Last night, my husband and I were looking at snapshots of our oldest son taken this year in eighth grade and back in fifth grade. In three short years, he's changed almost beyond recognition. He's shot up about six inches, his hair has gone from blonde to brown, and his little round baby face has grown longer and thinner. He's now got that fuzzy little middle school "stache" and will probably start shaving any day now. And his voice has cracked and dropped about a fifth.

We had barely noticed any of this happening, apart from the growth spurt and the little mustache. I look at older boys and can see the outlines of his continued transformation. It is a little scary. But we can't keep him locked in childhood forever, much as we love him that way. We have tried not to push him away, but he will be going soon of his own accord.

The point of parenthood is to raise independent, functioning adults, isn't it? But it is hard to think of them growing up and leaving us, even though it is the way things are.

Having children has allowed me to be in touch with my own younger self, for better or worse. There's always the wish to undo all of the things that damaged me as a kid, to protect my children and do it right this time, to remember my childhood triumphs through theirs. But there's a fine line between sharing my child's life and latching onto it like a vampire to make up for what's lacking in my own life. I try to give them room and hope for the best.

10,000 Maniacs summed it up pretty well:

Every time we say goodbye

you're frozen in my mind

as the child that you never will be,

you never will be again.

... Until a state does something they dislike. Why shouldn't California regulate its own greenhouse emissions if it has the legal right to do so based on its 40-year old EPA exemption? That's what federalism is all about: individual states having the power to work out solutions to problems. California has a long history of being ahead of the federal government on curbing air pollution. And the majority of California's residents want their state to regulate emissions of greenhouse gasses.

Those wacky Brits spell "subsidising" with an s instead of a z. Here's a working URL:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2007/12/subsidising_rootedness.cfm

This is bigger than the issue of renting vs. homeownership (which is in any case something that's specific to one's individual situation). The Economist blogger posits that encouraging rootlessness and transience would be an economic win because labor would become as fluidly allocated as capital. Laying aside the question of whether people should be treated as fungible work units, economics has been the driving force behind modern mass migrations. And government policies that affect how easy or hard it is to stay put do have an effect.

However, our econo-blogging Young Turk (or is it Young Turkey?) has completely ignored the downsides of his brave, new rootless cosmopolitanism. There's a cost to rootlessness in terms of frayed community bonds, lack of personal connection to others, negative effect on family relationships -- all those "pernicious communitarian myths" that he derides. Those without a stake in a community are more likely to let its institutions and infrastructure decay. Those without personal connections to others are more likely to commit crimes and behave anti-socially. And transience makes it more difficult for family members to mutually support one another. All of these things have a significan economic cost as well as a significant human one. Call it lack of social capital.

But of course the elites that read the Economist believe that ordinary people are interchangeable; we're valued only for the labor and services we provide to our corporate masters. That's the real pernicious myth -- not the idea that communities can benefit their members to the point where some prefer to stay there despite the economic benefits of moving! Presumably our blogger has never felt any sort of responsibility towards anyone other than his precious self -- not to his family, not to his friends, not to his community. But he is woefully ignorant of the fact that his corporate employer will discard him like a piece of used kleenex when it's convenient to do so, throwing him back upon the intangible bonds of community and family that he so derides.

Theologically, the Harry Potter series is milquetoast compared to "His Dark Materials," yet I've heard hardly a peep about it from the religious wackos until now. Even my conservative Christian friends who half-believed the arrant nonsense about Rowling's books had no opinion about Pullman's more theologically subversive series. Apparently a book needs to gain some kind of critical mass of publicity before the usual suspects come out of the woodwork to make spurious claims of demonism about it.

As for publicity, the Catholic League is getting tons of it for coming out against something that looks to be the next fantasy blockbuster.

In my opinion, the Catholic League, the Harry Potter-bashers and the Sudanese officials who jailed the teacher for the "Mohammed" teddy bear are birds of a feather. All are religious authoritarians who wish to eliminate free expression and critical thought. The main difference is that the Sudanese are the only ones with the power to prosecute people who commit religious thoughtcrime. I'm sure that the Catholic League and the anti-Potter fundies would eagerly punish anyone caught reading "His Dark Materials" or "Harry Potter" if they had the ability to do so.