The good, the bad and the milky

I've got a handful of little things that I can't quite make a full post out of, so you're getting the dog's breakfast post today. (Hey, I just checked on dictionary.com to make sure I had the right meaning for dog's breakfast, and it says this is a Canadian slang term. How about that!) Ahem, where was I? Oh yes.

First of all, I wanted to say a huge thank you to any of you who might have gone out last Saturday to the garage sale to help raise funds for Shona, the friend-of-a-friend I mentioned last week. You know what? They raised $2500 in a single morning. Isn't that amazing? Jojo has more details on her newly minted blog.

Second, I have another message to pass along from an old friend of mine. Cooper from the blog Been There, who was so terrific in setting up the clearinghouse to help out after Katrina, sent me this note last week:

Recently I saw the documentary film, The Motherhood Manifesto, and through the film I learned that in Pennsylvania, where I live, it is legal to ask someone in a job interview if they are married or have children. As you can guess, this hurts mostly moms and single moms. PA is one of 28 states that is in this predicament, and we, and the other states, aren't covered by the federal regs either.

I have been working with Joan Blades (co-founder of MoveOn.org) and others at MomsRising.org, as well as women in Pennsylvania to help get legislation passed (it has been stalled in the state house and senate -- for 6 years!) that would make this practice illegal. I wrote an article about it that ran recently in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Anyway, if Pennsylvania can do this, it means so much to moms everywhere, and could create momentum for many critical issues involving moms and families, and on this type of discrimination. PA could start a chain reaction, and we need to drum up some noise. Momsrising has create a web page for this, and we have been blogging over there too. We have information, links to PA legislators phone/email info and a petition. You don't have to be from PA to send a message that this is important.

I have to admit, I was really surprised to hear that this kind of thing could be legal. If you can do anything, or even lend a voice of support, please do contact Cooper through Momsrising. Sisterhood!

And finally, to end our all-altruism-all-the-time festival, I give you this link to the goodest milk on the Internet. I'll be stocking up. Hey, 764 Amazon reviewers can't be wrong...

(Confession: I didn't find the milk thing on my own. My Google ju-ju is not that good. Anyone care to guess who fed it to me?)