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Archive for the ‘American thoughts’ Category

Corporal punishment or murder: Too close to call?

Posted in Adoption, Adoption Advocacy, Family, The USA from the outside in on January 21, 2008| 8 Comments »

“You don’t know you’ve crossed the line until you get accused of crossing the line.”

That right there is a line crossed, as far as I’m concerned.

It came from the mouth of a guy named Jeffrey T. Schwartz in defense of one Cesar Rodriquez.

Whether Cesar Rodriguez, who is accused of beatings and abusive behavior that killed his 7-year-old stepdaughter, could not have known he had crossed a line is a matter for a jury to decide. He has admitted that he routinely beat Nixzmary with a belt, hit her with his hands using “all my force,” threw her on the floor. He has admitted duct-taping her emaciated 37-pound frame to a chair and binding her with bungee cords.

What he hasn’t admitted to isn’t reported.

The story in the NY Times points out that laws in that state, and all the rest of them for that matter, are “vague on corporal punishment.”

Hello?

On what planet, other than LegalBullshitWorld, is there dense cloudiness between grabbing a toddler and swatting her on the bum when she tries to run out in traffic and holding a kid’s head under water, beating her savagely, and forcing her to use a cat’s litter box for a toilet?

After all, that’s how Mr. Rodriguez was raised … at least according to Mr. Rodriquez and Jeffrey T. Schwartz … and look at what a fine specimen he turned out to be, so there’s a defense made in some version of legal heaven (which would by definition of ‘self-cancelling phrase’ have to indicate some pact with some devils).

Crossing a line? There is no case of crossing a line here. This is rappelling down a precipice (or repelling, actually), slogging across a vast Sahara of crushingly bone-dry nothingness, then pulling up ten miles of cliff face with nothing but fingernails. One can not possible be confused with the other, and the fact that, indeed, the two are confused, blurred, smudged, smeared, massaged, manipulated, into fitting under one banner is disgusting.

Another child is dead, and before she was dead she was tortured … for years … and those doing the torturing, her mother and her mother’s husband, got away with it right up until the time they snuffed the last of life from this little girl.

This is no special case, no rare occurrence, but just an example with a name of daily events.

And no wonder, when society deems torture “crossing a line” when it is perpetrated on a child.

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Naked Ugliness

Posted in Adoption, Adoption Advocacy, Adoption News, International Adoption, The United Nations, The USA from the outside in, tagged , , , , , on January 20, 2008| 9 Comments »

How many mornings start off with a sense of despair as I open my computer to learn what has happened around the planet as I slept the night away peacefully in the bosom of my beautiful little family? Far too many.

The world is for more people than not a terrible place of unimaginable pain and suffering where each day brings yet another hurdle to jump or cross to bear … one after the other until there is no more jumping or bearing to do.

The headlines give indication of misery enough, but my mind always wanders a bit further down the road and often ends up dwelling on whatever impact the attention-grabbing event that leads a report has on the children caught somewhere way down the story and living the consequences of religious fanaticism, ethnic intolerance, political unrest, greed, corruption and all the other horrors self-imposed by the human race upon itself.

Occasionally, a news item addresses the effects on innocents directly, as was the case in this article. Although designed by the United Nations propaganda machine for self-perpetuation and circulated through IRIN, the UN’s “humanitarian news and analysis” branch of the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the report does manage to pass along information without too blatant a tooting of its own horn … mainly because there is absolutely NO reason to credit the organization with anything positive under this circumstance … or make a begging plea for additions to its bulging coffers.

The story is on how the unrest in Kenya is impacting the vulnerable in the country, widows and orphans.

When the violence broke out immediately after the election, at least two of the people we support were killed by rowdy youths in their homes. One of our widows was attacked and her home was torn down to the ground; she was very lucky to escape alive. One child-headed household had their home invaded – they were chased away and when they came back everything had been stolen.

This, of course, is one tiny example in a country where millions are at risk any time the boat is even slightly rocked, so precarious is the semblance of stability.

Kenya has long been held up as a positive example of democracy in Africa, a model for other countries more obviously in danger of a rapid downward spiral into chaos. But Kenya has been corrupt as hell for years, and no one with the slightest knowledge of the place could pretend not to notice that the average Kenyan has been getting screwed by their government for decades while the powerful are creaming off the top and living like royalty.

With Zimbabwe just down the road a piece getting a complete pass from the “global community” on everything from its flagrant violations of human rights to blatant corruption, where could impetus possibly come for rising above?

Does the world care? Face it, folks, the answer to that is: Not really.

Pretending otherwise appears to be an unhelpful practice that works pretty well to keep the levels of hell stable for the majority while the minority takes expensive vacations.

Think about this …

At the moment, the population of the USA is somewhere around just over 300 million. Although numbers are hard to come by, USAID estimates that by 2010 25 million children in the world will have been orphaned by AIDS alone (Some suspect this number is a low guess, with estimates up to 200 million circulating.), and although that pandemic does take a hefty toll, added to numbers of children losing parents to other diseases, alcoholism and drug abuse, grinding poverty, famine, violent conflict, the total global population of children forced to fend for themselves could easily approach the number of people living in the United States in any given year.

Orphans, of course, aren’t the only people suffering … billions of children with parents suffer alongside their mothers and fathers … yet no small number of humans blithely go through their lives under the illusion that life is relatively fair … and is meant to be so … and that for the most part justice somehow prevails. Decisions on everything from product purchases to elected official to laws addressing adoption tend to be based on the false sense that happiness is a logical consequence of life for everyone finding the wherewithal their own bootstraps should provide, so consequences are slow to come to those living off the backs of the downtrodden … and that is often not only an expression, but a reality … and remedies too often have more to do with alleviating the little guilt that comes with plenty than actually addressing the real issues others face every day.

Forcing ourselves to wake up and smell the toast is a first step to taking the problems on full frontally, as we will never come to grips with something we have refused to see in all its naked ugliness.

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Abortion rate report

Posted in Adoption, Adoption Advocacy, Adoption News, Family, The USA from the outside in, tagged on January 19, 2008| 1 Comment »

The Guttmacher Institute released its latest report on abortion numbers in the US last week, and because they are down to the lowest rate since 1974, the report is getting press.

The latest figures are from 2005, and the study found a 25 percent drop from an all-time high of 1.6 million in 1990, although still adding up to more than one in five pregnancies being terminated.

A convoluted issue that has long been hijacked by various factions looking to provide traction for wider agendas, abortion is, to say the least, a contentious topic.

Having experienced an unplanned pregnancy in the days before Roe v. Wade, I feel I have more than a little right to my own take on abortion, and I have aimed some writing at it in the past, albeit in tandem with work on adoption.

I am always made very uncomfortable when a direct link is drawn between adoption and abortion, as the hot potato of the first can’t help but be backlit by flame throwers targeting the second, and adoption burning to a crisp in the crossfire is far too dangerous a potential to let the connection weld without comment.

The idea that adoption is a likely consequence of restraint against abortion feels intuitive to many, but is very shaky ground and seems unhelpful in the extreme when trotted out before someone in the dire circumstance of a crisis pregnancy.

Unlike the stereotypic picture of the clueless knocked-up teen … that was me in 1969, thankyouverymuch, when birth control was illegal for anyone under 18 … 61% of women who have abortions in the US are mothers, half have two or more children, and additional children may be considered a cause for compromising care for existing kids.

Without being asked directly, several of the women indicated that adoption is not a realistic option for them. They reported that the thought of one’s child being out in the world without knowing if it was being taken care of or by whom would induce more guilt than having an abortion.

I’m guessing that explaining a full term pregnancy not resulting in a new addition to the family would be an issue, as well.

Clearly, the answer is to prevent as many crisis pregnancies as possible, and education and availability of contraceptives are the keys to this goal.

For those interested, I freely admit that had abortion been a legal option for me in 1969 I would not have chosen it, just as I did not choose to relinquish my daughter. Both facts relate only to me personally and neither are laudatory, but rather simply a reflection the cumulative process that made me me at that given point in time.

If I had found myself pregnant in 1974, the last time the rate of abortions was as low as it was in 2005, I would have carefully considered and very possibly opted for an abortion. At that time I was a divorced 23-year-old struggling to raise two kids on my own, working three jobs to make ends meet, taking classes as I could. Luckily, I dodged that bullet.

I will not get into the abortion fray here, as I have more to address on this blog than leaves time for that endless loop, but I will mention a couple of niggles I can’t keep my mouth shut in front of …

Speaking authoritatively on abortion takes a uterus.

Beethoven was not the third or fifth or whatever offspring of a syphilitic tuberculin.

The more power women have, the better the world gets.

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The Evolutionary Benefits of Adoption

Posted in Adoption, Adoption Advocacy, Adoption News, Celebrities, Celebs, Fun, International Adoption, Older Parent Adoption, tagged , , , , on January 3, 2008| 19 Comments »

“My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.”
Steven Wright

Steven Wright cracks me up. His droll delivery of distilled nuggets of simple, yet warped observation always strikes me as funny, and often gives an amused pause for thought. Getting to where he ends up requires strolling in from new and unusual directions, something that can be very good for keeping perceptions fresh and challenged.

The line above, of course, caught my eye and started me down a thought path that has led to a blog post. How handy, since a blog post was on today’s “to do” list.

Although “The Evolutionary Benefits of Adoption” is a ridiculously grand title that appears to claim one hell of a lot of ground this post never even begins to approach, it makes me laugh … striking me as funny on many levels … and reflects my morning ponderings prompted by Mr. Wright’s one-liner.

There are plenty of people who would never choose to put the words “adoption” and “benefit” in the same sentence, some even going so far as to suggest that adoption itself spawns nothing less than mass murderers, serial killers.

The website “Adopted Killers” … picture lurid, blood-red copy on a black background … that postulates this connection is high drama, courtroom photos and turgid bombast that in spite of supposed intent ends up making a pretty good case for adoption.

(Keeping with the theme of amusing lines, one from this site is a classic, although I doubt it was devised to entertain:

WHY are there twice as many Adopted Killers who are known to be in the category of Adoptees Who Killed Their Adopters?

Now, really … isn’t that one of the funnier lines you’ve seen in a while? Not only the spontaneous use of capital letters which is always a hoot, but the heart and soul –no mention of brain, of course — of this classic example of nonsense and illogic. I have to laugh ever time I see it … and it is fairly widely quoted by those who apparently don’t see the joke.)

As I read through the sketchy examples of adopted killers, I can’t help but notice the damaging effects of inappropriate kinship placements, foster care, mental illness and genetics, and it occurs to me that some of these people may have found less dangerous paths if adoption had been more a feature in their lives, rather than less.

As for evolving humanity, the examples of adopted people making huge changes for the positive in the world are impressive.

From way back in the 300s BC when Aristotle’s parents died … he wasn’t officially adopted, but raised by a guardian, then married an adoptee and adopted himself … and the basis of what we now call science was born, to the 1800s in America that saw George Washington Carver, one of this country’s most important inventors, adopted after the death of his mother, the evolution of our humaneness has been spurred by adoption.

Would I be writing or you be reading today without the contributions of Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison and who they became at least partly through their adoptions? Perhaps, but there would be long odds on the information age developing as it has had they not forged the trails they did.

So, perhaps there are some “evolutionary benefits” of adoption, after all, since the world has more than marginally improved through the efforts of adopted people who have passed along the positives.

If nothing else, I suppose, those opposed to adoption might take comfort in the idea (?) that twice as many adopted killers are adoptees who killed their adopters, therefore suggesting to anyone equating adoptive parents with evil incarnate that the result is fewer of those.

I wonder what Steven Wright would do with that …

(Here’s a list of famous people with adoption in their backgrounds.)

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Mourning John Lennon

Posted in Celebrities, Celebs, On getting older on December 8, 2007| 4 Comments »

The day the music died may have been in 1959, but twenty-seven years ago today the world lost not only one of the most brilliant and creative musical minds in modern history, but a bit of its soul and a lot of its conscience.

220px-johnlennon1.jpgDecember 8, 1980 was the day Mark Chapman shot and killed John Lennon outside the Dakota building in Manhattan as he and his wife made their way home.

For more on this, check out:
A Tribute to John Lennon (October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980)

Photo credit: Wiki commons

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Rocking the vote boat, big time

Posted in American thoughts, Elections USA, The USA from the outside in on December 1, 2007| 2 Comments »

I’ve been pounding away on the adoption advocacy front for a very long time, but still raw from the recent flaying I’ve decided to commence a brand new campaign for the betterment of humanity for the time being … today, anyway.

Having left the US in 1993, I’ve missed a lot, and I am nowhere near up to speed on aspects of Americana ranging from breakfast cereals to presidential candidates. The pack, both Democrat and Republican, is a confusion of Who dat?, and You gotta be kiddin’!, but the process does put me to pondering all things democratic and the processes that are said to add up to democracy.

I well recall researching a paper on the Electoral College about 35 years ago and coming away from the project convinced that it had seen its day. Lo and behold, however, it lives, and continues to drag its rotting corpse all over the election process of the new millennium.

With that mummy apparently propped in place and not easily budged, I would like to propose an idea that would make all the difference in turning democracy into something that would really mean what it is suppose to mean. In one swell foop and with simple implementation, the people … THE PEOPLE (in big letters) … could be guaranteed true representation in every government in the world that now has reasonably free and fair elections.

Ready for it?

Every category on every ballot would have one simple addition:

None of the Above

If “none of the above” wins, it’s back to Square One. Yes, it would be an expensive exercise, but only until those in positions of power take a good look at the sack full of nickels that hit them upside the head and stop jerking us around.

The idea orginally came to me in the ’80s when i found myself in New Orleans covering the gubernatorial election in Louisiana that pitted a convicted criminal against the head of the Ku Klux Klan.

Imagine never again having to mark your ballot for a lesser of evils. Think of the process of choosing candidates that would have to consider a total rejection of all party favorites or “best chance to win” creeps no one really wants to see in office. Consider the power that would come with a vote that said in no uncertain terms, “We are tired of this nonsense, and we’re not going to take it any longer!”

And that is my thought for the day. Feel free to discuss this and get back to me with your assessments.

I think it’s a fab idea, and one we should make happen.

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Politics and life: Miss the beginning of the show and you lose the plot

Posted in American thoughts, Celebrities, Celebs, Expat Living, NaBloPoMo, The USA from the outside in, tagged , , , , on November 27, 2007| 2 Comments »

It’s a big dividing point between American expats as far as maintaining a capacity to take in and digest present day events in the country, the 12th of June 1994.

You are forgiven if the date doesn’t set bells clanging, as events of the day easily float to the bottom of the cesspool that started filling then and continues to this day. To put it simply, this was the day Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were brutally butchered in a Southern California condo.

What followed could now probably be traced as the headwaters of Reality TV, and it ended with OJ Simpson winning the “Got Away With Murder” award.

People living in the States through that process followed along, joined the discussion, watched the glove show-and-dance, knew what Johnnie Cochran drank, how F. Lee Bailey took his coffee and what Marcia Clark was going to do next with her hair. Who didn’t have an opinion on Lance Ito, was more than a bit uncomfortable with Mark Fuhrman or thought Kato Kaelin was a moron? Eating, drinking and sleeping the OJ trail was common behavior as a cult-like fixation drew in more and more media junkies.

The verdict brought whatever emotions it brought, and those who lived through it can still be brought to a froth over specifics.

Those who left the country BOJ (Before OJ) … me, for instance … certainly heard about the case, most likely a lot, but didn’t live and breathe it. We weren’t surrounded by the story, didn’t run into video of white Mustangs and blood-soaked walkways twice a day, and weren’t assailed by details, speculation and conjecture every time we turned on a radio or opened a newspaper. We didn’t live with OJ’s oversized smirk popping up on every corner, live coverage and endless footage of the same scenes and statements over and over and over again.

Because we missed all this, we never moved into the groove that grew accustomed to the frenzy, that began to see the hype as justifiable and the massive media as a citizen’s right to know, and we didn’t for a moment see the verdict coming. In other words, we found ourselves left out of the loop that found getting away with murder a logical consequence of celebrity.

Much that has happened since in America remains puzzling to BOJs like me. The 2000 presidential election is one example; the bullshit blind involvement in Iraq, another.

Today, it’s a CNN piece that has me scratching my head … the one about the University of Pennsylvania professor who beat his wife to death last year as she wrapped Christmas presents. He’s finally fessed up and is likely to do 4.5 to 7 years for his crime.

Excuse me, but WTF kind of sentence is that?

And what kind of sentences are these … ?

“What kept them there [in the marriage] was their undying love for their daughter Olivia,” said Art Gregory, who is now raising the girl. “Both of them put Olivia first, beyond anything else, unfortunately to a very tragic end.”

Rafael Robb apologized to Olivia, who was not in court, and said he was “very remorseful.”

“I know she liked her mother. … And now she doesn’t have a mother,” he said, stifling tears..

This is how cold-blooded murder is covered in the US today? With “stifling tears” and not one single mention of how appalling it is that a creep who bludgeoned his wife to death in the middle of her Christmas prep will probably be out by Christmas 2009 … having to do his own gift wrap, thankyouverymuch … seeing as how he’s unlikely to find a wife to kill while in prison, so should get time off for good behavior, and probably also for time served while hoping to slip the noose without having to admit that he bloody well did it?

Like coming into “Lost” in the second season, having missed the OJ show I just can’t get up to speed with so much in America these days and the point of the plot is lost on me completely.

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A question about politics …

Posted in American thoughts, NaBloPoMo, The USA from the outside in on November 26, 2007| 3 Comments »

I have a political question for today:

Are folks in America as hot over the YouTube “debates” as they look to be from out here where CNN comes only in brief, but enthusiastic spurts?

I heard the hype leading up to the Democrats doing their version of “Who Do You Trust”, and now that it’s Republicans about to step into the limelight, it seems the same attempt at frenzy whipping is happening.

For the first time in presidential debate history, user-generated video will drive two unprecedented debates.

Be still, my pounding heart.

Do people actually perceive this song and dance as some sort of prime example of true democracy in action? Or does everyone know that these are just the latest “reality programming” offerings, but with a longer wait for gratification as there is a bit of a twist on the voting procedures?

Is the process to choose a new leader of the free world now the same as deciding who is in and who is out of the house, off the island, the next pop star du jour?

Voters must realize that there is nothing democratic in the process that decides which videos make the cut, which don’t get a second look, and which are only used as teasers in the ad campaign leading up to the show. Someone with quite the agenda in tow is picking and choosing. The manipulation has to be obvious to one and all, and surely the idea of CNN in charge must give pause for thought. Mustn’t it?

“YouTube enables voters and candidates to communicate in a way that simply was not possible during the last election,” said Chad Hurley, CEO and co-founder of YouTube. “For the first time in the history of presidential debates, voters from around the country will be able to ask the future president of the United States a question in video form and hear the answer.”

“These debates take the bold step of embracing the ever-increasing role of the Internet in politics,” said Jim Walton, CNN Worldwide president. “The inclusion of the massive online community enables these debates to engage more viewers – and potential voters – than ever before.”

Hello?

So putting debate questions in “video form” somehow elevates that material above the living room dialog of the Iowa Caucuses or the coffee stops in New Hampshire? And because this was “simply not possible during the last election” it’s assumed to be a good thing?

Suppose next time around it’s possible to pose YouCube questions to candidates in 3D, will that guarantee a freer, less corrupt America and assure that the person with the most votes wins?

All one must do to get the true point of this for CNN is to substitute good demographic market targets where Jim Walton parenthetically positioned “potential voters”.

Want to embrace the ever-increasing roll of the Internet in politics? Get candidates to start blogs where anyone can ask questions, make comments, demand straight answers, and be able to search archives. Sure, it would be a massive amount of work, but politics ain’t for sissies … plus they could do it in their jammies from anywhere.

If Americans are truly concerned about moving the election process into the 21st Century, they should be demanding an end to the Electoral College instead of letting Anderson Cooper run the show.

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Thanksgiving … the act, not the day

Posted in American thoughts, Expat Living, Family, NaBloPoMo, The USA from the outside in on November 22, 2007| 4 Comments »

I am thankful. I am SO thankful. I am really, really thankful.

I am thankful for my life, the fact that I have had one and that I still have one. The emergency heart surgery in Singapore in ’99 was a close shave that puts me in mind every day of what a gift each is.

I am thankful for the miracles that are my children and am perpetually astounded at the people they are and how lucky I have been to have them in my life.

I am thankful for my husband, for his kind and loving nature, his generous spirit, his humor, and for the circumstances that allowed us to find each other even though he was on one side of the planet while I was on the other.

I am thankful for all my family, for my friends, for the people sharing the same plane of cyberspace I cruise.

I am thankful for my home, for clean air and clear water, the comforts my life provides, for the timing and circumstances of my birth that have allowed me to live without war in my back yard or the horrors of life as a refugee. I have never been truly hungry, and neither have my children, and that’s enough right there to fall on my knees in appreciation for.

Because my life is as wonderful as it is, I have the time and energy today to wallow in misery, and although that may sound like a mouthful of sour grapes, there is no way I can let this day pass without spending a good bit of it sad as anything and ready to burst into tears at the drop of a pilgrim’s hat. I am miserable in honor of all that I have that I no longer have access to, and as happily content as my life is now my losses still deserve commemorating, so here goes …

Today I miss my mother. I miss my oldest daughter and my granddaughter. I miss my grown son. I miss my brothers, their families, their humor and their appetites. I miss green Jell-O. I miss the country that celebrates thanksgiving so wonderfully and enthusiastically. I miss a chill in the air and the sight of my own breath. I miss the smell of sycamore leaves. I miss pumpkin pies cooling on my mom’s washing machine and the pattern on her good china. I miss the company of those who have known me for all their lives or all of mine. I miss sharing memories of Thanksgivings past with people who where there. I miss a shared comprehension of what it means to eat turkey and how important variations in stuffing can be. I miss hand-print gobblers on fridges. I miss my childhood, or at least the good parts. I miss the drive up I-5 and my mother’s kitchen.

I rue the fact that I could be in California today, that Mark and the kids and I, had we planned well and done what needed to be done, would right now be a couple of hours away from waking up on Thanksgiving morning and preparing to sit down to an early dinner with some portion of my family somewhere, if not the whole fam damily … if the planning had gone really well.

As I say every fourth Thursday in November: Next year, for sure.

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Another year, another blog?

Posted in Entitled to opinions, Expat Living, NaBloPoMo, The USA from the outside in on November 18, 2007| 4 Comments »

I must be seriously out of my ever-lovin’ mind, but I’m thinking about starting up another blog once this whole NaBloPoMo business is finished for the year. This one is good for a lot of release and stuff of interest (to me), but doesn’t focus, and my pro blogs are all about adoption, a topic that has my passion, but is restricting, nonetheless.

There’s not a day that goes by that something arising from my trawl for blog fodder, my perusal of newsal, doesn’t have me bursting at the seams with too much to say about events in the real world.

From this isolated little perch here in the Indian Ocean, a great deal of the stuff of life beyond these shores looks darned silly, menacing, imprudent, overindulgent or worse, and it seems a glance from a perspective that’s not marinated in the au jus du jour just might be interesting … perhaps, again, to me alone, but personal blogs are, after all, the journalistic equivalent of singing in the shower.

From my old hometown newspaper to the Times times at least three (New York, London, L.A.), to the WaPo and the WSJ, I read what’s fit to print, and it might be nice for me to be able to print what gives me fits.

We’ll see how it goes, but January could see yet another place where my opinionated blather goes public. Another year, another blog?

Speaking of …

On the women-over-50 group at NaBloPoMo it was mentioned that this demographic … women over 50 … is the fastest growing in blogs and web design on the Net. Apparently, we all have something to say. (I’m guessing our husbands already know.)

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