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2/21/1999 Puzzle Place Rant10:05 a.m. It's quiet around here right now. Tab left an hour ago to help some friends move. He's accruing moving credit; last month he helped Jim and Sheila, and he has promised his assistance in the future to another friend from work. The idea is that when it is our turn to move later this year, we will have a crew of folks who owe us favors. Daniel is spending the day with his grandmother. The twins are watching PBS. Puzzle Place is on right now. The public television station we usually watch has replaced Puzzle Place with Zoboomafoo in its weekday lineup, but Puzzle Place still airs on Sunday. Watching it now reminds me why I never liked this show. It is relentlessly PC. Most of the children's programs on PBS do a good job of incorporating multiculturalism without shoving it down the viewers' throats; Sesame Street is the shining example, of course. Sesame Street features people of every race, nationality, and physical ability (not to mention muppets of every color in the rainbow), but the characters' diversity is usually incidental to the storyline. In Puzzle Place, their diversity is the storyline. Respect for other cultures is a good lesson to learn, but using it as the sole focus of each episode makes for boring viewing. The kids seem to agree; they've turned it off and are asking to color now. Mom called yesterday afternoon to continue our usual Saturday chat. I had called in the morning but she was on her way out to watch my nephew's ice hockey game. Ryan's team was playing a team from Bangor. The Bangor kids, thinking themselves very worldly and cosmopolitan, laughed at Skowhegan's little outdoor rink as they entered the ice. They bragged loudly about their own modern indoor skating rink. But all that practice on an outdoor rink in subzero weather has made Ryan's team a hardy bunch: they beat the Bangor kids 8-2.
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