"Wild Things" should be rated PG13

We took our 4-year-old son to his first movie in a theater Friday.

The theater experience was good. Our son sat perched on his seat entranced with the scene. He remarked that the screen was bigger than our TV. He marveled at the runway-esque red lights that guide people to the stairs and their seats. He enjoyed nibbling on cheese popcorn (in a small Ziplock bag from home) while his friend Rachel, her mom, his mom and his dad enjoyed theirs. And he was amazed at the brightness outside after sitting in the dark.

But the movie "Where the Wild Things Are" was a bad choice. Thankfully, much of it was over my son's head, and he had the distraction of being in a movie theater for the first time.

I had read the book many times, watched a movie trailer, seen some advertisements for it and read a DNT blog that it would be a good movie to take the kids to. The outing had been suggested by my husband and Rachel's mom, both teachers who love children. I was sold and didn't do any further research.

The movie has a few similarities to the book: the look of Max and the monsters, some memorable lines of dialogue and the scene where Max, dressed in his wolf suit, chases the dog with a fork. But it is dark and violent, focused on raging out-of-control anger and physical abuse.

Mom gets a D- for this one.

The depths of unemployment

There's an excellent article in this month's Hadassah magazine called "Breaking a Recession's Social Barriers."

As someone who has been experiencing the depths of unemployment for a year now, I found Ilana Goldhaber-Gordon's commentary to be thoughtful, hopeful and even comforting. It also could be helpful to family, friends and still employed colleagues of those who are unemployed.

Here's the link: http://www.hadassah.org/news/content/per_hadassah/archive/2009/09_Oct/commentary.asp

Coal

It was an unexpected find among the rocks and driftwood that had washed ashore at the very end of Minnesota Point.

Being the granddaughter of two coal miners, I recognized it immediately. "Check this out," I called out to my exercise buddy as I bent to pick up the dark black lump. The coal was unexpectedly light in my hand.

I had been searching for unusal rocks to take home to my son and already was happy with some granite and sandstone beauties we had found. Now I was downright excited. I thought of all the things I could tell my son about this "rock," even imagining him taking it to preschool on his sharing day.

Our family history, how coal is used, the likelihood of where it came from, how it came to be on the beach at Park Point, connecting the songs he's been hearing about men working and dying in the coal mines on Kathy Mattea's tribute CD, fossil fuels, global warming -- there are plenty of things to learn from that one black lump.