Return with us now to yesteryear

As a grade schooler in the ‘50s, I took a couple of trips to San Francisco and Portland when he led his commercial art students there on extended field trips. Despite my provincial upbringing in a small southern Oregon town (where my friends and I would take our .22’s on a Saturday to prowl the surrounding hillsides), Dad frequently left me to roam the cities alone while he and his class were touring some advertising agency. Today, I suppose, he’d be hauled in by CPS. There were never any horror stories.
I reflected on those days after hearing about this Web site.
Columnist Rosa Brooks will have more to say on Friday’s Opinion page, but the theme has to do with whether we are smothering our kids these days.