I had a wonderful Christmas and got a lot of nice gifts, though the nicest was the chance to be with family and to watch Edwin get passed around from Grandmother to Uncle to Cousin to Great-Aunt. It reminded me of the description of the !Kung people in Harvey Karp's book The Happiest Baby on the Block. In tribes like the !Kung, infants are constantly being passed between family members and fellow tribesmen and women. In fact, in some tribes, babies aren't even allowed to touch the ground until at least one year of age. Talk about attachment parenting! Although I don't think this is feasible in our society, a recent article in Newsweek reported that children in hunter-gatherer societies, where the village raises the child, grow up to be much more confident and independent, with stronger social skills and better formed personalities, than Western-society children do.
This post just got away from me. I had meant to write about charitable donations, and how I find it difficult to choose a pet charity to give my money to. Does anyone have any charities that they are particularly devoted to? Why that specific one? My parents give a lot of money to charity, and they sometimes ask me where I'd like a donation to go in my name. I usually say the Make-A-Wish foundation or the American Cancer Society, but I know there are other wonderful foundations out there. It's hard to decide what I'm most passionate about. Curing cancer? Cleaning up the environment? Promoting music in our schools? Literacy programs? Saving animals? How do I choose when everything is so important? How do you choose?
Lastly, for those of you waiting for the Wallaby Christmas story sequel, it may be coming soon. I got several pages of good material and then kind of burned out with all the holiday hoopla. I know I'll finish it at some point, but if it takes me awhile I might wait until next Christmas to publish or post it. Just to give you a little preview, it's about a character who is only mentioned once in Sugar and Spice, and her secret obsession with a popular book series.
I can't think of another random topic, so I'll sign off here. Enjoy the last weekend of 2012!
I usually pick as local of a no-kill shelter as I can to donate to, in terms of pet charities. They use the most of the money to actually care for the animals. I avoid the Humane Society and the ASPCA because not all of their shelters are no-kill, and they spend too much of the donated money on PR. A necessary evil, but I'd rather support locally. If you want to go to my favorite no-kill shelter, the Susquehanna SPCA (just type in that name and dot com or dot org or do a google search on them) is always looking for donations. They were instrumental in rescuing almost 100 dogs from a puppy mill in Worcester last year, and have been active in helping other dogs ever since. And cats. :)
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