whatever happened to blocks?

I just saw a story on the NYTimes website about the most popular toys for preschoolers this holiday seasons. Turns out laptops, MP3 music players, and digital cameras are the hottest toys this year ... for 3-5 year olds.

Get a GRIP, people! Preschoolers need blocks and cars they have to push to go "vroom" with, and dolls and pretend kitchens and puzzles, and bouncy balls they can throw and chase across the yard.

To paraphrase from the article, one of the hottest toys this year is an exercise bicycle connected to a video game. According to a toy industry analyst there's been a "huge jump" in the last year in toys that involve looking at a screen.

I saw the bike/video game thing in a catalog and thought it was the dumbest thing I ever saw.

I'm not speaking out of turn here...I have two children (T1 and T2) and I can report with great authority that they would probably have a brief fascination with that thing, and then it would gather dust.

On the other hand, T2 is still creating the most amazing structures with the basic wood block set his grandparents gave him for Christmas five years ago. He builds detailed courses for his Hot Wheels cars to travel on with wooden shims we got at the lumber store. T1 colors and draws with plain old Crayons, and makes toy critters out of rocks and things she finds in the yard, and castoff packaging from things we get shipped to us.

I found a box of marbles in my storage shed the other night that I had brought home from my parents' house several years ago. At the time T1 and T2 were too young to play with small marbles (choking hazard) but now they are old enough to not do that, so I got on the floor and taught them how to play. T2 is toting them around like a Major Prize Gift from the Gods now.

My sisters recently brought my kids the "Tiddlywinks" game. Again...how basic is THAT? And they LOVE it. Ditto with dominoes, Crazy Eight card games and the kid version of Monopoly.

I'm on my righteously indignant parenting soapbox right now, but puhlllleeeaaaase....don't ENCOURAGE your children to spend any more time in front of a TV/Video than they already do!!!!

Oh, and here's an idea...how about taking them out on REAL bikes for a ride?

12 step program

A good friend of mine informed me the other day that avoiding W.M. is sort of like being in a 12-step program. If you are trying to avoid it (like I claim to have been for nearly a year now) you have to find alternate ways of feeding your craving, especially in THIS town, when it offers the only reliable choice for groceries in a particular geographic area; you also have to confess when you've been bad and shopped there (I've been doing that a bit on this blog, but not enough) and you have to come to grips with who and what you are hurting when you shop there.

Even though she was gently teasing me at the time, it is true. It is too easy to fall back into the W.M. addiction, and I've defiitely fallen off the wagon of late. You would think that they planned it out or something. Market themselves specifically to me, even though I claim to hate the place. I do hate the place. I hate shopping there. I hate their smug corporate attitude. So why am I spending The Reenactor's hard-earned salary there? Even on the smallest purchase?

One word: convenience.

I find that I go there for weird multiples...I might have half an hour to shop for five items...trash bags, organic milk, DVD-Rs, a birthday gift for T2's friend, and ballet tights for T1. I need all of these items in the next 24 hours, and I have the choice of driving to four or five different stores....at least two of which would still be "big box" stores, of lumping all these errands into one location and being done with it.

So I'm guilty of shopping there. And I FEEL guilty. I feel bad that I'm supporting such an awful corporate culture. I feel angry that I don't have better choices for groceries and other items in the town I live in. I am disturbed that most of the items I buy there are made in a sweat shop on the other side of the world. I don't want to have such far-reaching consequences lumped on my hurried-up need for milk, toys, and trash bags.

I don't have an answer, I'm just venting. I am still going to make a choice to shop elsewhere as often as possible, and to avoid the big box stores as much as I reasonably can. I'm hoping that if there are enough of people out there like me doing at least a portion of their shopping elsewhere, that the big corporations will realize they ARE accountable to us to be responsible citizens. Maybe I'm dreaming....maybe I'm just fantasizing at this point....dreaming my dreamy dreams.

I can always hope, though.

China angst

I'm not the only one who really starting to get mad about this....(from MSNBC)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21825517/

of Chinese lights, and Indonesian colanders

Exactly WHAT do we manufacture in this country anymore? I have been making a lot of purchases in the last few days, mostly because we are in the throes of remodeling the kitchen and kids' bath, and as The Reenactor is like a man possessed about getting the job done, I'm all for making those runs to the big box stores for purchases as quickly as we need them. And I'm quickly realizing that I'm buying almost nothing made in this country.

This all started with a bonfire last week. We were burning the cartons from the kitchen cabinets we had installed the weekend before (those WERE made in the U.S.), and we decided to pitch in the remaining two broken cabinets from the old kitchen that had been hillbilly-ing up our front porch. As these burned quite nicely we decided that since the vanity in the kids' bathroom was broken as well, and we had been intending to replace it anyway, we went in, unhooked it from the wall and plumbing (I'm using the Royal "we" here....I didn't do any of that...the Reenactor did) and by golly, that went in the fire too. After that we realized we had pretty much commited ourselves to remodeling the bathroom at this point.

So anyway....back to manufacturing. In the last 48 hours I have purchased a ready-to-install vanity, lights, flooring, and various other products needed to get this done. I also made a side trip to a housewares store to buy some drawer organizers for my new cabinet drawers. The cool bamboo (renewable resource!) wood drawer divider I bought was made in Indonesia, as was the new colander I bought. I didn't search through every bin at the home improvement store, but I can pretty much guarantee that none of the lights I looked at were made in the US. I saw "made in China" on every box I picked up. Same thing for the other fixtures we've purchased.

Here's the thing.... I would actually BUY American-made products if they were available, and if the price difference wasn't grosssly unreasonable. It is the same choice I make when I seek out organic products. The more I have available to me, the more I will purchase.

Oh and now we have a toilet on our front porch. It adds to the overall ambiance of the place, I must say. And if any of you come to visit be aware that you might be greeted by a gap-toothed kid with no shoes on playing a banjo. And that would be T1.

and furthermore

Just to give you an idea of their editorial integrity, a week ago they published an opinion piece that mocked evolutionary biology.

As long as they can make a buck

I make it a point to not purchase my local newspaper. This is because it is poorly written, poorly edited, and pretty much a joke in the local community--especially for those of us who have lived somewhere else and realize what an asset a decent newspaper can be to a community. On top of this, the very wealthy family who own not only the local newspaper, but the local television station as well (and maybe a radio station or two?) are decidedly "right" in their politics. The newspaper is something of a print version of "Faux" News--pretty much unfair and unbalanced. I see no reason to give these people a dime.

Nevertheless, I do "read" their online version occasionally. You have to pay them to read the full stories...they have a paid online subscription, which I don't pay. Mostly I just a glance at the headlines to see if there is something of stunning importance locally I need to know. The irony here is that if there were, this newspaper probably wouldn't carry it, or would get the facts wrong.

One day a couple of months ago I did buy a newstand copy out of boredom while I was waiting for T1 and T2 at school. That particular day the editorial "opinion" was that global warming was a vast conspiracy made up by thousands of scientists and Al Gore, and that they (the editors) chose to believe the one "NASA" scientist* who says it is not only all a bunch of hoopla, but if we try to fight it we could actually make things worse. Kid ya not. I could literally feel the veins in my brain starting to snap and fizzle reading this editorial.

So in the last couple of days in my early morning checking of my online papers (I check three or four different newspapers online each morning) I noticed that the banner advertisement at the top of the local paper's website is a "fight global warming..learn how" ad. What the? Huh? I thought that was all a bunch of made up stuff? It is a legit ad...sponsored by the AdCouncil and the Environmental Defense Fund. So the message here is that even though your editors don't "believe" in global warming, they'll take money from an advertiser who is trying to prevent it?

I have a word for them, and it sort of rhymes with "mustard."

* The "NASA" scientist quoted in their editorial has ties to the oil industry. I guess they didn't bother to google him before they got all lathered up about how informed his opinion was.