Who knew it could be so easy?

From the NY Times. You don't have to be Jewish to well, look for hope in all kinds of places...

Fertile Blessings Indeed

I prefer my blessings come from live saints, but hey, what do I know?

Article from "Inside China"

You will be discomforted by this article and there's a lot of context that the author simply misses, but try to read between the lines and get a sense of what the Chinese folks themselves really feel.

INSIDE CHINA: CHINESE TAKEAWAYSDay 1 .. the American child adoption factory
From Anton Antonowicz In Guangzhou, China
BREAKFAST ends at the White Swan Hotel and it is time for a group photograph. There are 21 adults, all beaming. And 11 baby girls, all Chinese.

Instant families courtesy of the White Swan Express.

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Want to help fund an adoption film?

Looks like this could be worth your while and support:

What is the Adoption Project?

Adoption: An American Revolution is a major multimedia project that will explore how transformations taking place in adoption today are having far-reaching effects on all our public and private lives.

The centerpiece of the project will be a two-hour documentary special for national public broadcasting. The documentary will feature a rich tapestry of original stories, illuminating the joys, the challenges and the impact of adoption.

The television broadcast will be linked to an ambitious adoption education effort, with innovative adoption-related materials for public libraries and schools, a new Web site with adoption resources, and more.

Poignant Article by Dan Savage

From the NY Times this past week

DJ's Homeless Mommy

Thoughtful, incisive, painful and real.

This could be about any of our Korean-born sons and daughters

Although international adoption has brought me two blessings of the most wonderful kind, I have remained ambivalent about Korea's general domestic social welfare response to poverty and single parenthood. It's changing, but change is slow.

Check out this article from SFGate.com:

Korean-born in U.S. return to a home they never knew
Many locate lost families, others work to change international adoption policy

Note the thread about racial isolation.

Now that she's almost 7...

My youngest daughter will be 7 in December. She's now at the age where she's beginning to understand that to be with her adoptive family ** now ** there is birth family who was unable to take care of her and keep her ** then **.

Last night, as she was getting ready to close her eyes and we spent a few quiet moments in the dark together, she heard my son say he saw another shooting star. (We live close to an airport. I think he sees planes, but that's another story.)

Daughter says, "I think Brother made a wish about his birth mom." "Really," I replied. "What kind of wish do you think he made?" But she didn't respond. Then she looked at me and started to say, "Why didn't my birth mom keep ..." and then she immediately rephrased, "Why couldn't my birth mom take care of me?"

We spoke about the reasons why a birth mom couldn't take care of a little baby and why sometimes a different family is needed. I also mentioned that it's okay to love your birth mom and your "lucky" mom (that's me) all together. She never has to make a choice. There's plenty love enough to go around.

That was good enough to sleep on.

It was interesting to me to watch her process the information and change "why didn't she keep me" to "why couldn't she take care of me".

Maybe I'm doing a little something right, at least for now.

More than a week past the horror

I won't go on and on about the past week ... the stupidity, the ineptitude, the pissing contests between the feds/state/local governments. Much has already been written.

But hey, when Barbara Bush thinks dem po' black folks are doing better living in the Astrodome than in their own homes, I just have to let you see this blog entry from The Nation.

And for a timeline of the criminal stupidity, here's how wikipedia details it.

What's race and even more importantly economic class got to do with it? Just everything.