Treading Water While Peeing in the Pool...
Things have been quiet here. I've been reading "Reading Adoption: Family and Difference in Fiction and Drama" by Marianne Novy. At the same time, I'm reading "Vanity Fair", the novel, not the magazine. Sometimes I just don't have an ax to grind, other times I am an ax...
I went by Powell's Books today and A. M. Homes' new memoir "The Mistress's Daughter" was in the front window. I wandered in, grabbed a copy and headed for the stacks to read as much as I could without purchasing it. I considered buying it, but I had to take Twiggy, our Black Lab/Rottie mix, to the vet earlier today for a bladder infection, and that ate up my book allowance for the week. I read "The Mistress's Daughter, version 1.0" in the New Yorker back in 2004, and had written a snotty review of it titled, "Memoirs of a Big Fat Liar". I'm interested in seeing if the longer, book-length version of "TMD" deals with the issue that intrigued me about the magazine article.
As I write this, I'm also wondering about the grammatical construction of the title... Shouldn't it be "The Mistress' Daughter", without the last "s" after the apostrophe? Suffering sibilance!
English teachers are encouraged to comment and correct me if I'm suffering a misapprehension...
Maudie, our middle daughter, is coming to visit tomorrow. She's going to France this summer, Provence and Paris, so she's forfeited any rights to bitch about anything.
An adoptee rights bill is flowering in the Missouri legislature. Go, Show Me State!
A bill that would create a black hole for adoptees in Massachusetts is, as far as I know, still in play. Senate bills No. 63 and No. 77 say that adoptees born after July 17, 1974 and before January 1, 2008 don't get access to their records, and allows all other adoptees access to theirs. This has been called a "donut hole", but its more accurately termed "bullshit". Perhaps I'll write about that one next, it's horrible on its face, but what really galls me, and thus induces me to focus on it, is that it's the product of intense legislative advocacy by people who out to know better. But more on that later.
Until then, I remain, yours in faithful bastardy,
BB Church
I went by Powell's Books today and A. M. Homes' new memoir "The Mistress's Daughter" was in the front window. I wandered in, grabbed a copy and headed for the stacks to read as much as I could without purchasing it. I considered buying it, but I had to take Twiggy, our Black Lab/Rottie mix, to the vet earlier today for a bladder infection, and that ate up my book allowance for the week. I read "The Mistress's Daughter, version 1.0" in the New Yorker back in 2004, and had written a snotty review of it titled, "Memoirs of a Big Fat Liar". I'm interested in seeing if the longer, book-length version of "TMD" deals with the issue that intrigued me about the magazine article.
As I write this, I'm also wondering about the grammatical construction of the title... Shouldn't it be "The Mistress' Daughter", without the last "s" after the apostrophe? Suffering sibilance!
English teachers are encouraged to comment and correct me if I'm suffering a misapprehension...
Maudie, our middle daughter, is coming to visit tomorrow. She's going to France this summer, Provence and Paris, so she's forfeited any rights to bitch about anything.
An adoptee rights bill is flowering in the Missouri legislature. Go, Show Me State!
A bill that would create a black hole for adoptees in Massachusetts is, as far as I know, still in play. Senate bills No. 63 and No. 77 say that adoptees born after July 17, 1974 and before January 1, 2008 don't get access to their records, and allows all other adoptees access to theirs. This has been called a "donut hole", but its more accurately termed "bullshit". Perhaps I'll write about that one next, it's horrible on its face, but what really galls me, and thus induces me to focus on it, is that it's the product of intense legislative advocacy by people who out to know better. But more on that later.
Until then, I remain, yours in faithful bastardy,
BB Church
Labels: adoptee rights, Adoption, politics
posted by BB Church at 6:35 PM
3 Comments:
I enjoyed your comments about the Mistress's Daughter! I had read the original version in the New Yorker and would be curious to read your review.
I live in Massachusetts and although the open records folks make a valiant effort, the anti- open records group consistently smashes the bill down year after year after year.
During the last hearings, they came in and said that open records would cause more women to have abortions! How idiotic is that?
It is frustrating to say the least. I do applaud the open records group for consistently re-introducing the bill though.
I am adding your blog to my links with your permission.
It appears to me from what I witnessed in Mass. personally, and later heard from other sources that the blackhole was a done deal by deformers who will take (or try to take) what they can, and to hell with the rest. The whole thing was set up to fail. Until the leaders of this so-called group are expelled or retire to the Old Benedict Bastards Home, nothing will change.
BB, I MISS POWELL'S! Central Oregon needs one. It's just not the same to order online. :) Rebecca
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