Yet Another Angry Response

Joy writes and I respond. Her name has not been changed for irony's sake. Promise.


O-M-G O-M-G

You are sooooo awful.


I, on the other hand, am rather enamored by your gentle tone.


"but not many adopted people or their families read scholarly journals or books."



Here, you use quotation marks, suggesting I said this (or at least something like it) and yet I never did.




And full of it, and NO they are not full of positive stories, be sure to give a shout out to all the adoptive mothers whose children committed suicide.

Where, exactly, is the evidence that more adopted children commit suicide than non-adopted children? I’m sure it exists, but I don’t know where. Please let me know where to find it.




That you could even come up with a slogan like, "who'd give away Faith Hill or Steven Jobs?"

Shows your extreme ignorance.

You want to promote ignorance, you want to promote a practice that harms children.

Where is the harm in being raised by people who love you rather than by a person who can’t take care of you?




Shame on you for not having the ganas to acknowledge the truth about adoption.

You suck.

You, contrariwise, seem quite charming and happy with your life.

Eponymous Eponomy

Well, Boys and Girls, now it can be revealed. Years ago, I released a CD of original songs, a release that led to a series of downloads on the MP3 section of boston.com, but no record label. Feeling nostalgic, I am including the eponymous title song of the band Pus Theory. Incidentally, the CD was called The Sound of One Mind Snapping: Songs in the Zen Baptist Tradition, and is a collector's item.

Just a single email request can get you an mp3 copy, signed by the artist. Just ask. Really.

Pus Theory

You just wait for the pressure to build up, you just wait for the build-up to to blow,
Then what you spew out of your mouth, mind, or hand, can be called a piece of art you know.
Whatever pops into your mind and plops out on a page
Artistically represents your joy, sorrow, loss and rage.

Art is art when an artist has found it,
Take a blank wall, put a frame around it
Don’t waste time trying to master your craft
Just set sail on the ocean of art with your ego as your only life raft

You don’t have to be that clever, you don’t have to have much soul
Jackson Pollock didn’t know what he’d get when he poured that paint out of a bowl.
You don’t have to study your craft, you don’t have to be that clever
When you subscribe to the pus theory of artistic endeavor.

Art is art when an artist has found it,
Take a blank wall, put a frame around it
Don’t waste time trying to master your craft
Just set sail on the ocean of art with your ego as your only life raft


Artists of a feather gotta hang together so they won’t hang separately,
Vision is a tired anachronism; you want marketability
Money is really what matters; vision is really quite garish
Never mind what the Bible says; it’s without mammon that people perish

Art is art when an artist has found it,
Take a blank wall, put a frame around it
Don’t waste time trying to master your craft
Just set sail on the ocean of art with your ego as your only life raft

As the Record Shows, You Love Your Writing Prompts

K-SOFA Means Krazy® Glue

Please read over the following fact sheet. On the back of this paper, write down ten (X) (10) new uses for this product.
Legal note: K-SOFA does not receive any direct or indirect income from the mention of this product. We neither endorse nor condemn.
Krazy Glue is named for the glue's seemingly crazy strength, quick-setting properties, and longevity as an adhesive.
In the motion picture What About Bob? (1991), Dr. Leo Marvin (Richard Dreyfus) describes the symbiotic Bob Wiley (Bill Murray) as "Human Krazy Glue."
If your fingers get stuck together with Krazy Glue, dissolve the bond with nail polish remover or acetone, or soften with warm soapy water.
The winners of the 1996 "How Krazy Glue Saved the Day" contest, Don McMullan and Sharon Bennett of Clearwater, British Columbia, used Krazy Glue to get themselves down Robber's Pass when their 18-wheel semi-trailer's engine cooling fan separated from its rotating shaft hundreds of miles from the nearest service station in the middle of the night. They put six drops of Krazy Glue on the two metal pieces, held the parts together securely for three minutes, and were back on the road for another 80,000 miles.
Surgeons treat an arterial venous fistulas, or entangled cluster of arteries, by injecting liquid acrylic agents into the abnormal blood vessels to seal off the excessive flow of blood. The material used, N-Butyl Cyanoacrylate, is similar to the ingredients in Krazy Glue.
Physicians in Canada use an adhesive similar to Krazy Glue instead of stitches, lowering the possibility of bacterial infection and minimizing scarring.
During her highly publicized disappearance for four days in April 1996, Margot Kidder, who costarred with Christopher Reeve as Lois Lane in Superman movies, lived inside a cardboard box with a homeless person in downtown Los Angeles while suffering a manic-depressive episode. According to People magazine, "Kidder had lost some caps on her front teeth that sometimes fell out and which she cemented back in place with Krazy Glue. 'When you're having a manic episode,' she says, 'you don't always remember to pack the Krazy Glue.'"
Food stylists use Krazy Glue to keep food in place during photography sessions for advertisements, television commercials, and motion pictures.

K-SOFA Means Hershey's® Syrup

Please read over the following fact sheet. On the back of this paper, write down ten (X) (10) new uses for this product.
Legal note: K-SOFA does not receive any direct or indirect income from the mention of this product. We neither endorse nor condemn.
Hershey's Syrup is named for company founder Milton Hershey.
In 1900, inspired by a new chocolate-making machine he had seen at the 1893 Chicago Exposition, Milton Hershey sold his caramel company for one million dollars to start a chocolate factory in Derry Church, Pennsylvania, to manufacture America¹s first mass-marketed five-cent chocolate bar. In 1905, the factory was completed and Hershey began producing individually wrapped Hershey's milk chocolate bars, followed by Hershey's Milk Chocolate Kisses in 1907, the Mr. Goodbar candy bar in 1925, and Hershey¹s syrup in 1926.
In 1993, Hershey introduced Hugs, a white-and-dark chocolate product shaped like Hershey's Kisses.
Derry Church, Pennsylvania, the home of Hershey's Foods, was renamed Hershey in 1906.
In 1909, Milton Hershey and his wife founded the Milton Hershey School, a school for orphaned children near the chocolate plant. In 1918 Hershey donated the entire Hershey¹s Chocolate Corporation to the Milton Hershey School, and for years the company existed solely to fund the school. Although Hershey Foods is now publicly traded, the Milton Hershey School still controls 41.6 percent of the stock. Former Hershey's Food chairman William Dearden (1976-84) was a Hershey School graduate, as are many Hershey employees..
During the Depression, Milton Hershey put people to work by building a hotel, golf courses, a library, theaters, a museum, a stadium, and other facilities in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
The universally popular Hershey bar was used overseas during World War II as currency.
Milton Hershey refused to advertise his product, convinced that quality would speak for itself. Even after Hershey¹s death in 1945, the company refused to advertise‹until 1970, when Hershey began losing sales to Mars.
The Hershey bar is one of the most widely recognized products in the world.
In 1990, during Operation Desert Storm, Hershey Foods sent 144,000 "heat-resistant" milk chocolate Desert Bars—capable of withstanding up to 100°F—to American troops in Saudi Arabia.
In 1995, MCI teamed up with Hershey to offer free long-distance calling to consumers who bought an 8-ounce or larger bag of Hershey's Kisses, Hershey's Hugs, or other chocolate products.

K-SOFA Means Wrigley's Spearmint® Gum

Please read over the following fact sheet. On the back of this paper, write down ten (X) (10) new uses for this product.
Legal note: K-SOFA does not receive any direct or indirect income from the mention of this product. We neither endorse nor condemn.
Wrigley's Spearmint gum is named after company founder WilliamWrigley, Jr., and the common garden mint (Mentha spicata) better knownas spearmint because of the sharp point of its leaves.
William Wrigley, Jr., started his career at the age of thirteen when,following his expulsion from school, his father put him to work sellingsoap door-to-door.
In 1891, William Wrigley, Jr., moved to Chicago to sell soap andbaking powder. At twenty-nine, he started his own business inChicago-with a wife and child and $32 in cash. When he began offeringcustomers free chewing gum by Zeno Manufacturing, customers offered tobuy the gum. So Wrigley developed his own gums, introducing Wrigley'sSpearmint and Juicy Fruit in 1893. By 1911, because of Wrigley'sinsistence on pumping huge amounts of money into advertising, Wrigley'sSpearmint had become the leading U.S. gum brand.
In 1915, William Wrigley, Jr. sent four free sticks of gum to everyperson listed in a U.S. phone book.
The spear-bodied elf character William Wrigley began using beforeWorld War I to promote Spearmint gum turned into the cheerful Wrigleygum boy of the 1960s.
During World War II, gum, considered an emergency ration, was alsogiven to soldiers to relieve tension and dry throats on long marches.G.I.s used chewed gum to patch jeep tires, gas tanks, life rafts, andparts of airplanes. Wrigley advertisements recommended five sticks ofgum per day for every war worker, insisting that "Factory tests show howchewing gum helps men feel better, work better."
William Wrigley was the first distributor to place gum next to restaurant cash registers.
The Wrigley family bought Catalina Island in 1919 and the ArizonaBiltmore Hotel in 1931, built the Wrigley building in Chicago in 1924,and owned the Chicago Cubs for 57 years.
The company did not raise the original five cent price of afive-stick package of Wrigley's Spearmint, Juicy Fruit, and Doublemintgums until 1971. Management reluctantly did so by creating a seven-stickpackage and charging a dime for it.
Before World War II, the basic ingredient of all chewing gum waschicle, the sap of the sapodilla tree indigenous to Central and SouthAmerica. When chicle became difficult to obtain during World War II, thegum industry developed synthetic gum bases such as polyvinyl acetate,supplied almost entirely by the Hercule Powder Company, an explosivesmanufacturer.
Americans chew approximately $2.5 billion worth of gum every year.
The average American chews 190 sticks of gum each year.

K-SOFA Means You Do the Math

Here, you have a choice. Please either use the following facts in word problems for Paul, Keith and Sam to work out or write a story about the best April Fools Day Joke ever. NOT BOTH!!!!!!
Per capita consumption of peanut butter in the U.S. and Canada is about 5 pounds annually. In the Netherlands, believed to be Europe's most developed market, per capita consumption is probably less than 0.5 pounds.
Americans spent more than $18 billion on lottery tickets in fiscal year 1990.
$627 billion is spent on food annually at shopping malls.
The new IRS employee manual includes provisions for collecting taxes in the aftermath of a nuclear war.
The first supermarket in the world was in France. The people who started it were related to the people who started the Big Bear supermarket chain in Texas.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Rowing Association, 15 percent of amateur rowers earn more than $100,000 a year.
Eight percent of company presidents use profanity selectively and consciously.
According to author Tom Heymann, on an average day 1,924 businesses are incorporated, 168 businesses fail, 6,082 complaints are received by the Better Business Bureau, nine corporate mergers occur, and five companies change their names.

More Writing Prompts to Sparkle Your Day

K-SOFA Means “Peach Pizza” in Thai

In 1975, orchestra conductor Jose Serebrier accidentally stabbed himself through the hand with his baton while performing. The audience and musicians were impressed by the fact that he continued leading the orchestra in perfect timing as if nothing had happened.

Below, please write a brief account of a person you know who has demonstrated courage, which Ernest Hemingway defined as “guts under pressure.”

K-SOFA Means Living Under these Conditions

When he heard that Sarah Bernhardt might need to have a leg amputated, PT Barnum sent a telegram offering $1,000 for her leg.

How much would you be willing to pay for or be paid for the following body parts?


Earlobe Left pinky toe Tongue Right hand Knee (your upper and lower leg can be surgically reattached) Nose

In the space below, please write an essay of not more than three pages on what these choices suggest about you as a person.
K-SOFA Means Language is Important

A husband and wife from Switzerland stopped in a restaurant in Hong Kong and asked that their poodle be taken to the kitchen and fed something. Because of a misunderstanding, the waiter did what he thought they wanted, and had the cooks fry the dog for the couple.

Please write about a time when you did not get what you ordered in a restaurant. Include the following, please:

Who was with you?
What did you order?
What did you get?
How did this make you feel?
What was the weather like?
K-SOFA Means Crime Does Not Pay

In 1987 or 1988, in Tennessee, Indiana and Illinois, someone passed bad checks. I mean really bad. This unidentified person purchased at least $800,000 of merchandise at many stores, but with counterfeit checks. To avoid eventual capture, the thief coated the checks with some sort of chemical that caused them to disintegrate within hours. By the time the checks reached the banks, they were nothing but powder.

Many people think they have thought of the perfect crime. Please describe in detail your favorite perfect crime. Thanks a lot, really.

Cats and Dogs (or at least dogs) Who are Dead

Just to prove I do have some experience with dead dogs, here's a novel excerpt. The narrator is Clayton Clevinger, the hero of On Account of Because, an as-yet-unpublished novel. If you're an agent, or sleeping with one, please be in touch if you like this. Thanks in advance.

I saw the boy had a mouthful of braces, which sparkled in the sun when he smiled. He didn’t look more than ten or eleven and he was hunched forward, shoulders raised, as if trying to keep a cloak from falling off. He was both short and scrawny. In Gramper’s war books, I had seen pictures of concentration camp survivors, starving and sexless. This boy would have fit right in, except for one thing.
He wore a black t-shirt with large yellow letters that read “Girls Don’t Poop.”
I laughed out loud, and walked up to him.
“That’s some shirt,” I said admiringly.
“Thanks,” said the boy in a high-pitched voice, smiling what looked like a mouthful of staples, paper clips and tin foil. “Mommy says it all the time, so I had this shirt made up special. My Aunt Margaret hates it, but she’s not the boss of me.”
I tried to take this information in, but couldn’t. How could any woman work that phrase into conversation once, much less all the time? I thought it was weird for even a little kid to call his mother “Mommy.” I’d never used the word, but I knew most kids switched over to “mom” or “my mother” by first grade. I couldn’t sort things out and assumed I had missed some piece of information.
“I’m Clayton,” I said.
“Mommy named me Sebastian, but everyone I know calls me Shiny,” he said.
“Why Shiny?” I asked.
“On account of because it’s my nickname,” he said, as if that answered any questions I might have.
I didn’t know how to respond, so I just looked at the ground.
“Do you go to public school?” asked Shiny, breaking the silence.
“Yeah. Just starting today. I’m new this year. We moved in over the summer. I’m in ninth grade. What grade are you in?”
I expected to hear that Shiny was in fifth or sixth grade.
“I’m in ninth grade, too, but I don’t go to the public school. I go to private.”
Two things surprised me. First, the boy was tiny for his age and, second, my picture of private school students had them in mansions with freshly rolled lawns, not silver trailers with broken lawn gnomes.
“You’re in ninth grade?” I asked.
“Yep. Mommy always said I was proof that good things come in small packages.”
“And you go to private school?”
“Yep.”
“And you call your mother ‘Mommy?’”
“Why wouldn’t I? It’s her name.”
“Her real name is ‘Mommy?’ That’s what it says on her drivers license?” I asked.
“Nope. She doesn’t have a driver’s license any more. It lapsed on account of because she couldn’t get to the DMV. But it is her real name. Mommy’s mother felt so good about being a mother she named Mommy Mommy to make sure she’d know the pleasure of motherhood. I mean, imagine if a woman named Mommy didn’t have kids. Think how confusing that would be.”
“Weird,” I thought, but I didn’t know what to say, so I gestured toward the trailer.
“Is that your house?”
“It’s not a house. It’s a mobile home,” he replied. “It’s not mine, of course. I’m only fifteen. What would I need with a trailer? It belongs to my Aunt Margaret.”
I looked at the tiny silver trailer, grass growing up its side. The screens over the back windows were shredded.
“So you and your mother live with your aunt in the trailer?”
“No, of course not. I live there alone with Aunt Margaret. Well, her and her cats. She loves cats and dresses them up for holidays.”
“How many?” I asked.
“At last count a dozen,” said Shiny. “Of course, three of them are pregnant so that number will go up.”
“You have twelve cats in that little trailer?” I was incredulous.
“Yup,” said Shiny. “They make it real cozy for us.”
Cozy seemed a funny word to describe a dozen cats in a two-bedroom trailer.
“So it’s you and your aunt and her cats?”
“Yup, and I’ll tell you, it feels good to be needed. I mean, she could hardly look after herself in her condition, now could she?”
“Her condition? What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s mad,” he said.
“Mad? What’s she angry about?” I asked.
“Angry about?” he parroted. “Nothing. That’s the problem. She’s entirely too happy for a woman in her condition.”
“But you said she was mad,” I said.
“Yes, I did. You’re quite right about that. She is mad, but not that kind of mad. She’s mad in the old sense of the word. She suffers from a rare form of mental illness that causes her to be happy all the time. Imagine being always happy, no matter what. She watches the news and sees a hurricane destroy some little town, and all she says is, ‘I’ll bet they rebuild it even nicer than before’ or ‘Well, at least now the Red Cross will have a chance to do their best.’ If she lost her leg, she’d say, ‘Well, at least I’ve got one good leg. Some people don’t have that.’ It’s horrible being so happy, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
“I guess,” I said.
“When I think of the fun I’ve had being angry at people or being disappointed by situations or just cursing life in general, and know Aunt Margaret never knows the pleasures of anger, it makes me so sad inside. And then when I’m enjoying being sad and sorry for myself, I get angry my poor aunt never ever ever gets to curl up in a blanket of sorrow and throw herself a good old fashioned pity party. It’s just awful, really.
“Like halitosis or intestinal distress,” he continued, “her illness is even harder on those around her than on my aunt. Seeing that poor thing so happy, day after day, just breaks my heart. She’s been to psychiatrists and psychologists and phrenologists and even a paleontologist, but there’s nothing they can do.
“While the rest of us enjoy a broad pallet of emotions--anger, fear, sorrow--poor Aunt Margaret is stuck with cheerful, heedless, lighthearted and content. Imagine if your only emotional forecast was chipper today, chirpy tomorrow with a one hundred percent chance of can’t complain for the weekend.
As Shiny talked, it was nearly impossible to get a word in edgewise, not that I was any great conversationalist. His words flowed, like some force of nature, and he didn’t appear to expect any interruptions.
“My grandparents are dead,” Shiny continued, “so poor Aunt Margaret has what’s called an ‘orphan disease.’ The big drug companies are willing to spend millions of dollars on antidepressants, but not one penny on depressants, which is what the poor woman desperately needs.
“The doctors have tried everything from daily screenings of war atrocities to listening to sad music to oral readings about good love gone bad, but there’s nothing to be done.
“And, of course, there’s also the pronoia, which would drive anyone crazy.”
“Pronoia?” I said. “I don’t think I know that word.”
“Not many people do,” replied Shiny. “And they should be thankful about that. I wish I’d never heard of it.
“You’ve probably heard of its opposite, ‘paranoia,’ which is perfectly healthy. In a world like ours, it just makes sense to watch your back and assume that people are out to get you. Instead of fearing that everyone wants to hurt her, though, Aunt Margaret lives with a sneaking suspicion people are working together in a secret conspiracy to make her happy. Aunt Margaret, if I let her, would hug everyone she meets and thank them for their hard work. The authorities would have to lock her up.
“Think of it, Clayton—that was your name, wasn’t it? —Clayton? You probably know from math class that when you multiply two negative numbers together you get a positive number. What they don’t tell you is that when the positives start multiplying, as they have for Aunt Margaret, it’s a very negative situation for everyone. That’s why it’s good for her what happened to Mommy, even though it’s bad for me.”
“What happened to your mother?” I asked. “And what about your father?”
“Well, to begin with,” said Shiny, “I never knew my dad, or anything about him, not even his name. All I know is that he hated his father, whose first name was Sebastian, and that’s why Mommy named me that. He wasn’t ever really even Mommy’s boyfriend, just a come and go kind of guy, if you know what I mean. Mommy always says that life is a sexually transmitted disease, and that I’m one of its most gorgeous symptoms.
“Mommy is about the most beautiful woman I ever saw. She has a gap between her front top teeth that she can stick two Popsicle sticks in. I don’t know if you know it, but all the prettiest women have gaps between their teeth. You could look it up.”
I wondered what reference book I’d use to track down this information.
“Mommy’s nose is nice and big, with a part up at the top that looks like it’s been broken, but it never was. I don’t know about you, but I like a woman’s nose to be clear that it’s a nose instead of a button. A nose should be proud, not trying to hide itself.
“And her hair? Talk about pretty. Not all thick and covering up her head like most women. Instead her hair is thinning, so you can see parts of her skull. I’ll tell you, men always go crazy for her.
“Mommy never bought into the whole world of responsibility, you know, all that make sure there’s dinner and that the electric bill gets paid and that the clothes are clean,” he said. “We moved a lot when I was little. Sometimes we’d move twice in a month. Mainly in Florida, but not the Florida they always show on TV, with everybody in bathing suits and running on the beach. I lived in Florida until I was twelve, and I never saw the ocean, just a lot of two-room apartments without pools. Mommy was kind of a free spirit, and didn’t like to feel pinned down.
“One tradition she had, though, was she would always subscribe to the newspaper wherever we lived. We’d get the Crestview News Leader when we were there, then the Branford News for a while, then the Palatka Daily News or the Citrus County Chronicle, all depending on where we lived. She never read them. She just liked having them in the house. I think it showed her that we were real people, getting the newspaper.
“As soon as we’d get to a new town in her big old white truck, she’d call the newspaper and set us up with a subscription. It was also a tradition for Mommy to use a fake name for her subscriptions, usually some minor TV or movie actress, whose name you’d think sounded kind of familiar, but not really. It could be Regina King or Rita Wilson or Amy Acker. That’s what our life was like, moving and getting the newspaper. Mommy may not have read any of them, but when I was little I used to like taking a ballpoint and drawing horns and beards on people. By the time I was eight, I was reading most of the paper each morning, just because it was something to do.
“We had a tradition of piling up newspapers in the corner of whatever kitchen we were in. Sometimes the pile would get taller than me, but usually we moved before that happened. Like I said, Mommy likes to move a lot. Moving is a tradition for her.”
“So did your mother have a hard time keeping a job or something?” I asked, thinking of Pops’ long-running problems.
“Oh, no, Mommy could have kept any job she had. She’d just get bored. Sometimes she’d get a job cashiering at the Piggly Wiggly or taking tickets at a movie theater. Lots of different jobs. What she likes best, though, is just sitting around the house, waiting for something to happen. Then Jack happened.”
“Jack?” I asked.
“He was the love of her life. She met him at a Bingo game and she won twenty dollars that night, so that’s why she fell in love with him. He made her feel lucky and special, kind of like getting the newspaper. Maybe they’d even have gotten married if it weren’t for Stella.”
“Stella was his wife?” I asked.
“No, Mommy could have handled that. She’s had lots of married boyfriends. Stella was Jack’s dog. Jack loved that little Chihuahua like she was his daughter. She’d sit on his lap at meal times, and he’d feed her right off his plate. Even though Mommy knew that Jack loved her, too, it was the too part she couldn’t stand. Mommy wanted Jack to love her more than, not just too. When he’d be drinking, he’d joke about how he didn’t know which he’d choose between the two of them. That hurt Mommy’s feelings. Still, if it hadn’t been for me and Chinese food, Mommy probably would have married Jack and he’d be my stepfather today.”
“Shiny,” I said, “I‘m confused here. Stella is a dog. Jack and your mom were friends. You and Chinese food? What does that have to do with it?”
“When I was younger, you see, I was crazy about Chinese food, especially egg rolls. I’d beg Mommy to take me out for Chinese. One Saturday afternoon, when Jack was at work, she got lucky at bingo again and won fifty bucks, and as soon as she came in the door, I was all over her, asking for Chinese food. Whenever Mommy was happy and feeling lucky she liked to spread the love, so she said okay. We got into her truck and we drove across town and parked a couple of blocks from the restaurant.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Why what?”
“Why did you park a couple of blocks away from the restaurant instead of at the restaurant?”
“It was a tradition. Mommy loves traditions. We ordered a pupu platter and Mommy had five or six of those colored drinks with the umbrellas. It was nice. Until the fortune cookies.”
“Fortune cookies?”
“Yup. We had this other tradition where I would choose her fortune cookie and she would choose mine. My fortune was nothing to remember, but when Mommy opened hers, she got a faraway look in her eyes and a smile on her face.”
“What did it say?” I asked.
“It said, ‘Stop ignoring your destiny. Remove the obstacle.’ So, of course, right then and there, Mommy knew what she had to do.”
“Of course,” I replied, having no idea where this story was going.
“We left that restaurant without paying. That was another tradition we had. Mommy said only rich people pay for restaurant food. We ran the two blocks to the truck and Mommy reached up under her skirt and took off her panty hose.”
“Why?” I asked, feeling more confused with each new piece of information.
“On account of because she was going to need them for Stella.”
“Why would she need them? I thought Stella is a dog.”
“Was. She’s dead now.”
“I see,” I said blindly.
“Then we drove to Jack’s place and Mommy and I went in and poor little Stella was sitting on an easy chair. This little Chihuahua was looking like she was just getting ready to turn on the television.
“Mommy went into the kitchen and got some doggy treats and put them down at the toe of one leg of the panty hose. In case Stella got hungry. Then Mommy told me to hold the thigh as wide open as I could and she snatched up Stella and shoved her, nose first, into the panty hose.
“Once she got Stella all the way in, Mommy told me to tie off the crotch with a double knot. Of course there was no way that little dog could have turned herself around in the panty hose, but Mommy wanted to make sure we did the job right. She was a stickler for that kind of thing.”
“She shoved a dog into tights? Why?” I asked.
“On account of because that was how she wanted to do it. Once Mommy had Stella in the panty hose, she lifted that sack of dog over her shoulder and left Jack’s apartment, like Santa Claus in reverse.
“Course, a Chihuahua is a yapper, so once we got her in the truck, Mommy took some duct tape and started trying to wrap Stella’s snout through the panty hose. The problem was, Stella didn’t really want her snout wrapped, and the tape wasn’t on her nose, it was on the hose, so Stella kept on backing and backing up toward the thigh and Mommy kept on wrapping and wrapping until finally Stella couldn’t back up any more.
“By the time Mommy was done, she’d used up so much duct tape that she’d made herself a stick out of the panty hose. When she held the staff of duct tape with the little ball of dog at the end, if Stella had been painted red, Mommy would have been holding an old-time thermometer.”
“So you’re in her truck in her boyfriend’s driveway,” I said, “with a duct-taped set of panty hose containing a ball of dog at the end of it. What exactly, was her plan next?”
“Like I told you, Mommy was never much for plans. She just kind of liked to let the fur fly and see what happened. So I can’t tell you about her plan or even if she had one. But I can tell you what she did, and that’s she drove us home and carried Stella inside, with the stick on her shoulder and Stella hanging down on her back. She looked like a hobo in one of those old movies.
“She went straight into the bathroom—she always did like the bathroom—and she left the door open. I followed her and watched as Mommy started the water in the tub, but she didn’t bother checking the temperature with the back of her hand. Just turned both faucets on full. Didn’t put in any bath salts, either, and Mommy was very particular about her baths. Used to take a bath two, maybe three times a week.
“Stella was really quiet, just a whimper or two, on account of because her nose was finally taped up, and she wasn’t moving that much anyway, ‘cause there wasn’t much space. I thought maybe she was going to take a nap, but Mommy’s lawyer said at trial she was probably already dead.”
“Her lawyer said she killed the dog?” I asked. “Why did she have a lawyer and why wasn’t he trying to prove she didn’t kill the dog?”
“Everybody knew she killed the dog,” replied Shiny. “People don’t go to prison just for killing a dog, Clayton.”
“Prison?” I asked.
“Yup. The thing was, the story gets kind of weird now.”
“Really?” I murmured, wondering what adjective Shiny would have used to describe the story so far.
“You see, once the water was about half way up the tub, Mommy held on to the duct tape handle and used poor Stella like a plunger. Just held her under water and kept pushing. After a couple of minutes, Mommy pulled the panty hose and duct tape stick out of the water, and using both hands pointed the dog at me.
“’Sebastian,’ she said, ‘this is what love leads to.’”
A dead dog on a stick, I thought.
“With the way Mommy was holding her, Stella looked kind of like a marshmallow that’s ready to fall off the end of your stick into the fire. Except, of course, she was brown, not white.
“Mommy carried the Stella-cicle into the kitchen. I followed and we both sat down at the kitchen table. Mommy leaned forward and put all her weight on the stick, so that Stella, or what used to be Stella, dripped water all over the floor.”
“’It’s time to think,’ Mommy said.
“I didn’t know what to do, so I tried to think with her, but it was kind of hard, ‘cause I couldn’t stop watching Stella puddle up our floor like a dog mop.”
“After about five minutes, Mommy looked at me and said, ‘Sebastian, don’t ever fall in love with a person who likes dogs. Things get way too complicated.’ Then she got up and turned the oven on to about three hundred fifty degrees and started unwrapping Stella.”
“Shiny, I’m starting to get confused again,” I said. “Why the oven? Why the unwrapping? Why not just leave the dog wrapped up and throw it in a dumpster?”
“On account of because that would be cruel to Jack, and Mommy loved Jack,” Shiny said with a hurt tone. “Mommy didn’t want Jack to spend the rest of his days thinking Stella might have run away from him. She said she wanted him to get closure, so that his love for Mommy could grow and grow
“Mommy said we were going to take Stella back to Jack’s street and leave her there for Jack to find. We were going to run over Stella’s body three or four times, so Jack would think a car had hit Stella. Problem was, no matter how happy he might be to find Stella and no matter how sad he might be that she was dead, he’d still have to notice she was dripping wet. Mommy said that grief might cover up a lot, but not the smell of a dead wet dog. Jack would get suspicious.
“So Mommy had to dry Stella off. She’d never had to dry a dead dog before. She’d only done one thing with dead animals. That’s why she turned on the oven. There was a problem, though.”
“Hard to believe there could be any more problems, Shiny,” I said.
“Well, there was. See, Mommy thought that after thirty minutes at three-hundred-fifty degrees, Stella would be all dried out. That’s where Mommy figured wrong, on account of because after half an hour in a closed oven, Stella was starting to cook, and smell like she needed to be basted, but she was still as wet as when she’d been lying on the kitchen floor.
“Mommy didn’t know what to do, on account of because the smell of roasting dog meat was starting to spread through the kitchen. She was kind of spooked, so she turned the broiler on and sat back, thinking that broiling with the door open might work. Next thing you know, smoke and flames are pouring out of the oven and filling the kitchen. Seems Stella had caught on fire instead of drying off.
“Mommy grabbed a couple of oven mitts with pictures of peacocks on them. Then she picked Stella up by the tail and yanked her out of the oven. Now she was standing in the middle of the room, holding a burning Chihuahua by the tail, kind of spinning herself like one of those hammer throwers in the Olympics.”
“I wanted to help, so I opened the kitchen window, to let some of the smoke out. Mommy told me to shut it, on account of because she didn’t want the neighbors to know. Then she spun one last time, and Stella’s tail came off in Mommy’s hand. Stella’s burning body flew into the corner of the kitchen, right beside our pile of newspapers, Mommy still holding on to her tail.”
“Well, if you didn’t know, newspapers are pretty good for starting fires and a burning dog beside a pile of newspapers turns into a big fire pretty quickly. Mommy started crying that she didn’t know what to do. She went to the fridge and opened a beer. With the beer and Stella’s tail in one hand, she grabbed me with the other hand and pulled me out of the apartment.
“She didn’t try to put out the fire?” I asked.
“Nope. On account of because it was just an apartment and I think Mommy figured that if Stella’s body burned up that maybe she’d get away with what she’d done. Unfortunately for her, some nosy neighbors smelled smoke and the fire department was there in about five minutes.
“They went right into the kitchen and sprayed down the fire and Stella was all burned, but she was still recognizable as a dog, a very dead dog. Mommy was going to try to talk her way out of things, but the fireman who was talking with her noticed Stella’s little tail, still grasped firmly in Mommy’s hand.
“When Mommy got arrested, I went into foster care with a nice family. I lived on a farm and everything. I even got to be a ward of the state on account of because they didn’t know where my father was and they had to sort things out. That’s how I got these,” here Shiny smiled broadly and pointed to his braces which had red, white and blue bands.
“They’re a gift from the people of Florida, kind of a going away present. Of course, now that they’re on and I’m in New Hampshire I won’t be able to get them off for at least three years.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“On account of because Mommy went to trial last June. Her lawyer convinced her to plead guilty to animal cruelty and arson and she’s doing three to five at Jefferson Correctional Facility. It’s a very nice place from the brochures and Mommy writes me every week.
“Mommy told me on the day she went away that soon I’d be going to stay with my Aunt Margaret here in New Hampshire, but first I’d be with a foster family. She told me that while she was in prison I was to do everything Aunt Margaret told me to do. I was to treat her like she was Mommy herself. I was even to call her ‘Mom,’ but not ‘Mommy,’ ‘cause I only have one Mommy.
“She also said that once she was out, we’d never have anything to do with dogs again.
“So that’s how I ended up here in Oxford,“ concluded Shiny.
“And you moved here in June?” I asked.
“Yup.”

It's Raining Cats and Dogs (and they're dead)

Hearing about how dogs and cats the country over are dying from kidney failure after eating certain brands of food, I wonder how many sick sons of guns the nation over are killing their pets, hoping to become part of a major class action suit. I know I’ve got five cats (two of my own, two of my girlfriend’s and one of my father’s, who is currently incapacitated), and I don’t even care for cats, particularly. If I were hard up for a chunk of change--say my trailer needed to be insulated--I guess I could picture a scenario like this.

As long as each of you sends me the $38.50 a month you’ve promised, that point will not arrive.

Tuesday Morning--Tech Request

I know a lot of Mac users read this blog, so I'll lay my problem bare and ask for help. My girlfriend has a G-5 with airport express. I have a G-4 with no airport card. How can our two computers grow to love each other the way my girlfriend and i do (and share an internet connection)? Best answer wins a cup of soup--your choice.

A Brief, Post-Blizzard, Response

Knowing how slapdash a writer I can be, my first response to reading criticism of what I’ve written is to think, “Why didn’t I reread, rewrite or fact check that sucker?” Looking over the comments written on yesterday’s adoption post, though, I feel pretty good about a piece I wrote two years ago and never submitted to anyone but my agent. In other words, boys and girls, it is a rough draft—not camera-ready copy.

That said, I’d like to respond to a few of the comments:

1) Anonymous said...

The JOY that adoption has brought to BIRTH PARENTS?

Shoot. I was supposed to get JOY by being forced to relinquish my first born.

No one told me.

Better go find that joy.

From reading that, it sure sounds as though I’d referred to some kind of happiness or bliss in relinquishing a child. Here, however, is what I actually wrote:

In The Chosen Child, I will present a balanced look at adoption, primarily through the words of members of the adoption "triad" (adoptees, adoptive families and birth families). To illustrate the joy that adoption has brought, I will interview a number of celebrity adoptees and adoptive parents (see Expanded Table of Contents Chapters Two and Three).

Clearly, “joy” refers to just two parts of the triad, not including birth parents.

Next, the comparison of adoption and slavery by Bastard Nation, denied by a number of commentators:

Marley Greiner said...

"I expect to interview Ms. Corangelo along with the founders of Bastard Nation, which likens adoption to slavery"

As co-founder and Executive Chair of Bastard Nation I am very surprised to read that BN compares adoption to slavery. Perhaps you mistook satire for policy. We have repeatedly ridiculed that idea.

BB Church said...

I served on the Executive Committee of Bastard Nation from 1997 to 2001, and have remained an active member up to the present. Bastard Nation has never, I repeat, NEVER, compared adoption to slavery. As a matter of fact, I have personally analyzed and criticized the hyperbolic comparison of US adoption and slavery on numerous public fora.

Lainie Petersen said...

I was one of the founders of Bastard Nation, and I do not recall us ever comparing adoption to slavery.

Sorry if this disappoints.

In an earlier post, I made reference to the quote from the April 2006 "Byline: Bastard Nation" (www.bastards.org/byline/bylinehome):

"Adoption remains the only institution in these here disUnited States other than slavery that keeps or has kept people from knowing their roots. Imagine that. Adoption; slavery. Adoption; slavery. Say it again and again and never forget it.

"Adoption; slavery.

"It took a war to bring about emancipation from one. What's it going to take to right the wrongs of the other?"

I'll admit a semi-colon is not a colon (or an equal sign, for that matter), however, I do think the parallel is clear here. Please bear in mind that this newsletter is an organ of Bastard Nation, or at least appears to go out under its name.

An anonymous poster said...

Oh dear. It seems your research and originality skills are sorely lacking.

Not only can't you spell Lori Carangelo's name correctly, you make a play on her already published book called "Chosen Children" with your [koff koff] hahahahaha---snerk "original" prospectus entitled "The Chosen Child".

Methinks you'll probably end up self-publishing. LOL

You know, Bastard Nation actually has a page with a mission statement on it. Too bad you, with your "extensive impressive" research skills seemed to miss it.

Ignoring the sarcasm, “The Chosen Child” is a working title for a project two years old and since discarded. Had I continued with it, I would have preferred a title like “Who Was the Dumbass Who Gave Away Steve Jobs?” or “Sex Tips from Adopted Hotties” or “The Last Self Help Book You’ll Ever Need (or Want).” Any other ideas for this book (which will never be written, I expect, and certainly never self-published) can be forwarded right away.

Anyone who thinks a mission statement has any relationship to the true beliefs of an organization must be looking forward to the Easter Bunny (or the fucked-up Italian bells) in a few weeks.

Six Comments, All Negative--Novelistador Responds

In the words of the immortal Phil Rizzuto, "Holy Cow!" Five or six people take me to task for saying Bastard Nation has NEVER equated slavery and adoption. To set the record straight, here is a quote from the April 2006 "Byline: Bastard Nation" (www.bastards.org/byline/bylinehome):

"Adoption remains the only institution in these here disUnited States other than slavery that keeps or has kept people from knowing their roots. Imagine that. Adoption; slavery. Adoption; slavery. Say it again and again and never forget it.

"Adoption; slavery.

"It took a war to bring about emancipation from one. What's it going to take to right the wrongs of the other?"

I'll admit a semi-colon is not a colon (or an equal sign, for that matter), however, I do think the parallel is clear here. Please bear in mind that this newsletter is an organ of Bastard Nation, or at least appears to go out under its name.

I apologize for misspelling Ms. Carangelo's name.

Unfortunately for me, I'm in a blizzard and need to get to work. I will post a longer, more thoughtful response this evening.

The Chosen Child: Adoption Book Proposal

At the suggestion of a reader, I am posting a non-fiction book proposal for a book on adoption. This proposal is ready to be turned into a book if you are an agent or publisher. Just be in touch.

Overview
Sixty percent of Americans have been touched by adoption, having either a family member or close personal friend who is adopted, has adopted or has relinquished a child for adoption. For the vast majority of these people, adoption has been a positive and life-changing event, and two-thirds of Americans hold an extremely favorable view of adoption.
Still, the general literature about adoption, both in print and on the Internet, is often seedy and negative. The tone of many memoirs of adopted people or people who have relinquished children is filled with horror stories and unsubstantiated claims:
• Adoption is akin to slavery
• Adoption is a wound from which no one can recover
• Adoptive parents of international children are "harvesting" human beings
• Adoption leads to serial killing
• Adoptive parents are more likely to kill their children
The professional literature in both psychology and history is much more balanced and positive, but not many adopted people or their families read scholarly journals or books. Still, they do want to know that their choices were and are valid, and that they are not "primally wounded," as one author of an anti-adoption book wrote.
In The Chosen Child, I will present a balanced look at adoption, primarily through the words of members of the adoption "triad" (adoptees, adoptive families and birth families). To illustrate the joy that adoption has brought, I will interview a number of celebrity adoptees and adoptive parents (see Expanded Table of Contents Chapters Two and Three). Through both internet and face-to-face interviews arranged through various adoption support groups, I will show the face of adoption in America today. Preliminary discussions with people who have been affected by adoption leads me to believe the negative, critical attacks on the practice are unwarranted and insupportable.
While 63% of Americans hold a favorable view of adoption, naysayers vastly outnumber cheerleaders in terms of books written. As shown in the Market Analysis and Comparable Books section below, non-fiction books and memoirs about adoption are generally negative, with some going as far as equating adoption with slavery and attempting to connect adoption with serial murderers. While some historians and psychologists have taken a more positive view, their audience has been more professional than general.
I will provide a brief history of adoption in America, examine some famous (and infamous) adoptees, explore models of looking at adoption, and look at the “search” phenomenon, the desire to find and make contact with biological relatives.
I expect the final manuscript to be approximately 70,000 words and to be completed by mid-August, 2005.

Comparable Books

Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self by David M. Brodzinsky, Robin Marantz Henig, Marshall D. Schechter, Doubleday, 1992, Hardcover, Anchor 1993 paperback

The authors, a psychologist, a psychiatrist and a journalist, present a scholarly look at adoption. Following a model based on Erik Erikson’s Eight Stages of Personal Development, they look at adoption’s effect at each stage of a person’s life. The book is dry, and represents that 100% of adoptees “search” for their birth parents, although they broaden the meaning of the term to include “intrapsychic” searching, meaning fantasies and inner contemplation.
The Chosen Child takes a more measured and accessible approach. While including anecdotes about childhood fantasies of birth mothers—"She looked a lot like Mary Tyler Moore and would be sending a limo for me as soon as she finished shooting her current movie"—it is much more grounded in the notion that each of us can generate our own definition of success being who we are and where we are.


Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew by Sherrie Eldridge, Dell, 1999, Trade Paperback

With more than 80,000 copies in print, this book is a prime example of the “adoptee as victim” view. With chapter titles like “I Need to be Taught that I Have Special Needs Arising from Adoption Loss” and “I May Appear to be More ‘Whole’ Than I Actually Am,” this book encourages adoptees to focus on loss rather than gain, and leads adoptive parents to view their children as damaged goods.
The Chosen Child instead encourages all people to recognize that the past is prologue rather than prediction. Adoption, or any other situation, does not need to define us. We can define ourselves.

Twice Born: Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter by Betty Jean Lifton, McGraw-Hill, 1975 Hardcover, St. Martin's Griffin, 1998 Paperback

This personal memoir, which has been in print 30 years, views adoption as something unnatural and, perhaps, evil. Throughout her long and successful career, Lifton has promulgated the notion that adoptees are not quite whole unless they reunite with their birth families.
The Chosen Child instead posits that each of us has “enough” of whatever we need to create success for ourselves. While in no way critical of adoptees who choose to search for birth relatives, I take a more bemused look at the issue.

Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption by Barbara Melosh, Harvard University Press 2002 Hardcover

In this grand history of adoption in America, historian Melosh uses primary sources from the state of Delaware to explore how adoption has evolved over time. Dryly written, the book is aimed at a scholarly rather than general audience.

The Privilege of Youth: A Teenager's Story of Longing for Acceptance and Friendship by Dave Pelzer, Dutton, 2004, Hardcover, Plume, 2004, Paperback

With three books currently in the New York Times Best-Selling Paperbacks List, Pelzer’s message of self-reliance and hard work has clearly found an audience. Pelzer, however, was raised by an abusive alcoholic mother until the age of 12, and then placed into foster care. The Chosen Child has the same uplifting message, but is focused on a more traditional adoptive setting.

Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution Is Transforming America by Adam Pertman, Basic Books, 2000 Hardcover, Basic Books 2001Paperback

A former Boston Globe reporter, where he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on adoption, and current head of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, Pertman gives a combination of personal history as an adoptive father and journalistic research into the history and current state of adoption in America. Clearly favoring open adoption, in which the birth mother has some contact with the adopted child and family, Pertman presents a balanced view, although his book is aimed at social historians and policy makers, rather than a general audience.
The Chosen Child is a readable overview that will appeal to a general audience. While drawing upon the work of such writers as Pertman and Melosh, I am not an academic.

Marketing

The market for a positive look at adoption is large, wealthy and well educated.
• Up to 100 million Americans have been directly affected by adoption. It is reasonable to assume that a large number of these people have touched other lives in a significant way (e.g., spouses, boy/girlfriends, co-workers) and would provide referrals for an upbeat look at this experience.
• In 2000, families with adopted children earned $56,00, 17% more than families with biological children.
• Families with adopted children are 21% more likely to have a bachelor's degree and 33% more likely to have a graduate or professional degree.
• Because they have generally been vetted by a social service or other agency, and have incurred up to $50,000 in their search for a child, adoptive parents are committed parents.
This large market of wealthy readers has been under-served in its need for validation of its choice to adopt. The Chosen Child is a book that meets a definite desire and need.

Table of Contents

1) How It Used to Be: A Very Brief History of Adoption
2) Who’d Give Away Faith Hill or Steven Jobs? Celebrity Adoptees
3) Wow! My Parents Are Rich and Famous
4) You Broke My Heart, So I Busted Your Skull: Adoption and Serial Killing
5) Damaged Goods: The Victimification of Just About Everybody
6) Adoption = Slavery: Hyperbole at Its Finest
7) Finding the Grail—And How Holy Was It? Successful Searches for Birth Parents or Relinquished Children
8) I Know She’s Out There Somewhere: Unsuccessful Searches
9) Staring into an Open Grave: The Dead Parent or Child
10) A Certain Desire for Salty Foods: Birth Siblings
11) It Don’t Matter to Me: Adoptees Who Don’t Search Out of a Sense of Wholeness
12) It Would Kill Mom If She Found Out: Adoptees Who Don't Search Out of a Sense of Guilt
13) It Should Be Enough that I Didn't Abort: Birth Parents Who Don't Want to be Found

14) What’s the Romanian Word for Relinquish?: International Adoptions

15) Do I Need to Buy a Birth-Father’s Day Card? Open Adoption

16) What It All Comes Down To: A Conclusion


Expanded Table of Contents



1) How It Used to Be: A Very Brief History of Adoption

Before the 1930s, adoption was often informally arranged, and the notion of confidentiality was not considered. Any party in the adoption could find out the names of all the other parties. With the rise of social work as a profession, this informality was swept aside, in favor of state approval of each adoption and the anonymity of the people involved. While the number of annual adoptions peaked in 1970 at 175,000, it has seen a recent increase, particularly in international adoptions. Likewise, such organizations as Bastard Nation and AbolishAdoption have raised a voice of criticism of the practice.

2) Who’d Give Away Faith Hill or Steven Jobs? Celebrity Adoptees

While Dave Thomas was the most public and vocal spokesman about his adopted roots, celebrities from a variety of fields are adopted. To illustrate the adoptees experience, I will interview many of the following adopted celebrities: Debbi Harry, Jim Palmer (who is an adoptive father as well), Eric Dickerson, Daunte Culpepper, Faith Daniels, Edward Albee, Bo Diddley, Ray Liotta, Jack Nicholson, Damien Hurst, Melissa Gilbert, Antwone Fisher, Greg Louganis, Scott Hamilton, Lee Majors, Liz Phair, Jett Williams and Michael Reagan. Additionally, the lives of Truman Capote, Dave Thomas, John Lennon, J.R.R. Tolkien and Babe Ruth will be explored.

3) Wow! My Parents Are Rich and Famous

Adoptive parents have won Oscars, Emmys and World Championships. They are members of three different Halls of Fame. Because of the personal nature of the adoption experience, I will interview many of the following adoptive parents: Angelina Jolie & Billy Bob Thornton, Barbara Walters, Burt Reynolds, Dan Marino, Diane Keaton, George Lucas, Jamie Lee Curtis & Christopher Guest, Jill Krementz & Kurt Vonnegut, Jim Palmer, Joan Didion & John Gregory Dunne, Kate Jackson, Kirby Puckett, Kirstie Alley & Parker Stevenson, Magic Johnson, Nicole Kidman & Tom Cruise, Paul Newman & Joanne Woodward, Sally Jessy Raphael, Sen. Gordon Humphrey, Sen. John McCain, and Stephen Spielberg.


4) You Broke My Heart, So I Busted Your Skull: Adoption and Serial Killing

In addition to the celebrities profiled in the previous two chapters, some infamous people have been adopted. Such murderers as David Berkowitz (Son of Sam), Ken Bianchi (Hillside Strangler and Joel Rifkin were adopted. A small but significant number of true-crime authors argue for a causal relationship between adoption and serial killing. Here, this argument is presented, along with a critical response.

5) Damaged Goods: The Victimification of Just About Everybody

The victim mentality maintains that adopted people and the biological parents who relinquished them are broken for life and need an eternity of “healing.” Money quote: “Adoption loss is the only trauma in the world where the victims are expected by the whole of society to be grateful.”—Unattributed posting on anti-adoption activist Lori Corangelo abolishadoption.com Web site. I expect to interview Ms. Corangelo along with the founders of Bastard Nation, which likens adoption to slavery.

6) Adoption = Slavery: Hyperbole at Its Finest

An argument put forth primarily by women who relinquished children and now regret their decision. The working model here is that their babies were harvested from them when they were young and unwise. This argument will be presented, along with a critical response.

7) Finding the Grail—And How Holy Was It?: Successful Searches for Birth Parents or Relinquished Children

Many adult adoptees have expended huge amounts of money and energy searching for birth parents or siblings. This chapter will consist of five to ten interviews with adoptees that have made contact with birth parents or siblings. Interview subjects will be found both on the Internet and through local newspaper advertising.

8) I Know She’s Out There Somewhere: Unsuccessful Searches

Five to ten interviews with adoptees currently searching for birth families.

9) Staring into an Open Grave: The Dead Parent or Child

Five to ten interviews with adoptees who discover their birth parents (or children) have died.

10) A Certain Desire for Salty Foods: Birth Siblings

Five to ten interviews with adoptees who have reunited with birth siblings

11) It Don’t Matter to Me: Adoptees Who Don’t Search Out of a Sense of Wholeness

Five to ten interviews with adoptees who express no interest in searching for birth family.

12) It Would Kill Mom If She Found Out: Adoptees Who Don't Search Out of a Sense of Guilt

Five to ten interviews with adoptees who would like to search for birth family, but are concerned about hurting the feelings of their families.


13) It Should Be Enough that I Didn't Abort: Birth Parents Who Don't Want to be Found

Five to ten interviews with birth parents who relinquished their children and have no desire for contact to be made.



14) What’s the Romanian Word for Relinquish?: International Adoptions

Over the last three decades, more than a quarter-million children have been adopted from abroad. This chapter will interview five to ten families who have adopted internationally and examine the challenges for international adoptees who want to search for their birth parents.

15) Do I Need to Buy a Birth Father’s Day Card? Open Adoption

Open adoption, in which the birth parent(s) maintain some form of communication with the children they relinquish, has become more popular over the past decade. This chapter will consist of interviews with five to ten families involved in open adoption.

16) What It All Comes Down To: A Conclusion

About the Author

Keith Howard is a writer, educator and entertainer. A nominee for European Military Journalist of the Year, Keith has published numerous op-ed pieces and essays on topics ranging from baseball to education to family issues. He began his career as a print journalist, writing straight news, features and a humor column, then moved into radio and theater.
For eight years, he directed and acted with the Clearway Improvisational Theater, which performed before more than 100,000 people nationwide. He is comfortable as a public speaker and has numerous appearances to his credit.
From 1988 until 2004, Keith ran alternative high schools, until leaving education to pursue a writing career. An active member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators, Keith has completed a young adult novel and an adult novel. He is currently working on a second young adult novel.
Keith lives in Nashua, New Hampshire, with his three daughters, two guinea pigs and a rabbit.

Writing Sample
It’s not often that the mail changes my life. Phone bills, supermarket flyers and invitations to further extend my already fragile credit are fine in their way, but they don’t lead to introspection and meditation. A while ago, though, I received a letter that did just that, hitting me like a meatball between the eyes.
Oddly, the envelope itself inspired dread, bearing the return address of the probate court in my hometown. Given that my life to this point has been criminally unremarkable, I assumed the envelope contained either a reminder of a long-forgotten debt or the news that my high school had reviewed its records and that my diploma had been revoked.
Instead, I found a pleasant letter from the probate judge telling me that a stranger and her social worker had found she and I had the same biological mother, she too had been placed for adoption at birth and she wanted to make contact with me.
As an adopted person, I’ve never used a phrase like “as an adopted person,” so the whole premise struck me as surreal. I’ve never really cared who my biological mother was. Instead, I’ve focused on what kind of father my children will have. Still, strange or not, I did have to respond to the request, so I wrote the following:
Dear Judge Cassavechia:
For the past 15 years I have spent my days helping adolescents with emotional difficulties recognize that their existence can offer meaning and purpose. I spend the rest of my life in nurturing and encouraging the search for meaning with my children. Life, for me, is filled with significance and purpose, with meaning pooling up like sunlight on a sheet of foil. Although I am a terrible poet, I do have poetic vision, with an ability to find connections between seemingly isolated objects and events. It is therefore very difficult for me to admit that I find meaningless the existence of a woman borne by the same woman who bore me. I find that I have no particular emotional response to this fact, nor any curiosity about this woman or her mother.
I am not a very philosophical man, at least in the sense of having a systematic belief system. In the choice between immanence and transcendence, I always choose the present and concrete over the ethereal and otherworldly. As H.L. Mencken remarked about philosophy in general, “We are here. It is now. The rest is all moonshine.” Because of this unusual situation, I have pondered and outlined a rough draft of a philosophy of life. This process has crystallized a number of previously unexpressed first principles. Please excuse the length of this letter, but I hope to make my intentions explicitly clear to you, the involved party from the State of New Hampshire and, most important, the woman who initiated this.
If I were asked to define myself by coming up with a list of 100 descriptive attributes, the list might begin with:
1. I am a father.
2. I am a teacher.
3. I am funny.
And so on, moving down toward the following:
37. I am a Red Sox fan.
38. I am a chess player who enjoys playing against superior competition, of which there is no shortage.
39. I am an Army veteran.
And conclude with:
98. I am a coffee drinker.
99. I worked my way through college and graduate school.
100. I am a good cook.
This hypothetical list, though, would probably not include the item “I am adopted,” for this fact forms almost none of my core identity.
When I do meet people who view their adoption as central to their humanity, I am vaguely amused, for adoption has had little significance in my life. Since our conversation, I have done a little Internet research into the world of adoption, primarily through reading postings at newsgroups devoted to the subject. I was shocked to find that thousands of people appear to devote considerable energy to tracking down biological parents, children and siblings. Most of the postings have a desperate, Holy Grail tone to them, as if successful detective work would somehow make the searcher whole.
Perhaps I have chosen massive denial as a strategy of coping with adoption, but the notion that one’s life is given purpose by the pursuit of another strikes me as pathetic and absurd. Pathetic because this is a sucker’s game: the elusive quarry is almost certainly not going to grant peace and serenity. Absurd because the random occurrence of a blood relationship guarantees no connection more profound than perhaps a certain physical similarity or a taste for salty foods.
Many of us have had the experience of traveling overseas and meeting someone who comes from the same state or region. This coincidence forms a short-lived bond that melts fairly quickly if there is no other connection to be made. Thus it is with adoption and me. Meeting someone who is adopted or interested in adoption is roughly akin to meeting a fellow New Englander in Vienna. I am interested enough to talk a bit, but the topic wears itself out fairly quickly. I would shy away from someone calling out in Heathrow Airport, “Hey, I’m from New Hampshire. Any other New Englanders here?” Similarly, adopted people using that fact as a calling card put me on guard.
Although I don’t much like labels, I believe some things that might be called “existentialist,” although they might just as easily be called common-sense conservatism.
First and foremost, I believe that what we do defines who we are. The “I” in each of us is the product of our experiences, those events which life has thrown at us, and, more important, our response to those events. Each situation in our lives offers the opportunity for choice and it is the patterns of those choices which create our identity. Without wanting to sound mechanistic, a human life is that set of patterns and rhythms created by the choices we make. Identity is the product of our responses to the chaotic events which life churns up over time.
This identity is being continually created, of course, so it also affects the choices we confront in our lives. As an example, a young person who is offered the opportunity to cheat on a test has at least two choices: politely refuse the offer or cheat.
If the young person takes the first choice, he discovers that he is becoming the sort of person who doesn’t cheat. The people around him are also learning this, so they are less likely to offer him the chance to cheat. This self-stoking cycle applies just as strongly in regard to positive options. We are always in a state of becoming who we are. There is no static “I,” there is a dynamic, ever-changing, and, one hopes, ever-improving “I.”
This philosophy leads directly to my feelings about my biological mother. My view of life is that each of us is born with certain biological strengths and limitations. The vast majority of us have “enough” of everything we need to be successful. The secret to that success doesn’t come, except in the case of professional basketball players and midget wrestlers, from the biology with which we are born, but from the psychology and sociology of our parents, which enables us to make good choices later in our lives. In the battle between nature and nurture, my money is on the importance of nurture.
For example, I was born with a brain capable of learning a lot of different information. My mother was a voracious reader who encouraged me to read broadly, deeply and until my eyes dried out. Whether I was reading comic books or Kafka, she urged me to read and think about what I was reading.
Likewise, I was born with potentially adequate hand-eye coordination and a body that would be capable of running fast. My father, who was a high-school phenom, drove me to baseball, soccer and track practice and attended every single one of my childhood and high school games, meets and tournaments, whether I was starting or riding the bench. In each of these examples, and in countless more, I was born with certain potential gifts and abilities but it was the nurturance of my parents and others who breathed reality into that potential.
If we can use the analogy of cards, my biological mother dealt half of my hand and left the table. It was my parents who taught me to play. In terms of influence on my life, my biological mother’s role is considerably less than that of my second-grade teacher, my old soccer coach, or even the friendly cashier at the local supermarket. In fact, if you had contacted me with information about Ben Roe, my elementary-school best friend, with whom I have not spoken since he moved away 35 years ago, my emotional response would have been immeasurably greater than it is under the present circumstances.
The difference between my relationship with the people mentioned above and my relationship with my biological mother is that I interacted with them, while I justresulted from an action of my biological mother, an almost certainly unintended consequence.
I have three young daughters, each of whom is wonderful in her own unique way. In a sense, I had nothing to do with which girl would have blue eyes, which would be left-handed and which would have dimples. I could not have chosen different attributes, for I had no choice. In fact, during the act that led to conception, babies were certainly far from my mind. I became my daughters’ father when I started to father them at birth, a dynamic and ongoing process. Until then, I was just a sperm supplier. By this light, my biological mother has had zero influence on who I am, for she had no control or influence over which genes she was passing on to me.
As a father, I know that the look I give when smiling into my eight-year-old’s face is the same look of love my father gave me when I was adopted. I love my children because of the time I spend with them and the dreams I have for them and because of the great people they are becoming, not because they are flesh of my flesh or bone of my bone.
In short, my need to find out more about the man who sired and the woman who bore me is nil. Nada. Zilch. With no bitterness or animosity toward either of them, and with thankfulness that neither of them appears to have passed on genes for madness or early-onset Alzheimer’s, I would say that I have no desire to discover these people. You have informed me that both my biological mother and father are dead. May they rest in peace.
Given that my need to establish any kind of contact is non-existent, I must consider those of my biological mother’s daughter, or my biological half-sister. While it is difficult for me to conceive of any questions that my identity could answer for this woman, the fact that she has initiated this process clearly indicates that she believes that finding me will be helpful to her.
My first response is that if she wishes to discover more about herself, she should start with a mirror. Likewise, if she wishes to discover more about her mother, that same mirror could be used to search for her mother’s effects on her. Still, I have no objection to some minimal amount of contact, as long as the following requests are accepted. I request that my biological half-sister
1. Understand that I am not her “long-lost brother.” I am a person who shares some genes with her,
2. Understand that I have no desire to enter a long-term relationship with her or any of her relatives,
3. Understand and respect my desire for privacy, and
4. Understand that I am a writer and that I may choose to write about this experience and publish these writings, promising to protect the anonymity of her and her mother.
As a practical matter, I would prefer that you forward me this woman’s name, telephone number and a convenient time to call. I will make every effort to place a phone call and to try to arrange for at least one face-to-face meeting.
Thank you, Your Honor, for your interest in this case. Until I hear from you, I remain
Sincerely yours,
Did I contact this woman? Yes.
Did we have a pleasant conversation? Yes.
Did I rethink my position as stated above, and become friends with this woman? No, not at all.
In fact, that is how the letter changed my life: it showed that I didn’t need to change my life all that much.

Into the Wayback Machine

In my first Blog post, I published the first chapters of three novels--On Account of Because, What Trouble Looks Like and First Chapter of Untitiled Book. Now that I've built up a readership of sorts, please let me know if you would like me to repost these, or, even better, put up a second chapter. Just write me at keithhoward@gmail.com

As the Traffic Shows, You Love Your Writing Prompts

What do you think about when you can't fall asleep?

Write the final paragraph of a story. Then, work backward to create the rest of it.

Write about where you first learned to do a particular activity (e.g., ride a bike, make change, etc.)

Write about a vacation taken in childhood

Write about something/someone that creeped you out

Continue this story: “By the time Mr. Zanorsky had arrived in Memphis, Annabella had already..."

Pretend you are a world famous musician about to release your first album. What is the title of your CD (and the name of your group, if you choose not to be a soloist.) Now write the name of 10 songs/movements you'd have on your debut CD.

Using only dialogue, write a story about a mother and her child in a playground. Now using the exact same dialogue, but adding descriptive text, write the same story, but imagine a stranger is watching the child intently.

List 50 things you'll never do.

Begin with "Today I will..." and write for 10 minutes.

Write a letter to the teacher who gave you a hard time in grade school or high school.

List three things you want to keep; three things you want to lose. Write from one or both lists whatever comes to you.

Imagine opening a medicine chest in a bathroom. List what you find there. Use these objects to begin your writing.

What is the strongest type of love? Why?

Use the first line of a nursery rhyme (take your pick) to start a story.

Make a list of 40 things that happened to you this month. They can be funny, embarrassing, happy, or infuriating. Then pick one from your list and write about it.

Even More Writing Prompts (At the Behest of a Number of Readers Grown Tired of Reading Longer, More Challenging Pieces)

K-SOFA Means Extrapolating from the Facts


Eighty-five percent of all life on Earth is Plankton.

Using your knowledge of the world, please estimate the percentage of life on earth of the following creatures. Most importantly, explain how you arrived at your figures.

Salmon




Squirrels



People with Red Hair



Elephants



Pigs



Pigeons



Dogs



Moose

K-SOFA Means Science is Not Scary

Read over the following descriptions of molecules and atoms and their relative size. Once you have done so, please write your own “picture story” about atoms and molecules.

If you took a glass of iced tea and magnified it until it was as large as the whole earth, each molecule of water would be about the size of a baseball.

How big is a molecule? If you were to make a pile of 10,000 average-size molecules, you could just barely see it as a tiny speck.

How big is a typical atom? Take the width of a human hair and divide it by two, then divide that by two, then divide that by two, and so on, until you have reduced each half by half a total of 20 times. That will be the width of a typical atom - roughly one millionth the thickness of a human hair. Now, just for fun, divide the width of the atom in half 13 times and you will have the width of its nucleus.

K-SOFA Means Divining the Future
Confused about the difference between molybdomancy and myomancy? We’re not surprised. Molybdomancers tell the future by dropping melted lead into the water; myomancers tell the future by watching the behavior of mice.
How do YOU tell the future? Please be specific and give five examples. Thank you.

K-SOFA Means the Beatles Were Way Overrated Then and Even More So Today

What are the names of the four musicians who were the Beatles?


The Beatles have sold over one billion recordings. If you stacked up all these cds, records and tapes, the pile would be almost 2,000 miles tall. What would you do with this pile?

Michael Jackson owns most of the Beatles copyrights. How does this make you feel?

Paul’s least favorite Beatles song is “Yesterday.” Sam’s least favorite Beatles song is “Hey, Jude.” Keith’s least favorite Beatles song is “Jumping Jack Flash.” What is YOUR least favorite Beatles song? Why? Second least favorite? Why? Third least favorite? Why?

K-SOFA Means J.D. Is Doing All His Work (or if he’s not, this might shame him into doing so)

At the age of two, Mozart could hear sounds and tell what pitch they were. There is a story that he heard a pig oink and yelled "G-sharp!" Someone duplicated the pitch on a piano, and discovered that it was indeed G-sharp.
Mozart started playing the piano at age three but not formally until age four. It was his choice. He started interfering with his sister's lessons so he could learn more. By age four he could learn a minuet within 30 minutes!
Mozart's full name was Johan Chrysostom Wolfgang Theophilus Mozart. Amadeus was just what people called him. His father called him Woferl.

One of Mozart's performing tricks, which he performed from the age of six, was to cover a keyboard with cloth so that the keys couldn't be seen, and then play music perfectly anyway.

Please use the facts above to write a story, essay, poem or song. Thanks a lot.

K-SOFA Means Large Mammals Are Very Big

The skin of a hippopotamus is a one-and-a-half inches thick and nearly bulletproof.

When hippos are upset, their sweat turns red.

The stomach of a hippopotamus is ten feet long.

Please write about a time when you either saw, dreamed or thought about a real, live hippo. Include facts, such as

1. What were you wearing?

2. Who was with you?

3. What did you think of the hippo?

4. What did the hippo think of you?

5. What happened.

NOTE: If you’ve never before even thought about hippos, please do so now.

K-SOFA Means “Thar She Blows”

Blue whales emit a loud low-pitched sound which can be picked over 500 miles away.

Sometimes people get athlete's foot. It seems rather trivial compared to what can happen to whales. Whales have been known to carry around up to one thousand pounds of barnacles
Whales have the worst bad breath imaginable. According to Herman Melville, who researched whales thoroughly for his novel, Moby Dick, "The breath of the whale is frequently attended with such an insupportable smell as to bring on a disorder of the brain."
So far, the biggest whale ever weighed (by calculations) was 170 tons, equal to more than four fully-loaded tractor-trailers.
A baby blue whale gains 200 pounds per day while drinking 50 gallons of milk. Her mom eats 4 tons of plankton out of the water every day.
Please write ten other facts about whales. When done, please show them to J.D. for his comments and signature.

K-SOFA Means One Dead Singer/Songwriter
WARREN ZEVON (1947 – 2003)
Warren Zevon was one of the many singer-songwriters to emerge from the hedonistic environment of Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, with quirky songs which stemmed from his own experiences. He later said, "I wrote my songs despite the fact that I was a drunk, not because of it", but his songs would have been very different without the wayward life style fuelling his imagination. His best-known hit was "Werewolves of London" in 1978, but Zevon's was a cult following and he never made it to the top of the tree. This can partly be attributed to his personal problems, but also to the fact that his raspy voice could give his often diverse tracks a similar sound. "I wish I could sing better," he would muse. "If only I could sing like Don Henley."
The seeds of Zevon's unusual songs can be found in his background. He was born in Chicago in 1947. His mother, Beverly, was a Mormon of Scots-Welsh descent and her strong-minded parents disapproved of her husband, William, a Russian-Jewish immigrant (whose surname had been Zevotovsky), who worked as a boxer and professional gambler. Warren's father was often away from home and when his parents divorced. Warren was not told about it by his mother until some months afterwards. Warren Zevon was a good scholar, but dropped out of high school because he was furious with a teacher who accused him of having had help in writing an essay. He was also a gifted classical pianist and throughout his life wrote classical music but, apart from a few interludes included on his albums, these compositions have not been recorded.
Zevon had to make his living through session work and writing commercials, and was then employed by the Everly Brothers as their pianist and musical director, but they rejected the song he wrote for, and about, their relationship, "Frank and Jesse James".
His first album for Asylum Records, Warren Zevon (1976), is an acknowledged classic of the singer-songwriter genre. It was produced by Jackson Browne and the guest musicians included Phil Everly, Lindsey Buckingham, Carl Wilson and Glenn Frey. Four of its songs were covered by Linda Ronstadt - "Hasten Down the Wind", "Mohammed's Radio", "Carmelita" and Zevon's self- mocking "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me", which became a US hit. Zevon alluded to his love of drinking and firearms in "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead":
Zevon's stage act included plenty of action, involving gunfire and strobe lighting. One critic likened it to putting Apocalypse Now on stage. The excitement of Zevon's live performances was captured in the album Stand in the Fire (1981), which was recorded at the Roxy in Los Angeles and dedicated to his friend the film director Martin Scorsese.
In 2003, Zevon recorded a new collection of songs, The Wind, which he regarded as a goodbye to his family and friends. The album, featuring Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne and Emmylou Harris, is due to be issued in the UK on 15 September. Its closing lines are, "These wheels keep turning, but they are running out of steam, / Keep me in your heart for a while." Warren William Zevon, singer and songwriter: born Chicago 24 January 1947; twice married (one son, one daughter); died Los Angeles 7 September 2003.
Warren Zevon wrote many strange songs. Please choose one of the following titles and write a brief essay stating what you think the song might be about:
“Mohammed’s Radio” “The Barricades of Heaven” “Quite Ugly One Morning”
“Splendid Isolation” “You’re a Whole Different Person (When You’re Scared)”
“Heartache Spoken Here” “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead”

After a Variety of Strange (If Not Wrong) Turns, Novelistador Returns to Giving Away Writing Prompts

Below are seven or eight writing prompts. Do keep your responses coming to keithhoward@gmail.com


K-SOFA Means “Dreamless Sleep” in Kampuchean
Fact: If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the
air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air,
the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all
four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

Using your prior knowledge, and this fact, please make a statue of a horse and rider.

K-SOFA Means Jeff Raymond
Studies show that if a cat falls off the seventh floor of a building it has
about thirty percent less chance of surviving than a cat that falls off the
twentieth floor. It supposedly takes about eight floors for the cat to realize
what is occurring, relax and correct itself.

Please write a story, from the point of view of a cat, about a cat falling from the twentieth floor of a building. Use foreshadowing to build suspense.

K-SOFA Means One Math Problem with a Strange Answer
111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = ???????????????????

Please show your work below. Thank you in advance for following directions.

K-SOFA Means Washing the Fruit Before Letting It Rot

Please write an essay, story or datribe about at least one of the following facts.

* 21% of us don't make our bed daily. 5% of us never do.
* Men do 29% of laundry each week. Only 7% of women trust their
husbands to do it correctly.
* 40% of women have hurled footwear at a man.
* 85% of men don't use the slit in their underwear.
* 67.5% of men were tightie whities (briefs).
* The average bra size today is 36C whereas 10 years ago it was a 34B.
* 85% of women wear the wrong bra size. (Is there a correlation????)


K-SOFA Means “Gentle Lamb” in Swedish

Please tell how YOU would respond to the following survey.

* 58.4% have called into work sick when we weren't.

YOU:

* 3 out of 4 of us store our dollar bills in rigid order
with singles leading up to higher denominations.

YOU:

* 50% admit they regularly sneak food into movie theaters to
avoid the high prices of snack foods.

YOU:

* 39% of us peek in our host's bathroom cabinet.

YOU:

* 81.3% would tell an acquaintance to zip his pants.

YOU:

* 35% give to charity at least once a month.

YOU:

* 71.6% of us eavesdrop.

YOU:

After a Variety of Strange (If Not Wrong) Turns, Novelistador Returns to Giving Away Writing Prompts

Below are seven or eight writing prompts. Do keep your responses coming to keithhoward@gmail.com


K-SOFA Means “Dreamless Sleep” in Kampuchean
Fact: If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the
air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air,
the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all
four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

Using your prior knowledge, and this fact, please make a statue of a horse and rider.

K-SOFA Means Jeff Raymond
Studies show that if a cat falls off the seventh floor of a building it has
about thirty percent less chance of surviving than a cat that falls off the
twentieth floor. It supposedly takes about eight floors for the cat to realize
what is occurring, relax and correct itself.

Please write a story, from the point of view of a cat, about a cat falling from the twentieth floor of a building. Use foreshadowing to build suspense.

K-SOFA Means One Math Problem with a Strange Answer
111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = ???????????????????

Please show your work below. Thank you in advance for following directions.

K-SOFA Means Washing the Fruit Before Letting It Rot

Please write an essay, story or datribe about at least one of the following facts.

* 21% of us don't make our bed daily. 5% of us never do.
* Men do 29% of laundry each week. Only 7% of women trust their
husbands to do it correctly.
* 40% of women have hurled footwear at a man.
* 85% of men don't use the slit in their underwear.
* 67.5% of men were tightie whities (briefs).
* The average bra size today is 36C whereas 10 years ago it was a 34B.
* 85% of women wear the wrong bra size. (Is there a correlation????)


K-SOFA Means “Gentle Lamb” in Swedish

Please tell how YOU would respond to the following survey.

* 58.4% have called into work sick when we weren't.

YOU:

* 3 out of 4 of us store our dollar bills in rigid order
with singles leading up to higher denominations.

YOU:

* 50% admit they regularly sneak food into movie theaters to
avoid the high prices of snack foods.

YOU:

* 39% of us peek in our host's bathroom cabinet.

YOU:

* 81.3% would tell an acquaintance to zip his pants.

YOU:

* 35% give to charity at least once a month.

YOU:

* 71.6% of us eavesdrop.

YOU:

Profiles in Oddity

My friend Mark Roth is one of the wisest men I know. He is, to use a little Yankee slang, a mensch, one of those people who know exactly what to do when and where to go to get what needs to be gotten. A mensch is the son of whom a mother can be proud. Mark Roth is a mensch. I, whose mother hesitates to recognize him too quickly in public, am not a mensch. I bear Mark no ill will for his good fate; at least I am not what we New Englanders call a schlemiel. But I digress.
In addition to his mensch-hood, Mark is a strikingly attractive man in a toadlike sort of way. Standing somewhere between five-three and six feet tall, Mark looks much like the action-adventure movie actor, Wallace Shawn, star of My Dinner with Andre. Mark’s muscles are much tauter, though, due to his practice of tai chi, an oriental martial art which draws upon the traditions of both karate and karaoke, although its primary spiritual goal is the proper arrangement of dried flowers. Steeped in Eastern thought and mysticism, Mark is capable of maintaining a straight face while tossing off such gnomic utterances as “The foot of the chicken supports the soul of the future.” As a Zen Baptist myself, I have found Mark’s insights into the universe enlightening, if unintelligible.
Twelve years ago, Mark was chosen as the first principal of a brand, spanking new high school in the town of Weare, New Hampshire. John Stark Regional High School, named after a long-dead patriot who is most famous for having given New Hampshire its state motto, “No new taxes,” serves students from Weare and Henniker, a town for which the claim to fame is that it is “the only Henniker on Earth.” One wonders why Intercourse, PA and Truth or Consequences, NM, don’t use the same tagline. For that matter, exactly how many Kissimees, Tallahassee’s and Ybor City’s exist outside of Florida? But, again, being no mensch, I digress.
Under Mark’s leadership, John Stark went on to become the New Hampshire School of Excellence for 1997, which some may see as evidence that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Still, Mark did an excellent job at Stark, and has progressed from opening a new high school to creating a school district from scratch and not just any school district but a first-in-the-nation project, which crosses state boundaries between Vermont and New Hampshire. These two states, of course, share the same kind of love as Arabs and Jews, Hatfields and McCoys or Red Sox and Yankee fans, with New Hampshirites believing that the population of Vermont is borderline socialist, clad in rope shoes and practicing free love. Vermonters, on the other hand, think the typical New Hampshire resident is a loudmouthed wrestling fan who should shut up and go brush his tooth. In other words, Mark is presiding over a marriage made in Hell, with the towns of Orford, New Hampshire, and Fairlee, Vermont, engaged to be joined in schools by September of 2000.
The bastard offspring of this union takes its name from a novel with a huge cult following in the 1960’s. No, lacking poetic justice, it is not to be named Slaughterhouse Five, with its slogan “Corpse-carriers to the slaughterhouse.” Instead, the literary work in question is Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, with the district to be called Rivendell. Its motto? “Rivendell is a haven for all that is kind and just, no evil will pass its borders.” Of course, Tolkien’s book was written in Middle-Earthian, so a more accurate quote might be Dante’s, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
Mark, a visionary of the first rank, hopes to create a new kind of school, one which is central to the communities it educates and one which is able to serve as a model for future bizarre pairings, say the marriage of Patrick Buchanan and Woody Allen. The glue to hold this community together is technology, specifically expensive, high-powered computers purchased by the gross lot. Mark’s vision includes laptops for every teacher and 11th and 12th grader, Internet connectivity for all citizens in the district and the creation of a network of creative, intelligent people sharing their lives in cyberspace. Mark’s vision does not include 5,000 people linked electronically to compete in the world’s largest solitaire tournament, although that’s where the smart money would be bet. Mark’s vision does not include these laptops, routers, hubs and other high-tech gizmos being marshaled simply to allow people on the Vermont side of the Connecticut River to peek into the lives and homes of those on the other side and remarking, “New Hampshire women really are as fat as we always feared and I think the schnauzer is cheating in that painting of poker-playing dogs on the trailer wall.”
Mark, being a mensch, believes that the people in his fiefdom will progress past this point and will create a true “virtual community,” where people will be unified rather than divided, supported rather than criticized, warmed by the promise of e-mail rather than burned by flame wars. Mark, being a mensch, knows that his vision will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, in order to equip every student with enough computing power to predict accurately the motion of a ping-pong ball in a tornado. Mark, being a mensch, is sometimes too smart by half and occasionally does crazy things. For example, Mark has asked me to help him find ways to fund this vision of a brave, new, wired world. My Internet experience has been that I can never find what I want, unless what I want is to waste time in new and creative ways; my experience with fund-raising has been that it is considerably easier to spend other people’s money than my own; envisioning the synthesis of these two qualities is the sort of thing at which Mark excels.
Mark already has a head of technology, Barrie North, a computer whiz who can tell the difference between Windows 98 and Windex with ammonia and who can use the word Linux without wondering whatever happened to Schroeder, Lucy and the other second-tier Peanuts characters. Barrie has clearly thought about the challenges the district faces in trying to secure and maintain world-class technology. In short, Barrie is a realistic, levelheaded man with his feet planted firmly on the ground. He makes me very nervous.
Mark recently arranged for Barrie to meet me and discuss possible strategies, walking us to the New Hampshire banks of the Connecticut River, seating us at a picnic table facing beautiful cliffs. As soon as we sat, Barrie opened a calfskin briefcase that cost more than my car, and produced sheaths of paper with charts, tables, graphs and other creations of which my word processor is still ignorant. Not to be completely upstaged, I reached into my pocket for my pocket-knife and carved my initials into the top of the picnic table. Barrie is an Englishman, I believe, from the funny way he talks and he is clearly much brighter than I, having had the advantage of growing up in a nation that has been declining steadily for the past 90 years, although he can be a bit of a stick in the mud. He sat through our meeting chuckling quietly, if unappreciatively, at my fund-raising ideas, which would have been fine except that I was serious. Regardless of their legality or morality, each of the following ideas is possible and should be treated respectfully.
Riverboat gambling on the Connecticut. New Hampshire is, of course, the state which decided that the best way to fund education was by selling cut-rate liquor on its highways and lottery tickets to its stupidest citizens. Give even the smartest person enough Wild Turkey and he will believe that seven-million-to-one odds are not really that bad. After all, somebody’s got to win. From drunken scratching of tickets to drunken vomiting off the side of a riverboat is one small stagger for man, one giant payday for the Rivendell School District. Fill the decks with roulette wheels and the Rivendell School District has the educational equivalent of a currency printing press. When I finished explaining this idea to Barrie North, he looked at me and said, “I don’t believe the school board would wish to make alcohol abuse and wagering on the river the foundation of its fiscal future.” Perhaps not, but they might wish to have enough money pouring into the district that they could afford to buy disposable Pentium-III computers and still give every man, woman, child and dog enough cash to buy satellite dishes and snowmobiles.
Native American Casinos on the Shore. Although I may not be the smartest guy around, having received my education in New Hampshire, I have studied a little logic and philosophy and can quod erat demonstatum with the best of them. Ethics tells us that we should honor that which is good, eschewing the evil. History tells us that Indians once lived in the Rivendell School District area, but that these Indians are now dead. Folk wisdom tells us that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. Using inductive reasoning, we can see that by running a drunk-infested, mob-influenced casino with a name like Mohican Mama’s Bingo and Slots Emporium, the Rivendell school district would be honoring good Indians while pulling in mad cash hand over fist. When I put forward this eminently logical argument, Barrie looked at me quizzically and said, “I don’t quite follow your reasoning about dead Native Americans and somebody’s mother.” I’d like to know what exactly is the advantage of having a fruity, refined accent that calls out for an honorific title and a monocle in one eye if you can’t even see the color of money when it’s right in front of you.
Using the District Web Site, Rivendellschool.org, as a Portal for Internet Pornography. Although I have no personal, first-hand knowledge of how pornography on the Internet works, I understand from acquaintances that people are regularly asked to give out their credit card numbers in order to view pictures of women engaged in unseemly behavior with sports equipment or barnyard animals. I have small children; had I any desire to view some other woman locked in carnal embrace with a llama, I would not like an item on my Visa card reading “$49.99 to Madame Suki’s House of Nookie” lying on the coffee table. On the other hand, a charitable donation to a school district would slip right by any curious nine-year-old. In fact, if we could change the Web address to amnestyinternationalsavethechildren&greenpeacepresenttherivendellschool.org, even the local Unitarian minister could view candid locker-room pictures of cheerleaders without raising his congregation’s suspicions. When I asked Barrie North how easy it would be to assess a surcharge of five dollars per transaction, he coughed nervously and said, “I, ahem, assume, ahem, that is a joke?” No, ahem, it, ahem, wasn’t.
Auctioning Off Virtual Items from a Virtual Marketplace in the Virtual Rivendell Community while Collecting the Bills in Cold Hard Cash. As long as the site is clear about the virtual nature of its merchandise, how can any state attorney general complain that a customer’s virtual refrigerator or garden hose never arrived? One doubts that any court has jurisdiction over virtual transactions; if possession is nine-tenths of the law, how define possession of that which has no objective existence.. Even if charges are brought, imagine the fun of watching a state prosecutor trying to prove the absence of a non-existent object in a customer’s home. In fact, ancillary money could be made by selling the rights to a movie of the trial, either as an existential experiment in the meaning of nothing or as a boffo laugh riot. When I suggested to Barrie that Robin Williams would be perfect for Mark Roth’s part, he replied, “While I don’t know Mr. Williams, I doubt his advisors would allow him to become part of a felonious conspiracy to defraud the Internet public.” I bit my tongue rather than ask him what an Englishman knows about entertainment, now that Bill Shakespeare has shuffled off to mortal Buffalo
Solving Social Problems in the Real World with the Resources of the Virtual Community. Rural New Hampshire and Vermont have long, cold winters, with not a lot of recreational opportunities that don’t involve expensive clothes and frostbitten extremities. Teenagers, especially, lack much to do but begin an evening drinking beer on back roads, ending it by mating, then vomiting or vice-versa. Regardless, these couples’ coupling leads to the social problem of teenage pregnancy. Enter the Internet, with its easy access to millions of childless couples the world over, many of them with Platinum Cards and a willingness to pay any price necessary for a little baby. In one fell swoop, what was previously a problem, drunken teenagers rutting in the woods, now produces a cash crop which the district can sell, passing on to the teenage girls enough seed money to buy makeup and beer for the next crop. When I completed the idea, Barrie North looked at me and said, “I believe, sir, you are suggesting that the school district should promote promiscuity and make a profit off what is, in effect, a slave factory.” Well, duh.
I could sense from Barrie’s tone that he was tiring of these ideas, so I quickly outlined a few more— having declared the Connecticut River international waters, as it connects to the Atlantic and is more than 250 miles from the ocean shore, hosting mano a mano fights to the death between world leaders; selling the Rivendell School District’s combined computing power to the highest-bidding third-world dictator; mud-wrestling PTO moms on live Internet feeds, etc.
As I enumerated these ideas, a certain vein in Barrie’s forehead started throbbing. I know that vein well, having seen it in a lot of these reality-laden people, from third-grade teachers to traffic cops to employers. Just as migraine sufferers speak of an aura appearing before a headache’s onset, I know that I am on a roll and thinking clearly when that particular vein starts pumping away. At the very moment my riff is just starting to achieve transcendence, my audience’s forehead seems unable to contain its pressure any longer. To stave off an embolism, Barrie held up a hand to stop me and spoke, very slowly, through those clenched teeth that seem to follow throbbing veins as autumn follows summer.
“When Mr. Roth suggested that we meet to discuss the district’s technology funding needs, I assumed you would have some familiarity with the subject. I assumed you would present a series of practical proposals from which we could create an action plan. I assumed, at the very least, that you were prepared to write a grant proposal or something.”
Or something. Here in New England we have a word for a person who appears foolish in order to further a cause for which he is hopelessly unsuited. We have a word for a clown who recognizes that meeting the technology needs of a new school district is a task far beyond his capabilities, but that there is a chance that his folly will lead one person who reads his work to pick up the telephone and call 603-353-2170 or e-mail markroth@rivendellschool.org with ideas for how to make this vision a reality. We have a word for that sort of person. Not being a mensch, though, I can’t remember the word.