You know you want it!

I am finally getting some stuff together at the Book-Kitten Cafepress store. The main goal is to make some cool shirts for kids. I like the idea of making empowering shirts that the shorties can wear without being walking billboards for corporate America. I've already created a special shirt for some peace-loving twins I know and a shirt for Miss Lily-Belle as well as a few others. We'll see how it goes. In the meantime, here's a teensy preview:




If you'd like to buy something, I'd love to sell to you!

Be ye a-feared of me!

Okay, so don't ask, but I just found out my secret Pirate Identity. Arrrgh!

My pirate name is:

Dirty Charity Rackham

You're the pirate everyone else wants to throw in the ocean -- not to get rid of you, you understand; just to get rid of the smell. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
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Not sure what to be for Halloween?

(This is killin' me!) Buycostumes.com has a "Naughty Librarian" costume for sale.

=:'-D

Baby Got Book tees

I have finally gotten a (very) few things up in a Book-Kitten store, including Baby Got Book shirts. I'll add more eventually, but it took almost all night to edit the mudflap girl for the graphic. I really wanted to get the tees done, though, so we could wear them on our Asthma Walk in a few weeks...

This is one of the saddest things I have ever heard...

From MSNBC: Staff at a zoo in southwest China are in mourning after a sleep-deprived panda dropped her two-day-old baby and crushed it to death, local media reported on Friday.

Poor Ya Ya!

Read the whole sad story here.

Is braiding someone's hair dangerous?

From The Reader: Black women have been braiding hair for generations, and until recently they didn’t need a license to do it for a living. Now the state requires braiders to spend thousands of dollars on beauty school, where they must learn to cut, dye, and perm--services they never wanted to provide. Instead they’re going underground.

Apparently, the cosmetology industry thinks it's not safe for an unlicensed woman to braid another's hair. How utterly ridiculous! This fascinating article in The Reader explores the issues of licensing for braiders and lockticians and examines the rifts between the communities of African-American and African natural hair-care practioners.

Read the whole article here.

Mold-a-Rama!

I *love* Mold-a-Rama. I love the way it smells, the way it is hot when it comes out of the machine, the way you can dent Lincoln's head if you push the hot figure ever so gently when it is freshly made. (NOT that I do that anymore...) On one of our first dates, Science Boy bought me a Mold-a-Rama space shuttle which now lives on our bookshelves.

Today's Chicago Tribune features an article on Mold-a-Rama and the guys who keep it running.

Comfort Reading

Science Boy and I are watching a heartbreaking documentary on Hurricane Katrina. Even among all the tragedy, my favorite Camus passage (from The Plague)comes to mind. pehaps I have blogged it before, but I feel a need to repeat it again, like a mantra:

Dr. Rieux resolved to compile this chronicle, so that he should not be one of those who hold their peace but should bear witness in favor of those plague-stricken people. . . and to state quite simply what we learn in a time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.

for cryin' out loud

I don't even have words...