The information age has ushered in an era of fear about children’s well-being, shifting norms heavily towards constant oversight and nearly impossible standards of safety. One casualty of that trend has been the playground, which has become mind-numbingly standard-issue—with the same type of plastic swing sets and slides—designed to minimize harm, rather than maximize enjoyment.
Over the last few years, however, pushback against the overly sanitized playground has grown considerably, with new research supporting the importance of play—especially unstructured play—for early childhood development. Critics also argue that concerns about actual harm are overstated. These findings have raised questions about playground design. Is the current playground model fostering creativity, independence, and problem-solving? What does risk really mean—and when is it OK? What can alternatives to current play spaces look like? And how can their benefits extend to all children in a city? Architects, researchers, childhood development specialists, and parents are weighing in on these questions around the world, and outlining a new vision for the future of play.
Writing a novel is a scary prospect. They’re so long and winding, they can seem never-ending. The main obstacle might seem to be starting – the terror of the blank page – but the real stumbling block lies elsewhere. There is no reason in the world why you can’t write a novel and the only thing stopping you from doing so is yourself. It seems such an insurmountable task and, in any case, you might ask yourself, why would anyone be interested in what I have to say? Who am I to have a voice? It is this lack of self-belief that is the main hindrance. It is the first thing any aspiring author has to get to grips with every time they sit down to write.
Writing is about claiming ownership of yourself in order to become the person you know you can be. It’s about acknowledging to yourself that writing is not just a hobby, but a profound force in your life, one that will help you to achieve a deep sense of self-expression. A novel is making your mark on the world. It is your cri de coeur. But bridging that gap will be a struggle. You will have to push yourself far outside your comfort zone. And you will have to be completely honest with yourself about why and what you want to write. The first question to ask yourself is: “What do I want to say?”
Max Weinreich, a linguist, made famous the wry remark that “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” The usual criterion for what is a separate language, and not a mere dialect, is that speakers of two languages should find it difficult or impossible to understand each other. But factors that have nothing to do with language often supersede the linguistic ones.
Neel Patel’s debut story collection is a study of doomed attachments. In “If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi,” no one is spared: Friendships fester, marriages combust and families fall into civilized distemper. Where did it all go wrong? Patel’s characters are trying to piece it together. In elaborate feats of retrospection, his 11 narrators re-enact conversations with lovers and friends, scrambling their memories for clues and causes. Hailing from backgrounds wealthy and working class, closeted and out, coastal and country, they seem to share a talent for unrequited love.
Translation, after all, entails its own set of artistic demands. Defined by both fidelity and freedom, it must offer transparency while remaining a touch inaccessible and foreign. “The task of the translator,” as it were, is rooted in creative limitation-as-inclination, in a need not only to communicate what escapes language but also to communicate it artfully.
But what if a translator judges the original text to be artistically inadequate? What if he argues that its narrative trails are begging for stronger connections, that its story exhibits glaring archetypal deficiencies, that its author is much too pretentious?
The book opens with a clear-eyed look at the early anti-GMO movement. But Lynas begins to ask questions and finds the slogans often don’t reflect scientific consensus.