More News From Appalachia

These are tough times for children. Unemployed parents are in the house all day. Threats of foreclosure loom on the horizon, cars are being repossessed and trips to the ice cream shop are few and far between. Classroom failure is a constant, and success is defined as conformation to a statistic. Their lone pleasure comes from electronic gadgets, and for this adults criticize them. Flak jackets and condoms are standard issue in any lunch box. The world is unfeeling and unjust and just plain mean if you're small and weak. Their reality is a world in which, as the good Doctor said, "Rain is poison and sex is death." And now vultures vomit on them when they go to the playground.
It's starting off slow. It's isolated to a few places in Greeneville. Tennessee. It'll spread. It'll spread like the locusts and the frogs did in days of yore. It'll spread like a plague through London. Like white men in the new world. Kids don't get a break even in the best of times, and in days like these, every one of them is bound to be hit by projectile digested road kill just for playing spud. And the cure is worse than the disease. The Federal Government, in the guise of the Department of Fish and Wildlife, has recommended hanging dead vultures from the swingsets. Their carcasses, dripping maggots, are bound to scare off the other vultures, the reasoning goes. (Ignorant farmer that I am, it was my impression that dead things attracted vultures.)
The point remains that the playgrounds are not safe. There's broken glass and bullies and sexual predators. They now fear even birds. There is no refuge. Nature itself has now turned on the children, and the grown-ups are powerless to help.