Someone asked me recently if I felt deprived growing up in a trailer park until age 6. No! And yes, we had a TV (black and white), and it had inappropriate things on it -- which could have been monitored a bit more. But we also had freedom.

Nobody can convince me that kids are any more likely now than in 1968 to be kidnapped and molested, but we were allowed, in the '60s, to run free. We made our own friendships, negotiated our turf, built bridges over a drainage ditch, rode bikes and roller skates, formed alliances, and looked out against bullies. I still wonder if trailer-park kids have more interesting lives as adults today.

But most families today live in an intellectual trailer park. I see the terror in parents' eyes when I suggest taking their kids to a park instead of "The Lion King" or Niketown while visiting New York. In other words, seeing real people doing real things, 99% of it perfectly legal but not involving fluffy orange puppets.

As for Mozart, though, who is saying this music's effects on kids is fraudulent? Get real about the promises of high SAT scores, but Mozart and all classical musics heighten awareness in ways that we will never be able to fully measure. So buy some real orchestral CDs, slap 'em on the stereo, and get down with it. Cultivate an appreciation for the finer things in life, whether it's sliding down a sandpile or sampling jazz -- turn off the DVD, escape the "Baby Mozart" ghetto -- and get OUTSIDE.

As one who never quite bought into the Cult of Diana, I nevertheless learned something here. I finally met Diana. Not just how she screwed up but *why* she screwed up by being raised in a bubble. She who didn't know better because she didn't know that there was anything better. Aren't a lot of people like that?

I have come to question not just the Dianas and Elton Johns and Bonos with their narcissistic save-the-world scenarios without even knowing the world, but the people who created them out of pure fantasy. "Princess Diana" was a construct, not a real person.

I once read a children's story in a women's magazine in the late '80s, written for real, grown-up women to read to their children, about two little boys and their mother who kissed them goodnight wearing a tiara, and I nearly vomited right there in the check-out line. It was a fantasy for women who had never grown up. The real person of Diana was valid even if flawed -- but irrelevant, because the person these fans created was just a piece of their own immaturity.

What we single women lack isn't available men. We lack instead the strength of an Austen heroine in SEEING our men beyond our self-centered fantasies. Mr. Darcy exists as a separate, unconquerable being; that's why he's so sexy by the end though never portrayed directly as such (or costumed in dripping breeches).

In Austen's novels, the leading man becomes irresistible only after an erotic charge builds up out of . . . restraint. We women can create our perfect men, not out of wishful thinking but out of realistic expectations and disciplined acceptance of our warriors. So keep your corsets on, ladies: abstaining not from sex but from self-indulgence and absolute control.

If you're not feeling great about your dates, that says a lot about how you live your life in general, not being really present to the beauty of the people right in front of you, regardless of their utility in making your dreams come true. That's your job anyway. Jane Austen's women moved in limited social circles; they could not easily trade in their prospects for better ones. Stop shopping at the man-mall, girls, and start relating.

I liked this interview and wish it could have continued for at least another page. It did not, however, deliver on its promise to explain "WHY it's impossible to predict the housing market."

I just wonder if it ever occurs to real estate "flippers" that housing is a place to live, and that a good proportion of people are being priced out of the market. There's an old American myth that games (markets) have only winners. (I really loved that part about the poor kids in the real estate class. So much for the classless, market-driven society.)

Kudos to people who put sweat equity into their homes and build wealth. Blessings on those who invest in neighborhoods and schools and share the benefits with the people already there.

However, wealth without production is inflationary. It's just basic economics. And market players are subject to, well, markets. Consider that if a lot of people are getting rich on real estate and sending their kids to fancy colleges, the price of fancy colleges is just going to go up further. They didn't create more fancy colleges in the process, so supply exceeds demand. And then they lose again when lagging demand for overpriced houses erodes their net worth.

Real estate maintains class differences. If you ever wondered why, generation after generation, the public schools don't get better, this is why. Why in the world would people vote for improving all schools, when the scarcity of good schools drives housing prices?

The author is right; this ain't no game for rookies.