Progressive Wednesday

Father’s Day is about the children

I woke up this morning to my wife playfully tossing my 19-month-old daughter between us in bed. She was wearing an ear-to-ear smile on her beautiful little face (as she does every morning) and a shirt that my wife bought her yesterday that said, “I love my Daddy!– on the front. And as I do every morning, I thought, “I'm the luckiest man on the planet.”

But my thoughts seldom end there; this morning they quickly turned to fathers who are less fortunate and their children. So I went downstairs and found an organization spending Father's Day helping those families.

The National Father's Day Council last week held its 65th annual Father of the Year award, honoring seven fathers who have “attained success in their chosen fields, and have found the time to be role models in raising their children.– Here they are:

• Allen Sirkin, President & COO, Phillips-Van Heusen
• General George W. Casey, Jr., Chief of Staff, United States Army
• Hulk Hogan, Professional Wrestler
• Tom Glavine, Pitcher, New York Mets
• Harry Smith, TV Anchor, “The Early Show,” WCBS-TV
• John R. Edwards, former U.S. Senator & Presidential candidate
• Dwayne Wade, Guard, Miami Heat

Now I know that there are fathers that are more deserving than these and that they are only receiving this because they are famous, but the award isn't really for them:

Proceeds from the event will be donated to Save the Children’s United States Programs, which benefit almost 35,000 children who live in areas of persistent rural poverty. Partnering with schools and community organizations, Save the Children provides high quality early childhood development services for children from birth to age five, and literacy and physical activity/nutrition programs for children from kindergarten through eighth grade.

Last year they raised over $100,000 for “Save the Children's– Gulf Coast Hurricanes Recovery Fund through fund-raisers and private donations. They hope to exceed that his year.

So instead of that last-minute, 20 dollar necktie that your father will probably only wear because he's a good father and doesn't want to hurt your feelings, why not send that money to children whose fathers are not so lucky. Do it in Dad's honor. You can donate just those few dollars here. Plus, you can feel all warm and fuzzy about donating to Save the Children. According to CharityNavigator.org, 91% of donated funds go towards program expenses rather than administrative costs and they receive four out of a possible four stars. So make progress in peace, my progressive friends.

A Book Does a Body Good

Problem:

You need to read to your little ones, and you need to find some books that they can read to you. You know all children's books, especially those designed for the younger sets, have morals, sometimes explicitly stated, sometimes not. You want to find books that espouse a world view that doesn't conflict with yours, and may even help encourage your wee ones to believe what you believe, baby.

Or maybe you don't have any tikes of your own, or, you know, maybe yours are a bit older and can be found flipping through the pages of the latest Danielle Steel offering, The Bible, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Supercharged Kama Sutra, and Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, which changed and inspired the lives of a few of the folks at Progressive Wednesday.

Regardless, odds are you believe in the important relationship between children and books. And here's the other problem: plenty of children don't own any books, and many others don't even have access to books outside of school. And as progressives, we owe it to children, all children, to let them have as close to the same youth as we'd want for our own. We owe them this because we want to protect innocence. And we owe them this because want a caring, intelligent, articulate, and creative generation to come. We want a better world, so we want a world with more books.

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Make Progress:

To take some action this Wednesday is simple, really. It's simple as A, B, C, D, one, two, three, four– ¦.

• Buy (or Borrow) & Read
• Find & Tell
• Recycle
• Give

Photo thanks to this picture-clicker.

A Book Does a Body Good: Buy (or Borrow) & Read

Buy (or Borrow) & Read:

We've compiled a brief list of books (sixteen to be exact) we'd recommend reading to your future progressives. If you're interested in picking up a copy of any of these tomes for your very own, we recommend going through a small, privately-owned Western New York business, The Book Corner. These guys make finding odd or out-print-books look like making instant pudding. (Mmm– ¦ pudding.) Of course, you can always hunt down most of these titles through your local library or library system (we did).

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I Live on a Farm by Stasia Ward Kehoe

Kehoe's book uses photos instead of illustrations, and teaches children about items and actions unique to farm, such as storage silos, bales of hay, barns, tractors, harvesting, and irrigating. The book also has a discreet anti-pesticide message. We believe this book will help kids who live on farms have more pride about where they live, and will help suburban and city kids better understand life in rural America. Empathy is the most progressive of emotions.

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Spiders by Ann Heinrichs

Spiders is a children's science book that discusses the benefits of spiders (which are referred to as “nature's friends– ) to both the environment and humans. With Heinrichs' book, kids can learn key science terms, scientific history, cultural myths, and facts about reproduction. The text also addresses the common fear of spiders: “Spiders are afraid of you. To a spider, you look like a giant.– To further ease fears, Spiders emphasizes that very few arachnids are dangerous to humans. Kids also encouraged to be in awe of both spiders' silk and webs. We'll take appropriate awe over fear any day.

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At Daddy's on Saturdays by Linda Walvoord Girard

This 32-page picture-book helps kids understand the true causes of divorce (read: it's not the child's fault). Little readers also learn that both parents, despite separation, still love their children, that sadness is an understandable reaction, and that a child can feel at home with both their mother and father. We highly recommend At Daddy's on Saturday's, as well as the other books by Girard, who's not afraid to tackle emotionally charged topics like AIDS, adoption, and sexual abuse.

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Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by Doreen Rappaport

This beautifully designed book won Best Illustrated Children's Book of 2001 from the New York Times Book Review, and deserved it. The book shares the biography of Dr. King along side breathtaking drawings and pithy, inspiring quotations drawn from Dr. King. The heart of the book is that courage, love, learning, and human rights shall win the day. Rappaport doesn't gloss over Dr. King's death, and she reminds kids that good work and good words on earth live on after you do. Both are, in fact, a way to make progress.

Continue reading ‘A Book Does a Body Good: Buy (or Borrow) & Read’

A Book Does a Body Good: Find & Tell

Find & Tell:

If you'd like a method for discovering additional famous and not-so-famous progressive easy-readers, you can ask librarians online 24/7. Allow us to point you to Read This Now, a service provided by the public libraries in Ohio. To increase the odds you get a like-minded librarian assisting you online, we recommend entering the zip codes for either Columbus (43210) or Cleveland (44101), two of the more progressive cities in the Buckeye State.

When you find other suggestions, we'd dig hearing them — just contact us and we'll pass them along to our readers. Also, you can start a List or a Guide of recommended children's books on Amazon.com. Here's the thing, just label it “Great Children's Books– or something like that. There's no need to label them as progressive. They're just great books, so call them that.

Universal Child Care – Making Life a Little Easier

After reading the Monday Morning Mother column by Melissa Brannen, “ Not quite Wonder Woman, but close,– I was moved to write something, being a stay-at-home father, about parenting. I love it. It is truly the most rewarding thing I do. And thanks to my hardworking and underappreciated wife, I haven't had to get a regular paying job. I don't envy the role of single parents trying to juggle the importance their job with that of raising their child. In order for a single parent to afford daycare, they would have to make and extra $4,000 to $14,000 a year for an infant, and $3,900 to $10,200 for a toddler.

But not in Quebec. Canada's largest province has had a state-funded childcare system since 1997. So how much does it cost per day for our friends to the north to send their children to daycare?

The initial cost to parents was $5 a day. This increased this year to $7 a day. On average, monthly child care costs for parents in Quebec would amount to $140 a month, or $1,620 a year. In the rest of the country, parents foot a bill for regulated child care ranging between $3,300 and $10,000 a year.

Of course the system isn't perfect (show us one that is), but it would make it a little bit easier for single parents and lower income families to achieve their financial goals while providing good care for their children. It will still be hard, but that's good. I like that it's hard. It should be. That's part of what makes it so rewarding. But knowing that regardless of how things go at work your children will have the proper care is a peace of mind that all parents should know.