Fond farewell to Charlie’s Playhouse. Big hello to “Evolution for Kids!”

Yes, friends, it’s true: Charlie needs to retire.

“But Kate, why?” I hear you cry, rending your garments.  

So many reasons. I have neglected this business dreadfully, and while I would like to blame that on my day job, the real reason is that my heart just isn’t in it anymore. There are so many boring bits to running a business, and I am so very bad at marketing. I just want the interesting bits: talking with kids about evolution, designing fun things, and being outraged politically.

So change is called for. Here’s the new plan.

First, license my evolution products to other manufacturers: people who actually know what they’re doing, people who have whole marketing departments. A company in Connecticut is nibbling, and you, my friends, can help move that deal forward. More on that in the next post.

Second, evolve a new animal called Evolution for Kids, an online community of grownups who love kids, science, and putting the two together. 

Here’s what I'd like Evolution for Kids to offer:

• Fun ways to introduce kids to evolution
• Reviews of children’s books on evolution
• Links to kid-friendly evolution resources
• A smidgeon of science blogging on new research
• Color commentary on the politics of evolution education
• Why all this matters

Here are some cesspools I'd like to avoid:

• "Debates" about whether evolution is "controversial"
• Polarizing "religion vs. evolution" diatribes
• Personal attacks, nastiness, bad karma
• Spinach between the teeth, parking tickets, Murphy's Law

Welcome. This is going to be fun!

Hey kids, now you can eat like Darwin!

This just released: "Mrs. Charles Darwin's Recipe Book" by Dusha Bateson and Weslie Janeway, a delightful and high-quality update of Mrs. Darwin's handwritten personal cookbook. I just got my copy yesterday and am scouring it for snacks I can serve at our Darwin birthday party. Looks like some very tasty stuff -- with the added attraction that it's exactly what our man probably ate at the Down House family dinner table. Nice.

An aside on Emma Darwin. She married Charles in 1839 at the age of 30, and went on to bear ten babies, the last one in 1856 at the age of 47. That's a kid roughly every year and a half for 17 years, and not exactly in the springtime of life. How she did not die from sheer exasperation is beyond me. How she managed in addition to make Turnips Cressilly (p.110) or Gooseberry Cream (p. 136) now and then is nothing short of miraculous. Here's to Emma and her vast reproductive capacity.

Finally! Darwin's life in movie form

Hooray, they're actually doing it -- they're making a big fancy movie about Darwin's life!

It's scheduled to be released sometime in 2009 to coincide with Darwin's birthday year, and stars Paul Bettany as Darwin and Jennifer Connolly as his wife/cousin/true love/deeply religious nuisance. You might remember this couple from "A Beautiful Mind," where they met on set and later married. Ah, Hollywood gossip, the best kind.

It's a UK production. I only hope it will come across the pond and be shown widely here. Or maybe the US distribution companies will shy away, just like the toy companies. Well, the distribution and box office of this movie will be interesting to follow, anyway. Must start reading Variety....

And here's my one gripe. The movie focuses on Darwin's ideas about God and how they affected his family relationships. This is terrific, deep, character-driven territory. But I wish it were instead about the voyage of the Beagle. That story also covers terrific, deep, character-driven territory AND it has raucous adventure, vast natural landscapes, boistrous sailors and soldiers, a fiery ship's captain, visits with native Queens, three people who had been kidnapped from Tierra del Fuego and were "civilized" in England, and oh man, so much more. What a story.