Tindley did, if they had just turned around. But no one did. Not in the entire 43 minutes. They just shuffled forward toward that machine spitting out numbers. Eyes on the prize.

J.T. Tillman was in that line. A computer specialist for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, he remembers every single number he played that day -- 10 of them, $2 apiece, for a total of $20. He doesn't recall what the violinist was playing, though. He says it sounded like generic classical music, the kind the ship's band was playing in "Titanic," before the iceberg.

The lottery can be fun, but ultimately it's about greed - the idolization of money and goods, one of many sins that deadens the sensation of all true pleasures. The other passersby show a singleminded focus on the schedule of meaningless tasks and material accumulation - perhaps not the commission of greed, but it seems an offense to the Creator to lose all sense of meaning in your daily life. Follow the children. Stop to listen to the music.

(thanks to Kyle for the link)

p.s. I love authors like Gene Weingarten and many of the people in Slate. They write with excellent style, and I need to absorb some of that.