oh and happy fathers day
Thanks, but it's sort of an awkward holiday around here.
Intractable in situ, but not in the long run, surely, circumstances depending. Or did you pay a bribe last time you got a new driver's license or were stopped for a traffic violation?
You know, the usual way, after taking "a year to get some space, and teach, and write in China" and then telling us that it was a lonely first couple years being a stay at home dad. In 2009. In Brooklyn. Oh, the humanity.
Orphan tourism is a big deal and big money in a lot of countries. Your local newspaper should have some photogenic white family whose Congolese not-yet-adopted children are being held "hostage" because of paperwork mistakes that are probably actually accurate. Ethiopia is super sketchy these days, and has been for much longer than people want to admit. Cambodia has signed the Hague treaty on international adoptions, which should mean that when they open up for international adoption again this year there will be less falsified information and trafficking than before, but I'm not sure I'd count on it. (And insert caveat about how all my kids have parents and that potentially with the right interventions they could have remained with them, so I'm not claiming I'm morally blameless. But I also didn't spend 40K "ransoming a kid for Jesus," so I'm at worst history's third greatest monster or so.)
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Utterly OT, but because this a guest post from Teo: Teo, I have a couple of friends intending to spend a week or more at Chaco in a few weeks. As of now, they're intending to stay at Cottonwood Campground in/at Canyon de Chelly. Do you have any advice? Apparently that is a first come, first served campsite. Do you know anything about it? Is it likely to be full up? If so, is there a better or best place featuring similar beauties that they might go to?
Apologies for putting this here, but I don't have contact information for you, Teo, and as I listen to my friends make their plans, I keep thinking: but I know someone who knows that area rather intimately. Let me know at the linked email address if you have any suggestions.
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And coming in at comment number 7, NMM to Casey Kasem
My wife and I looked into international adoptions with a reputable agency one time. The options were actually quite limited. My understanding was that more options were available through less reputable agencies.
When we adopted our kids from Korea in the early 90s, Korea had tightened the rules considerably because of international disapproval of its foreign adoption system at the time of the 1988 Olympics. It was still the quickest way to adopt just about anywhere (about 9-10 months from start to arrival), including the U.S., and not expensive. We weren't allowed to go to Korea to pick the kids up - the agency entrusted the adoptees to U.S. military coming home on leave. So no photo ops of us standing in Seoul looking bewildered. That came later when we visited when they were 9 and 10.
I just steal my neighbor's children, and when they stop being cute I sell them to the circus.
6: Well, for one thing, if they want to spend a week at Chaco they should be camping there rather than at Canyon de Chelly! There's only one campground at Chaco itself, and it's also first-come first-served but rarely fills except on the busiest days of the summer. You can reach me at the linked e-mail if you have further questions.
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Is this where we complain about the absence of Lady Stoneheart? Or should I save that for a blog that cares?
Also, don't google that if you don't want to be spoiled on something that wasn't in the season finale of GoT but may or may not show up in the future although WTF, talk about a season ender.
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No, this is not where you complain about whatever it is you're talking about.
Doesn't anyone want to talk about Cambodian orphanages?
I guess that sort of answers itself.
"Pity is a most dangerous emotion," said Ou Virak, the founder of a human rights organization in Phnom Penh. "Cambodia needs to get out of the beggar mentality. And foreigners need to stop reacting to pure emotion."
Never a bad time to relink Teju Cole: "I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly."
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ok but this was funny. sorrynotsorry
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They already won, heebie. You don't have to keep cheering.
But I just caught up on Facebook.
I don't know how it is now, but a few years ago (mid 2000s) there was a pretty robust phenomenon of child kidnapping in China. Bandits would mostly kidnap girl children and sell them to orphanages to be adopted by Americans. Occasionally boys were kidnapped for the domestic adoption market, but it was mostly girls. The idea that parents abandon girls has been out of date in China since the late 80s or early 90s at the latest, but the idea has hung on in the West. In fairly uncommon cases where parents do have multiple unwanted girl children, they tend to be smuggled out to extended family members, usually grandparents. Actually giving away a baby to a stranger is considered far crueler and immoral than aborting it in utero.
22.1: got any links on that?
(Late 80s is a bit optimistic on the end of the unwanted-girl dumping. Try early 2000s, when the one-child policy started to be more generally relaxed. Now they mostly dump disabled kids instead.)