Children take flying fox to school

Sometimes you have to be amazed at the awesomeness of life. There's a little village down in Columbia where the only access to the outside world -- including the kids' schools -- is down these ziplines (the Aussies call a zipline a "flying fox"). The kids ride down them on pulleys and control their speed with a wooden stick. And they carry their younger siblings with them in sacks. First off, I HAVE GOT TO GET ME ONE OF THESE!!! My second thought is that I have to write a story about this, probably just using the concept of a girl zipping about on a flying fox as a kickoff point. Some of the comments on this story, particularly at the Daily Mail, are a bit boneheaded. It doesn't look safe? Do these pampered first-worlders understand how people who live in places like this risk their lives all of the time just to live? Sure it's dangerous, but look how calm and confident this girl is. Do children really benefit from having everything given to them wrapped in plastic? Who is going to face life better when she grows up, Daisy Mora or your local mall rat with her cell phone and iPod and vivid warning signs everywhere?

Dave Eggers had a few things to say about these fearful attitudes of our advanced world in a nice little novel he recently wrote...

Eff school buses; we could cut truancy down to near zero if we let kids go to school this way every day.

Best view of the pictures here, and as usual, Boing Boing's commenters are a bit less worried about the danger of it all.

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UPDATE: Sometimes the ideas just wash right over you and it's hard to keep them from sweeping you away with them. I have the story idea now. Boy, do I ever!

Capturing the Magic of Childhood

Somehow I missed this great review of WTWTA by Marshall Fine when it first appeared. It talks about the way the film portrays childhood, but doesn't get quite as, um, morose (too serious? or can one be too serious about play and childhood?) as my earlier interpretation. Both views speak equally to the greatness that is WTWTA. This isn't a movie that is easy to pin down, that's for certain.

...Jonze has made a career out of subverting genres and expectations, whether in “Being John Malkovich” or “Adaptation.” In this case, Jonze and Eggers have written a film that truly captures what it’s like to be a 10-year-old, in all its mood-swinging glory. This film is fueled by imagination, not driven by plot or built around structure. It’s a film about play and the sudden shifts it can take when someone gets upset or hurt or hatches an unexpected idea.

Beautiful, and absolutely correct.

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The Wild Things

As you might expect, I read this and enjoyed it quite a bit. I had never read Dave Eggers before, but right after reading The Wild Things, I read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. It was, of course, staggering.

The Wild Things was lots of fun! I love the way Eggers gets completely into Max's head without irony or affectation, and some of the expanded glimpses of the characters were fascinating. There's a lot of psychological depth going on inside the wild things, as well as inside Max. And as a fine example of unpretentious but brilliant writing, this little passage near the beginning of The Wild Things is where I fell in love with Dave Eggers:

One might think that a boy who was out in the snow for so long would get cold, but Max was not. He was warm, partly because he had on many layers, and partly because boys who are part wolf and part wind do not get cold.

Lovely.

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