Excuse the iPhone autofill typos

Excuse the iPhone autofill typos

Excuse the iPhone autofill typos

Excuse the iPhone autofill typos

It’s a Halloween jack o’lantern piñata. Last year’s was so plain in comparison, and I still thought it was the second coming.

This year, the awesome includes ears, pointy nose, a jutting chin, and a wart on said chin. Plus hair.

We love it. Can’t wait to stuff it with goodies (half candy, half pumpkin-shaped erasers, etc).

Baby Milk Action, a UK-based organization that has consistently kept up the pressure for Nestle to practice ethical marketing of its products–most notably infant formula–is promoting a Nestle-Free Zone October 26-November 1, 2009.

If you aren’t aware of the reasons why the boycott of Nestle’s marketing of powdered infant formula has been going on for more than 30 years, with a slight gap in between of a few years before resuming again, go here or here.

(The company’s chocolate-making division, as well as its bottled-water division, have come in for great scrutiny of unethical, and in some cases outright abusive or morally repulsive, practices.)

Excuse the iPhone autofill typos

Excuse the iPhone autofill typos

This has been on my mind for quite some time, ever since I wrote that I was a “Free Range Mama.” It’s only weighed more on me since adding a Blog With Integrity button to my sidebar, which is a reaction many of us had to the controversy over the heightened presence of sponsorships/commercial interests competing for the attention of bloggers at Blogher ‘09. There, the murky and emergent ethics of blogging for pay or in exchange for “gifts”, along with anxiety over a pecking order of blogger desirability, found expression in heated discussions of swag.

In my “Free Range Mama” post I said I’d made peace with not ever being a “WalMart Mom” or having certain corporate advertising, sponsorship or other commercial interests affiliated with my blog. But even after crossing off several companies that to my eyes have sketchy ethical practices or support political organizations I don’t agree with, there’s still a large gray zone that’s left. I mentioned that I patronize JC Penney stores, until recently I shopped (stopping when its CEO made stupid remarks about health insurance reform) at Whole Foods, and I like Target a bit too much relative to some probable unsavory labor practices that I haven’t Googled yet. And what’s complicating is that the grey zone quickly gets subjective.