Over a Candle

Two days ago, I visited a friend. She died during our sophomore year of college, and I have gone to her grave nearly every year since.

In the last two years, an adjoining headstone announced the passing of both of her parents. Since she was an only child, the passing of her parents seems like a second tragedy. Though I had never spoken to them, I did write them once, and received a nice letter in return. It gave me some comfort knowing that they were out there, that other people remembered my friend, presumably even better than I did.

Now, I don’t know. Am I the last person to remember her? Will I be the last to visit her grave?

People vanish so unexpectedly from this world. I don’t know that I think of death as a tragedy. But that doesn’t stop me from missing people who so abruptly vanish. And it doesn’t stop me from hoping they are happy now. And I am just selfish enough to wish they were still here with me.

Yesterday, adoptees, first mothers, and other supporters marched to support equal rights for adoptees. In case you haven’t picked up on it yet, adoptees in forty-four states are not allowed access to their original birth certificates. Every year they gather at the National Conference of State Legislators for the protest. This year that meant going to Louisville.

The night before, we made signs for use in the march. Much fun was had by all.

Sunday morning, we began to march to the convention center.

There was a lot of energy and excitement as we marched.

We got to talk to a few legislators on their way into to register for the conference.

But I would be lying if I said it wasn’t hot. It was. Very. Everyone was committed, but we needed breaks from marching.

We were told not to sit on the wall, though, so we took our breaks in the park across the street. The heat index was supposed to be around 110, and it felt like it. By the end of the day, we were all pretty tired. But we were happy for what we had accomplished. Literature handed out, news interviews, people talked to, and awareness raised.

The party afterwards suffered from a lousy restaurant. Extremely poor service and a failure to provide adequate space marred an otherwise wonderful day. But once we quit the restaurant, several of us hit a nearby pub and enjoyed ourselves immensely.

The only downside to the whole event, for me, was how quickly the time passed. I didn’t feel like I had enough time to visit with friends. Being surrounded by these people was both empowering and comforting. It was almost like a two-day long support group with a healthy dose of activism thrown in.

I originally did not plan to go next year, as San Antonio in late July is not my cup of tea. But now I don’t think I can wait any longer to see this group of people. I wish I was still there. So now I’m going to try to find a way to make it again next year.

And I look forward to the day when we don’t need the demonstration anymore, and we can just plan a weekend party. But until then, I cannot imagine a better way to spend two days than protesting with my fellow adoptees.

We left by eleven to drive to the Adoptee Rights Protest in Louisville. It looked to be nearly a five hour drive, but that still got us there by four. Plenty of time to check in and eat before the sign-making party.

Plenty of time, that is, if nothing went wrong.

Twenty minutes down the road, and the engine maintenance light came on. We pulled off at a nearby gas station, and I checked everything I could, which basically consisted of the oil level and making sure the gas cap was on correctly. But neither seemed to be the problem.

There is something so typical about this, that I wasn’t even surprised. Indeed, I think I would have been more surprised if nothing had gone wrong. It seems that lately all of our trips have some kind of snafu.

This was my grandmother’s car, so we called my father, hoping he would tell us that it was normal for the car and we could ignore it. But it wasn’t to be. Instead, he offered to switch cars with us. He drove down to meet us, letting us take his car, as he drove the other to get it checked out. (Turns out, it was the air filter.)

So we were back on the road, and on target to get to Louisville by five. The rest of the trip went smoothly and we found the hotel without a problem.

We met other adoptees almost immediately. First it was Theresa, then Jeff. There is something so cool about meeting other like-minded people, especially ones you have such great admiration and respect for.

We were starving and thought we had enough time to eat before the sign-making party. We found an interesting looking Irish pub, and it would have been perfect if the service had been timely. As it was, we got to the party about half an hour late.

I think I colored in one sign over the course of the next two hours. It was too hard to do that and meet people face-to-face who I had known forever online. Jeni, Kara, Julie, Dory, Joy, Elizabeth, Linda, Jim, Diane, Cheerio, Amanda, Spencer… I’m sure I’m forgetting people, but it was so much fun.

At the end, there was a brief workshop for how to talk to legislators. Gaye and Jeff did a terrific job. As a student of strategic nonviolence, it was fascinating to hear others employ the principles in a real training session.

After that, there was much drink to be had. Maybe too much. Though, for me, I’m usually so shy around other people, it may have helped loosen me up a bit, so I actually managed to talk to people. (I hope not too much. And I hope I didn’t say anything too stupid.) We had a blast. We had been told the hotel bar closed at ten, but I think the bartender realized how much money there was to be made and stayed open until midnight.

I wish even more of my online friends had been able to make it. There is just something so amazing about meeting some of your favorite people on the planet.

And in just over an hour, we’ll be gathering to go do what we came here to do.

In case you haven’t heard, the NAACP has charged elements within the Tea Party movement as racist. I’m not interested in evaluating those charges here. What interests me are the reactions to those charges that I’ve seen online and in editorial pages.

Some of the responses are something of a red herring. They at least miss the point. These are the responses from members of the movement who claim not to be racist themselves. Of course, if the charge is, as I understand it, that some members of the movement are racist and should be purged, saying that you aren’t racist isn’t really the point. If the NAACP had claimed that all members were racist, then your response would be relevant.

What is really obnoxious, though, is the form of ad hominem that some of the responses have taken. Rather than defending those charged with racism, these response simply claim that the NAACP is itself racist. This is the tu quoque fallacy, or more colloquially, “I know you are, but what am I?”

In essence, they claim that they can be racist, and ignore charges of racism from the NAACP because that organization is also racist.

Counter-charges are as old as politics itself, I suspect, but they are a crappy way to reason.

If you think the NAACP is racist (and I’m not saying they are, but I’m not going to have that argument here), then they are being hypocritical. But that doesn’t mean you get to be a racist, too. Racism is wrong. If the NAACP engages in it, it is wrong to do so. And if the Tea Party is doing so, it’s wrong, too. It’s no defense to point out your accuser’s hypocrisy.

I don’t think the Tea Party is inherently racist, not from what I’ve seen anyway. But if there are racist elements in it, then it should seek to eliminate those elements from its ranks. Instead, its supporters seem mostly interested in giving fallacious defenses of people most of them don’t even know.

Christopher Nolan has a knack for making wonderfully engaging and rather dark films. Memento. Batman Begins. The Dark Knight. All these films were among the best films that came out in those respective years.

Inception belongs right up there with them. Nolan has crafted a tricky movie based on a tricky premise: people can go into your dreams to find your secrets. Despite the twists and turns, the dreams within dreams, the film manages to tell a coherent and comprehensible tale of espionage and deception.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, a corporate spy, stealing business secrets for whoever will pay for them. Cobb is hired to do the impossible: plant a thought inside someone’s head rather than steal one. He has to put a team together, and the action begins.

It’s hard to say much more without spoiling most of the fun here. The visuals are appealing. The effects are nifty, but unlike so many other films, the emphasis is on the story and the characters, not the CGI.

DiCaprio is superb here, as are his supporting cast members. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays his second. Ellen Page is the greenest member of the team, the new architect of the dreamscapes in which their plans unfold. Cillian Murphy is Robert Fischer, Jr., their target. All of them do a fine job, but the emphasis of the film is on Cobb, and DiCaprio has the chops to bring the depth to the character that he requires.

This is smart summer fare. Not too heavy, but definitely raises some fascinating questions. It made me wish I still taught Introduction to Philosophy on a regular basis; this film would be perfect for the class.

The Evan B. Donaldson Institute released its latest study on granting adoptees access to their original birth certificates. The summary is below. You can click on the title to read the whole report.

FOR THE RECORDS II: AN EXAMINATION OF THE HISTORY AND IMPACT OF ADULT ADOPTEE ACCESS TO ORIGINAL BIRTH CERTIFICATES

Authors: Dr. Jeanne A. Howard, Susan Livingston Smith, and Georgia Deoudes.

Published: 2010 July. New York NY: Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute

For the Records II: An Examination of the History and Impact of Adult Adoptee Access to Original Birth Certificates” is based on a years-long examination of relevant judicial and legislative documents; of decades of research and other scholarly writing; and of the concrete experiences of states and countries that have either changed their laws to provide these documents or never sealed them at all.

The Institute’s report suggests that, while a growing number of states have restored OBC access to adopted people once they reach the age of majority, efforts to accelerate the trend have been impeded by misunderstandings about the history of this controversial issue, misconceptions about the parties involved (especially birthmothers), and mistaken concerns about the impact of changing the status quo – e.g., legislators often assume that negative consequences will occur but, in fact, they do not.

Among the findings in the 46-page Policy Brief, which updates and expands the Institute’s November 2007 report, “For the Records: Restoring a Right for Adult Adoptees,” are:

• Barring adopted adults from access to their OBCs wrongly denies them a right enjoyed by all others in our country, and is not in their best interests for personal and medical reasons.
• Alternatives such as mutual consent registries are ineffective and do not meet adoptees’ needs.
• The vast majority of birthmothers don’t want to be anonymous to the children they relinquished.

The recommendations in the Institute’s new Policy Brief include:

• Every “closed” state should unseal OBCs for all adult adoptees, retroactively and prospectively.
• States that already provide limited OBC access should revise laws to include all adult adoptees.
• No professional should promise women anonymity from the children they place for adoption.

This is one of those little insights that hits me now and then. Something I expect everyone else will find completely obvious, but had eluded me for the longest time. Ah well, I still feel the need to share.

I don’t think the same way other people do. Maybe there are others who think the way I do; I can’t be sure. But other people think differently. Not better or worse. But different.

The reason this wasn’t obvious for me is that I had misidentified the problem. For so long, I thought my problem relating to others was communication. I thought I didn’t know how to communicate in a way that would get through.

This explains disagreements I’ve had in my personal life and online. I argue with people and get confused when they seem to misunderstand me. I thought I must be doing something wrong in the way I said things.

It turns out, instead, I think differently. I’m nearly sure of it, now. Doing a better job of listening to others, and noting where things go wrong, I’m picking up on it a little more clearly.

I don’t think I could explain how I think differently. And certainly I know that at least some others think like I do (or perhaps the other way around) at least some of the time. Ronni and I, for instance, sometime make the same connections. Probably we’ve had a great deal of influence on one another.

How this might be useful to me is not clear. What it means for my attempts to communicate is trying to pick up on those times that my thought process has diverged wildly from someone else and not try to plow ahead. I don’t know. But it seems important. And I’m trying to do a better job of stopping and noting the important things that occur to me.

Writing, for me, is really an auditory experience.

The best way for me to proof-read stuff I’ve written is to read it aloud. That process serves two purposes.

The first is practical. Proof-reading my own stuff is very nearly impossible. I believe this is probably true for most people. When I proof-read silently, my mind is happy to supply missing words or correct typos. In other words, I miss mistakes. Reading the material out loud forces me to notice those mistakes more fully than I otherwise would. This is the reason I recommend proof-reading aloud to all my students. It’s not fool-proof, but it’s more thorough.

The second reason, though, is that I want to hear how the words sound. I want to hear the flow of the words, sentences, and paragraphs. How does it sound? Because the process of reading, for me, is auditory. I hear the words in my head, even if I’m reading silently. It is important, then, in my own writing process, that I make sure the words sound how I want them.

This may go a long way towards explaining why I prefer writing dialogue to other parts of the narrative. Dialogue most obviously is auditory in nature. It’s the easiest for me to hear in my head. And it is the easiest for me to produce. Descriptions, movement, action… All are difficult for me to produce. I don’t know how those should sound.

I love reading to other people. Taking the prose on the page and bringing it to life is a simple pleasure. A form of story-telling, perhaps, though more story sharing. When I wrote poetry, I wrote intending it to be spoken, not simply stared at on a page. And I think I approach my prose in a similar way.

“Hey! Turn that off!”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, turn that OFF!”

“But it is GOOD.”

“Who says?”

“I did. Just now.”

“Who are you?”

“Me? Well, I AM…”

“Never mind. Just turn it off.”

“But I declared it GOOD.”

“Look. You can’t just move in here and start . . . illuminating everything. You need to show some consideration for your neighbors.”

“. . .”

“I get it. I do. You have this new fangled toy, and you want to play with it. I’m the same way. Just last week. . . Well, that doesn’t matter. I just annoyed the gal two houses down. Not a good situation.”

“So even though this is GOOD, I should turn it off?”

“Well, you don’t have to get rid of it. Use it during normal hours. Maybe turn it on for a bit, and then off. And give us some heads up. You could turn it on slowly. That way we all know it’s coming.”

“I guess I could do that.”

“We could even name the periods you have it on, and when you have it off.”

“Names?”

“Sure. Come up with something.”

“How about ‘The Shining Brilliance of Daystar’?”

“That’s a mouthful. Let’s just call it ‘day.’ Much easier to remember.”

“Day?”

“Sure. Now what about when it’s off?”

“Uh… ‘Nigh the… day?’”

“You are a wordy bugger, aren’t you. ‘Night.’ Same idea, but only one syllable. One syllable is good.”

“So ‘day’ and ‘night’?”

“Sounds good. Now. It’s night. And I’m trying to sleep. So. Turn. It. OFF!”

I’ve always thought that it would be cool if, when you take an exit off the highway, you could choose which location with the name on the sign you ended up at. In other words, if you were driving on I-75 and saw a sign for Lima, you could choose… Lima, OH? or Lima, Peru? Then you would just want to make sure you live in a place with enough other places nearby which take their names from other places. Unfortunately, as far as I know, Fargo is unique.

Also, I wonder about my GPS. Ronni thinks the voice sounds sad or resigned when it is forced to recalculate your route (because you didn’t follow its directions). For my part, I have fun making it recalculate. After all, I know it has a route in mind, but I’ve already decided on my route with Google Maps. The GPS is just back-up. It took about a mile before it finally capitulated to my route. It spent that mile trying to get me to make turns so that I would wind up back on its preferred route. It did sound a little resigned when it finally accepted my new path.

Which makes me wonder… Why do I have three devices with GPS capability, including an actual dedicated GPS, and I still get directions from Google Maps that I print out at home before setting out on the road? Doesn’t that seem like overkill?