Getting Married

Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.

This short film, Nuit Blanche, is just beautiful on so many levels. Julian watched it with me and, after deciding that the people in the film looked like they were getting married, he asked, "Is this what you were like when you were getting married?" Sortof, without all the slow motion and broken glass. And it was in color.

I know, this should be something I post on our anniversary or something, but that's a long way off and I saw the film on Boing Boing today.

An Ad You Won't See During The Super Bowl

You will, however, see an advertisement wherein a talented athlete and his mother discuss his mother's choice not to terminate her pregnancy. What is ironic about the advertisement is that it is sponsored by a group whose goal is to prevent other people from being able to make choices regarding what is best for them and their families. Why are they co-opting the language of their opponents? I really can't say, but my suspicion is that many people who oppose government intervention with regards to health care and banking regulations may have a problem with the idea of that same government intervening in their reproductive decisions. So instead of Focus on the Family saying what they really want, which is to end a medical practice with which they disagree, they try to characterize their position as protecting the rights of women like Pam Tebow to not to have an abortion. Except that no one advocates forcing women to have abortions, so this is extremely deceptive on their part.

Knowing this doesn't change the fact that I am always inspired by stories of people lived when doctors thought they wouldn't. So, if you are like me and find yourself inspired by Pam Tebow's story and her choice, consider making a donation to the organization which is dedicated to protecting a woman's right to decide what happens to her body and make smart reproductive decisions for themselves: Planned Parenthood.

If You Want To Adopt, Why Not Consider Adopting From Foster Care?

The other day, I wrote about my feelings about the group of kidnappers who are currently in custody for attempting to smuggle children out of Haiti. As I learn more about the tactics used by the kidnappers to separate children from their families, I am becoming increasingly agitated and hope that everyone involved in this scheme serves prison sentences.

There is an amazing article on The Dangerous Desire to Adopt Haitian Babies on racialicious. It not only discusses the ethical dilemmas and questionable impulses surrounding adoption from post-earthquake Haiti, it discusses the problems inherent in international adoptions as well. The writer asks a lot of hard questions about what the prospective adoptive parents are willing or able to take on and then delivers an observation which is devastating in its truth:

You’d better be sure you can handle it. If you can’t, your child will pay the highest cost. If the adoption falls through, your child may end up in foster care, possibly so scarred that they’ll never get another chance at a family.

The Adoptees of Color Roundtable has a statement on Haiti on their website which I also consider to be a must read for all of us. The whole thing is powerful, but I was struck most by the following:

We uphold that Haitian children have a right to a family and a history that is their own and that Haitians themselves have a right to determine what happens to their own children. We resist the racist, colonialist mentality that positions the Western nuclear family as superior to other conceptions of family, and we seek to challenge those who abuse the phrase “Every child deserves a family” to rethink how this phrase is used to justify the removal of children from Haiti for the fulfillment of their own needs and desires. Western and Northern desire for ownership of Haitian children directly contributes to the destruction of existing family and community structures in Haiti. This individualistic desire is supported by the historical and global anti-African sentiment which negates the validity of black mothers and fathers and condones the separation of black children from their families, cultures, and countries of origin.

Too often, we assume we know what is best for other people. Too often, we confuse what we want with what is right, proclaiming our desires to be "moral imperatives" and, therefore, above reproach. Too often, we confuse our cultural conditioning with morality. Too often, we do not take the time to listen to the people who will be most affected by our actions.

I am not suggesting that people should shouldn't adopt children or that there is something inherently wrong with international adoptions. However, we need to question our motives when we seek to "rescue" children. Isn't it arrogant to assume that the life we can offer them is better than the one that they are currently living? Is adoption the only way to offer a child a "better" life?

We keep hearing about how poor Haiti is (though we aren't reminded enough of the western world's responsibility for that poverty), but poverty explains why the quake did so much damage, it doesn't begin to explain the tenor of the world's response to the damage. As in many things related to the aftermath after the earthquake in Haiti--idiotic and racist statements made by Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh, people getting food and water for their families being described as looters in the American press, the insistence by Americans that we need to expedite the adoption process so that children (many of whom still have families) can be "rescued"--I can't help but feel it would all be a lot different if the earthquake had happened in, say, Iceland.

So the Haitian people don't need us to adopt their children. What they need is help. Please give to an organization (like UNICEF) that is on the ground in Haiti, helping the people put their lives back together so they can keep their families intact.

Is It Really George's Fault, Or Is It The Man In The Yellow Hat's Fault For Taking An Agent of Chaos Out Of The Wilderness?

When I was around four or five, there was a night when I was lying in bed. I must have drifted into that in between state, where you think you are awake and thinking, but your thoughts are so scary and surreal that you are probably dreaming. I began to think/dream that me and my family were in a blank space, not a room, not outside, nowhere familiar, just lots of white background which seemed really far away and insubstantial (when I was this age, I also thought I could touch the horizon if I had the endurance to reach it). Some people came and though I couldn't really make out what they looked like, they were obviously in positions of authority, and they told me that they were taking my family away. I remember looking at my mom and dad and my brother, they were all together watching me, but not distressed by being separated from me, and they were slowly moving farther away from me, as if we were on conveyor belts, and I couldn't move to reach them. I started to cry. I got out of bed and sat in the kitchen an tried to explain what had happened in my head to my mom, but it was hard because I was positive that I had been awake and I couldn't explain why I was so shaken by the experience. I don't remember how my mom reacted, but since my insomnia was well established at this point, she probably consoled me by telling me it was just a nightmare and I needed to go to sleep. Which I did. I have no idea why this experience remained so vivid in my memories over the years when so much has faded. Perhaps it was the intensity of my fear that my family would be taken from me and my fear that they wouldn't mind so much. Maybe it was an awareness that, as a child, I was completely dependent upon others and that other people didn't necessarily have my best interests at heart, even when they thought they did, that most adults couldn't hear my voice through the filter of their own expectations and desires.

Perhaps this is why I feel no sympathy for the group of Americans who are currently under arrest for attempting to kidnap Haitian children. While I understand the impulse to help children who have lost their families and I have wondered what the process would be to adopt an orphan from Haiti, I can't imagine what level of cluelessness and arrogance one must achieve to believe it is a good and noble thing to go to a newly damaged country and scoop up children to bring back to the US for adoption without notifying any government (US, Haitian or Dominican) of your intentions. This doesn't sound like the modus operandi of people who legitimately want to help children, this sounds more like the actions of people who sell children to sex rings. Even if their intentions were what they claim they were, did they ever ask the kids what they wanted? Even if all these children were orphans (and there is evidence that this is not the case), what if they have grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends who are still alive and want to care for them? Where did these idiots get the idea that being raised by strangers in America was automatically superior to any life the children may have in Haiti?

Oh yeah, they got the idea from centuries of colonialism and the culture in which we live.

As you may recall, we are big Curious George fans in our house. However, we are fans of the present day, kinder, gentler Curious George. Whenever we go back to the originals, Fred and I find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of having to address awkward questions like, "You mean the Man With The Yellow Hat stole George from the jungle?" and "Won't George miss his family and the jungle?" and "Why is George smoking?" Most of the time, one really would prefer a reading of a children's book to remain just that and not turn into a teachable moment about imperialism, slavery, and colonialism-not that we don't want to teach Julian about these things, but we have learned through hard experience that bedtime is not always the best time to tackle big scary concepts.

It will probably be awhile before he watches this

Werner Herzog Reads Curious George is a million bits of brilliance glued together with awesome. It is filled with hilarity. Such as:

George is lured out of hiding by the hat, an alien trinket of unimaginable cultural significance. George shortly learns a hard lesson about desire as his adventure with the hat leads to his immediate captivity.

In short order, a monkey has bested seven adult men. This should give you a dim view of human potential.

Back in society, even an unspoiled mind like George's cannot resist human materialism. He decides he must have the balloons.

Watch the whole thing. It will make you very happy. And it will remind you about the original stories. Because these days, we are all about the new stories where George is more of a child to the Man With The Yellow Hat and we don't examine how he left the jungle. We focus on how patient, kind, and good the Man With The Yellow Hat is and we gloss over the reality that he took George out of his world in order to satisfy his own desires. But if we allow ourselves to forget the sins of the past, aren't we doomed to committing them in the future?

Still Looking For The Elusive Bananfish

I'll admit, my first reaction to the news of J.D. Salinger's death was puzzlement. It wasn't that I was surprised he was still alive until now, I have heard about the recent lawsuits after all. It is that, for a long time, I considered J.D. Salinger to be one of those people whose cantankerousness and reclusiveness kept him going. He could not die as death would prevent him from guarding his privacy and protecting his unpublished work from the prying eyes of an adoring public. So I can't help but wonder, now that he has passed, will we see all the novels and stories he has written over the years? It goes without saying that I would expect anything he has been writing to at least equal the work that has come before and one hopes that his characters, conflicted and complex as they were, grew and found some contentment. Because it is hard to remain angry at the world forever. Holden Caulfield's anger at the world is appropriate at 17, it is not so appropriate at 35 or 91. The passion of youth is something we should all try to hold onto, but we also have to work to forgive those around us and make the world a better place. If there is any lesson from his work, living in the world and loving the people one encounters is the only salvation we have. Unfortunately, it is a lesson J.D. himself did not seem to learn and he will be remembered as much for his rejection of the world as he will for his literary gift to the world.

I have not thought of The Catcher In The Rye in awhile. I'll admit, love it as I did, I grew to dislike it because so many of my classmates in high school loved it too and felt such a connection to it. It bothered me greatly that so many people who I perceived to be the phonies Holden railed against had the audacity to suggest that they felt an affinity with him. I wanted to hold up a huge mirror and shout, "see how you are," but since I could not, I just moved on to Salinger's other works, works all those plastic people never bothered to check out. But as time has passed, I find my feelings have softened, or perhaps, my understanding has grown. Adolescence sucks for almost everyone and no matter how easy someone seems to have it, they aren't necessarily able to see that. We all think we are alone in our confusion and, unbeknownst to us, everyone else is confused as well. Holden was a rich boy dropping out of prep school, his complaints could easily be disregarded as whining self-pity, yet it resonated with so many of us because while we didn't have his exact set of experiences, we knew exactly what he was feeling. Confusion, pain, self-hatred, self-pity, a sense of superiority? Yep, I was feeling it. And maybe if I had stopped wallowing and looked around, I would have seen that so many of the people around me were feeling it too. But maybe this is one of the gifts of hindsight.

And while the fact that Holden Caulfield's middle name was Morrissey is almost too perfect, there is a song by a different artist from the eighties which does a much better job of distilling teen angst and dissatisfaction into four minutes of new wave melodiousness. Yes, it is self-indulgent to hear Nik Kershaw tell us that he's got it bad, we don't know how bad he's got it (and yes, I want to say something flippant like "maybe next time you'll get the flu vaccine, Nik"), but we all know what like to be sick of fighting and to have a broken spirit frozen to the core and wouldn't it be good if we could live without a care?



Also, I learned recently that this is one of the best songs to do one's grocery shopping to, something about the tempo makes it perfect for pushing a cart through aisles, which only goes to show that angst and anger is noble and all, but over time, it all fades to consumerist ennui.

P.S. All Things Considered had a couple of lovely remembrances for J.D. Salinger. Read and listen to them here and here

It Must Be True, A Computer Said So

Never mind that I hear Sandra Bullock often (though less lately as I think we are now aging differently) and Denise Richards never, my features are 83% similar to both of theirs (though not necessarily the same features).

I have known about this website's feature for years, but I don't think it ever occurred to me to post this here (though maybe I did and I have forgotten because everything eventually blends together. I can't tell you the number of times I will hear a song and then say, "I already talked about that, didn't I?" and then I find out I didn't, but the moment has passed). Anyway, I was reminded of this because, over on Facebook, people are posting photos of celebrities that they get told they look like and, well, I like to back all this up with empirical evidence.

Go upload a photo of yourself at MyHeritage.com and find out who the computer thinks you look like.

P.S. I know, it is cheating to upload a headshot (on both my and the celebrities' parts) so maybe I'll try uploading a passport picture or my new driver's license picture. Of course, my vanity will not allow me to upload that collage. And they are comparing faces, not bodies, so it isn't like I'm suddenly issue free or anything.

The Most Interesting Man In The World

I don't ever drink beer, but if I did, these commercials would inspire me to consider Dos Equis.

Yesterday, my uncle, Les, turned 60. Many members of my family would agree that if any person in our family could approach Most Interesting Man In The World status, it would be Les.

However, as you can see, he hasn't always been very finicky about the beer he drinks and he probably wouldn't be allowed to babysit, nowadays.

Stay thirsty, my friends!

The Makeup Of My Childhood

Eunice Johnson died this past Sunday and public radio has had tributes to her throughout to week (most recently, here). In all of these tributes, there are references to the cosmetics company she founded, and I hear a name which had such huge significance to me as a child.

Fashion Fair.

It came in pink packages and those pink containers filled my mother's makeup bag. Oh, there was an occasional eyeliner from Estee Lauder (clearly an impulse purchase when she was buying the Youth Dew), but the foundation, blush, eyeshadow, lipstick all was Fashion Fair.

I used to watch her putting her makeup on, and it always confused me how she could be prettier without it, but more glamorous with it. My mom would tell the story about her first makeover, how her best friend, Mary Beverly, dragged her to the makeup counter and had them make her over and how she walked out of Marshall Fields with her hands over her face saying, "Mary, I feel like a painted doll."

I didn't realize, until much later, how lucky my mom was to have the option of painting herself at all.

Fashion Fair was founded in 1973. 1973! When looking back from the vantage point of today, I find that unacceptable and unfathomable. How could cosmetics manufacturers have ignored all the potential customers for so long? But then I remember how my mom would try to buy other brands of makeup and would always come back to the pink compacts. I remember my own struggles to find a foundation that actually matched my skin tone (for some reason, in the eighties, makeup counter salespeople saw olive skin and thought that meant dark, possibly because they didn't make makeup for olive tones, which often meant I was sold foundation that was way too dark or which was way too pink. I remember how stunned I was to encounter Prescriptives when I was in college. I'm Y/O, in case you were wondering). I remember teaching a makeup class in 2004 and one of the participants, who was African American, came in with Cover Girl makeup that was way too light for her and she said, "But this is the darkest color they had!" And after remembering all of this, I find it unacceptable and unfathomable that so many cosmetic manufacturers continue to ignore potential customers.

While I have felt angry in the past for not having all the options as someone with blond hair, blue eyes, and pink skin, angry that definitions of beauty have taken a long time to evolve to this point where I may be included and courted, at this moment, I feel sad that I cannot wear Fashion Fair myself. Because even though my lighter skin offers me more makeup options than my mother had when she was my age, I feel the loss of the makeup I played with as a child.

Visuwords

A graphical dictionary and thesaurus? There are so many things I find appealing about this. Words, graphs, pretty colors, it is as if someone developed internet catnip just for me. I may never leave the computer again. Check it out. Words alone cannot describe how truly great this is.

Happy New Year

It's a new decade, so of course, any and all wishes for the new year are multiplied by ten. So Fred, Julian, and I wish you a safe and prosperous decade, as well as a fruitful new year.

Merry New Year

I will get around to creating our Holiday/New Year e-card (because not only am I not so organized as to actually mail out cards, but I feel guilty about all that paper destined for a recycling bin), but for now, I will just quote Eddie Murphy in what was, arguably, his best film and wish all three of you a Merry New Year!

Some Xmas Confusion

So we were sitting around, watching television, and Julian began singing some of the songs from the Charlie Brown Christmas CD. I got up to get something from the other room and thought I heard something strange.

"Julian," I say, as I return, "Did you just sing 'God has seen a reckless child'?"

"Yes," He says, "Those are the words."

I did attempt to set him straight, but it isn't as if this lyric couldn't fit in with the general theme of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing! and, in truth, it is a lot easier for a five year old to understand an all seeing eye in the sky keeping tabs on bad behavior than the concept that because it is Christmas, an almighty deity and those who sin regularly will hold hands and sing carols with one another. I mean, what is the whole point of being nice all year if, at the final hour, everyone gets a reprieve? How is that fair? Bartender, I would like to order a round of sin for the room, don't bother putting it on my tab.

Speaking of reckless children and remaining on the nice list for a few more weeks...

A couple of mornings later, we were running late and Julian was playing with a train car when he should have been putting on his shoes. I pointed out that he was being naughty.

"Santa is very forgiving," he says to me, pityingly, as if I am unaware of the ways of Santa.

"Well, Santa checks in with me before he delivers the gift," I tell him.

"When?"

"Before Christmas."

"Well, I am going to send in my letter to him before you have a chance to tell him anything," Julian replies, clearly believing he has outsmarted me.

"It doesn't work that way. Santa checks in with mommies before he makes the deliveries. He will talk to me after he gets your letter."

He gets quiet for a little bit, and then he says, in a voice filled both with innocent faith that the world works the way in which it is supposed to and pity that I would be so foolish as to think otherwise, "Santa would never put me on the naughty list."

Trump card played, he put on his shoes and finished getting ready. Of course we were late for school, but it probably doesn't matter. After all, one can infer from Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!, reckless children abound and their antics do not go unnoticed, but come Christmas, Santa will forgive and forget everything.

National Cookie Day

Cookie Monster obviously felt that waiting until the end of the month for cookies was unacceptable, so he proclaimed December 4, National Cookie Day. Further proof that Monstership has its privileges.

I think this is a minor holiday that deserves wider observance, don't you?

Bhopal Anniversary

There are some things which stick in your memory, tragedies which one heard about during childhood which haunt one into adulthood.

It has been twenty-five years since the Bhopal disaster. The Boston Globe has a great collection of photos from Bhopal. Worldview focused on the anniversary yesterday. If you don't know what I am talking about, you owe it to yourself to learn about it. That you might not know what I am talking about is astounding to me.

Just thinking about it makes me sad and angry. Chemicals from the accident are still leaking into the ground, poisoning the water and we have allowed Dow Chemical to avoid cleaning up the site. The coverage of the anniversary has been scant and hasn't had a negative effect on the company's stock price, but a 2004 hoax in which one of the Yes Men pretended to be a Dow executive who claimed responsibility for cleaning up the site did result in a drop. I think this shows our collective lack of regard for people in other countries, especially people in the third world. The developed world's attitude seems to be that getting our stuff cheap and making a profit is more important than human lives.

Amnesty International's website asks us to write to India's Prime Minister and Dow Chemical. It will take you less than a quarter of an hour to do what you can to end this human rights travesty which has been going on for a quarter of a century.