A harried commuter buzzes along the highway. A field rises up to the right. At the top of the knoll stands a simple brown barn, its gambrel roof outlined against the early morning sun. Ah, a fleeting visual respite from the modern world, a journey back to the agrarian past, a simpler time when we were closer to the land.

Well, yes and no. This particular structure is not a barn. It is actually a state Department of Transportation salt storage shed. But it was purposely built to look like a barn because, well, we expect to see barns in the country. They're distinctive, they fit...

In the 1960s my three brothers, sister, parents, and I used to visit my Uncle Woody, who lived in Levittown, Pennsylvania, one of the most famous suburban developments in America.

Uncle Woody was visibly proud of his little house. It was immaculate inside and out. He put a bowl of fancy chocolates on the coffee table, and we sat around his cramped living room enjoying the picture window. At Christmastime, he decorated the whole place, even wrapped tinsel around the railing of a staircase that seemed to lead nowhere; it, in fact, ended at an attic trap door.

Uncle Woody died...

On October 25, 2002, schoolchildren in the Washington area emerged gleefully from locked classrooms and ran out to the playground. “Recess is back,” proclaimed The Washington Post. But had the snipers who shut down ordinary life for weeks chosen to attack in Chicago, or Atlanta, or parts of Texas and Florida -- or many other places -- the children wouldn't have marked the return to normality by going out for recess again. Children in these places do not have recess—ever.

Recess has been disappearing quietly, school by school, for at least two decades. Its...