Adopting

For much of my life, I have wanted to adopt. Whether one or more, it's always just been something I assumed I would do. As a kid, I viewed adopting a child or children as a convenient way to avoid the excruciatingly painful experience of childbirth. Eventually I got over that fear. I never got over adopting, though.

As a tween/teenager, I somehow read a lot or fiction and non-fiction about kids in foster homes. It made me so sad and angry! Kids who are given up by their parents or taken away from their parents but are not adopted become wards of the state and are put into foster homes. Foster homes are families or single adults who are entrusted by the state to take care of the child. These families/individuals are paid money to cover the living expenses of having another child. Unfortunately, often people will foster parent simply to make money. Some stats on how screwed up foster homes can leave children...
-- Children are 11 times more likely to be abused in foster homes than they are in their own homes. (National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect)
-- 80% of prison inmates have been through the foster care system. (National Association of Social Workers)
-- 30% of the nation’s homeless are former foster children. (Casey Family Programs National Center for Resource Family Support)

How does this relate to adopting? Well, part of the foster care problem could be alleviated by adoption. Since I was a young teen reading stories about foster kids, I knew I wanted to adopt to do a small part.

When I think about adopting, it's completely normal to me. I think of it as perfectly normal to have a child or two of my own and raising them as siblings to a child or two I'd adopted. A friend recently was asking me how it's possible to love a child who is not your own blood as much as you would love a child who is your own. To me, that's never even crossed my mind: I'm choosing to adopt a child, so obviously I would choose to love him or her as my own child.

Knowing families who have adopted and have raised or are raising adopted children alongside their own biological children has only further proved to me how wonderful it can be. The latest was Amy and Eric. These friends of mine are absolutely exceptional as they not only adopted a second baby to raise alongside their biological child Mason, but from the start they wanted to adopt a special needs baby. In the end, they were given a beautiful black baby girl named Maleah. Sometimes when I tell people about Amy and Eric and I think about how humble and serving they are, I get teary eyed. As a Christian I believe I am here to be part of God's hands and heart on the earth carrying out His love and service; Amy and Eric overflow with this selflessness and love. Seeing their family only rekindled my own desire to adopt a baby.

Why adopt? There's so many kids out there needing families... I want to meet at least a little of that need. I'm not particularly attached to my own genes, so I don't mind raising someone elses genes. Here's perhaps my weirdest reason for wanting to adopt. There's a huge population boom, and eventually the earth won't be able to support such a huge human population. So, if I want more than two kids, I would most certainly adopt; I don't want to contribute to population explosion!

Well, that's about it as far as my desire to adopt. I'm smiling now, because I get happy thinking about adoption and the Hartleys and all.

Spring Arrives in the Bend

Last Friday night (Good Friday) I went for a walk to the Grotto on campus. For those who don't know what a Grotto is (as I didn't before I came here), ours is a little outdoor alcove filled with votive candles you can light, a couple of statues/sculptures of the Virgin Mary, and benches in front to kneel and pray. While I was kneeling praying, I had a tough time remembering I was celebrating EASTER holidays and not Christmas. Why? Because it was below freezing! Easter to me has always been the quintessential Spring holiday; on the secular level, Easter celebrates new life, often seen in the Spring. (Hence Easter eggs and Easter candy in the shape of chicks, bunny rabbits, flowers, etc). I was having a tough time with the juxtaposition of Easter in sub-freezing weather.

Well, lucky for us, yesterday was (finally) the first day of spring weather here in the Bend. It went up to like fifty-five degrees! Sure, for you Texans reading, you are thinking "55?!?! I'm still in sweaters and long underwear at that temperature!" But up here, it's the exact opposite. It seemed like the whole population emerged from its long winter hibernation; everyone was out in shorts, t-shirts, and flip flops, running, throwing frisbees or baseballs, lying on the grass studying, just going for walks...

Today is day 2 of Spring. According to weather.com it is currenly 59 degrees and is going up to 66. I am wearing (get ready) a three-quarters length shirt and FLIP FLOPS!!! (I'm still not hearty enough to wear shorts when it's in the 50s, like the rest of folks here.) Granted, I had to wear a windbreaker on top, but this is a big breakthrough in weather, folks, particularly given that last Thursday it was snowing.

Some people say that having winter makes you appreciate spring more. I agree that I am much more excited about the weather this March than I was during Houston Marches. However, being in warmer weather clothing makes me miss the gorgeous Texas weather! I'll trade three months of extreme Houston heat for 4-5 months of the Bend's arctic cold any day.

To fight or to solve?

I often get quite disillusioned with sociology. Maybe if my sub-fields were sociology of culture or sociology of emotions or mathematical sociology, it would happen less often. But I study race and inequality. I learn about how for the most part the rich succeed and the poor have very hard lives; how schools structure and perpetuate inequality; how minorities are continually disadvantaged; how the system of capitalism requires inequality to work; how despite the "successes" of the civil rights movement, blacks are still paid less and denied access to the best neighborhoods and schools . . . and that's just to name a few. Some people are optimists, and say, "But hey, look, things are getting better." I'll agree that some things have changed; for instance, blacks are no longer slaves in the United States. But on the other hand, most inequality has hardly changed and in fact much of it has gotten worse with time. (ask me for evidence if you don't believe it.)

Sociologists are great at identifying problems and their causes. They come up with solutions that would work, but these solutions are often simply not going to happen in our country or our world. It's not the sociologists' fault. Solutions that will make real changes (the kind sociologists propose) are impractical. In sum, for inequality to go away, the rich people and powerful people have to give up some of their riches and their power. Rich people and powerful people who have the power to actually change things usually are pretty happy being rich and powerful, and have no desire to give any of it up. So, how will things change?

My adivsor Dr. E says that most people who start out wanting to be activist sociologists (wanting to change things or make a difference) after a few years usually end up deciding all they want is a nice income, a good house, a nice life for their kids, status in the field, etc. W.E.B. Du Bois is the quintessential activist sociologist. The first great American sociologist (and a black man at the turn of the 20th century, at that!) , he worked like crazy to change things. Amongst other things, he started the NAACP, still today the foremost black activist group in America. But by the end of his life, he gave up his activism and his Christian faith because he saw no results of the fruits of his labor.

I fear I will end up like Du Bois: angered by the injustices of the world, wanting to see change so much that it can only lead to disillusionment when injustices continue.

Some people use the consolation that changing a few lives is good enough. If you can help a few people get out of hunger, or inspire a few people to become activists on race issues, or give a few people decent jobs, that's enough. As a sociologist, I don't really like that argument; I want to see large scale structural changes, because those are what really solve problems. I am satisfied at a personal level helping a few people out, but not on the activist level that hates injustice.

The only consolation I can come up with for myself right now is that it is the fight that matters, not achieving solutions. I fully admit that this comes entirely from Christian theology, and maybe nothing securlarly rational or practical. All I can say is that in the New Testament there are many urgings that we are to keep working for justice and peace, keep being merciful, keep doing good, for those acts in and of themselves are valuable and worshipful to God. In that sense, it's not fixing a problem that matters, but fighting to fix the problem. (Here is perhaps the quintessential verse on this:Galatians 6:9 "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.")

In fact, I think the Bible pretty much says that often we won't see the fruits of our labor. Unlike working for material things like profit, the Bible says that the profit of working for good is stored up as treasure in Heaven, not on Earth.

So this is the charge: keep on working for good, even if there is no solution or end in sight. Talk about tall orders to fill! As part of this, we have to not give in to the system; we can't adopt the thinking that, "Well, things won't change, I should just take my lot in life and run with it."

Suggestions are welcome (non-theological and theological alike) on how to keep one's chin up in the struggle for justice.

Musings on Current Events

Some things always seem to bring me back to posting on my blog. Messing fruitlessly with data for too many hours. Staring at a computer screen with little human contact for several hours. You get the idea.

Sometimes I wish my blog would just write itself out of the thoughts in my head. So many thoughts and ideas, but so little transition onto the blog. Once I sit here, it's like it all flees my mind.

Current events are a never ending source of inspiration. My musings on a few...

A reputable statistician reported in the latest Journal of the American Medical Association that American life expectancy will decrease for the first time in two centuries, due to obesity and the many health problems surrounding it. Some critics came out right away and said the guy was overblowing the situation; I'm tempted to trust him, because as I said, he's a very reputable statistician. Anyways, I find this interesting and a bit ironic... Continued development has sped America ahead in life expectancy for two centuries. Now, finally something is coming back to bite us. Having an abundant supply of food improved human health for millenium. Now we have reached the peak, and finally we have an overabundance of food, making us less healthy. Perhaps this is just one foreshadowing of other things to come. For instance, technology has pushed us ahead, but will it eventually lead to our demise? Capitalism made the US the the richest country in the world, but will it eventually lead to the destruction of our (or the world's) economy? Use of natural resources for millenium sustained humanity; are we nearing a point where we will have overconsumed natural resources and see ramifications in human life/society? These are questions we must consider.

Terry Schiavo's feeding tube was pulled. For those who don't keep up on current events, she has been in a vegetative state since 1990. Her husband has been fighting to take out her feeding tube, arguing she wouldn't want to live that way. Her parents have been fighting to keep her alive. A Florida judge ordered the tube be taken out. Congress today tried to stop it from being pulled by subpoena-ing Terry for a Congressional hearing. The judge got pissed Congress was meddling, and the tube was taken out. Now, sure, there are big life and death moral issues in this case, but did Congress miss the civics lesson on the balance of power? They can't overrule judges unless they pass laws. Not to mention that I feel they should be focusing their time and energy on important (large) issues. And we wonder why so little good legislation gets made...

Lastly, in his first day on death row Scott Peterson got two marriage proposals. Prison officials said it's not uncommon for death row inmates to get married. I wonder why? Also, for the unmarried folks looking to get married, it's quite a blow to know that you get on death row and suddenly your stock goes up. What gives?

Milk bags, not milk cartons

Sometime while I was in elementary school our school decided to switch the way it served milk with lunch. Instead of giving us the traditional milk cartons, we were served milk in bags. The bags were made of clear plastic, and they were recyclable. One day in class a man from the milk company came in and we had a lesson on how to use the bags. It was a little complicated because to drink from them, you had to jab a pointed straw into the bag. They made a big deal of remembering to keep your thumb on the end of the straw when you jabbed it in, or else milk would spew out the end. (Obviously this man had never worked with elementary school children before... warning us of this only served to show us how to spew milk out, namely at other kids in the lunchroom).

The milk bags had pros and cons. The pros: first, a milk bag with a straw stuck in it was a powerful spraying weapon. Second, the bags were recyclable, so we were saving a lot of landfill space. The cons: they switched from serving 2% white milk and chocolate milk to serving 0.5% white milk and 1.5% chocolate milk. This may seem like a small difference to you, dear reader, but to elementary school kids, a change in the percent milk fat is dire. For the rest of elementary school, I never knew if the bad taste of the milk was due to the plastic bags the milk was stored in, or the changed percent milk fat.

Our janitor always stood by the trash can, and if you came with your milk unfinished, he made you stand there and drink it all before you could put it in the recycle bin. If you tried to trash a half full milk, you had to drink it all and put it in the recycle, along with getting yelled at. I resorted to many techniques to get out of drinking the yucky milk: squirting it into any bowls or plates, hiding the bag under a napkin to throw it away, pawning it off on my friends.

It got worse when awhile into the plastic bags deal a big gray trash bag was hung up in our school lobby with a sign saying something like, "Your recycled milk bags made this trash bag!" I was mad. If we were going through all this trouble to recycle, why the heck should we hang the finished product in our school lobby? That seemed utterly pointless. Why wasn't the product made of our recyclables being USED?

I took some comfort in the idea that soon all school kids around the country would be drinking out of milk bags like ours. Sadly, I later found out that not even one other school in our district used the milk bags, and I have yet to meet anyone else subject to the nasty tasting milk. Alas.

Question to you, reader, that I can't decide my own answer to: would you rather have slightly nasty milk with recyclable packaging, or tasty milk in non-recyclable packaging?