i, cartographer

Disloyal Boston: Equal Exchange

2012-01-14T18:12:00.003-06:00

"This winter, eight independently owned cafés are joining together to launch Boston’s first disloyalty card program. It’s similar to a customer loyalty card, except that customers are encouraged to visit other businesses. The idea is to build support for local, independent shops in a city dominated by national coffee chains and to inspire coffee enthusiasts to explore Boston’s growing coffee culture.

The disloyalty card concept was first launched in London by Gwilym Davies, the 2009 World Barista Champion. Similar programs have popped up in the U.S., in Seattle and San Francisco."

I don't know how I found out about the Boston version of this card, but I ran down Boylston Street from my new(-ish) apartment to Ula as soon as I did to start the caffeinated tour of my (relatively) new city the very next day.

Ula, more than likely, will be the place where I ultimately redeem my Disloyalty Card, so I'll write more about their incredible popovers later and tell you, instead, about the first stop on this independent odyssey: Equal Exchange Café. When I looked up the address (226 Causeway Street), I thought that I might be disappointed by its lack of public-transit accessibility, but I was totally wrong. Equal Exchange is directly across the street from North Station and the massive TD Garden:

on my very own Orange Line:

Equal Exchange is also a Boston Green Business and, because of this, it took me a while to get to the actual coffee because I got sidetracked by the wall of merchandise just inside the door. In addition to bags of locally-roasted beans, there were reusable bamboo utensil sets and oversized mugs that were actually manufactured domestically(!) Add to that the aggressive composting and recycling initiatives outlined on the wall opposite, and I was sold long before I even ordered the superb Mind, Body, Soul blend (just black, as I do).

"Spain’s Stolen Babies"

2011-11-19T22:19:00.000-06:00

By Ann Cahill, Europe Correspondent

THOUSANDS of babies disappeared over a 40-year period in Spain, stolen from their mothers and handed over for adoption by the state and the Catholic Church.

Gradually over the past few months the story of these stolen babies — it could be as many as 300,000 — has emerged and with it more details of how such a momentous crime could be carried out.

As hundreds of people call for an investigation and many suspect they may be one of the children kidnapped at birth, it seems they may never find out the truth — at least not officially.

Spain had one of the most vicious civil wars in Europe but the atrocities continued long after as the victor, Francisco Franco, maintained and strengthened his hold on the country.

In 1940 he legalised taking babies from their parents if their "moral education" was at risk.

In Franco’s Spain this meant any parent whose social, political and religious views did not coincide with his.

Many of these children had parents who were jailed for their leftist political leanings.

The babies were usually put into Catholic orphanages and many went on to become nuns or priests or were adopted, often illegally.

However, when Spain became a democracy after Franco’s death and the law was revoked, the despicable practice continued. This time the babies were not forcibly taken from their parents, but stolen and sold to couples looking to adopt children.

It was a well thought-out operation that involved the collusion of a considerable number of people, particularly in hospitals. Mothers not from the area, and especially if they were poor, were the main targets.

They were told their babies had died and the hospital would take care of the arrangements. Later searches of cemeteries by families revealed no records of births or deaths and undertakers have since revealed the practice of burying little empty coffins.

The well-known Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzon raised the issue of the Franco regime’s baby thefts two years ago when he estimated 30,000 babies were involved.

He is known for trying to have the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet extradited for crimes against humanity and for investigating the execution and disappearance of more than 100,000 Republicans — the losing side in the Spanish civil war

He was prevented from pursuing this under legislation introduced in 1977 declaring an amnesty for all those who committed atrocities during and in the years after the 1936-1939 civil war.

As Spain emerged from 30 years of brutal dictatorship, the politicians who battled against the extremists and the army to introduce democracy decided the best option was to let bygones be bygones.

It has worked to an amazing degree but if you ask enough questions of thoughtful Spaniards they display a deep understanding of their past and the difficulty of keeping it in the past.

In the last few days Spain’s attorney general has ruled there will be no national investigation into the stolen babies. Instead each person will have to pursue his or her own case at local level in an attempt to prevent any national outrage.

One town, La Línea in the southern region of Andalucia, has opened an investigation on foot of complaints by six families about babies disappearing from three clinics in the town.

An organisation, Anadir, has been set up by Antonio Barroso who suspects he was stolen and illegally adopted, and they are taking cases to the courts in a number of regions.

A Basque prosecutor is opening an investigation following a complaint by a woman who thrown out by her family when she became pregnant in the 1980s. She says she was pressurised by a Catholic priest into giving up her baby for adoption — a case that would find resonance in the Ireland of that time.

[This appeared in the printed version of The Irish Examiner Monday, February 07, 2011]

Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T09:21:00.010-05:00

at home in 1982: “This was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and that’s what I had.”

I never met the man, but I was saddened to hear that his life was cut so short yesterday.

[Quote and photo from The Everyday Minimalist by way of JoAnn.]

"Australia's Roman Catholic Church Apologises for Forced Adoptions"

2011-08-19T10:53:00.007-05:00

Australia's Roman Catholic Church has issued an apology for its role in the forced adoptions of babies from unmarried mothers during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, a practise that has been described as a "national disgrace."

By Bonnie Malkin, The Daily Telegraph, July 25th, 2011

It is estimated that more than 150,000 young women across Australia had their children taken away at birth without their consent, often never to be seen again.

Women subjected to forced adoptions in Catholic-run hospitals have described being shackled and drugged during labour and prevented from seeing their children being born or holding them afterwards.

Many said their children had been earmarked for forced adoption well before birth and they were told they could not oppose the decision.

Following an investigation into the practise by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Catholic Church issued a national apology, saying its history of forced adoptions was "deeply regrettable."

"We acknowledge the pain of separation and loss felt then and felt now by the mothers, fathers, children, families and others involved in the practices of the time," the apology said.

"For this pain we are genuinely sorry."

Women involved in the forced adoption process have given personal accounts of the horror of having their children ripped away after birth.

Juliette Clough was 16 when she gave birth to her son in a Catholic hospital in 1970.

"My ankles were strapped to the bed, they were in stirrups and I was gassed, I had plenty of gas and they just snatched away the baby," she told the ABC.

"You weren't allowed to see him or touch him, anything like that, or hold him and it was just like a piece of my soul had died and it's still dead."

Lily Arthur, from the forced adoption support group Origins NSW, was a 17-year-old ward of the state when she gave birth in 1967. She agreed to give up her child under threat of being imprisoned.

"When we were going to deliver the child we were put in a position where we couldn't see the delivery of the child," she said, describing how she was positioned on her side, with her face "pushed into the mattress."

"After my son was born I was nearly knocked unconscious and transported to a ward without my child."

Other women told of curtains being put up so they could not see their children and pillows held over their faces. Some lost more than one child to the program, their newborns being whisked away to live in families deemed more suitable by the Church. The women claim they were never told about their right to revoke consent for adoption, or the fact that they could claim single parent benefit.

A federal parliamentary inquiry is currently investigating the issue and has already received more than 300 submissions from across the country.

As well as issuing an apology, the Catholic Church has called on the government to establish "a fund for remedying established wrongs" and a national programme to help mothers and children who were harmed by the forced separations.

However, many of the women who were subjected to forced adoptions have called for further action.

"I don't think that anyone can accept an apology for something that's never been basically dealt with legally," Ms. Arthur said.

Oslo Bomb Blast: 'Deaths And Injuries'

2011-07-22T10:49:00.011-05:00

This saddens me greatly:

"Norwegian police have said that explosions in Oslo this afternoon were caused by bombs, and have caused "deaths and injuries."

Police said there were "one or several powerful explosions in the government building in Oslo."

They have told people in the Norwegian capital to stay away from the city centre and limit the use of mobile phones.

The building housed the offices of the Prime Minister, who was not thought to have been in his office at the time, and was reported to be safe.

The explosion was also thought to be near Norway's biggest tabloid newspaper.

Journalist Asgeir Ueland said that Oslo is a popular destination for people from other parts of Norway. He said the streets were crowded: "It happened when people were packing up for the weekend and leaving their offices. There were lots of people with blood on their faces and severe cuts."

Craig Barnes is in Oslo and said that he is shocked at what has happened. "It is a very nice, safe place to live. Norwegians are very friendly and I think everyone gets on. I think this is going to change a lot of views now. There will be questions regarding safety."

Nearby offices in the Norwegian capital have been evacuated.

Large amounts of glass and metal have been seen in the street.

Police and fire officials have declined to comment on the cause of the explosion.

The wreckage of a car was seen outside one building and there was early speculation that the damage was consistent with that from a car bomb.

One radio journalist reported from the scene. "I see that some windows of the government headquarters have been broken. Some people covered with blood are lying in the street."

Norway has experienced problems with several homegrown terror plots linked to al Qaeda.

Last week, a Norwegian prosecutor filed terror charges against an Iraqi-born cleric for threatening Norwegian politicians with death if he was deported."

[UPDATE 08/19/11: The shooter, as most of us now know, has been identified as Norwegian extremist, Anders Behring Breivik.]

Katy Perry's "Firework"

2011-07-04T14:05:00.001-05:00

"Same-Sex Marriage Wins 33-29 in [New York State] Senate"

2011-06-25T14:23:00.006-05:00

[Senator Thomas Duane, who is openly gay, left, shares a moment with Governor Andrew Cuomo when the Senate passes the same sex marriage bill on Friday, June 24, 2011, at The Capitol in Albany, N.Y. Standing at right is Senator Duane's partner, Louis Webre. (Cindy Schultz / Times Union)]

Published in today's Times Union:

"ALBANY -- The state Senate approved same-sex marriage on Friday night as the cheers of a crowd of advocates echoed up and down The Capitol's ornate western staircase.

The final vote was 33-29.

Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the bill just before midnight; it goes into effect in 30 days.

New York's action doubles the total U.S. population living in states where same-sex marriage is legal -- joining Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Iowa, and the District of Columbia.

The chamber was proceeding with a preliminary vote on chapter amendments to the bill -- strengthening language offering protection to churches and religious groups -- when Senator Steve Saland, R-Poughkeepsie, announced he would vote "Yes" on the measure, providing the 32nd vote required for passage.

Minutes later, Buffalo-area Republican Mark Grisanti provided a fourth Republican vote. "I cannot legally come up with an argument against same-sex marriage," he said.

Two other Republican senators, Roy McDonald of Saratoga and Jim Alesi of Monroe County, last week became the first GOP members to support the bill. They made their decisions after concerted lobbying by advocates and foes.

Debate began late in the evening. After an extended and technical description of the amendments, Saland thanked the governor and said with characteristic dryness that he would vote for the measure.

"My intellectual and emotional journey has ended here today," he said. "I have to define doing the right thing as treating all persons with equality, and that equality includes within the definition of marriage. To do otherwise would fly in the face of my upbringing."

Saland refused to yield for questions to Senator Ruben Diaz, Sr., the sole Democratic opponent to same-sex marriage. The amendments passed the Senate 36-26.

When the main bill came up for debate, Diaz castigated Republicans for allowing it to come to the floor. He charged the GOP had become "a tool of the Democratic governor."

"G*d settled the issue of marriage a long time ago," Diaz said.

Senator Tom Duane, the openly gay Democrat who has carried the legislation in the chamber for years, spoke emotionally about coming out to his Catholic parents.

"There are only heroes in this chamber tonight," he said.

There was a minor point of drama: debate on the measure was extremely limited, with only two Democrats allowed to speak. Diaz was stifled as he tried to speak against the bill, and other Democrats -- including a vocal Senator Kevin Parker, D-Brooklyn -- complained audibly that they weren't allowed to speak.

Aides to Cuomo and Skelos stood with Lieutenant Governor Bob Duffy, as he coaxed each into their seats. "It's a shame," said Diaz.

Following the vote, a great cheer rose from the Senate galleries and out to the western staircase, where supporters and opponents had been gathered all day. Duane waved to supporters in the balcony who erupted into cheers, chanting "U-S-A! U-S-A!"

Senator David Valesky, a Syracuse Democrat, was in tears nearby, tapping him on the shoulder. Alesi shook Duane's hand, as the Democrat mustered a simple, "Thank you." Duane's longtime partner, Louis Webre, embraced him.

On the south landing of the western staircase near the Senate, the crowd of supporters erupted in cheers when news broke over Twitter that the measure had 33 votes. The demonstrators had spent the day making noise -- singing "Chapel of Love" and "This Little Light of Mine," chanting "This is what democracy looks like!"

Off to the side, a small group of traditional marriage advocates knelt in the direction of the jubilant supporters, heads bowed in prayer.

A few minutes after the vote, Duffy welcomed Cuomo, who had pushed hard for the bill after making its passage a priority in his gubernatorial campaign, into the chamber to offer and accept congratulations.

"This state, when it is at its finest, is a beacon for social justice," Cuomo said in a subsequent news conference. "What this state did today brings this discussion of marriage equality to the nation -- that's the power and beauty of New York."

He applauded the "courage" of Republican senators who voted "Yes," and said Saland was "magnificent" to work with.

The Republican majority announced its intention to bring the bill to the floor just before 6PM.

"After many hours of deliberation and discussion over the past several weeks by members, it has been decided that same-sex marriage legislation will be brought to the full Senate for an up or down vote," said Majority Leader Dean Skelos, R-Long Island.

In 2009, senators defeated a same-sex marriage bill 38-24.

This year, amid a major push by advocates and Cuomo, the Senate GOP spent the past two weeks negotiating the language of the amendments, which include a clause prohibiting a judge from striking down the exemptions without striking down the marriage rights, explicit application to local non-discrimination laws, and language that would prohibit government entities from penalizing religious organizations or their officers from penalty at the hands of government.

Republican senators spent Friday discussing the issue -- along with a tuition hike at the state's public universities and an omnibus bill to cap local property taxes, renew rent rules in New York City and repeal mandates on local governments -- behind closed doors.

"There was a group that really was pushing for a (statewide) referendum," said Senator Betty Little, R-Queensbury. The idea was eventually discarded because it would not be able to become law for several years.

The main marriage bill passed the Assembly last week 80-63 and passed the amendments earlier Friday evening 82-47.

"Love won, our families won, fairness won, democracy won," said Ross Levi, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda."

[By JIMMY VIELKIND, Capitol Bureau]

"Quebec Mourns Singer-Songwriter Claude Léveillée"

2011-06-11T23:24:00.009-05:00

This was the headline from The CBC on Thursday.

Le Journal de Montréal reported that "Claude Léveillée meurt à 78 ans."

Admittedly, I wasn't familiar with his work until this week, but I now think that Mon Pays is one of the most beautiful songs about identity, heritage, fierté nationale, and yet not quite belonging, that I've ever heard.

"Birth Certificates at Center of Bill"

2011-05-26T22:23:00.006-05:00

Published in today's Times Union:

"One bill in the state Legislature demands passage on humane grounds alone: the Adoptee Rights Bill. It would return to people who were adopted the right to obtain a copy of their original birth certificate.

Even if we assume that the 1935 law that sealed their birth records was passed with good intentions -- to reassure adoptive parents that the natural mother could not interfere, and to validate the adopted person's place in the new family -- it is well past time for repeal.

In real life, one cannot cut off the past and pretend it does not matter. Simple stories that satisfied when adoptees were young become inadequate when they grow up. It is part of the human condition to want to know where we came from.

And mothers like me, who gave up their children 30, 40 or 50 years ago, do not get on with our lives without wondering and worrying what happened to them.

Yes, there are some who would stay hidden from their offspring, but "protecting" them by law demands that the state continue to trample the rights of others, the adopted. Yet the law sealing their birth certificates never included this "right" to parents' privacy from their own children that is now bandied about by some legislators as the reason to keep the records sealed.

If America is the land of the free, people adopted as children must have the same rights as the rest of us, that is, to fully answer the question: Who am I? It's only human to want to know.

Lorrainne Dusky
Sag Harbor

The writer is the author of the memoir Birthmark and blogs at Birth Mother, First Mother Forum. She was a reporter for the former Knickerbocker News."

The Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund

2011-03-20T22:45:00.002-05:00

Please consider making a donation by clicking here.

Andrew Pyper Reading at The U of T

2011-03-19T20:15:00.007-05:00

Yesterday, I went back-and-forth to Toronto on the bus to attend the last reading in the "Literature for Our Time" Series featuring Canadian novelist Andrew Pyper. I recently read Lost Girls (courtesy of PaperBack Swap) and am now looking forward to reading The Killing Circle. His advice to all of the aspiring writers in the audience was something along the lines of: "Be the author of your life rather than the actor in the play about your life that is being directed by someone else." (He conveyed this with far fewer words, however.)

While in the city, I had a luxurious and sophisticated soy latte at the diminutive, but incredibly welcoming, Jimmy's Coffee just off of King Street West and picked up a copy of the recent Giller Prize-winning The Sentimentalists, by Johanna Skibsrud. I've just started the book and it is quiet, dense, and poetic. More after I finish.

[Jimmy's was the second of Toronto's Top 10 Independent Coffee Houses that I plan to hit, so I will be back sooner-than-later to savor the flavors of the third (TBD).]

Sheriff: Three Adopted Children Suffered Horrific Abuse

2011-02-25T21:44:00.007-06:00

February 24, 2011|From Divina Mims, CNN

Three adopted children who allegedly suffered burns and were forced to eat pet food lived in "inhumane conditions" and might never fully recover, an Oklahoma sheriff said Thursday.

"They have been raised worse than dogs," Canadian County Sheriff Randall Edwards told CNN of the three malnourished juveniles, who are 9, 11 and 15.

John Kluth, 50, and Sonja Kluth, 57, of Yukon, Oklahoma, are accused by the district attorney's office of three counts of child abuse and three counts of child neglect, authorities said.

The complaint alleges the Kluths confined the 15-year-old boy to a plastic dog carrier for two months and deprived him of food.

The couple, who surrendered Tuesday, were released on a bond of $9,000 each. A phone number for them was unlisted.

"We are certainly not happy with the low bond," Edwards said.

The Kluths confessed to some of the allegations during the execution of a search warrant, the sheriff said. According to an affidavit filed in support of the arrest warrant, Sonja Kluth told investigators that she had tried but lost control of the children and had become a "monster," doing things she never should have done.

The three children are in custody of the Department of Human Services and are improving, according to the sheriff.

All three have stunted growth, Edwards said. He called it the worst abuse case he has seen.

According to the department, the 15-year-old was found sleeping in a box behind an Oklahoma City store on November 28. An investigator learned about child abuse at his residence in Yukon, a city about 15 miles west of Oklahoma City. The teen has an 11-year-old brother and 9-year-old sister.

Originally, the three were foster children in Wisconsin, officials said. The state placed them in the home of the Kluths, who adopted them and were still receiving $1,500 per child per month from Wisconsin after they moved to Oklahoma, Edwards said.

The Wisconsin Department of Children and Families is withholding adoption assistance payments, said Erika Monroe-Kane, communications director for the department.

"On January 20, 2011, we received information from the State of Oklahoma that the children had been removed from the Kluths' home. That same day, we requested additional information from Oklahoma and are still awaiting their response," she wrote in an e-mail to CNN Thursday.

Last Tuesday in Toronto

2011-02-15T22:52:00.013-06:00

I found myself suddenly in Guelph:

My plan was to attend a reading in Toronto by members of Environmental Defence, but I was sidetracked by a swirl of papers on Queen Street West that, when assembled, turned out to be a one-way bus ticket to Guelph, Ontario. And this was very strange because I have been looking at this PhD program(me) at The University of Guelph for years because of this man, Sky Gilbert:
So I went, but Guelph (itselph) was a hard sell in the middle of the winter. Luckily, I was able to have an intriguing version of aloo ghobi and a basket of garlic naan at Spice11 before boarding my bus back to Toronto (and on to Buffalo from the Bay Street terminal).[Photo of Professor Gilbert lifted from The National Post.]

DNTO: The Reunion Show

2011-02-06T13:38:00.007-06:00

Yesterday on Definitely Not the Opera, Sook-Yin Lee discussed reunions of all sorts that included an adoption segment about a mother and daughter.

[If you missed the show on CBC Radio One, you can listen to the podcast here.]

My Brother's Name is LeRoy

2011-01-28T11:52:00.020-06:00

and today is his birthday. He is named after our father:
but he might not know any of this because, like I once was, he was erased by adoption.
I took this photo (of an ad on a bench at a bus stop somewhere outside of Minneapolis) years ago. It reads: "Adopt siblings. Because sometimes all they have is each other."
And if you look closely at this last photo, you can see the word LeROI on one of the machines in front of our great-grandparents' home on Lark Street (I found this one by accident).

[I wrote an essay, Le Roi Inconnu, about the beginning of the search for my siblings and you can read it here.]

Ithaka, 1989

2011-01-25T12:23:00.028-06:00

On the night of January 25th, 2010, I was standing on a bridge on the Cornell campus holding a bottle of Ommegang Rare Vos and an old university course catalog. Above the din of the water below, I did my best to act normal when pedestrians approached from either side in order to avoid interaction, pretending for a few strides, at most, that I also had a destination elsewhere.

From page five of the January 26th, 1989, edition of The Citizen, in Auburn, New York:

“Missing Student’s Body Found”

ITHACA (AP) – The body of a Cornell University freshman who disappeared last month during exam week was found Wednesday in a creek near campus, police said.

Ithaca police divers pulled the body of Adam Stross, 18, of Loudonville, from Fall Creek at about 11:05 a.m., police said. His body was found in a 10-foot pool of water about 200 feet from Tripphammer Bridge, a suspension bridge that spans Fall Creek Gorge along the campus’ border.

Ithaca police and Cornell campus security officers had been searching for Stross since he disappeared on the afternoon of Dec. 15 after helping a fellow student pack her car.

Police did not rule Stross’ death a suicide and said an autopsy is scheduled."

Twenty-one years after the fact, I was suspended above that very same lethal topography having second thoughts about my dark pilgrimage. There was only one person on the planet who knew where I was, but that was an accident. I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want to get talked out of going. Part of me knew before I boarded the bus to Ithaca that this would be one of the most difficult things I’d ever done, but the entirety of me that was staring into the frigid black-and-white water churning between the jagged cliff walls hundreds of feet down had no doubt whatsoever.

I spent my freshman year of college at Cornell, but I was only truly present for a month or two. The brightness of my (projected) Ivy-League future was eclipsed by my friend’s disappearance and death and a series of funerals and memorial services (for others who lost their lives to terrorism and various cancers) that clustered relentlessly around the opening months of my life in higher education.

Two decades later, I’m shocked by two things: 1) That I ever graduated from any college at all, and 2) That I’m still in school to this day. I withdrew from Cornell University (by phone) after that first year, thinking that it was a big, punk-rock fuck you to the conventional life that was being scripted for me at the time. What I could not have predicted then was just how unconventional things would become, that there would be so many casualties, so many drugs, cops, and court dates.

I met a man at Cornell (not in the way that I would meet men later) who inspired me to change my own life in that first year. He was a foul-mouthed PhD candidate who taught the two sections of composition that I was required to take as a freshman. His name was Kirk and he encouraged me and another student to pursue both writing and publishing (even though we were not yet declared English majors) and for me to submit work to an annual undergraduate fiction competition. I did and I won with a piece of nonfiction that read like a play (which makes total sense in retrospect). My happiest memories of my time at Cornell all seem to involve Kirk in some way, like the dramatic reading of Don Quixote that he choreographed one afternoon where I played the role of a nonspeaking, but energetic, windmill spinning on top of a seminar table in Morrill Hall. Or the intimate nights that I spent with Freidrich Nietzche in the A.D. White Library trying to keep up with the (relentless) readings for his classes. I let the pages in my psych and sociology classes pile up, untouched, in my room as I read outside of my official course of study in a gorgeous oasis of wrought-iron and polished wood that had nothing to do with it, either.

I’ve always been wary of, and uncomfortable with, anything overly-formalized: Education, religion, conversations, meals. I was often the target of chalk, erasers, and other projectiles thrown by frustrated teachers, priests, and commanding officers prior to my acceptance at Cornell (at a baker’s dozen of Catholic, public, military, and Catholic military schools). This innate skepticism about the educational system was cemented for me when they pulled Adam’s decision into the light of day.

There was one bright afternoon, just before finals, though, when the four of us rejected the idea of another trip to Uris Library and, instead, replaced it with some quality time on the ice at Lynah Rink. (Adam was dating my girlfriend’s roommate and we were their romantic interlopers allowed, often with lightest of knocks, into the darkest and quietest parts of their nights). What started as a leisurely couples’ skate quickly became a competitive game of tag and, by far, one of the best days of my life. Jill and Sarah squealed like the teenage girls that they were and played along while Adam and I tried to outskate and outmaneuver each other like wild animals who found themselves suddenly upright and balanced on slivers of stainless steel. I don’t know if I was wearing gloves that day or not, but I left the rink bleeding, bruised, exhausted, and euphoric, the ice anaesthetisizing my wounds until my hands, knees, and shins thawed out later.

Within weeks, however, I was papering the campus with these XEROXed fliers:

And that exercise changed me and it changed those around me, too. We started telling each other lies about where he was. The most popular version of the lie was inspired by the music that he loved, particularly Otis Redding’s, Dock of the Bay. We conjured idyllic images of him with his bare feet dangling off of a pier into the Pacific Ocean leaving the cold, and the pressure, and Cornell far behind. We consoled and we counseled Sarah who was, of course, immediately shaken by his sudden, wordless absence. Everyone in our circle of friends upped their collective alcohol intake and people on the outside seemed to want in on our pain. (Maybe they just wanted to be there at the exact moment that one of us cracked, so that they could slip off to their own room, click the door shut, and call their friends back home to tell them just how rough it really was.) There was one Saturday night in the dorm, where we all lived on the fourth floor, when the party was confined to a single elevator shaft. Ed (one of my roommate’s friends from down the hall) spent hours with his girlfriend (I can’t remember her name if I ever knew it) strumming his acoustic guitar and screaming Lola, by The Kinks, for hours and hours while people got in and out of the box adding their drunken voices and contributing bottles of whatever to the cacophony as they did. The same song, over and over and over again. Somehow I knew that this was the calm before the storm. Adam was also fond of The Who’s Baba O’Reilly, the song that everyone calls, “Teenage Wasteland.” The one that opens every g*ddamn episode of CSI.

I didn’t drink until after I left Cornell, but as people in my life have often pointed out, I more than made up for the lost time. My introduction to demon alcohol was in the parking lot of this church after I dropped out:

St. John The “Divine,” where Adam’s memorial was held by his family, where I told his mother that it was “an honor” to have known her son, where his best friend broke down on the altar and pointed his finger at that very same woman and her husband and screamed, “They did this! They did this to him!” before he was escorted from the pulpit by another lacrosse player from our floor. I wanted to stand and yell, “Yes, yes, yes!” because I knew that kind of pressure and because I knew that Adam had felt incredible shame at being waitlisted at MIT. That Cornell was his safety school.

When the university sent counselors to Cascadilla Hall to help us process the discovery of his body, I reacted like a pit bull on a leash to their therapeutic tones and bullshit theories, actually shouting, “Where were you before? Where were you?” before being pulled to the floor by Sarah, Jill, and (maybe) Ed. Pete then escorted me back to our room where he stood in front of the door with his arms folded across his broad chest refusing to let me leave until the suicide presentation was over and the clinicians had left the building. (Pete had executed a similar maneuver once before when I got into a fist fight with the two steroid-loving frat boys from down the hall just after I had been lofted into a wall by one of them. He remains that awesome to this day.)

My friend, Michelle, gave me a new nickname after I was accepted to Iowa. She called me “The Degree Collector” and I thought it was howlingly funny at the time. My plan, my goal, before I landed in The Midwest was to leave The Writing University with another MFA, the right one this time, and a completed memoir. I went to force my own hand, to separate my life story from my daily life through writing, to workshop the pain away. I left Ithaca to escape the memory of Adam’s suicide, I moved to California to escape an abusive past in Albany, and I fled Iowa City to escape the devil in my bed. But all of this running, ultimately, landed me in an exorbitantly-priced studio apartment back in my hometown almost equidistant from the hospital where I was born and the orphanage where I was subsequently placed. I see the patterns, I understand the mistakes I’ve made, but I’m still not convinced that I will ever write what I need to write, to ever clear that fence. Five years into my three-year program, all that I’ve seemed to accomplish is to shovel more cash onto the mountain of my pre-existing student debt and to confuse yet another weary thesis director.

“Writer’s block” is a concept that I have never given much credence to and a phrase that I’ve actively avoided using in print, online, and in conversation, but I could be the poster child for the national campaign. Friends, colleagues, and people that I’ve never liked (but have been forced to interact with), have used the phrase as a get-out-of-jail card for failed papers and missed deadlines like a fake doctor’s note for another hangover. I’d always thought that they were just lazy and weak. When I’ve read about Famous Authors and their heroic battles with it, I’ve scoffed at their luxurious (and well-documented) temper tantrums. But now I think I’m starting to understand because now I’m outing myself as something of a sham. For years and years, I’ve been busy convincing friends and professors, both near and far, that I’ve been diligently typing away at my “difficult” memoir, publishing just enough every so often to convince myself that this was true along the way, as well. The truth is, however, that I’ve been trying to run from myself and my story for over half of my life now. The problem these days is that I’ve gotten to a point (personally, professionally, and academically) that requires me to have finished the manuscript yesterday. Last year. Ten years ago. I can’t move forward because I don’t want to write about myself anymore (even though I do, in fact, want to write). Friends have suggested that I should present my life as fiction, to write a semi-autobiographical novel, but I can’t, I couldn’t, and I won’t. Which probably makes me one of the most-reluctant memoirist that Iowa may ever see.

All of which brought me back to the bridge in Ithaca, even though I’d sworn off bridges in general out in California. When I used to play tour guide to the legions of friends who visited my shabby railroad apartment next to The Central Freeway in San Francisco, I would often organize a hike across The Golden Gate, but after a half-dozen successful field trips back-and-forth to Tiburon and Sausalito, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it anymore. Part of the problem was the dipshit fascination with signs like this:

expressed by one tourist in particular during one of her visits. And another part of the problem was the way my body started to feel drained of blood, my legs to jelly, my head to feel so heavy and unsteady on my shoulders as to pull me accidentally over the railing. The views of The San Francisco Bay from the bridge are well-documented and breathtaking in person, but I started to crouch a little bit more every time I went, to bear left on the path toward the traffic and away from the wide-open potential of the buena vistas, all the while putting on a brave face for my out-of-town guests. Making jokes, even (but never ever in the direction of self-destruction). Was this out of respect for what Adam had done in Ithaca? Partially. It was also out of respect for the other strangers who had thrown themselves from this iconic structure. And another small part of it had to do with self-preservation. I think that some of the impetus behind my own silence has been the fear that if I spoke about the unspeakable, that it would somehow unleash, or even encourage, the same behavior in myself. The same fear, and then some, can be applied to my reluctance to write about my time at Cornell. Complicating this gag order were myriad questions of tact and respect for the dead. Did I have the right to tell this part of Adam’s life story? What if his father read what I’d written? His mother? Why would I subject a reader, any reader (familial or not), to something so unfathomable and so ugly? And why would I ever want to think about this again?

I’m writing about my friend now, twenty-two years after his death, because I’m still not over his loss and because I haven’t been able to move on. Rather than simply forgetting, I have been trying, very unsuccessfully, to unthink this epoch completely. Therapy hasn’t put a dent into my avoidance. Sobriety didn’t do the trick, either, as much as I wanted it to be The Silver Bullet of Well-Adjustment. This isn’t simply an exercise in how fucked-up I still feel, but a conscious declaration of my vehement non-acceptance of what happened at Cornell back in 1989 (as body counts should have no place in academia). But I’m also writing about my friend now, twenty-two years after his death, because I need to let go of some of the anger that I felt then and some of the pain (a fraction, anything) that I’ve been carrying with me for so long (both literally and metaphorically). The autumn of 2010 found me moving into a new apartment in a new city, with another mattress on another unfamiliar floor, like a forty-year-old foster kid moving his box of allotted belongings from one placement to another. Except that I’ve got more than one box now after all of the living that I’ve done and the weight is something that I don’t want to bear any longer.

That night on that bridge was a memorial. An exorcism. Immersion therapy of my own design. Even though my hands were shaking so badly that my dexterity was almost lost, I tore out the first page from the book indiscriminately and let the sheaf of yellowed newsprint fall over the railing. The way it meandered through the night air conveyed its indifference to its mission, its significance. After I’d started the process, I knew that I’d have to see it through, but I was not sure that I could complete my mission without drawing unwanted attention from strangers who actually wanted to use the bridge to get from point A to point B or from students or security (who could have seen me from the path that runs along the edge of the Arts Quad above). I let another page go. And another. And another. And then I had to step into the shadows on the other side of the gorge to avoid the scrutiny of a well-dressed Asian man who looked like he might have been on the faculty. I feinted to my right with my head bowed in order to exude “purpose” and waited for the sound of his footsteps to recede into the distance. Aware of the fact that my time might have been more limited than I had previously thought, I sped up my efforts until I got to fourteen and had to stop again, had to convey “destination” with my gait and my deportment to the undergraduates who looked my way, mid-conversation, and then abruptly looked away as they passed. And then it was just me and my mission again, alone together, and I tore the remaining pages from the catalog and let them fall in rapid sequence, like a school of two-dimensional fish, caught and then released, returning to their aquatic habitat below.

Twenty-one pages, one for each of the years that Adam had been gone and that I’d still been here. I pulled the bottle out of my bag, keenly aware of the fact that this was the first alcohol that I’d purchased since I quit drinking and wondered, for more than a moment or two, if I was just going to down its contents right there, right then. For some reason I had assumed that it was a screw-top, but it wasn’t and I hadn’t thought to bring a bottle opener (as my first choice had been whiskey), so I used the bridge itself to pull it off, scraping the fresh coat of battleship grey in the process. And I was dismayed by the damage for some reason. I held the bottle over the rail and drained its contents into the roar, but I did not pray because there was no point. I capped the empty bottle and returned it to my bag, pulling out my camera in the hopes that, with the determined gesture and the new prop, I might cloak myself in the guise of a lost tourist. With my hands trembling more than ever, I pointed the lens at one of the faces that had been stenciled onto several surfaces, onto different planes of the bridge's construction, and I started shooting as many as I could, but the tunnel vision of the view finder left me alone with the portrait of someone who looked like my dead friend and my heart throbbed in my chest, my temples, and my ears and I had to look away. It was the same face replicated in different colors and sizes and their collective gaze was disquieting, the paint running down their faces like tears or stigmata. Like they’d all seen something that should never be witnessed.

Was this Adam’s countenance abstracted (because that would just be fucked)? Or were these tributes and protests for the lost lives of other men who had gone over this very same edge? I’ve had a year to consider both options and I still have no idea (although I heard that there was, in fact, a rash of suicides on the Cornell campus before I went back to make this particular peace). Either scenario is problematic.

My life stopped on January 25th, 1989, when police divers discovered my friend’s lifeless body in that icy water, but my story also begins on that very same day.

I have never written about this before.

I had to tell someone.

I’m sorry that it had to be you.

-----

[I took the first photo above in Cambridge, MA, last year during The Adoption: Secret Histories, Public Policies Conference at MIT. I'm not sure who took the last photo, but Adam is the man behind the bear.]

TorontOH!

2010-12-19T16:52:00.010-06:00

I just got back from a quick trip to Toronto with my friend, Shoe, and can't wait to go back. (Like, say, tomorrow.)

While in Canada's largest city (but not its capital), I walked for both miles and kilometers up and down Yonge Street going from bookstore to bookshop, and from coffee shop to café, including Bulldog Coffee on Granby Street (near Ryerson University) and to the Tea Shop 168 location on Queen Street West.

At Bulldog, I had one of the best, but most expensive, soy lattés of my life (which was, unfortunately, served in a Styrofoam cup). And then, in addition to the requiste bubble tea at Tea Shop 168, I had some "chocolate toast," which ended up being something like the love child of Angel food cake and actual toast that was then dusted with cocoa powder. (And, holy mother, was that combo phenomenal!)

For dinner one night, we tried (unsuccessfully) to go to Bo De Duyen (because they are in the process of moving) and instead went for Japanese at Yamato on Bellair Street and the Teppanyaki chefs were incredibly entertaining as they prepared everyone's meal on the massive grill in front of our very wide eyes.

On the way back to BuffalOH! we made a pit stop at the IKEA in Burlington for frukost and some Christmas shopping on the fly before we had to cross the border again.

[Bulldog was the first of Toronto's Top 10 Independent Coffee Houses that I plan to hit, so I will be back sooner-than-later to savor the flavors of the second (TBD).]

"Change Law, Open Adoption Records"

2010-12-16T19:43:00.006-06:00

Great letter to the editor from Tuesday's Albany Times Union:

Joyce Bahr ("Records Need to be Unsealed," letter, Nov. 29) is correct in saying that there are thousands of people who were born and adopted in New York who are stymied in their efforts to learn the truth of their identities. It is the hidebound state Legislature with the backbone of a jellyfish that keeps this bad law in place.

The results of all surveys of the public, including adoptive parents, favor repeal. And birth mothers need to search to heal their immense psychic wound that is the result of surrendering a child.

New York's sealed records law dates from 1935. It was pushed through the Legislature at the behest of then-Gov. Herbert H. Lehman. While he may have believed that this was in the best interest of the three children he and his wife adopted, time and changing attitudes have taught us a new lesson.

All people need to know where they came from, who their mothers and fathers are, what their real stories are. Denying this information is an injustice.

I relinquished a child in 1966, and was not given a choice as to whether I wanted anonymity. It was a condition of relinquishing a child. I argued against it to no avail. But I was never "promised" anonymity; if my child had not been adopted, her records would never have been sealed. We were reunited happily in 1981.

She was living in Wisconsin, and like the people Ms. Bahr wrote about, had no voice in the state of her birth and adoption, no legislator she might write to.

It is long past the time for this archaic and outdated law to be relegated to the dust bin of bad law.

Lorraine Dusky

Sag Harbor

[The writer is the author of Birthmark, a memoir about relinquishing a child (1979).]

November Was

2010-11-30T21:08:00.007-06:00

National Adoption Month, punctuated on the 20th by National Abduction Day, but November was also such a difficult month for me emotionally, logistically, romantically, and geographically that I, unfortunately, had to take this year off.

The photo above (taken by my friend Ori in Boston back in May), however, will have to serve as a stand-in for the 1,000 words that I did not write in the last 30 days.

"ADOPTED: for the life of me"

2010-10-21T12:44:00.010-05:00

Jean Strauss, author of the memoir Beneath a Tall Tree, needs some financial assistance to help distribute her new film, "ADOPTED: for the life of me," to a wider audience.

If you can offer any support whatsoever, please send a check made out to: Silver Tandem Productions and mail your contribution to:

Jean Strauss
Silver Tandem Productions
2300 Glenna Goodacre Blvd. #4325
Lubbock, TX 79401
(Please be sure to write "For Deposit Only" on the back.)

If you'd rather use PayPal, click the "Donate" button at the bottom of the “How You Can Help” page under the ACTION! tab here.

[PHOTOS: Joe DeGironimo of New Jersey. He finally discovered his original identity at the age of 67.]

Daydreaming About Dutch Canals on the Banks of the St. Lawrence

2010-08-04T07:49:00.013-05:00

We're settling into a really nice Saturday morning routine up here on Montréal's South Shore: I hop on my bike or walk up to la tabagie, pick up copies of The Globe and Mail and Le Devoir, and we read the papers together over a phenomenal breakfast (I make the coffee and he makes incredible (h)egg things).

There were two articles about The Netherlands in last week's Globe and Mail, one in the Travel section and the other in Books, and they both got me thinking (again) about saving my gulden to see Amsterdam one day (or some day sooner).

Québec Expresses Concerns About the Trafficking of Haitian Children

2010-06-14T10:50:00.009-05:00

Le Devoir ran a story on the 5th titled Adoption: le Québec craint le trafic d'enfants haïtiens, written by Antoine Robitaille, that touched on the provincial government's concerns about illegal adoptions from Haiti.

An official quoted in the article wants to insure that the children being bought and sold from Haiti are actually "real orphans" (which is an extremely important distinction to make in light of Save The Children's recent finding that "at least four out of five children in 'orphanages' [worldwide] still have [living] parents)."

Hopefully, this will help to stem the tide of looting by affluent North Americans in Port-au-Prince.

Adoption: Secret Histories, Public Policies Conference @ MIT Next Week

2010-04-22T15:11:00.006-05:00

Adoption-literature luminaries Ann Fessler, Marianne Novy, and Adam Pertman will be presenting.

"No Place Like Home"

2010-04-10T13:45:00.010-05:00

Thanks to a hot tip from JoAnn over some bad Mexican the other night, I had the immense pleasure of meeting Gregory Maguire this morning at The Empire State Book Festival underneath The Empire State Plaza (a perfect venue for this event, no?)

Not only was I thrilled to meet the author of Wicked, Son of a Witch, and A Lion Among Men, but I was particulary amazed to connect with someone who had also spent some quality time in the same orphanage. Walking away from the author table (mobbed, but well-behaved, by the way...), I realized that I'd never done that before (spoken to someone who had shared these very particular lodgings). But rather than getting something signed at said author table, I instead gave him a copy of Believer, Beware, an anthology that contains my essay about returning to St. Catherine's as an adult.

Of course, I left my stupid camera in my dumber apartment, so I lifted the above photo from Ellen Datlow's KGB gallery. [And, yes, I will be kicking myself for the rest of the day (and probably well into the night) about missing what may have been my one and only chance, EVER, to flash orphan gang signs in a photo with Gregory Maguire(!)]

Of Haitian Children and Idahos

2010-02-17T10:05:00.008-06:00

I have been stunned into a blogging silence by the natural disaster in Haiti and the ensuing man-made disaster involving the morons from Meridian, Idaho. Adoption, and adoption-related issues, seem to crop up in the strangest places and under the most unlikely of circumstances these days (as is the case with last month's catastrophic earthquake). I could never have predicted that a predatory group of Americans would descend upon the rubble of Port-au-Prince to "gather" up a fresh supply of obscenely poor foreign children for sale on the North American adoption market(!)

And then when Sainte Angelina touched down in Haiti, I could only assume that she was on another international shopping spree:

"This one will match my couch perfectly!" Jolie is rumored to have said of this young Haitian girl (held up here for her inspection by Wyclef Jean). [Photo lifted from a January 15th article in Le Figaro.]

In addition to Haitian relief efforts through organizations like The Red Cross and the aforementioned Yéle, there are some innovative aid partnerships that I'd like to draw your attention to. Starbucks has teamed up with The Red Cross to accept donations in participating US and Canadian locations, MicroPlace has added a note that allows investors to help Haitians rebuild their livelihoods over the long term, and there is a cover of R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts" available on iTunes that was recorded recently in The UK to raise money, as well. (Proving to Baptists worldwide that there are other ways to help a devastated country than to steal its children!)

"Vic Chesnutt est mort à Noël"

2010-01-06T13:32:00.011-06:00

This is a headline that I stole from Le Monde because I've been living in French (in Montréal) for weeks now, but just found out about Vic Chesnutt's overdose in Athens, Georgia, on Christmas Day a few hours ago after checking in on the Killing the Buddha blog.

A friend of mine in San Francisco told me about Vic Chesnutt years ago and burned a copy of Little for me and I've been a huge fan of his brilliant melancholy ever since. (That he died $70k in debt makes me wish that I had bought this particular CD, instead.) That he died of an overdose, however, does not surprise me at all.

Part of my attraction to Vic Chesnutt's music (aside from the beauty and inventiveness of his lyrics, and his sometimes strange arrangements on instruments like toy pianos) was the fact that he was also adopted. His scratchy angelic voice was the soundtrack of my own pain. Most of the attention in his myriad biographies is focused on the car accident (at age 18) that left him partially paralyzed, but I always thought of that event as symptomatic of the alcohol-fueled turbulence of his life as a teenage adoptee (oh, how I hate that word). In fact, "Where Were You?" (from West of Rome) became an anthem, of sorts, for me and the search for my family.

I met Vic, once, in 2003 at Amoeba Records on Haight Street in San Francisco after an in-store performance and I loved him then for not giving a shit about fame like I love him now for once being fired for refusing to tuck in his shirt and for stealing a copy of The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.

What I can't handle right now is the fact that he was only 45 years old and that At The Cut will be the last album we ever hear from this particular genius.

[Photos lifted from Metal Orgie, Constellation Records, Amazon, and Madison Music Review, respectively.]

Project 7 Addresses International Adoption

2009-12-07T22:44:00.006-06:00

I found out about the Project 7 line while perusing CaribouCoffee.com for gift ideas and I like some the items available on the P7 site. Particularly, the T-shirts made out of recycled plastic bottles and organic cotton and the breath mints packaged in unique vials with cork stoppers (made from recycled materials, as well).

Amazingly, there is some progressive copy on the site about orphans and international adoption(!):

"Internationally, human rights organizations have brought to light serious neglect and cruelty in foreign orphanages— most notorious of which are orphanages in China and Russia. The Human Rights Watch investigation of one Russian orphanage revealed that children who were considered “too active” or “too difficult” were confined to dark or barren rooms. The report also uncovered that staff would tether orphans by a limb if they believed they might try to escape, and restrained others in makeshift straitjackets. This sad reality is a clear indication of the necessity for human right organizations to monitor these institutions, and to take prompt action and intervene when necessary.

Surprisingly, adoption is still a fairly unregulated $6.3 billion industry. Americans have, since 1971, adopted nearly 300,000 children internationally. However, the condition of orphanages and the welfare of abandoned children is not a top priority in the current system of adoption.

Within the U.S. the number of orphans pales in comparison to third world and other international countries. Many argue that domestic processes are lengthy and costs of U.S. adoption are significant in comparison to international options. Therefore, while there are 114,000 children in the U.S. waiting to be adopted from foster care, many couples are seeking to find and adopt infants from abroad. Of course, it doesn’t help that celebrities and the media have made it appear popular to adopt international children."

Kudos to the people at Project 7 for having the balls to refer to adoption as an "unregulated industry."

And while the scope of Project 7 itself (to Heal, Save, House, Feed, Help, Build, and to give Hope worldwide) seems quite ambitious, their store is definitely worth a look as we head into the holidays.

A Grounded New York Adoptee's Letter to Governor Paterson

2009-11-22T18:25:00.008-06:00

[Please note: This letter was presented to Ms. Wendy Saunders at the State Capitol on 9/2/09]

Dear Mr. Governor and Deputy Secretary Saunders,

My purpose in writing your offices today is to request your support of Bills A8410/S5269 known as “The Adoptee Bill of Rights.” This legislation will grant equal rights to adult adoptees born in New York State by providing us access to our “Original Birth Certificates.”

Original Birth Certificates differ greatly from the “Certificate of Live Birth” New York State currently issues adoptees. While the Original Birth Certificate contains our factual identifying information, the “Amended” certificate is erroneously written as though our adoptive families are our birth parents. This practice in today’s society continues to misguide the general public as well as policy makers. Even President Barack Obama has faced scrutiny of late for having an “Amended Birth Certificate” similar to those issued to adoptees in New York State.

Due to these outdated practices, adoptees in New York State are not receiving the same rights non-adoptees have as U.S. Citizens. In 2004 the 9-11 Commission created “The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative” demanding stricter practices with the granting of a U.S. Passport for travel. Nationwide, adult American-born-adoptees have randomly encountered rejection in their applications for a U.S. Passport. The information contained on our sealed “Original Birth Certificate” has birth information necessary to fulfill Federal Passport requirements while the Amended Birth Certificates do not.

Currently the State Department not only demands extensive detailed proof of birth information, they also demand a non-refundable application fee. Many adult adoptees wait weeks, if not months, for a passport only to have it returned marked “Action Not Taken” while also forfeiting their 100 dollar payment. This denial of our constitutional rights is unfair as we are American-Born residents yet are treated as though we are second-class citizens. As a late-discovery adoptee, I am included in the group of adoptees who are denied in their passport application. Ironically, it was a result of the federal passport requirement that I learned of my adoption at the age of 41 in 2007.

There are over 6 million adult adoptees living in the United States today. It is time for New York State to join Maine, Oregon, Kansas, Alaska, Alabama, and New Hampshire by granting adult adoptees like myself with equal access to our “Original Birth Certificates.” Won’t you please join us by supporting passage of “The Adoptee Bill of Rights”?

Sincerely Yours,

Jeffrey A. Hancock
Western New York Regional Coordinator
New York Statewide Adoption Reform's Unsealed Initiative

[Another Note: Photo lifted from an article on eHow.com.]

New Travel Writing

2009-11-05T15:49:00.006-06:00

My first official piece of travel writing was just picked up by the fine folks at All Over Albany. Check out my words and images about taking the train from Albany (well, Rensselaer really...) to Montréal (to La Gare Centrale which, as its name suggests, is centrally located in downtown Montréal -- Imaginez ça!) here.

[Photo of Rue Saint-Jacques, circa 1910, from Wikipedia by way of The McCord Museum.]

Lorrie Moore Tonight at Page Hall

2009-10-15T22:00:00.006-05:00

My friend, Kevin, told me to read her short-story collection, Birds of America, a few years back and I've been grateful for that recommendation ever since. Tonight Lorrie Moore read from her new novel, A Gate at the Stairs, and I nearly walked out of the auditorium as the scene she was describing slowly came into focus.

But I couldn't.

And I didn't.

Because I was too thrilled to be in an audience of fellow bibliophiles listening to Lorrie Moore read from her new book even if the passage she read was about adoption. (Sometimes I just really want a break from this subject matter, from my own story, from the scarlet 'A' (different, but related, to Hester Prynne's) that I've been saddled with for well over thirty years.)

So, I bristled, but didn't bolt and I'm glad. Lorrie Moore is wickedly brilliant and incredibly funny and, if you haven't read her yet, take Kevin's advice and do so as soon as possible.

[Photo of Lorrie Moore by Lisa Carpenter lifted from The Guardian.]

"In Jupiter's Shadow: A Memoir/Mystery"

2009-09-18T21:44:00.003-05:00

My copy of In Jupiter's Shadow, by Gregory Gerard, arrived today from Amazon!

Alison Smith, author of Name All the Animals, has this to say about the book: "Generous, bighearted, and filled with homespun wisdom, In Jupiter's Shadow is a mystery story of a different stripe!"

I had the opportunity to read a draft of Greg's new memoir and look forward to revisiting the story of "a religious, teenage detective confront[ing] Heaven and Hell as he struggles to solve the mysteries of sexuality and faith within a family full of secrets."

[Photo with the author (who hails from Rochester and teaches at Writers & Books) taken by Lynn Beaumont at Cheesecake Machismo this summer here in Albany.]

"Believer, Beware" Featured on The Writing Univeristy

2009-09-01T11:46:00.004-05:00

The Writing University at The University of Iowa has a nice write up about Believer, Beware: First-Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith, me, and fellow-contributor (and KtB Editor) Laurel Snyder, on the site right now.

Pan Am 103 Bomber Released Today

2009-08-20T20:32:00.007-05:00

This saddens and angers me immensely. I can't imagine how the families of the men and women lost in this attack must be feeling tonight.

[Photo from an older ABC News blog posting.]

Review: "Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller"

2009-08-01T21:26:00.005-05:00

I read Todd Hirsch’s review of this book on the train from Québec back in May and was floored by the excerpt that was included with it in the paper.

Why?

Because the author’s story is just as compelling as his subject matter.

Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization, by Jeff Rubin, isn’t meant to cause panic, but rather to present a concise vision of a future (emphasis mine) without access to cheap imported oil in North America. Far from being overly apocalyptic, however, Rubin’s forecast sounds like a relief. After the price of oil functions to restrict (or eliminate completely) the movement of cheap goods and produce from overseas, North Americans will be forced to rely on things like local farmers and public transportation for food and for their daily commute. The way that he connects these dots is impressive (and strangely hopeful) and the way that he explains the interplay between the scarcity of oil, corn, and water in his more-local version of the not-too-distant future is fascinating, as well. While there are some highly technical points made in the text (particularly about following economic trends and how oil is extracted from various points on the planet) the voice and style are very accessible and easy to follow across the industries and the concepts that have converged on the world at the end of the age of cheap energy.

The fact that Rubin wrote the manuscript for Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller in four months and then promptly walked from his post as Chief Economist for CIBC World Markets in Toronto made me run out and grab this title as soon as I got back to Albany.

"With Liberty and Justice for [Some]"

2009-07-21T09:05:00.002-05:00

Here are two articles from The Philadelphia Inquirer from before and after The Adoptee Rights Demonstration.

"Believer, Beware" Out Now!

2009-07-01T21:14:00.008-05:00

I am thrilled and honored to be included in the new Killing the Buddha anthology, Believer, Beware: First-Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith, out now from Beacon Press.

So thrilled and so honored, in fact, that I hopped a bus to New York to attend the launch party at Le Poisson Rouge on Monday night. Fellow contributors Paul W. Morris, Quince Mountain, and Irina Reyn read their work to an enthusiastic and responsive audience and I got to talk shop with KtB co-founders Peter Manseau and Jeff Sharlet*, and current KtB editors Meera Subramanian and Nathan Schneider, as well.

The collection is phenomenal (no lie) and I encourage you to read it, reflect on it, react to it, and then write for Killing the Buddha yourself (if the spirit moves you, of course).

[Photo lifted from Andrew Vomhof as my camera crapped out long before I got to New York.]

*Listen to Jeff discuss his latest book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, with Terry Gross here.

I Spent My Birthday

2009-05-24T12:48:00.010-05:00

On the other side of the border in beautiful Boucherville, Québec, but I still turned 39 on Tuesday despite my best efforts to avoid the whole affair. Birthdays can be difficult days under the best of circumstances, but are complicated exponentially if you grew up in any sort of institutional care or in foster and/or adoptive constructs. Birthdays, like Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas, and a slew of other dubious and official holidays, simply hammer home the loss for me -- The loss experienced by mothers forced to reliquish their children and the loss of identity experienced by their sons and daughters once we were caught in the undertow of a wildly imperfect system.

This birthday, however, felt different.

I woke up in the arms of a wunnerful new man and flew across the St. Lawrence with him as we drove through Montréal's early morning traffic. After we had coffee together in La Gare Centrale and he went off to work, I bought copies of Le Devoir, The Globe & Mail, La Presse and The National Post to bring to Joann's later in the week to read over waffles and more coffee out on her palatial front porch. (Have I mentioned that I love coffee? It's true.)

I rode the rails back to Albany slightly overwhelmed by all of the positive changes that have taken place in my life in the last couple of months (none of which would have been possible without the love and support of all of my incroyable friends from coast-to-coast). You know who you are and I can't thank you enough (even though I keep trying). To that end, I took Penny out to Capital Thai for a fantastic birthday meal before meeting up with Joann to roam through the night reclaiming what we could from the curb (more on that haul later).

True, I'm a little bit older and I'm still searching for my brother, but I'm looking forward to this summer in a way that I haven't in years.

[Image Credits: Top photo taken by the aforementioned wunnerful new man before he took me to Cirque de Soleil's production of OVO and the second photo, of the interior of La Gare Centrale, was borrowed from Wikipedia.]

Shane Jones Thinks That I Am a Nice Man

2009-04-15T11:56:00.009-05:00

Which is pretty cool because I think that he is a good person.

Part of the Yes, Reading! Series, Shane read from his new novel, Light Boxes , on Friday night at The Townsend Park Bakery Café on Washington Avenue.

I'm looking forward to sitting down with this new work by this local author and going to the next Yes! event on the 24th, featuring Joshua Harmon and Andrew Zawacki, at The UAG Gallery. (If I’m not running around in Brooklyn that weekend with Neil, that is.)

[The painting in this photo, “Camouflage,” is an amazing acrylic on canvas by Mark Gregory, whom I also had the pleasure of meeting recently at All Over Albany’s first birthday bash last month.]

L' Ētranger Ētrange à Montréal

2009-04-01T11:47:00.012-05:00

Amtrak is currently running a special on The Adirondack , so I just got back from Montréal after a phenomenal long(-ish) weekend. (For only $75 r/t!) I had originally planned to visit (and write about) two swank hotels, The St-Paul and The St-James, but I got a bit lost (in a good way) and distracted (by a very charming Montréaler). These two properties are both former financial institutions, so I was going to write a piece about “Things to Do with Dead Banks,” but I never found them (which is kind of unfortunate because it would have dovetailed nicely with today’s protests of The G20 Summit in London). Oh, well.

Instead, I zipped around the city (on foot and on the métro) and found a couple of other things that had caught my attention in print before I left.

The first was the Marché Atwater (pictured above) for some chocolate infused with aged balsamic vinegar from Geneviève Grandbois for a friend. The building looked to me like the love child of Buffalo’s Central Terminal and London’s Tate Modern and the interior totally reminded me of San Francisco’s Ferry Building. I got the sense that there was some adaptive reuse going on, but I don’t know what the building was originally constructed for. (If you know, please send me an e-mail because I’m extrêmement curious!)

The other thing that I was looking for was evidence of Montréal’s bike friendliness and I found it, as well! Check my photo of the dedicated lanes completely segregated from the city’s fast-and-furious auto traffic(!):

I ate really well at Le Commensal and at ChuChai (with the aforementioned feisty Quebecker). The Thai food was some of the best I've ever had in my life!

I’d wanted to visit the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, but I didn’t have time this time around. That’s OK, though, as the special railfare is still being offered through the 21st and I’m thinking of going back for The Blue Metropolis Festival in a couple of weeks anyway. (Maybe I'll be able to find those hotels-that-used-to-be-banks then? I wouldn't bet on it. My sense of direction is horrible, but it usually leads me to interesting places nonetheless:-)

I Saw Dead People

2009-03-19T11:38:00.004-05:00

More precisely, I saw "James Joyce's The Dead" on Wednesday night at Capital Rep (where I also spotted William Kennedy in the audience).

I was really impressed by the stage and lighting designs by Ted Simpson and Stephen Quandt, respectively, and by David Sutton’s gorgeous and dramatic tenor. You can read Michael Eck’s full review here.

[Thanks again to my incredible friend, Penny, for hooking me up with tickets!]

“Whoa, Albany?!?”

2009-03-11T14:40:00.008-05:00

This has been the general tone of the various reactions that I’ve gotten to my unexpected relocation last month from Iowa back to New York. Albany is my hometown and I’m happy to be back (despite the fact that “home” has been such a complicated word for me for most of my life). There is somehow simultaneously more and less here than when I left, more blight, yet more beauty than I remembered, and I’ve been busy exploring both in the last couple of weeks.

On Friday night, I saw The Hudson River Panorama (part of the 1st Friday festivities) after a fantastic dinner with friends at El Mariachi (across the street from The Albany Institute), followed by a fizzy beverage and some great conversation at The University Club.

I also checked out the “Issues” show at The UAG Gallery on Lark the other day after some black tea and red velvety goodness at The Good Leaf. The art scene isn’t as front-and-center here as it is in other places that I’ve lived around the country, but I’m looking forward to seeing the new Massry Center, EMPAC, the Live with Less show at The University at Albany Art Museum, and The Annual Photo Regional at The Opalka Gallery.

On the literary front, I went to see Taylor Mali at St. Joseph Hall and was really impressed, not only by some of his spoken word, but also by his commitment to teaching. Mali appeared as a visiting writer in The Frequency North Reading Series that was started by Daniel Nester (who is on the faculty at St. Rose). Since the big breakup, I’ve been reading a lot of poetry (by Michelle Tea and Mike Doughty, in particular) and am looking forward to hearing Shane Jones read on April 10th at The Townsend Park Bakery Café.

On the flâneury front, I’ve been pounding a ton of Albanian pavement since my return to the city and still marvel at the big wide waste that is Central Avenue. (Where is the light rail that should replace the lumbering #55 between Albany and Schenectady?) As a staunch perambulator and public-transport freak, however, I’ve been encouraged to encounter like-minded people on the Web who are doing just fine without a car and biking it up in the area. The news about potentially bringing high-speed rail service upstate is pretty awesome, as well.

So, to wrap up one of my lengthiest posts to date, I had to leave home years ago, but am glad to be back in Albany today. (In the interim, I've shed a very thin skin to reveal a much tougher hide.) And lately I’ve been camping out at The Muddy Cup, so stop by and say, “Hello!”, if you see me typing away into The Void (especially if you have ideas about putting this place back on the map or want to hook me up with a cup of coffee:-)

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love:

2009-02-14T15:01:00.002-06:00

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

Oslo on the Move via Methane

2009-02-04T12:03:00.005-06:00

Ori sent me this link the other day about a pilot program in Oslo, Norway, to convert the city's fleet of buses from using petroleum to burning biomethane. Derived from sewage, discarded food from restaurants, and cut grass, biomethane is cheaper to buy, reduces the amount of material processed in treatment plants, and also reduces the amount of carbon dioxide spewed into the city streets by the buses themselves.

I'm intrigued by this technology and can't wait to ride around the city on one of these when I get back to Norway someday!

"Long-Lost Brothers Reunited"

2009-01-12T16:10:00.002-06:00

Yahoo! repackaged this video from ABC News today about “Long-Lost Brothers Reunited” after eighty years of separation. The Chicago Tribune Magazine reported the story back in November in an article by Don Terry titled, “Lifetime, No See,” about “Lew and Jack, two grandfathers in their early 80s who, after a lifetime as strangers, discovered they are brothers.” Since then, the story has been picked up by publications, Web sites, and forums all over the Internet that invariably describe the story as “amazing” and/or “heartwarming.”

Why is this?

Mainly, I think, because most people don’t understand adoption at all. They don’t understand that actual families are permanently fractured and destroyed in order to create the fake “adoptive families” that are so much in the news today. They don’t understand that children’s identities, heritage, and medical histories are erased by adoption and that the adoption laws on the books in most of these United States will keep them from finding their “long-lost” family members once they reach adulthood.

Why is this?

Mainly, I think, because the concept of adoption is predicated on so many lies, so many elaborate fictions, that have been repeated so many times that the majority of North Americans now believe them.

Why is this?

Because to tell the truth would be bad for business.

Starbucks (RED)

2008-12-01T12:28:00.004-06:00

Today, Starbucks will donate a nickel from the sale of every “hand-crafted beverage” (at participating US and Canadian locations) to The Global Fund.

November is National Adoption Awareness Month

2008-11-19T08:47:00.005-06:00

And, unfortunately, most Americans are still not aware of the fact that adoption has also erased the identities of millions of people in this country by way of amended (i.e., "fake") birth certificates issued after their adoptions were finalized in court.

I've had three.

Can someone explain this one to me again because I've never really gotten a straight answer about why this has to happen?

[Photo taken completely out of context this summer from the steps of Erie County Community College in downtown Buffalo, New York.]

My First Foray Into Microfinance

2008-10-26T00:47:00.016-05:00

I’ve just started reading Banker to the Poor: Micro-lending and the Battle Against World Poverty, by Muhammad Yunus, who won The Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his innovative economic work as the founder of The Grameen Bank.

Intrigued by the concept of microfinance, I’ve held off from actually investing because all of the opportunities that I found were overseas. (In the same way that I advocate for people to adopt domestically, I also wish that there were more of a focus on Americans working on economic and social issues here in the US.)

Annoyed by E*Trade’s surprise forty-dollar “inactivity fee” on my first (experimental) stock purchase, I was happy to see that domestic options were recently added to MicroPlace and invested one hundred dollars via ACCIÓN USA. My decision to invest was definitely influenced by this borrower profile borrowed from the MicroPlace site:

“Your investment will enable loans to people like Jonathan,
[a former] Navy man. [A]fter eight years of night watches fueled by a thick concoction known as ‘mud,’ he is also a coffee man. But it wasn’t until Jon spent several years in construction that he decided to turn his love of coffee into more than a hobby. “I was always building things for other people,” he explains. “It was time to build something for myself.” With that, Jon decided to open The Freaky Bean Coffee Company, a specialty coffee shop featuring organic and Fair Trade beans, in Scarborough, Maine, just outside of Portland.

Once Jon finished his business plan he began looking for financing. “One day, I Googled ‘microloans in the US,’ and ACCIÓN USA popped up.” Although ACCIÓN USA only has offices in Atlanta, Boston and Miami, the new online lending platform gives entrepreneurs the ability to apply for a loan from anywhere in the United States. After completing his application over the Internet, Jon was approved for a $10,000 loan for his first Freaky Bean location. “The process was a breeze,” he recalls.

‘The Bean’ has become a fast favorite among local business people since the doors opened last summer. “Our core value is to create community through the medium of coffee. It’s all about giving back,” says Jon of his growing company. He and his partners opened the second Freaky Bean location in Westwood, Maine, also a suburb of Portland. “Soon enough, we’ll be the number one coffee house in New England,” says [Jonathan]—who takes his coffee black.”

One of the coolest aspects of this whole process was that I was able to fund this investment via PayPal making the set-up infinitely easier than navigating the small print and other assorted pettiness of FEE*Trade. And given the downward spiral of the stock market itself in recent weeks, I’m totally fine with the 2% that this $100 should return over the next thirty months. I also like the fact that my hundred dollars will be doing something more than just making money for a brokerage firm between now and then.

Another amazing facet of microfinance is that women, in particular, benefit from receiving microloans. Wouldn’t it be great if this simple, yet radical, economic concept could help more mothers in this country retain custody of their own children, sparing their sons and daughters from foster care, and keeping more families together?

"The Locator"

2008-09-12T01:57:00.007-05:00

Made its debut on WE tv last Saturday and I was dubious. (Might still be, actually). I tire of adoption as plot device, of adoption as a shortcut to cheap drama, of adoption in the media, period. With trepidation, I watched Episode 1 ("Jerry Sloop") about a pair of siblings (a brother and a sister) looking for their brother who was lost in the shuffle a nasty divorce forty years prior. (I was actually relieved that adoption wasn't a factor at all in this first episode!) However, when the brothers reunited I absolutely lost it. Tears nearly shot out of my eyes as I felt that familiar frustration of not knowing how to find my own brother after years of searching.

This show was particularly difficult to watch as I was just dropped by Kin$olving via e-mail with this "Adoption Search Cancellation Notice":

"Michael,

After carefully reviewing your file once again, we regret to inform you that we have been unsuccessful in concluding your search and feel we have done all we know to do.

While we have exhausted all sources that are currently available to us, many searches are resolved by other investigaators [sic] that may have different research capabilities.

We encourage you to continue in your efforts and hope that you will be able to see your search through to a satisfactory conclusion.

Thank you for affording us the opportunity to try and assist you.

Again we wish that we could have completed your case but could not. Please consider this as termination of our contract.

Kinsolving Investigations"

This despite the fact that I supplied them with a copy of my brother's original birth certificate, his date of birth, his date of file, the name of the hospital where he was born, and the names of both of our parents (and their dates of birth). Is it possible to supply any more information to a researcher without first finding the subject of the investigation for them?

And why should I have to resort to paying someone else to find my own brother? Because we were both erased before either one of us knew how to speak and neither of us has any legal right to this information as adults.

"Protesters seek to change laws sealing birth papers"

2008-08-07T12:30:00.006-05:00

This is The Times-Picayune coverage of The Adoptee Rights Demonstration in New Orleans on July 22nd:

The Adoptee Rights Demonstration for Equal Access To Birth Certificates is Next Week in New Orleans

2008-07-16T17:08:00.007-05:00

Here is the Press Release for the Demonstration (we leave on Sunday morning!):

Adopted persons, their families and friends will be gathering in New Orleans for the National Conference of State Legislators for a demonstration on equal rights for adopted persons in the United States.

DATE: July 22, 2008

TIME: 11:30AM

DEMONSTRATION LOCATION: Lafayette Square Park, New Orleans. The demonstration will begin at Lafayette Square Park marching 8 blocks to the National Conference of State Legislators being held at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Centre ( 900 Convention Center Blvd., New Orleans)

In the United States only six states (Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, Maine, New Hampshire and Oregon) allow adopted persons access to their original birth certificates. We believe that it is discriminatory to legally withhold personal information and documents from citizens that all other tax-paying voting citizens are entitled to.

Nowhere on any adoption contract or in any legislation is it written that an adopted person can not possess their original birth certificate or why the birth certificate is withheld from the adoptee. Opposition to adopted persons possessing their original birth certificates will present legally unsupprted claims that a relinquishing mother has the right to privacy and to be protected from her daughter or son relinquished to adoption, therefore allowing a mother a lifetime of privacy and anonymity. This is discrimination. Relinquishing mothers do not seal their children's original birth certificates - the original birth certificates are sealed by state governments.

The participants of the demonstration believe that every citizen of the United States should be treated equally. To do otherwise is discrimination. We would like all remaining states to introduce legislation that will allow adopted persons in the United States access to their original birth certificates.

We encourage your reporters to cover this story and event to help us bring public awareness to this demonstration in New Orleans.

Web Site for the Demonstration: adopteerights.net

Media contacts for the Demonstration in New Orleans:

Kali Coultas
805 500-5317 (pst)
Cell: 805 607-2704
withoutatribe@hotmail.com

Michelle Edmunds
516 593-2753 (est)
Cell: 516 263-1556
michelle.edmunds@gmail.com

A Series of Modest Proposals for Buffalo's Central Terminal

2008-07-04T17:26:00.017-05:00

I have been thinking a lot about Buffalo’s Central Terminal since this year’s Artists & Models, and I’ve put together something like a series of brief proposals for making a strong case for its eventual reopening as an actual rail station, as well as ideas for repurposing some of the grand interior space (imported from The West Coast), and for bringing in some much-needed funding for these various projects.

Having arrived in, and departed from, “Buffalo” via the Amtrak’s Depew station, I can say with confidence that this is one of the most confusing introductions to a large(r) North American city that I’ve encountered in my rail travels to date. Depew, for those traveling without a car (as that is often the point when opting to take the train), is in the middle of the nowhere and is accessible only by very limited local bus service. (Not to mention that it is heinously ugly!) Oddly enough, Amtrak makes arguments for reopening Buffalo’s Central Terminal, and for razing the Depew abomination, on its own site. Admittedly, it’s buried, but it’s there in the form of a single static page about The Great American Stations Project and “why stations matter.”

The Central Terminal could be one of the best domestic tourist destinations in Western New York as well as being a phenomenal gateway for Canadian travelers if it once again functioned as an actual rail terminal. The January/February 2008 issue of Amtrak’s own Arrive Magazine featured a glossy article, titled “Imagination Stations,” about the rehabilitation of various rail terminals throughout The Northeast that proclaimed that “a new golden age of train travel is upon us.”(p.28) I think it would be interesting if trains could start to roll in and out of The Central Terminal on a limited basis, like The Napa Valley Wine Train or The Boone & Scenic Valley Railroad, from Niagara Falls from the west or from Rochester from the east. (These are arbitrary short-haul suggestions.) The cover story of the July/August issue of Buffalo Spree Magazine asks the question, “How do we sell Buffalo?” in a way that “celebrates Buffalo’s status as an architectural destination.” My answer to this is, “Why not start with the beautiful architecture of The Central Terminal as a tourist destination unto itself?”

The photo (above) was taken in San Francisco’s newly renovated Ferry Building by my good friend, Wendy Vasta, while I was out visiting in February. The Ferry Building was derelict for most of the time that we lived in California because it was so heavily damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. (It just sat there looking sad and empty on the waterfront with its clock tower slightly askew, like it had lost a fight years ago and never bothered to pick itself up off of the pavement.) Today it is mobbed with tourists and locals who flock to the shops and restaurants inside (like Peet’s Coffee) before or after they hop one of the new high-speed ferries that began, or vastly improved, services after the building once again became such a sight to see. With some enthusiastic volunteers and a lot of donated paint, the The Central Terminal’s passenger platforms could host quite a farmer’s market or become the basis for one of the best drive-in (or bike-in) theatres in the country!

Here’s where things get really interesting, though. Both HSBC and M&T Bank offer online banking in the form of HSBCAdvance and OnBank.com, respectively. I think that there is an opportunity during the application process for these online accounts for donations to Buffalo-centric projects like The Central Terminal. Specifically, when new customers (like myself) are asked to fund their new accounts.

I propose an IRS-esque bit of copy on both sites that could read something like:

"HSBCAdvance's corporate and customer service headquarters are located in Buffalo, New York. In an effort to uphold our tradition of being "the world's local bank," HSBCAdvance has taken the initiative to assist in the preservation of Buffalo’s Central Terminal, a stunning Art Deco rail station that opened to the public in 1929 that is now, unfortunately, in serious disrepair. The Central Terminal Restoration Corporation, however, is currently working to save this architectural gem in an innovative partnership with HSBCAdvance. Would you like to include a donation to this nonprofit with your initial deposit?”

HSBCAdvance (and/or OnBank) could then match donations up to $X and virtually automate a huge chunk of their corporate philanthropy in the Western New York region.

For additional ideas about reviving and repurposing gorgeous, yet neglected, structures like The Central Terminal, I suggest looking to San Francisco’s Ferry Building for commercial and transit ideas, to Altoona’s Railroaders Memorial Museum for opportunities in cultural and historical tourism, and to MASS MoCA in North Adams for artistic inspiration. If I’m accepted to UB next year, I’ll definitely be volunteering at The Central Terminal, but in the interim I’m going to grab a membership and hope that some of you will consider doing the same.

When Iowa Rivers Attack

2008-06-14T23:03:00.009-05:00

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from The Editor of The Iowa Review with a call for volunteers to help move books out of the basement of the university's main library. I grabbed a pair of Adam's winter gloves, walked to campus, and plugged myself into a human conveyer belt that lifted, among other things, gorgeous oversized art books to higher ground. What was really funny about this distinctly unfunny operation was watching all of the bibliophiles trying not to read all of the titles as they passed by.

During a lull in the conveyance later in the afternoon, I decided that my talents might be better utilized outside of the library and I joined the sandbagging effort along the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City train tracks. I was dismayed to see that the water was so close to The English-Philosophy Building and further dismayed to learn that it was assumed that the building would start to flood within hours.

I worked until dinnertime and found out after I got home that Art Building West (above), one of my favorite places on The University of Iowa Arts Campus, was already closed and partially flooded.

Physically exhausted and upset, I watched Cedar Rapids disappear on television until Adam got home from the library where he was moving books, art and otherwise, up and out of the basement.

[Photos lifted from The University of Iowa News Services.]

Almost Lost + Possibly Found in Buffalo, New York

2008-06-06T13:02:00.011-05:00

The lobby of the Ellicott-Square Building in downtown Buffalo, New York, is so gorgeous that I had to sign a release form just to take this photograph. (I've never been to Paris, but this dramatic interior made me think of the Gare du Nord.)

After I wrapped up my first semester of teaching nonfiction writing here at The University of Iowa, I needed to get out of town, so I hopped a bus from Iowa City to Chicago and then caught the Lake Shore Limited to Buffalo with my friend, JoAnn, for three days of art and urban exploration. Hours after we arrived at the wildly inconvenient (and mildly depressing) Depew station, we attended "Artists and Models" at The Central Terminal. Buffalo's Central Terminal is Western New York's abandoned-and-abused version of New York City's Grand Central Station and it was full of thousands of artists, bands, DJs, and other assorted freaks on Saturday, May 31st. We left, reluctantly, at about 1AM because we were exhausted from traveling, but were up early the next morning for "The Whirlwind Tour" on The Open-Air Autobus. Perhaps the best twenty dollars that I have ever spent, this tour of Buffalo's architecture and history clocks in at over two hours and JoAnn turned to me as we were momentarily parked underneath the imposing, yet inspiring, towers of The New York State Asylum for the Insane and said, "This is one of the coolest things I've ever done!" and I totally agreed.

After we re-caffeinated on Elmwood, we caught the last day of "Continuum: The MacKrell Collage Archive Project, curated by Gerald Mead" at UB's Anderson Gallery. "Continuum" was a small, but dense, show that illuminated bits and pieces of the creative process by illustrating how one artist categorized and utilized her often-found raw materials.

JoAnn spent the rest of her time in The Queen City working diligently on her thesis while I roamed around indulging my lust for public transit, hockey, and coffee by riding Buffalo's Metro Rail between Tim Horton's in the HSBC Tower, The Sabres Store in HSBC Arena, and the Dunkin' Donuts on the corner of Main and Chippewa.

I may be back in Iowa, but I'm clearly still in an (Upstate) New York State of mind.

There is Something About a Train

2008-05-10T21:43:00.005-05:00

On a lighter note, today is The First Annual National Train Day. While this event isn't exceptionally exciting in and of itself, riding the train is one of my favorite things to do and the most environmentally-friendly option when compared to driving or flying.

Sadly, there is no Amtrak station in Iowa City despite the fact that Iowa City was once "the westernmost terminus for rail travel" in the United States. In the mid-1850s that is, according to the modest commemorative plaque (above) on the bridge over the existing commercial lines near DeLuxe on Summit Street. Amtrak has been studying the feasibility of restoring service to Chicago and released a new report in April, but I'm thinking that we'll have long since moved out of state before this particular ribbon cutting.

Survivors (Most Likely) Include: Thoughts on the Sueppel Murders

2008-04-25T20:27:00.013-05:00

I was actually typing away at a café up the street from St. Mary's Catholic Church in Iowa City while mourners were walking to the Sueppel family's funeral Mass on Saturday March, 29th, but I didn't know that there were four adopted children involved until days later. I was up late writing, as I like to do when the house is quiet, and I just happened to pick up The Gazette from Sunday, the 30th, that had the above photos on the bottom half of the front page. My blood ran cold at the sight of the white couple and the Asian children who were bludgeoned to death by the husband.

It wasn't until days after that that I found out that I wasn't alone in my outrage: "How many seriously have to die before we all start demanding changes in adoption? How many children have to be hurt before the adoption industry is held accountable for their actions in the placement of these children?"

The story made national and international headlines, particularly in Korea: "An embattled former bank executive committed suicide by crashing his van after killing his wife, failing to asphyxiate their four children in a garage then slaying them individually, authorities in Iowa said."

Steven Sueppel, the alleged thief and multiple murderer, was once heralded locally as a "humanitarian" because he and his late wife had adopted the now-dead children. The repeated purchasing of Asian children, however, seems more like obsessive consumerism than an act, or acts, of altruism.

Another article from The Gazette, written by Diane Heldt and published on the 28th, contained the following two gruesome details: "A black bat, a blue bat and a piece of skull bone and biological tissue found in the main level hallway were among the items taken by Iowa City police officers from the home of Steven and Sheryl Sueppel in Iowa City Monday." In the van with Steven Sueppel's body were found "social security cards that were partly burned and a permanent resident card and passport from Korea for Jinhee Choi, according to the search warrant."

No efforts will be made by the adoption agency to contact surviving relatives of any of the dead children back in Korea as, clearly, this would be bad for business.

International Monday: "Sold Into Adoption"

2008-03-24T17:13:00.011-05:00

"Sold Into Adoption: The Human Baby Trafficking Scandal Exposes
Vulnerabilities in Chinese Adoptions to the United States" -- Written and presented by law students Patricia Meier (right) and Xiaole Zhang (left)

Date: 03/24/2008 Time: 12:00pm-01:00pm
Location: Iowa City Public Library, Meeting Room A
Sponsor: International Programs

I was floored when I saw this event listed on the main University of Iowa calendar a few weeks ago and had been looking forward to it with a combination of dread and relief. Dread because I wasn’t sure that the facts would be presented nearly as well as they were and because I didn’t know that I’d necessarily be able to keep my cool during a public forum about issues that I feel so strongly about. And relief because someone was going to speak locally about international adoption in such a way that wasn’t just the typical “Strategies for Procuring Children from Foreign Countries Seminar for Affluent American Couples.” This sense of relief was deepened soon after Xiaole Zhang was introduced and began presenting the issues surrounding the sale of Chinese children for purchase, primarily in North America, by way of international adoption with such levelheaded clarity.

From a press release issued by International Programs at The University of Iowa about this lecture:

“Meier and Zhang [spoke] about the Hunan baby trafficking scandal [also referred to as “The Hengyang Case”] that was uncovered in late 2005. In the incident, the Chinese government prosecuted a number of orphanage officials and private individuals for their involvement in a child trafficking scheme that profited from placing trafficked children for inter-country adoption and collecting mandatory $3,000 donations from adopting parents. The story surprised many in the adoption community because China’s program of inter-country adoption had been thought to be nearly scandal proof to that point.

[Patricia] Meier is a mid-career law student at the University of Iowa. She worked as a writer and editor in Iowa, Washington, D.C., Illinois and Colorado before entering law school. She is also a mother to three children, one of whom was adopted from China in 2003.

[Xiaole] Zhang is a second-year law student at the University of Iowa. She received her Bachelor of Law degree from the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE), in Beijing, China. Before pursuing her Juris Doctorate, Zhang completed her Master’s of Law in International and Comparative Law from the University of Iowa College of Law in May 2005.”

Zhang and Meier cited a history of ineffectual laws and lack of adequate enforcement mechanisms in both the United States and China, as well as rising demand, as some of the contributing factors to this nearly-unbelievable problem of state-sanctioned human trafficking. “The same motivations still remains” in The East and in The West, Xiaole made a point of saying, and those motivations are fueled, not surprisingly, by “money.” And, as is the case in the US, most of the children exported from China and put on the adoption market “are not orphans.” (China’s one-child policy and a generalized reluctance to care for children with special health needs often lead to child abandonment. Others are simply stolen. Literally.)

Both women were gracious as they answered some of my questions and posed for the photo (above) after the lecture, but my biggest questions about international adoption still remain perpetually unanswered:

“Why don’t we take care of our own children and why aren’t other countries expected do the same?”

San Fiasco!

2008-02-27T12:47:00.007-06:00

I was recently in California for a fast-and-furious weekend visiting my good friends, Wendy and Patrick Vasta, and checking out the faux flower children and the junkies in our old neighborhood. I shot this photo (above) somewhere South of Market and thought I’d share even though I’m not sure if ORFN (the tagger) is actually a literal, or a metaphorical, orphan.

Here’s a super touristy shot of me and Wendy on the Embarcadero near The Ferry Building:

She’s currently showing some of her gorgeous paintings at My Boudoir on Fillmore Street!

AWP in NYC

2008-02-11T21:37:00.001-06:00

Just under a week ago, I was alone overnight in the Detroit airport on my way home from The Association of Writers & Writing Programs’ annual conference, held this year in Manhattan. I didn’t plan it that way, but my connecting flight was canceled due to the weather, so I wrote from midnight until 4AM on Tuesday morning in a phone booth on my old Handpring (one of my favorite tech hand-me-downs from Adam).

While in New York, I met a slew of friends, writers, authors, and editors from all over the country, including: Susan Ito, Karen Salyer McElmurray, Joy Castro, Raphael Kadushin, Ira Glass, Greg Gerard, and Heather Sellers.

One of my best “discoveries” at AWP was an author named Lorraine López who read from her work on two of the panels that I attended. Ridiculously talented and funny as hell, I look forward to reading her debut fiction collection, Soy la Avon Lady and Other Stories, as soon as I can.

Being in New York, however, is difficult for me because I feel like I’ve been fighting with its imperviousness for years and yet, when I visit, it’s business as usual, get out of my way, I’m trying to make a train and don’t really have the time, or the inclination, to help you find your family. It’s a matter of scale that seems to hammer home the impossibility of ever winning the court battle of “Michael Allen Potter vs. The Entire Fucking State of New York and Everyone In It.”

Today is My Brother's Birthday

2008-01-28T15:40:00.000-06:00

But I have no idea where he is. Why? Because he was adopted and his original birth certificate was replaced with a document that reflects only the names of his court-appointed guardians and that of his own reassigned identity. I wonder if they kept his first name of LeRoy? (I doubt it -- I'm sure that it was a little bit too country, a little bit too rock 'n' roll, maybe a bit too conspicuous for the neighborhood.) I wonder if they retained his actual date of birth (01/28/73)? I wonder if they even told him that he was adopted? (Told him that he has an older brother and an older sister?) Or if he was simply matched with people who were as pale and as blond as I imagine him to be long before he had a voice to object? To say that this day makes me mad, or sad, or angry, or despondent really doesn't do justice to the way I feel right now.

I want to burn things.

Adam took this photo last year on a weekend trip to Minneapolis (as he is a much better photographer). We drove by this bench at a bus stop earlier in the day, but I made him go back with me after dark to take a series of pictures, as it was the first time I had ever seen anything like this out in the world.

Today is my brother's thirty-fifth birthday and I wonder if he is happy. (Gay? Straight? OK? Alive?) Did I take the subway to work with him for years and years in San Francisco and not know it? Did we attend some of the same schools as children back in Albany? Will I pass him on the street later this week in Manhattan? Does he live next door to me here in Iowa? (Sometimes here in The Midwest, I think I see him a hundred times a day.)

The State of New York maintains that I do not have the right to any of this information, based on legislation passed in 1935 designed (it is purported) to spare us both from the shame of illegitimacy, and I think that's just fucked here in 2008.

"Opening Closed Books on Adoption"

2008-01-15T17:30:00.000-06:00

Hot on the heels of the sensational story of the twins who recently married (is no one else outraged that they were adopted out to separate families in the first place?!?) comes a phenomenally level-headed article written by Jennifer Gish of The Times Union in my hometown of Albany, New York.

Published on Sunday, "Opening Closed Books on Adoption" outlines the issues faced by Sharon Casey Smith, a 43-year-old woman from Colonie, as she continues the search for her mother that began in 2000.

""I just want to know her. Sometimes you feel like you're not connected, like you don't have any background," says Smith."

To read the entire article, click here.

[Many thanks to my good friend, Nancy Drew, for forwarding this link to me over the weekend!]

Christmas and July

2007-12-25T23:44:00.003-06:00

As per usual, I've bolted the door, laid in supplies of ice cream and movies, and hidden the phone in an attempt to ride out the storm known as Christmas. Sometimes people think that I'm being facetious when I say that I hate the holidays, but I'm not. And when I try to convince them that it's different for people who grew up without families, or who grew up in other people's families, I can usually tell when they've heard too much by the way their eyes cloud over not long into the explanation. The period between Christmas and New Year's can be one of the most difficult times of the year for adoptees embroiled in the search for family members when it seems that everyone else in the world has gently retired to the warmth and comfort of a familial togetherness that is, more often than not, completely taken for granted. (I am well aware of the fact that this is a sweeping generalization, but something about this time of year precipitates such displays of overwrought emotion, does it not?)

What am I most looking forward to, then, in 2008 you ask?

Well, I'll tell you. The only thing that I've started planning for the new year is our trip to New Orleans in July for the Adoptee Rights Protest on the 22nd. I'm looking forward to standing in a crowd of other people in the light of day who share my own secrets so that we can wrangle our private shame, guilt, and anger into something more positive and productive, like political change and retroactive adoption law reform in most of these United States. I can't wait to finally be on the offensive about this issue, en masse, rather than constantly being put on the defensive in a thousand useless conversations when faced with questions like, "Why are you so obsessed with finding your family?" with people who have no personal experience with adoption, but ridiculously strong opinions about the subject nonetheless.

Plus, I am beside myself with excitement about hopping a train in Chicago with Adam and riding the rails on The City of New Orleans all the way down to Louisiana!

“Who I Am”

2007-11-17T14:22:00.011-06:00

One man’s search for his biological family—and his own history

[This article was the cover story for Metroland Magazine in my hometown of Albany, New York, on National Adoption Day in 2003.]

My parents met through The National Enquirer’s Pen Pal Club. My father worked at the post office on South Pearl Street at the time and my mother was living in a town farther upstate that is, more often than not, difficult to find on a map. They started writing to each other in the late 1960s and, soon after, my mother took a Greyhound bus to “the big city” to visit her future husband. They were married within months.

The fact that I owe my existence to a supermarket tabloid perhaps explains the often cinematic qualities that my life has had to date. The person responsible for coordinating the pen pal club at The National Enquirer, as the story goes, paired my mother with my father because they were both born in May 1944. I doubt that he or she also knew that they were both schizophrenic.

I read the first letter that I ever received from my mother on New Year’s Eve 1999 in a diner on Church Street in San Francisco. The West Coast, like the rest of the planet, was holding its collective breath to see if the world was actually going to come to an end. Y2K was the talk of the town. The millennium was upon us. Newspapers and magazines polled the hell out of us trying to find out how we were going to spend our collective last night on Earth.

I hardly noticed and didn’t much care.

The letter I held suspended above my French toast and strawberries was written on a manual typewriter in Albany and dated March 21, 1972. The name at the bottom was whited out completely and efficiently because the orphanage where I spent the first years of my life is, even to this day, legally bound to keep all records of my biological parents confidential.

Adam, my partner of almost a decade, held my hand across the black tabletop as I started to cry, not boisterously, but enough that people started to notice. Black Sabbath blared in the background and it occurred to me that the other patrons likely assumed that I was being dumped.

There were other documents included with the letter from my anonymous mother, including one written by a nun at the orphanage to a social worker assigned to my case.

Dear XXXX:

I am writing to you to express my concern about the possibility of Michael’s discharge to his parents. The child was referred here for emergency placement because of the mother’s attempted suicide. My contacts with both parents would indicate that there is much risk involved in considering Michael’s discharge to them. Both parents manifest much emotional disturbance and confusion in thought process. The mother seems much more aware of the realities of her problems than Mr. X. The latter is excessively pre-occupied with medical problems—real or imagined—and has made several requests for a variety of diagnostic services for Michael. As much as the parents’ situation precludes a feeling of optimism in discharge of Michael to them, we are concerned about his need for further observation. He has been observed to walk on his tip toes and to “hug the wall”—both of which are manifestations of a child deprived emotionally and living out of reality.

XXXX

This letter was also unsigned, but closed with a series of dates and results underneath the heading “Tests & Innoculations.”

We went to a party in Oakland that night and rang in the new year every hour on the hour with people in various time zones on television. We all wore cardboard tiaras and threw a lot of glitter. After everyone had gone to bed or simply lay where they had fallen, I sat on the front porch with a bottle of wine and a pack of cigarettes and drank a hole in my heart and smoked a spot onto my lung.

Having spent most of my life searching for her, I met my mother for the first time the following November. When I started looking for her in earnest 11, 12, 13 years ago, all I had to work with was her last name. I took this single word and, with the help of several phenomenal friends, scoured print and Web archives, databases, genealogical societies, city directories, phone books and church records all over the country to find my mother’s first name. I then submitted this information to a professional investigation firm in Southern California, which returned 37 listings nationwide. After receiving this list, every day felt like a free fall from a great height while I whittled down the possibilities by a process of intuition and blind luck. Eventually I found her.

When I met my mother, I was 30 and had been living in California for almost five years. I had flown back to New York for the long holiday weekend, and I stood on her front porch in Schenectady and waited with one of my best friends from grade school. It took some time for her to descend the stairs from her second-floor apartment. As a student at Union College, 10 years prior, I had lived directly around the corner from her, but had never seen her face until that Saturday after Thanksgiving.

At the time, I was working as a scientific editor for a major Web directory in San Francisco and began conducting my own research on the causes and symptoms of schizophrenia on the sly. I had studied psychology, briefly, at Cornell and started to recall some of the images that were projected onto massive screens for the almost 2,000 students usually in attendance in Bailey Hall for the Psych 101 lectures. They were short film reels of patients undergoing electroshock therapy, cross sections of malformed and diseased brains, and near-silent clips of catatonic patients in stark facilities.

The woman who greeted me at the door that day (who had my blue eyes and my kinky hair!), however, wore one of the gentlest expressions I have ever seen, and she changed my life in an instant. I had resigned myself to the fact that I would be overcome by choking sobs and searing tears, but I was not. My mother, however, wiped her eyes for the hour and a half that I spent with her. She told me stories about our family and about relatives I didn’t even know I had, and I listened, every once in a while wondering how much more I could stand. In the course of my research, I had discovered that because of her condition I was predisposed to the development of certain conditions like depression (check) and alcoholism (check, check, check), but I was not prepared to hear about all of the lives cut short in my family by drinking and violence.

My mother kissed me on the neck as I left (I’m a bit taller than she is) and I felt the weight and trauma of a decade of my own substance abuse fall away from my body as I walked back down the steps of her apartment building. The whole experience was like making a pilgrimage to Lourdes without having to cross the Atlantic, but I was the only one who could see the crutches and leg braces falling to the sidewalk.

In February 2000, I received the results from the New York State Department of Health’s Adoption and Medical Information Registry. Almost 30 years after the fact, Peter M. Carucci, director of vital records, wrote to inform me that my parents were white Americans and that my father was male and that my mother was female.

According to public record, there are 19 women in the United States with my sister’s name and date of birth. I have called each of them at their homes in Minnesota, Washington, Texas, Georgia and Ohio. I listened to their answering machine messages over and over again trying to discern if their surnames were acquired by marriage so that I might cross them off of my list and move on to the next address and phone number. On the rare occasion that one of them actually answered the phone, she would invariably become angry at the invasion of privacy and would demand to know how I found her information. When I was able to explain that I was looking for my sister whom I had never met because we had been separated as children, then her tone would soften abruptly before she hung up on me.

It wasn’t until September 2001, while Adam and I were bouncing around western New York and southern Ontario, that I found myself standing on her front porch just outside of Rochester. We had been invited to a friend’s wedding in Buffalo and I leapt at the opportunity to run down one of my 19 leads in person, but no one answered the door for three days in a row. Each time we approached the house in our oversized rental car, I panicked and feared success as much as I feared the failure I had become so accustomed to. Hours before we were to fly back to San Francisco, I located her foster mother at work by following one of the most tenuous leads that I had (a name in an article about a local food drive). “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” is all she could say after the receptionist finally put me through to her office.

I met my half-sister for the first time last August at the airport in Oslo. She flew in from Japan, where she has lived for the last eight years, and I paced the terminal for hours and hours, waiting for her connecting flight from Amsterdam to arrive, rehearsing the things I might say and the things I wanted to say when she walked through the gate. Statistically, there is a 15 percent chance of developing schizophrenia if one of your parents has the disease. I think that this number was in the back of my mind when I scanned her face and lost all of my words and simply offered her a piece of my Kvik Lunsj chocolate bar on that bright, unforgettable, Scandinavian afternoon. We traveled for a week by train north through the country until we arrived in a small farming village just south of the Arctic Circle. There we buried the ashes of our great- grandmother, Agnes, alongside her own brothers and sisters. I never had the privilege, nor the legal right, to meet Agnes, but hers was the first memorial that I have ever attended for a member of my own family.

Statistically, I am screwed. I am screwed because my father also has the official diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, so my risk of developing the disease jumps to just shy of 50 percent. My father, bless his congenitally defective heart, has refused any and all contact, and I have respected his wishes. He returned a Christmas card and a picture of me that I had sent to him with the following holiday greeting scrawled across the front of the envelope:

DOES – NOT LIVE – ANYMORE. NO – MORE MAIL. I’M – A CRIME VICTIM AT – STATE AND – FEDERAL LEVELS. ANYMORE MAIL – I’M RETURNING TO SENDER.

He resides on a locked ward near the Québec border and hordes batteries, stamps and bits of machinery (among other things) in anticipation of the coming apocalypse. My mother talked about him that first day, in a monotone that is peculiar to people with schizophrenia, and told me about his inexplicable tantrums in the middle of the night when he would wake up screaming and smash glasses and dishes in the kitchen until there was nothing left to break. I take solace in the knowledge that his response to me was (hopefully) a product of an altered brain structure and erratic dopamine levels rather than a pointed rejection of his long-lost son.

I located one of his brothers (my uncle Duane) and have spoken to him twice. The first time that I summoned the courage to pick up the phone and introduce myself to yet another unknown relative, he asked me, point blank, what was “wrong” with his brother. They hadn’t spoken in years and my father, apparently, was a bit off while they were growing up. When I got to the word “schizophrenic,” he interrupted and barked, “What’s that?”

My uncle has a son named Larry. I have a picture of my uncle Duane and my cousin Larry taken in 1988, and it saddens me because I know that they too have not spoken in years. I don’t have the heart to tell my uncle and his new wife that Larry’s got it, too. You can see it in his awkward stance, the Velcro shoes on his adult feet, and the expression on his face. It could be described as “dim,” but I’ve come to perceive it as extreme disinterest coupled with a very self-conscious and overwhelming confusion. I have a picture of my mother as a child, given to me by a distant relation while I was in Norway with my sister, and she has the exact same heaviness in her eyelids that makes them both look like they’re trying, unsuccessfully, to hide a great sadness from the camera.

At my desk, months before meeting my mother, I had discovered a condition known as alcohol-induced schizoaffective disorder in the course of preparing for the reunion. I was stunned. I have threatened, and attempted, to take my own life on several occasions (with alcohol, drugs, gravity, speed, blades) and had attributed these episodes to certain unfortunate aspects of my strange upbringing. The more I’ve learned about this particular brand of psychosis, triggered both by substance abuse and by withdrawal, the more the scales tipped toward a clinical explanation for my desperate and terrifying actions and away from an overblown artistic temperament caused by a difficult childhood. As with alcoholism and depression, I have inherited another predisposition that I’ve come to think of as a “schizophrenic sensitivity” that is expressed only when I am under the influence.

In their now-famous paper about the form and structure of DNA, James Watson and Francis Crick wrote: “It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing [of purine and pyrimidine bases] we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.” (From “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid,” by James D. Watson and Francis H. C. Crick, April 25, 1953, Nature, Vol. 171.) What this says to me 50 years later is that, despite the fact that my name changed three times within the first 10 years of my life, I was and will continue to be myself, genotypically speaking. Gattaca notwithstanding, there should have been a label slapped on my ass as I was being scanned through the orphanage checkout that read: “Warning: This Product May Self Destruct When Combined with Alcohol.” I was placed with a foster family, however, solely on the basis of my blond hair and blue eyes, and all of my actual hereditary traits and potentialities were sealed away, essentially forever, with my medical records. No one thought it necessary, then or now, for me to know that suicide runs rampant through my family history.

I assume that this was also the case with my brother, whom I found out about on that first afternoon at my mother’s kitchen table. He is named after my father and turned 30 at the end of January. I’ve got a copy of his birth certificate, but little else. Unlike my sister and I, he was taken by social services at birth, and his name was changed almost immediately. My mother has told me the story of that day dozens of times in the last three years. She describes his hair and his eyes and the birthmark on the back of his neck and how the nurses refused to ever let her hold him.

While I do not question the fact that my parents were unable to care for their own children, I do take offense at the fact that the three of us were expected to never look back after our placements in the various households full of strangers who raised us throughout New York State after we were separated. I doubt that professional scientific journals such as Nature were required reading for social workers, attorneys or members of the clergy in the early 1970s, but in retrospect, I think they really should have been. I find it criminal that the people responsible for my placements used my physical appearance as the sole criterion to match me with potential foster and adoptive families. These same “professionals,” however, turned a collective blind eye to a number of potentially life-threatening inheritable traits that I then had the pleasure to discover, by way of a nightmarish process of trial and error, later in my life.

In July, I stood on the front steps of a home on one of the quiet side streets behind Crossgates Mall. After I rang the doorbell, I stood face-to-face with a man who was born on my brother’s birthday (Jan. 28, 1973) and who was born at the same hospital (St. Peter’s). The man standing in front of me was angry for the intrusion and had an olive complexion, brown eyes and fine, straight brown hair parted in the middle. The man standing in front of me was born on my brother’s birthday at the same hospital, but the man standing in front of me was, unfortunately, not my brother. His features were distinctly not Scandinavian in the least, so I asked him what his background actually was. (“Italian? French?” I queried.) And he didn’t know because his father had been adopted. I thanked him for his time and left angrier at the system and the laws than I had been before I had walked the excruciatingly long block from the rental car to his front door.

There was another letter from Peter M. Carucci in my mailbox when I returned home to California that informed me that “the adoptee,” my brother, “has not yet registered.” The letter went on to say that my brother’s parents were white Americans and that my father was male, that my mother was female, and that my brother was (astonishingly) male.

The New York State Adoption Information Sibling Registry is, for all intents and purposes, a cruel joke. In order for a reunion to be facilitated, both siblings must submit their respective applications to the New York State Department of Health. However, in order to submit an application in the first place the adoptee is required to supply a copy of his or her original birth certificate with both parents’ names listed on the document. This, simply stated, is unrealistic and offensive to a population of American adults who may not even know their own family surnames. My “official” birth certificate, on record in the Office of Vital Statistics in Albany’s City Hall, contains only the names of my adopted parents and is dated 1980, a full decade after my actual birth.

Crazy is a word that no longer peppers my casual conversations these days, because crazy is also a word that may already have taken my brother’s life. He is the last member of my family that I need to find, and I hope that one day in the near future I’ll be able to pick up the phone, dial his number and tell him secrets like “SNAP-25,” “RGS4” and “HLA-B44.” These are proteins, genes and gene types thought to be involved with the development of schizophrenia, and they may have already conspired against him. Crazy is the fact that, when I am finally able to locate and dial the number that will allow me to warn him about the electrical storms that might one day rage through his prefrontal cortex, there might not be anyone to pick up the phone when I call.

In May, I stood in front of a judge in San Francisco Superior Court and petitioned my adopted state for the legal right to use my own name. I filed the papers for this in March, and the first available court date was early morning on my 33rd birthday, a total coincidence that I jumped at instantaneously. At 9 AM on May 19, 2003, I reclaimed what was taken from me by the archaic adoption laws that are still in effect in my home state. Before the doors of the courtroom actually opened, I noted that since I was representing myself in court without the assistance of an attorney, under my adopted name were the words Propria Persona (“In one’s own proper person”) and I thought this a fitting title for one of the proudest days of my life. I took back my own name for myself, but I also did it for my sister and my brother and for the thousands of other adoptees whose lives, identities and families are still being held hostage by the state of New York.

Michael Allen Potter holds degrees in English and creative writing from Union College and San Francisco State University. He can be reached via e-mail at: MichaelAllenPotter@Yahoo.com

November is National Adoption Awareness Month

2007-11-01T23:12:00.000-05:00

And I have taken this as an opportunity in the past to call attention to the issues faced by anyone who has been erased by way of adoption and thought that November 1st would be an auspicious day to start a blog about adoption law reform in the United States.

One of the most egregious events during National Adoption Awareness Month is The Surgeon General's National Family History Day which should, if Rear Admiral Steven K. Galson, M.D., M.P.H. were really to think about the issues involved, make the strongest possible case for open records given the fact that adoption laws still keep such pertinent medical information locked away from over seven million adult Americans.

Rather than breaking up actual families to build facsimiles via adoption, why don't we (as a nation) instead focus our attentions on preserving these basic, yet crucial, family connections before permanently removing children from their homes?

And while we're at it, can we also please work (as a nation) towards abolishing the practice of buying children from other countries over the Web, or by way of perceived celebrity privilege, please?

Thanks for reading and if you see my brother, please tell him that there are people all over the world who’d really like to meet him.