Wiffle Ball War

This story in the NYT is amazing, but not unexpected. What else happens in a place so expensive the local day schools provide housing to teachers, who would otherwise have to live 1+ hours away from school and therefore not be available for tutoring and after-school events? The place has become too expensive for words, and it looks like the residents value that a lot more than simpler things that are in reality a lot more important.

What these kids are doing - building a whiffle ball field, for Heaven's sake - is great. It's American. It's 10 times better than anything else they could be doing. Seriously. They came up with the idea themselves, did all the hard labor themselves, and now play a game they like without having to be in a fancy league with rules, screaming parents, or expensive uniforms. Kids entertaining themselves - at something completely clean and harmless - WHAT A GREAT IDEA!

The article ends with this quote:

"All kids deserve a Huck Finn summer. We perhaps have lost our collective minds about our overscheduled, overstressed young. But, in the end, maybe there was a reason that Kevin Costner built that Field of Dreams in Iowa and not in Greenwich."

Yes, there is a reason he picked Iowa: apparently there's a lot fewer a**-backward whackos in the Midwest.

Link from Ann Althouse and Instapundit.