The poster says it all…

We were so stunned by the demise of Gourmet magazine last week, it’s taken a while for the rest of Conde Nast’s news to sink in too. It’s not just Gourmet going under, it’s Modern Bride and Cookie too. We’ve always been big fans of Family Fun Magazine and its accessible, affordable craft, cooking and travel ideas for families. But Cookie never really grabbed our attention. At first, we thought it was because our kids – them! not us! – were aging out of that demographic. But Amy Wilson’s Babble.com piece, “Why Cookie Crumbled,” makes us re-think that and realize why that magazine always made us feel so disengaged. We’ll give you a taste here (follow the Babble link for the rest):

“The idylls of Cookie’s pages, featuring toddlers in patent leather and cribs lined with flokati, altered not a whit with the collapse of Wall Street and our entire economy with it. Though Cookie’s media kit indicated that their readers’ median household income was $80,616, it would have taken five or ten times that amount to live the life depicted in its pages. And even if readers might once have aspired to that kind of lifestyle, when our gilded age came to an abrupt close, Cookie seemed suddenly – and glaringly – irrelevant.”

How about you? Were you a Cookie fan?

Interesting piece in this morning’s New York Times about a major, high tech makeover of the Disney stores you see in every mall. Apparently Disney has recruited Apple’s Steven Jobs and is planning to turn the old toys-on-shelves model into interactive “imagination parks” instead, a kind of entertainment hub to woo kids with such attractions as high tech, interactive trees and in-store theaters that let you watch your choice of film clips, do karaoke or do a live video chat with Disney Channel stars. It goes beyond the video screen too. If you’re watching Disneys’ “A Christmas Carol,” for example, the store could fill with the fragrance of Christmas trees. Hold a Cinderella doll or tiara, and an embedded computer chip signals the magic mirror nearby, so Cinderella can appear and talk to your child.

Part of me thinks that sounds really, really cool. Part is a teensy bit reminded of that creepy scene in “Minority Report” where the Gap ad comes to life. What do you think?

Thinking about your mom? We are too. This morning’s “My Mother, My Friend” story in the Times and Trib drew some of the most lovely little tales about mother-daughter friendships. You may need a hanky to read some of them. Here’s our fave – a letter from Diane Gibson-Gray, about how the relationship between a young mother and her loving mother-in-law can outlast the marriage:

I am not only lucky but so blessed to have my ex-mother-in-law, Aloha Baker, in my life. I met her in 1974. I was 18 and pregnant with her son’s child and scared to death. He had just told her that we were going to get married. I just knew she was going to be angry and tell me how I ruined her son’s life, but instead she was gracious and kind. She was wonderful to me that day and has never stopped being wonderful.

I was only married to her son for a few short years, but our mother/daughter relationship has lasted a lifetime. She is my best friend, my confidant, my strength. She is the one I call when I need advice or I need someone to gently remind me that I am not the center of the universe.

When I remarried 25 years ago, my husband became her son-in-law, and when we were blessed with a son he became her grandchild. And she and her husband, Jack, are part of our family, forever!
— Diane Gibson-Gray

Lovely, huh? Click “comments” and tell us about the wonderful mothers in your life.

As we mentioned yesterday, we were smitten by Family Fun mag’s mother-daughter tea party ideas in the May 2009 issue, and loved the idea of some gentle, conversational games to pass the time and build connections. And this one – She Loves It, She Loves It Not – was particularly adorable. All you need is a daisy and a group of mothers and daughters. One player holds the flower and plucks off a petal as she names something her mom (or daughter) loves. The next player takes the daisy, plucks off another petal and names something her daughter (or mother) loves not. The daisy circles round as mothers talk about their daughters, and girls talk about their moms. Sweet for a mother-daughter tea party and for a Daisy Scout troop meeting too …

Happy, er, tax day. In an effort to put a little cheer into a gloomy day, we asked readers to write some IRS haiku – hey, if you can’t inject a little levity (or bitterness) into 17 syllables, there’s no hope to be had! The full collection is posted online, but here’s a little bit to cheer you…

Tax collector wrote
“Loved your creativity,
Sending auditor.”
— Marilyn Slade, Pleasanton

Not just rob me blind,
But make all the instructions
Confusing as hell.
— Cynthia Bass, Danville

We’ve seen these in a variety of musical flavors lately, but this one just makes us happy… Enjoy!

Remember the era of goldfish swallowing, raccoon coats and phone booth stuffing? OK, neither do we, but we remember the pictures – especially the iconic shot of 22 St. Mary’s College students stuffed into a telephone booth that appeared in Life Magazine. Well, this is the 50th anniversary of that stunt, so our buddy Matt Krupnick ventured over to Moraga to watch the college kids try to beat the 1959 record, with some kibbitzing from original phone booth stuffers, including Benicia pharmacist Ray Motta. “Several former students,” says Krupnick, “who became intimate with the phone booth in 1959 watched Wednesday as a new generation — some of whom likely have never been in a phone booth — clambered into a glass box on the school’s chapel lawn. Paramedics stood by as the occasional groan rose from the bottom of the pile. All were unscathed… The box, however, was a bit bent out of shape over the ordeal.”

Here’s hoping the kids don’t try to beat any other records. PETA would be all over that goldfish thing.

OK, factory closings are always sad, sad affairs. But this? Hershey’s is closing the Scharffen Berger factory, easily Berkeley’s most beloved and deliciously fragrant production facility. Sigh. Yeah, the cocoa nibs were fab and chocolate awesome, but it was the factory tour that rocked on the sweetness scale. Hershey’s claims it’s making most of Scharffen Berger’s stock elsewhere anyway – which, I’m sorry, but that’s sacrilegious right there… But the Berkeley factory was a great, offbeat destination for a family outing, a little gourmet Willy Wonka in our own backyard. Yes, the Bay Area has plenty of other wonderful, family-friendly destinations – including that cool Dragonboat Festival on Treasure Island that one of our readers, rkt88edmo, mentioned earlier this week! But let’s take a moment of sad silence for Scharffen Berger…

OK, who among us wouldn’t jump at the chance to stay in our jammies and work from home all day? In my former days as a sports writer, I spent many a day writing from the desk in my home office. I saved a lot on lunches, gas for the car and after-school babysitters, not so much on my heating and electric bills. Yes, those were the days, but even as I sit typing from the real-work-world office, nothing about those days — or the current economic crisis — could tempt me into answering one of those “work-from-home” ads.

We’ve all seen them. The ads promise big money doing jobs ranging from data entry to stuffing envelopes. Best of all, you don’t have to schlep to an office. But as Staffcentric, a company specializing in home-based careers, notes, the scam ratio is 54-to-1 among the 5,000 home job leads the company researches every week. CNN has a must-read article about the subject that should make anyone wary of hitching their financial future to a prospect that is likely a fraud.