The Stolen OBC: Another Bastard Moment

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I’ll be tied up later in the day (not literally) and don’t have much time.  NaBloPoMo calls however.  So to make things easy, I’m going to include another Bastard Moment–hopefully the last. I’m sure you all have your own. You don’t need reminded by mine. In June 1989 my adoptive  mom died about three weeks after suffering  a debilitating stroke. As required by law, a couple days later, her attorney, whom I’ll call by his initials JR, and I went over to the bank to open her lock box.and inventory its contents. My boyfriend, Gordon, who was pretty– hmm– impressive– (the only Orthodox Jewish hillbilly in the State of Ohio) came along.  I believe a bank official was also present as a fiduciary witness (or something) to oversee the entire affair. Afterwards, we were to hop over to the county seat and file the will for probate. All on my dime, of course, or rather the estate’s dime, of which I was the heir. By the time it was over, Lawyer JR had collected about $20,00 in lawyer’s fees. Adoption was the farthest thing from my mind that day. I’d gotten my original birth certificate and decree  in 1980, and Continue Reading →

My Wedding Anniversary; My Bastard Moment; My Bastard Month

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Today is the xxth  anniversary of my marriage to T..  I refuse to write the number  It’s too depressing. It is also the anniversary, or thereabouts, of my first big Bastard Moment..  You know, the moments that hit you in the gut and remind you that as an adopted person–a Bastard–you are different from the rest  Suspect. Damaged, Troubled .Inadequate. Unloved. Abandoned. I met T (he is an intensively private person,  virtually invisible on the ‘net, so I’ll only use his first initial) when I was close to the end of my junior year in college.  I worked three evenings a week downtown at a bookstore, and he came in nearly every night.  He’d stay a couple hours, stand in the aisles, and read mostly poetry, European literature, plays and sometimes philosophy. He was especially fond of Beckett and Ionesco and German writers.  He’d memorized passages from Goethe’s Faust–in German–and could rattle them off.  He believed  Goethe was far superior to Shakespeare.We talked a lot.. He very much opposed the war in Viet Nam and had done civil rights actions in college.  He was a Taoist. Although I read The Village Voice and The Evergreen Review when I got my Continue Reading →

Welcome Back, Triona! Some Wise Words from 73 Adoptee

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Yay! 73adoptee73 is back.  She’s come out of retirement–at least a little bit–to write on the Feigenholtz-Mitchell scam in Illinois.  She also gives us her analysis of AdoptionLand and why she has reassessed her role as a activist. I wholeheartedly agree with her on both counts.  . Honestly ,why do any of us continue with this–well–shit in our lives. It’s great to have Triona back, but she’s got a sobering message with 73adoptee Returns! But Nobody is Coming Back for Left Behind Illinois Adoptees. Two different topics covered, yet tightly related. First, on the glad-handing in Illinois where the seller-outs refuse to admit they sold out: Illinois is not open. Illinois is sort-of open to adoptees who unwittingly end up playing roulette with their own rights. Some will win. Some will inevitably lose. I’m on the losing team, so I know how it feels. Everybody’s celebrating and they’ve forgotten you. Or, if they remember, it’s to slap you on the back and say, “better luck next time” before they go off to congratulate the winners. But adoption isn’t football. There’s only one game, the Adoption Game, and if you make a mistake you don’t get a do-over. I remain disgruntled Continue Reading →

Living Adoption: Life-long issues in the Birth Parent Experience: Redux

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The Columbus Dispatch ran a pretty clueless article–For Some Parents, Struggle over Adoption is Never Ending,  on yesterday’s event at Camp Mary Onrton sponsored by the Ohio Birth Parent Grup  (see blog directly below this. I’m not famliar with reporter Bill Bush, but I think the event wojuld have much better served if Rita Price had covered it.  I’ve worked with Rita before, and she knows her aodption business. Anyway, Bush emphasized, victimization and sensationalizatin, something that sells papers, but not adoption reality, and makes those of us in adoption look like victims, not fiighters  Please post comments on the Dispatch website if you wre there or write a letter to the editor.. I’m posoting something ,but not tonight  I’m still sick and going back to bed.

Living Adoption: Life -long issues in the Birth Parent Experience: A Short Review

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Earlier today it was my great pleasure to attend the first anniversary meeting of the Ohio Birth Parent Group (and Facebook). . The event. Living Adoption: Life-long issues in the Birth Parent Experience,  was held at Camp Mary Orton just north of Columbus and Worthington and featured Brenda Romanchik as facilitator and guest speaker. The first session was open only to “birthparents”, so I can’t report on that. The second session was a two-hour talk.open to the public including social workers who got CIUs,  and Q& A led by Romanchik.   About 19 attended the fist session (including one woman all the way from New York City!), about 60 the second. The group was mufti-generatinal and included parents in closed an open adoptions. Unfortunately I am sick with some kind of stomach bug (worse as the day goes on, and I’m going to bed in a few minutes) so and didn’t take notes. To make it worse, the shutter on my camera stopped shuttering, and I only got one picture.So here is a general review and some thoughts. I met Brenda online about 18 yeas ago on the original alt.adoption. Her son, Matt,  was a relatively little guy back then, and Continue Reading →

Florida: Questions about "Safe Haven" and Adoption Agency Privilege

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Back on November 4, Al Neuharth, old newspaper man and founder (of among other things USA Today) wrote a rather unnotable piece in Florida Today, “Chosen Children” in which he extols National Adoption Awareness Month. Neuharth is a longtime advocate of adoption, so the essay isn’t surprising. . Left hand couple:  Fornes & Neuharth Neuharth, 87, and his wife, Dr. Rachel Fornes have transracially adopted six children between the ages of 11 and 20. Fornes, in fact,  founded the not-for profit adoption agency Home at Last located in Cocoa Beach, FL. and is a former board member of the National Council for Adoption. About half-way through the otherwise routine adoptaarticle, these curious paragraphs pop up:  [Rachel] has special contacts with schools, churches, hospitals and police who put her in touch with pregnant women who cannot or don’t want to take care of their offspring..I In Florida, women with newborn babies can leave them at any of those locations for caretaking, no questions asked. Then, instead of desertion, they are in good hands while the adoption process proceeds. Remember that in Florida, babies dumped off at “safe have” stations do not, as in most other states, go through the state system.  Continue Reading →

Adoption Not Abortion: Pimping Adoptees for a "Higher Purpose""

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I did not intend to write as much as I have about abortion in this month of National Adoption Awareness but the subject just keeps getting in the way. Abortion is the wild card that pops up in even the best laid plans of reformists and activists. In some weird fit of cognitive dissonance, anti-aborts claim that the  fetus shares the same rights as the already born, but reject the notion that if this sacradotaled fetus is brought to term, born and adopted that it should be treated equal under law once it is secularized. In other words, once the word becomes flesh, it’s on its own.  Adoption and abortion, of course, have little in common, though the increasingly Gospelized adoption industry and the anti-abortion corpos make a seamless fit.  Together they present adoption as a  happy win-win-win solution for the principals involved, when they are actually  manipulating, propagandizing, redeeming and reconstructing these principals for the higher purpose of political pimping. It’s bad enough as is, but  during National Adoption Awareness Month (NAAM), we get a booster shot of happy-dappy juice from the evil twins. STUDENTS FOR LIFEJust as NAAM was gearing up, I received a tweet from Students for Continue Reading →

Glenn Beck: Redux

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Ohio Right to Life now has a collection of pictures up on YouTube of the Glenn Beck’s  art project I reported on last week. Go below for a closer look at Beck, his faithful chalkboard, and 2500 fawning fans . Beck, like Herman Cain, the soon-to-be-dumped-wannabe-prez, is a performance artist –or tries to be. He lacks the irony to pull it off except for the artless crowd that represents American culture today.. Here, for instance, is Beck a few months ago on Fox, calling for a pre-emptive US strike on England to prevent it from re-colonizing America.. It’s all about the Beatles, doncha know: The Brits are in cahoots with the Chinese. They’re aligned with the Islamo fascists who also want to take over the world. Together it’ll spread into India, which Britain also used to own. The Brits, the Chinese, the Arabs and the Indians, everyone in this caliphate cabal is a tea drinker—that’s the link that ties the conspiracy together, they use tea as a form of mind control.” Beck said. “The fall of Egypt is not about freedom, it’s not about democracy, it is about an Islamic state, too much tea and rock and roll.” Although I Continue Reading →

Bastardette Poll: You Decide: Does Michele Bachman Support Adoptee Rights

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The blog I’d planned to post today won’t be finished in time to meet the NaBloPoMo deadline, so I’m offering a survey today. A few days ago I tweeted Michele Bachmann: @MicheleBachmann . Do adult adoptees deserve the restoration of the right to our original birth certificates or are we 2nd class citizens? I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked, that  President Mrs.  Bachmann hasn’t replied.  With 6,000,000 potential Bachmann voters waiting breathlessly in the wings, you’d think she would understand the Power of the Bastard to swing an election.. Perhaps she’s busy launching her biologicals.or lecturing fosterparents on the harmful sexual identity effects of The Little Mermaid. Or perhaps she’s just too reticent to offer an opinion  You know how shy  she can be. So, in lieu of  Ma Belle Michele’s response, I’m now turning to Daily Bastardette readers to speak for her with a poll at the top left corner of this blog Does Michele Bachman support adoptee rights?  The poll will remain open for the remainder of National Adoption Month and you can give more than one answer. Vote early and often.

Losing My Adoption File

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 Today I had to renew my driver’s license.  I say “had” because my license expired on my birthday a couple weeks ago, and although Ohio gives a big grace period in renewal, I want to vote in tomorrow’s state election..  I  was afraid, the way Ohio runs its crooked vote, that without a current’ “proof of identity”  I’d be forced to do a highly questionable “provisional ballot.” (I suspect that expired legal IDs are invalid so the self-perpetuating state can dun you–in this case $22.00– for another ID that will eventually expire so the state can dun you again..)  While I generally believe that  the fix is in, and voting is a waste of time, there is no way I’m going to not put my X where my mouth is and vote against Issue 2–Gov K-sick’s attempt to bust Ohio public unions.  (For a good breakdown of what K-sick is up to read Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman’s latest on the measure, Will the !% steal Ohio’s labor rights referendum?  It can happen in your state, too, and it’s about a lot more than unions.) But I digress.  According to the Ohio BMV  webpage, since my license expired less than Continue Reading →