I can recall watching the show as a kid and picking up cues about racial tolerance and how bigotry can hurt someone’s feelings. Or giving to others instead of being greedy. What loss feels like after a loved one passes away (YouTube).

Or how it is our differences which make each of us the special person we are…even little furry monsters.

After Katrina, there was an episode where Big Bird lost his nest in a hurricane.  The Sesame Street community came together to help him rebuild. 

For parents and educators? There was a whole curriculum program put together to help teach children to cope with weathering a fierce storm in their own lives.  It was brilliantly done.

So, when I heard that the Children’s Television Workshop had a special in the works on the economy and its impact on families, I had to find a copy to view. 

Above is a promo clip for "Families Stand Together," which aired on most PBS stations nationally on September 9th. If you missed it, you can view the whole episode here.

And you should, because it is wonderful.

As they move from table to table and story to story, Roker and Roberts ask how each family is coping and celebrate their ability to put togetherness before material things. Even so, the series of mini-docs will make an adult viewer swallow hard more than once. Jobs have been lost, and homes, families that were planned on the foundation of a solid-seeming career now teeter, mothers wipe away tears and proud parents find themselves having to ask for help — financial, psychological — from family and local agencies.

Although the emphasis is kept firmly on the importance of love and careful planning, "Families Stand Together" makes it clear that there is no magic wand, no fairy-tale ending in sight. These hard times are real and must be endured, sacrifice is required, and comfort comes not from a sudden windfall but from knowing that many have, and are, going through the same sort of thing.

This is the way to convey not only a sense of compassion and caring, but also to foster a sense of community that is sorely needed as so many folks struggle to get by.

dday recently examined the new census data, and it is absolutely devastating:

The U.S. Census Bureau has just announced that the poverty rate for 2008 was 13.2%. This means the number of people in poverty has increased by about 2.5 million, to 39.8 million. To give you some perspective, 2.5 million is more than the number of people who live in Detroit and San Francisco combined.

The only way that any of this gets better is if we all pull together and help each other through it. Poverty is an issue that needs broader discussion, especially as more and more families with children are forced to tighten their belts even further. (more…)

Brilliant Oxfam campaign ad via net_efekt.

Meanwhile, how the other half lives still isn’t pretty:

The National Academy of Science’s formula, which is gaining credibility with public officials including some in the Obama administration, would put the poverty rate for Americans 65 and over at 18.6 percent, or 6.8 million people, compared with 9.7 percent, or 3.6 million people, under the existing measure.

The original government formula, created in 1955, doesn’t take into account rising costs of medical care and other factors.

Seriously, the formula for calculating poverty rates among the elderly hasn’t been changed since 1955? And it’s never taken into account rising medical costs in a rapidly aging population? That’s incredibly daft, so much so that one would think it was deliberate to prevent the public from knowing the full extent of the problems.

What kind of problems, you ask? Ones like this:

Like many older people, Woodruff and his wife spend a tremendous portion of monthly expense money on medicine, he said.

“I know people that don’t even eat to pay for their prescriptions,” he said.

He also knows people who ration medication into smaller dosages just to get by, in addition to those who struggle with everyday expenses such as his own recent electricity bill than ran more than $300.

When you are this close to the edge, $20 can be the difference between starvation and making it through the month. And for so many seniors who have watched their retirement nest egg dwindle or who have had their pension funds yanked out from beneath them through corporate bankruptcy proceedings that were out of their control? It’s shaping up to be an even leaner winter this year.

Especially with a moratorium on COLAs for social security recipients looming.

It doesn’t help that millions still remain out of work for more than 6 months, so that families are too strapped for money to help fully bridge the gap for elderly relatives, either.

Every time people rail about health care reforms, I wonder if they know anyone who is elderly and barely getting by? Or if they even bother to notice, even if they do?

Poignant moment via Jake Parrish. Lovely shot.

As a nation, we are failing the most vulnerable members of our society.

The number of homeless schoolchildren, uprooted amidst the financial turmoil of the last few years is rising:

There were 679,000 homeless students reported in 2006-7, a total that surpassed one million by last spring, Ms. Duffield said.

With schools just returning to session, initial reports point to further rises. In San Antonio, for example, the district has enrolled 1,000 homeless students in the first two weeks of school, twice as many as at the same point last year.

Between foreclosures, job losses and catastrophic illness costs, it’s not just the very poor who are feeling the pinch. The middle class is hurting, too, as families who never had to ask for assistance in the past suddenly depend on it just to get by from week to week.

These days? We’re all a paycheck away from disaster, it seems.

And the elderly? New analysis shows that the poverty rate among those over 65 is far worse than previously thought:

Nearly 20% of Americans over 65 would be considered poor if the government updates the way it calculates poverty, which hasn’t considered medical costs, regional variations and other factors since its creation in 1955.

Currently, the poverty rate for that age group is 9.7%, or 3.6 million people. If the government adopts a revised formula by the National Academy of Sciences, that figure would jump to 18.6% — 6.8 million people…

Recently, a United Way group in Illinois tried to give its volunteers a glimpse into life for the "other half." The lessons learned were some hard ones:

Participants were separated into six different low-income family types and assigned a role to play under various situations, including being newly unemployed, a new applicant for government assistance or a part-time employee relying on food stamps.

Families had to keep their home secure, pay their bills, feed their families and keep the utilities on for a month using various income and debt scenarios. Services such as an employment office, pawn shop, banker, food pantry and grocery store were available. To reach them, though, every person had to use a $2 transportation voucher, which grew scarce as money ran low.

If you have never had to face unexpected poverty, or didn’t grow up around it as a child, then these situations might sound dire. For folks who have lived barely scraping by? It sounds like a whole lot of life.

Certainly personal responsibility plays a big role: bad choices make for bad results for a lot of folks. But for young kids who didn’t choose the families into which they were born? Or for the elderly who have seen retirement savings shrink over the past few years while prescription doughnut holes have expanded?

Who wants to tell their grandma the fact she has to choose between her medicine and food is her own damned fault and to stop whining about prescription drug profit margins. (more…)

These days it seems that bipartisanship is all the rage. Not in practice, mind you, but as a codeword sop to the masses as justification for defending the status quo. The end result of bipartisanship is paring down a bill until it changes next to nothing of import. And then selling it as if it were the greatest thing since the last bucket of lukewarm spit to pass this way.

This is

Word is that the DOJ is seriously beefing up the fraud enforcement unit within the Criminal Division. This is some very good news indeed: The department is looking for what Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer calls “a superstar” to lead the fraud section. It also plans to add 10 trial attorneys and fill the long vacant job of deputy chief for corporate, securities and investment fraud.

The last few weeks, I’ve been following the hoo haw over Matt Taibbi’s brilliant Goldman Sachs/Wall Street screed with more than a little amusement. The rabid pushback at Taibbi from the usually timid bunny following the golden carrots financial press has been a sight to behold. My favorite was Charlie Gasparino at CNBC who dismisses Taibbi’s article without adequately addressing any of its substance by relating it to “half-literate bloggers.”

Piggy banks via Daniel Y. Go. Love the colors!

With the economy still crawling along for a whole host of people, I thought a bit of discussion on how folks are trimming their own budgets might be useful for everyone.

I know at our house, I’ve been doing much more home cooking from scratch and much less take-out and convenience food .

I have been on a travel book kick of late. It’s a bit of escape reading for me, really, without having to actually leave the house.

There is a line in Out of Africa where Karin Blixen is asked whether she’s traveled much — she’s being teased about bringing Limoges to Africa to set up house.