Where have all the good shows gone?

If I owned a TV, I would have chucked it out this Friday. It's official: there's nothing on.
Not literally, of course. One can find any number of ways to waste your time and brain cells, but i was counting on two shows to help sustain Zak's childhood, and protect him a little from the commercial blitzkrieg that is children's television. Now one of them is gone.

I speak, of course, about Reading Rainbow. Every child of the late 70's to the 90's should have known and loved it. Since its premiere in 1983, countless children have developed a love of reading thanks to Levar Burton and his cheerful explorations of worlds found right in your local library. Now, thanks to financial concerns, my beloved show is gone, and with it my hopes of the show helping me introduce Zak to the many joys of reading.

But are those hopes really gone? Ever since Zak has had periods of wakeful alertness*, we've done story time on a regular basis. Even for the probably doomed visit I've planned with his father, the local library is on the list of spots to visit. Zak's holiday and birthday presents will likely always include books, and his baby registry is half-full of classics like "The Giving Tree", "Goodnight Moon" and "Where the Wild Things Are".

I am an avid reader, and have been since I taught myself to read at the age of three. But what would have happened had my interest in reading not been encouraged, what if that spark had been left to die out, instead of being fanned? Would I have the motley crew of books that make up my small but treasured library? Even more importantly, how would this have affected my life beyond reading for pleasure? I picked up "The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding" during my pregnancy. Would I have known enough to endure the difficult moments I've had, as few as they've been?

In a way, Zak is already reaping the benefits of Reading Rainbow without watching a single episode. I plan to purchase the DVDs anyway, along with School House Rock, another lost gem, and share those pieces of my childhood with him. And what's raising kids for, if you can't bore them with all the things you knew and loved when you were their age?

*In case you haven't been around a newborn lately, they do three things quite a lot: eat, sleep, and cry. There seemed little point to reading to Zak during any of those times, so I waited until he had a good stretch of time when he seemed ready for something besides milk or another diaper change.