The below letter responds to this post from yesterday, and I publish it because I enjoyed it so:
Hey Jay,
No great point here. In Östersund, Sweden, from second grade to sixth grade, my walk to and from school was by a massive ski jump (wooden/rickety) with no barriers to entry. My mom made a parachute for “Big Jim.” Jim, a GI Joe-type action figure, survived approximately a gazillion jumps before he got caught in a tree (autumn storm). What was my mom thinking?
I’ll repeat my point, or observation: In Scandinavia, there is big-time socialism but maybe not so much American-style nanny-statism. Do plastic bags there say, “Please Do Not Put Over Your Head, Because You May Experience Difficulty Breathing”? I doubt it. America’s lawsuit culture is cuckoo.
By the way, the fourth and final part of my journal “Up in Norway” is on the homepage now, here.