POTD

[kyburg]

1. Whoever dumped the stupid juice in the water supply, no love at all here for you.

2. I'm helping my BIL clean up his late mother's house Memorial Day weekend. Nope, no conventions, no vacations, no nothing but me, him and anyone else we can find, cleaning up a house in Redlands that is barely passable for the boxes of WTF. Jim is working. I think he's gotten into the better deal. Me, I'm renting a U-Haul. I may need it.

3. I don't have different rules for LJ than I do for RL. Maybe an additional level of detachment, because I can turn off the computer and not check LJ for days at a time. Matter of fact, if it all possible, I try to meet as many people on my LJ in RL as possible.

4. If you're anything but footloose and fancy-free - GOOD. You're normal. If you're down in the dumps, angry and pissed off, less than amused and just in general going WTF - see #1. It's all I got today. Blame it on someone? No.

5. Provided as a follow-up to yesterday's linkage. "The boy's body, dressed in a one-piece sleeper and socks, was wrapped in a blanket and towel and placed in a soft-sided lavender suitcase. A rancher repairing fences spotted the suitcase near a state highway and opened it in November 1999...The death of the baby, known for years only as Baby Moses, led to North Dakota's safe havens law."

6. She plays Karen Filipelli on NBC's The Office, but Rashida Jones hasn't an ounce of Italian in her. The daughter of Mod Squad beauty Peggy Lipton and composer/music mogul Quincy Jones, she’s biracial and Jewish, a “double whammy” of a distinction that she has found challenging and liberating at different times in her life. Something about the language of "(S)he enjoys being something of a chameleon. “I can immerse myself in the cultures and pick and choose what I want and then just be myself. I have all these different groups of friends. The nature of who I am and the fact that I am so many things allows me to float,” explains Jones, who feels strongly connected to both her black and Jewish cultures" that piques my meter. I've said how easy it is in my culture, sitting here in Los Angeles, where white people assume they can "paint" themselves with whatever culture they find attractive to them - discarding the realities that go along with the color of that paint when they find it inconvenient. But then there is the concept of being what you can PASS for. Okay, full stop. That's no better. OR.

Discuss if you wish - I got work to get back to.

Comments

[saoba.livejournal.com]

Re: extra stupid- It's been at least the last four days, according to my husband. Evidently work this whole week has been 'Loin of Stupid, grilled and served on a bed of fresh, shredded Stupid with a side of extra Stupid sauce'.

Re: you are what you can PASS for- My father came to the mainland from Hawaii at age 18 and proceeded to become the most whitebread middle of the road white guy you can imagine, despite being the same approximate color as a piece of mahogany.

As a result none of his children have any grasp at all of Hawaiian history, culture or language except what we managed to learn on our own and even that was actively discouraged.

[dracowayfarer.livejournal.com]

I think the stupid is starting to drain away, but I have to agree that things have been really stubbornly stupid for the last week or so.

As for "painting" oneself with parts of culture... how would you define this and where would you draw the line? I'm not Japanese but I like anime, and koi, and samurai. I'm not English, but I enjoy British media. Does that count as "painting" or is it something different?

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what Ms. Jones meant. If taking on those roles is done for the sake of others, rather than because what she is doing appeals to her, then she might be acting in her personal life, too. Our three children are black and Jewish (I'm Jewish, and my wife had an Orthodox conversion) also, but they have adopted, and manifest, aspects of the respective cultures that appeal to them for their sakes, and not anyone else's.

[drlaurac.livejournal.com]

Hearing that story makes me so sad. But I do know that adoption among the Indians is iffy. A white person can't adopt an Indian off the reservation. I know, I wanted to. In Pharmacy School I spent a month on the Colorado River Indian Reservation working in the hospital there for school. We had a 2 year old come in with a fractured skull. Her Mom had done this to her. She was such a sweet and quiet child. We used to sit and look at each other. She was beautiful. I wanted her to be ma daughter (though I was only 25) but I could not remove her from the reservation. I seriously considered dropping out of pharmacy school to be a Mom to this little girl. She ended up going to stay with an aunt. I hope that worked out for her. I regret that I didn't find a way to care for her then.

Too many children are being stuck in bad places because the tribe won't allow them to be adopted off the reservation. And I understand the need to keep those kids immersed in their culture and heritage. But those places aren't always good for the kids as they get older. So many stories, increasing gang activities and fights and stabbings and shootings. Something has to change.

I hope it's OK that I came back, please let me know if it's not and I'll go. I am just in hopes of having a friend to go through this adoption thing with. It was so much easier having a blog friend misa1 to share this with, I think adoption will be even moreso.

[drlaurac.livejournal.com]

(the "this" in the last line was pregnancy - misa1 and I were expecting at the same time, but I shouldn't get pregnant again for medical reasons)