Black Lamb

October 2011 in Black Lamb

Volume 9, Number 10 — October 2011

October 1st, 2011

The All-Family Issue

In the cover story of our All-Family Issue, Terry Ross examines the strength — and fragility — of family ties. In Family unfriendly, Greg Roberts wishes he lived in a more child-centered neighborhood. John M. Daniel remembers taking his kids to Disneyland in Magical kingdom.

Cervine Kauffman takes issue with the reverence for and misuse of the word “family” in American life. Lane Browning reveals her family’s favorite group activity in Logophilia. In Reunion, Toby Tompkins is pleasantly surprised at perhaps the last reunion of his extended family. In Blood is ickier than water, Ed Goldberg says it would be great if all the strands of his disconnected family could be woven together again, even temporarily. In Souvenirs, Elizabeth Fournier describes how saving loved ones’ body parts can be a form of fond remembrance. Dan Peterson recalls family members he looked up to in Heroes.

We welcome two figures from world literature into our pantheon of Honorary Black Lambs and The Ultimate Literary Calendar for 2012: French encyclopedist Denis Diderot and American lexicographer Noah Webster. Bridge columnist Trixie Barkis poses a problem. Our lamb recipe is for a delicious Greek lamb loaf. Advice columnist Millicent Marshall answers readers’ questions. And Professor Avram Khan gives us another challenging Black Lamb Word Puzzle.

Posted by: The Editors
Category: All Family Issue, Month summaries | Link to this Entry

Family unfriendly

A neighborhood without kids isn't normal.

October 1st, 2011

BY GREG ROBERTS

Our first mistake was moving into a neighborhood where families are anomalies. This university crowd is mostly childless, and some are downright hostile to the rugrat stage of hominid evolution. Most of us moved here decades ago, arrogant dickbrains from back East, raring to show the rest of the town that we were Beethoven or Twain or Margaret Mead reincarnated. Sickening egotists all. How many Edward Abbey impersonators do you know? Over the years I’ve met 500 of them in my front yard, just by being out there watering the spiderworts and lewisii. One of these guys was devoting his life to removing all place names on the map with the word “squaw” in them. He started a non-profit thing of some sort and probably received a grant. Not a very good Abbey impersonator, he seemed unaware of the author’s salty references to all the races.

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Posted by: The Editors
Category: All Family Issue, Roberts | Link to this Entry

Logophilia

October 1st, 2011

BY LANE BROWNING

There is Charades, and then there is Charades.

I come from what people would call an “intellectual” family; both of my brothers have doctorates, and each of them has been married to women with doctorates (my brother’s second wife had two). My sister is a retired surgeon married to an orthodontist; my nephew is a surgeon, my nearest cousin is a neonatologist, my nieces are bilingual and academically accomplished. My son, still in his teens, has already won science and math awards.

I’m the dumb one, but that’s not the subject of this essay.

Though I have sibs who speak multiple languages and have traveled all parts of the globe and published in impressive journals, what probably defines us as a group is our humor — and the games. When we congregate, the games predominate. Yes, there is a lot of conversation, and there is some cooking and eating and physical activity; but chiefly, it’s the games.

Not board games or games requiring pieces. In my family, the default is Charades and the runnerup is Dictionary Game.
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Posted by: The Editors
Category: All Family Issue, Browning | Link to this Entry