Monday, August 31, 2009

Why I'm No Longer a Totes/Isotoner Customer

Thanks to Loralee's (@looneytunes) tweet today, I just found out about a wrongful termination case in the state of Ohio. The Supreme Court of Ohio has ruled that breastfeeding is unrelated to pregnancy and, therefore, a woman who was fired for taking breaks to pump milk for her baby was not wrongfully terminated.

You can read the post that Loralee's tweet sent me to at Writes Like She Talks. Enjoy, and don't forget to not give this company any more of your hard-earned dollars.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Saving Mister Rogers' Neighborhood

I should have written about this before but can't find that I have (shame, shame). I found this blog last year that is devoted to saving the program Mister Rodgers' Neighborhood (MRN) for generations of children to come. Talk about a worthy cause!

I have such fond memories of watching that show. The feeling of peace, acceptance and love is one I treasured greatly when I was young; I returned to watching it eagerly when The Biscuit was a newborn. I assumed that message would be available for him to hear for himself when he was old enough. Guess I was wrong.

PBS says they can't afford it. I especially like this paragraph from the current post:

While we can certainly empathize with PBS’ financial situation, surely, someone there must realize that nothing on their current schedule comes even remotely close to MRN in terms of affective development. But then they have to compete with popular cable programs like Yo Gabba Gabba — a creatively brilliant show, but one that is essentially crack for the toddler attention span.

That's right, "crack for the toddler attention span." I've never seen Yo Gabba Gabba (we don't have cable), but who needs that?

Apparently the powers that be haven't released the episodes on dvd either. At this point we are left with a campaign to get the shows released that way. I'm going to write to Family Communications (their contact page is here) and let them know how I feel. And next week when we are at the library I'm going to ask the children's librarian if she'll get involved.