In Toronto someone was selling pre-carved pumpkins for Halloween. Can anything be more indicative of our time-starved society and the pressures on families to be involved in every calendar event while missing the joys that accrued to these in the past? The process of carefully slicing open a pumkin, removing the messy innards and then creating a face, artfully or not, and roasting the pumpkin seeds, shared between parents and children, was its own reward. We are raising a society of young people who know little of the simple joys of the past.