The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

The Secrets of the City, the newly launched Rake website, is now one of the Twin Cities coolest publications.  It is a web site chock full of outstanding suggestions for great nights out on the town.  Whether it is theater, movies, restaurant, or a banging new downtown club, The Secrets of the City has got the Twin Cities covered.  The wildly popular “Secrets of the Day” section leads Twin City trendsetters from one awesome happening to the next.  Sadly, though, I do not participate in any of it.   I suck.  Roy

The holiday spirit had barely dissipated last month when close to one-hundred-fifty people took to the streets to protest budget cuts for early childhood education. One protester was apparently so distressed by the lack of resources that she wailed and threw herself on her knees. Others tried to help her up, but she let her body go limp like an obstinate child. She was, in fact, four years old.

So, it sucks to park the car on Hennepin Avenue in the winter - scaling the piles of snow hardened into ice, trying not to fall against (or under) the filthy auto, hoping that busses and SUVs will not take the car door off (or at least slow down if they do) when you get get the frozen lock unlocked ... it especially sucks getting into/out of a car parked on Hennepin when you're toting a 10-month-old, however good-natured, and all of his attendant baggage. It sucks to do this at least twice daily, which you do when you don't have any other place to put the car.

I just picked up my two children from their school-supported daycare, at which time a young woman put her finger in the air and motioned for me to have a moment with her. I stepped aside and proceeded to listen to her complain that my son had been calling her, and other students and teachers, "sweetheart." She told me that she and some of the other students did not appreciate it, and that this behavior was unacceptable.

Jeannine Ouellette's puzzling article seems to cite the regimentation of children's lives and the role of technology as a threat to the development of imagination. As a girl in the '50s and '60s, I faced far more restrictions to my imagination and free play than any kid today.

This is a story with a hopeful ending. Lucky, even. But be forewarned, you have to get through a lot of hopeless, unlucky crap before you find it.

Here’s how it all starts: My first-born son has autism.

Boys will be there but your parents will not,” promised the summer camp brochures that came in winter’s mail like seed catalogs. There were pamphlets for marine biology camp in Florida, space camp in Alabama, and some sort of geology road trip called the Central Rocky Mountain Institute. “I hear scientific greatness calling me,” I said to my parents, handing over the stack of glossy pictures and application forms. “It’s for my education,” I insisted.

 

My five-year-old son, Peter, is standing in the middle of the practice rink at Parade Ice Garden in Minneapolis. The other children, coached for this moment by their parents, can push off their skate edges in a wobbly glide. Peter hasn’t made the connection that skating is an entirely different motion from walking. He marches across the ice, arms akimbo, his blades tick, tick, ticking where they should carve and slide.