Thinking about that girl crushed by a tree made me think of my daughter's wedding

Whoa, Nelly. The "conservative view of culture:"

Personal Post Script: Smith’s article helped give me a context for much about these traditions that seemed both foreign and admirable, although sometimes silly and even deadly. My experiences weren’t unusual: one semester, a girl sat in the back of a class I was teaching (many are co-enrolled and the traditions of the “big” campus influence those of our little one). She was not “there” much of the semester, clearly traumatized. She and a girlfriend had taken cookies out to the cut; somehow something terrible had happened and a tree fell across the car - killing her friend in the passenger seat. The combination of youth, lack of sleep, power saws, huge timbers, and far too much alcohol hurt many and some died. But that something was lost when the bonfire was banned was something even non-Ags like me could sense and, caught in the midst of these discussions, Smith saw where it had gone awry and still viewed the tradition with respect. This is clearly the work of years of thought not only about the bonfire but where we are going as a society.
But he also helped put something else in context - or at least helped me understand why I’d said something that even I thought was weird at the time. My first daughter was planning her wedding when it happened, already living with her husband-to-be and trying to plan for his clan’s American visit that would coincide with their wedding. I’d been a hesitant about the ritual and traditions, about the responsibilities of a large, at-home wedding. But that fall, the importance of the symbolic, of the ritual was brought home to me. My mother had been married at home, so had I. We had this mini-tradition going.

Ah, tradition.

Via Roy. Where does he find this stuff?