Как правильно читается (по ) on a recent trip back to america, i decided to take a nostalgic walk through my old neighborhood, a walk down memory lane, as it were. i visited the baseball field where life-and-death games were played until die ball was nothing but a dangerous silhouette against the night sky. i walked through a small patch of urban woods where baseball players became fearless soldiers and crude tree branches substituted as guns. i set momentarily on the old wooden porch where lazy conversations warmed the chilly evenings. it wasn't until later that i realized something was oddly amiss: there were no children to be seen — anywhere. my old neighborhood had become a ghost-town, devoid of the voices of chil dren (cynics may counter that this is not such a bad thing). with a bit of detective work i soon discovered that the kids were all “interacting”, with some electronic gadget. if they weren't sitting blankly in front of a television screen, they were staring blankly at a computer screen; if they weren't playing a video game, they were sending an email to a friend, who probably lived right down the street in short, they were all “piuggedin” one way or another. and the playgrounds stood silent.
