I Want to Be a Witch by Ian Cunliffe

When and where I grew up, we learned that witches were wise and powerful women who were persecuted for it. We sang this song:

So, imagine my delight when we pulled this book off the shelf. It's about a little girl who wants to be a good witch. My kid and I both highly recommend it.

hardly strictly all the best artists who played

My daughter and I love the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival every October in Golden Gate Park. We don't get to stay very long because young miss can only stay cool for so long. But this year, my favorite artists we saw were:
Malawi Mouse Boys
Hurray for the Riff Raff
Of course, many amazing artists played. These were just our (read: my) favorite this year. Thanks for listening.

a child-safe Pandora

My daughter and I were listening to "Let It Go" (from the Disney movie Frozen, which every preschooler I know is obsessed with right now) radio on Pandora this morning, and the music paused for an ad. I was appalled when that ad was to combat "muggers", "rapists" and other "creeps" with some special phone feature. My daughter didn't seem to notice. The music played on. When the ad played a second time, and I couldn't find a button to give it a thumbs down, I sent an email to Pandora. In their defense, they sent this response within a few hours:


Stations that have the word (Children's) in the title will automatically have explicit content filtered out, but you can also restrict Pandora from playing songs or displaying ads with explicit language. To do that you need to sign into your account on a computer.

Once you're signed in, click your email address (or name) in the top right corner and select Settings.
Select "No. Do not allow explicit content." To protect this setting with a PIN, choose a password and an email address to send it to in case you forget the PIN.
Click the Save Changes button when finished.

Enabling this filter will limit Pandora to playing music that could play on daytime broadcast radio. Note that this can only be applied to the entire account and NOT specific stations. Once set, this will restrict explicit content for that account on all devices, as well.

Maybe it's the mommy hormones talking, but I don't want to hear fear-mongering ads like that EVER.