I had no idea when we were taking these photos a couple weeks ago that this wax statue of Conan O'Brien probably won't be at Universal Studios the next time we go there. Will it be replaced by wax Jay Leno? Was there a Jay Leno statue there before?
I've just started looking through "How to Be an Everyday Philanthropist: 330 Ways to Make a Difference in Your Home, Community and World at No Cost" by Nicole Bouchard Boles.
I'm sure I'll comment on it more as I continue on, but I didn't get much further than the press release before this caught my eye:
"Encourage your video game-obsessed adolescent to try one of the online games that allow players to virtually walk in someone's shoes. Games for Change (gamesforchange.org) offers a series of digital games that promotes awareness of social problems."
— Media materials for "How to Be an Everyday Philanthropist" by Nicole Bouchard Boles
Since I am, in fact, a parent of a video game-obsessed teen, I figured I'd better take a look and arrived here:
At Games for Change, kids can play socially-conscious video games.
I couldn't resist trying a game called "A Moose's Love," aimed at preschoolers. According to the website, "A Moose's Love is an allegorical game about a marginalized moose trying to grow his tree of happiness." How could I go wrong? Apparently in a whole lot of ways, since my poor moose's tree died. I think he managed to make a couple friends before his hopes for happiness withered, but that's small consolation.
It's a simple game, played with the arrow keys on the keyboard, and I'm sure my kids could have figured it out instantly. The question is whether they'd play it in the first place. I'd love them to try, just because I like the concepts the games teach: waging conflict using non-violent methods, managing a third world farm, global poverty and hunger, refugees' experiences and addiction, among others.
I'm impressed with the offerings and despite my failure to earn my moose universal acceptance, I'm inclined to check out some of the other offerings. I might even consider extending my son's gaming time if he tries out a couple.
If anyone has tried the games, or can get their kids to try them, let me know how they are.
In anticipation of the season of buying, I’ve been embracing the spirit of giving and taking the kids along for the ride. They’d been enthusiastic — urging me to feed the poor, help the homeless and support several charities — but they weren’t thrilled when I told them I’d been buying fair trade products made from recycled items from an organization that matched every purchase with books and food.
As I described things made from bicycle tires and chains, old newspapers and magazines, seatbelts, candy wrappers and soda can tabs, they heard “trash.” They weren’t impressed that all my gift purchases to date serve a greater purpose. I’m pretty sure they wanted me to hear them muttering brand names and “Is that all we’re getting?”
Apparently, socially conscious isn’t socially acceptable as far as they’re concerned. I say they can take it up with Santa.
Don’t believe me? When I looked to my 6-year-old daughter for validation, she bounced around enthusiastically as she informed me, with just a bit of superiority: “The only best parts were the whole play, silly! The play was awesome! You know I love history!”
In a play aimed at kids age 5 and up, you might expect some of history’s darker moments to be off-limits, but McCarthy gleefully dashes eager young volunteers to their imaginary deaths, touches on the Civil Rights movement through a ghost story and has the whole audience singing along to a song about Ruination Day (April 14), which highlights Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, the sinking of the Titanic and the devastating Black Sunday Storm of 1935 (the inspiration for Woody Guthrie’s “Dust Storm Disaster”). In another singalong moment, Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” gets a bit of an update to reflect Hawaii’s statehood, which McCarthy points out, was unanimously voted against by all representatives of Niihau.
That little nugget of history is one of several “surprising” facts the award-winning storyteller and songwriter drops during a performance that covers a good bit of ground, considering it runs just under an hour. But those nuggets, woven together with American folktales and lesser known facts, create an fascinating and uplifting American timeline that elevates the disenfranchised, but more importantly, sends children away protesting injustice and inequality, even if they just think they’re singing catchy songs and retelling funny stories.
In that regard, the play, which has two public performances left on Saturday, is just fun. It’s hard not to enjoy the work of a good storyteller, and McCarthy keeps the audience so engaged that even tone-deaf and rhythmically-challenged audience members like me can’t resist when encouraged to sing along. McCarthy primes the audience from the very beginning, using clever lighting and creative use of a guitar to add extra dimension to a Native American folk tale about stars before trading his acoustic for an electric guitar to rock-out to the “Star Spangled Banner.”
The star power — the constellations, the stars on the flag, the glitter of gold dust and the sparkle of snowflakes — helps keep the tone upbeat even when the topics aren’t, and that’s what my daughter held onto after the play. She might not have grasped all the humor and irony or understood the gravity of the injustice that led to women’s suffrage and civil rights movement, but it didn’t matter.
“Rules is rules,” she said, when I asked what she’d learned. She might not have seen how those words could lead to both equality and inequality, but she’s the perfect age to understand that some rules need to be questioned and sometimes you need to clamor to be heard. “It’s not fair,” she said, which could have applied to many of the stories told in the play, but instead of elaborating, she just started singing “This Land is Your Land.”
“Stripes and Stars” has performances at 1:30 and 4:30 p.m. Saturday at Tenney Theatre. For information and reservations, visit www.htyweb.org or call 839-9885.
I've always been disconcerted by the sight of red-cheeked Santa and red-nosed Rudolph displayed next to pale vampires and green witches, so no matter what retailers have to say, I refuse to accept that the holiday season begins before Halloween.
But now it's November and I expect that at some point in the middle of the night, all evidence of Halloween was moved aside to make way for Thanksgiving- and Christmas-themed items, which will delight my daughter, who bought her Halloween costume in September and has been eager to move on to the gift-giving days ever since.
This year, my material girl surprised me. She's always been a giver, although at age 6, she's never been much concerned about who owns the items she's giving away, or what value they might have. I've graciously accepted extravagant gifts like my mother's wristwatch (and returned it to its rightful owner) and just recently stopped her before she generously distributed items from a box of mementos I've been holding on to since I was about my son's age, persuading her instead to give away original pieces of her artwork.
Since she doesn't share my reservations about mixing up holidays, she started watching the new Veggie-Tales DVD "Saint Nicholas: A Story of Joyful Giving" when it came out a few weeks ago. The main video explains all the mythology surrounding Santa Claus, with a serious lesson about anonymous giving woven in with typical VeggieTales silliness when the story doesn't match up to the story about the jolly old elf who lives in the North Pole and delivers toys on demand.
What really drove home the lesson for my daughter was information about Operation Christmas Child, which sends shoeboxes full of gifts to children in need. My daughter and I are currently locked in an ongoing debate about where to send boxes — I point out that there are people in need in Hawaii, she frets about the people featured in the video who don't have anything — but I have no problem with helping her fill shoeboxes, especially since she has decided that it's a good use of her Christmas fund, which she could have used on herself.
It's a good lesson for a little girl who likes to shop for toys and periodically give the excess to charity because — like Larry the Cucumber in the VeggieTales video — she's learning that it's not about toys. She can pick little toys, of course, but the shoebox project requires her to really think about some of the things she takes for granted: pencils and notebooks or toothpaste and soap. While she's been known to hide hairbrushes to avoid getting her hair detangled, she's going to discover that a brush might be a luxury for some children.
It's different from shopping for Toys for Tots (practically the only holiday shopping I really enjoy doing with the kids), because while it's good to think about what kind of toy might make a child really happy, it's so much more important to think about what children need to survive.
