The Kids Are All Right

‘I can’t really feel bad for this rich kid with a weekend free in New York City.’

Somehow I missed this winningly titled article, Get a Life, Holden Caulfield.

These days, teenagers seem more interested in getting into Harvard than in flunking out of Pencey Prep. Young people, with their compulsive text-messaging and hyperactive pop culture metabolism, are more enchanted by wide-eyed, quidditch-playing Harry Potter of Hogwarts than by the smirking manager of Pencey’s fencing team (who was lame enough to lose the team’s equipment on the subway, after all). Today’s pop culture heroes, it seems, are the nerds who conquer the world — like Harry — not the beautiful losers who reject it.

Every now and again, something I read in the newspaper really perks me up.  But the best line was the last:

Ms. Feinberg recalled one 15-year-old boy from Long Island who told her: “Oh, we all hated Holden in my class. We just wanted to tell him, ‘Shut up and take your Prozac.’ ”

One wonders whether pharmacutical improvements will be treated as basic hygiene in the near future; listless moodiness might soon be equivalent to offensive odor.  The future is looking bright!

Free-range Death

I visited a farm or two as a child, and was allowed to run in the corn field and harass the chickens.  A generation ago, this would have been true of many, perhaps most Americans.  Thank goodness that we know better now!

To enforce these rules, retail buyers have sent forth armies of food-safety auditors, many of them trained in indoor processing plants, to inspect fields.

“They’re used to working inside the factory walls,” said Ken Kimes, owner of New Natives farms in Aptos (Santa Cruz County) and a board member of the Community Alliance With Family Farmers, a California group. “If they’re not prepared for the farm landscape, it can come as quite a shock to them. Some of this stuff that they want, you just can’t actually do.”

Auditors have told Kimes that no children younger than 5 can be allowed on his farm for fear of diapers. He has been asked to issue identification badges to all visitors.

Not only do the rules conflict with organic and environmental standards; many are simply unscientific. Surprisingly little is known about how E. coli is transmitted from cow to table.

Have they gotten ’round to banning smoking near farms?  Just think of the effect of third-hand smoke on your stomach lining!