See, white people DO have a culture!
Feb 3, 2008 Race, Read/heard/seen
Mornings are exceptionally important to white people, as witnessed by their love of breakfast places. However, some white people never go out for breakfast on a Sunday Morning. The reason? The Sunday edition of the New York Times. A perfect white sunday generally works like this. Wake up at around 8:45, if the paper is delivered, then one walks to the front door, retrieves the paper and begins a pot of coffee. If the paper is not delivered, a white person will go out and usually buy the supplies needed for breakfast - bagels, orange juice, lox, cream cheese, or waffle mix. Some white people even pick up freshly brewed coffee with the paper!
Once coffee, food, and the newspaper have been procured, white people put on extra mellow music (Jazz, Classical, or for the cooler ones in the bunch, ambient trip hop or something along those lines). They then procede to read each section of the paper, stopping periodically to tell their partner about the interesting news they have just seen. “Looks like another civil war might break out in Africa,” “did you see that the Met is doing Tristan and Isolde?”
White couples usually fight over who gets to read the Sunday Magazine first. How do we know this? They will tell us repeatedly about how they always fight over the Sunday magazine.
(Note: White people also love to laugh about how white we are. Did you ever see that Simpsons? Where Homer is watching a black comedian going, “White people drive like this — deedle deedle dee — and black people drive like this” and here he acts really laid back and cool and Homer says, “It’s so true! We’re so lame!”)
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I went walking
Dec 10, 2007 Adoption, Read/heard/seen
That’s the name of a picture book Madison used to like but it’s also what I did this morning. I’ve got a lot of work to do and my head isn’t cooperating so I thought heading out into the slush would help. (I’ll find out if it did after I finish this entry.) I listened to Selected Shorts this morning. It’s on at a ridiculously early hour of the morning Sundays here but I used to listen to it when I fed Madison early early in the morning three years ago so I was happy to find the podcast.
You adoption-oriented readers, you might want to download the one titled “Shattered Peace.” I didn’t think it was going to be adoption-ish from the description but it is. It’s Hope Davis reading The Woman from Hamburg by Hanna Krall. As a memoirist, I was intrigued to hear the story because Krall fictionalizes journalism to create short stories based on truth.
Although the work of the Polish journalist Hanna Krall is billed as nonfiction, it is not surprising that the title story in her collection ”The Woman From Hamburg” appeared as fiction in a recent issue of The New Yorker. Krall’s distinctive style could be called Holocaust gonzo journalism. She reports the basic facts but adds a novelistic twist, weaving her interviews into elegant, multilayered narratives. In Madeline G. Levine’s subtle translation, Krall’s deceptively artless prose speaks of real events with the power of fiction — creating a mysterious fusion she acknowledges in her story ”Salvation”: ”My work as a reporter has taught me that logical stories, without riddles and holes in them, in which everything is obvious, tend to be untrue. And things that cannot be explained in any fashion really do happen.”
From a New York Times book review, which you can read to find out more about what the story is about and it’s adoption connections. But you really need to hear it (or read it).
I keep thinking that what ultimately will redeem (and can redeem) adoption is Truth. Tell expectant mothers the truth. Tell adoptees the truth. Tell adoptive parents the truth. Stop lying to the kids. Give them access to their birth certificates. Quit using adoption as an excuse to lie to children about where they come from. Even when the truth is hard or ugly or painful, it’s still the truth and adoptees deserve the truth. There are no white lies in adoption.
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Tags: Madison
I saw this and it made me think of that
Dec 6, 2007 Read/heard/seen
Christina Katz linked to a youtube mom-song and it reminded me of this great song from Cathy & Marcy: Orange Cocoa Cake. (You’ll have to scroll down to find it!) Seriously — if you’re a parent and have ever tried to have a conversation on the phone with the kids around, you’ll relate!!! And if you don’t have kids and have tried to talk to a friend with kids, you’ll relate, too. (Especially the line towards the end!)
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Tags: wordpress
My throat hurts
Nov 28, 2007 Read/heard/seen, The Story of My Life
Damn. It’s from Madison coughing in my face. Kids do that. They wipe their noses on you, lick your food and cough in your face. How can a person not get sick under those circumstances?
Did I tell you that Noah dyed his hair? Well, I dyed it. Well, we bleached it. He looks like he belongs to my friend K’s family — they’re all strawberry blonds only they come by it honest. No pics yet but I’ll upload some eventually.
I’m working on my chapter outline right now. I know my conclusion and I have my beginning — now how do I get from one end to the other? By taking lots of notes and staring glumly at my open word document! Actually Scrivener file but you know what I mean. I kinda wish I was working on it right now but I’m theoretically watching Pushing Daisies with Brett. (I actually like this show because I’m a showtunes geek and I love Molly Shannon who’s guesting but I can blog and watch tv at the same time because I’m magic and because my blog standards are sometimes low.)
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Three things
Nov 27, 2007 Adoption, Read/heard/seen
1. I have A LOT of work and it’s all due right this second or tomorrow. I’m going to be slaving away all day. No blog time.
2. Someone I know in the blogosphere knows (in person) the brilliant young woman who wrote this brilliant essay and she and I both want to encourage you all to read it if you haven’t, although you probably have.
3. You know what’s really boring for a kid? Dialysis. You know what makes dialysis easier? Video games and television-watching! No guilt there — there really isn’t much else to do while you’re hooked up to a machine acting as your kidneys. Problem is lots of hospitals have a few broken games and a handful of outdated shows. You and your kids can help and Julia tells you how.