What was she thinking?!?

So...there's an American mother who adopted a little boy from Russia and then sent him back.  What!?  Oh, and get this: right now they can't charge her with a crime.  Child endangerment?  Abandonment?  Apparently not.

The family claimed the kid had behavior issues.  Actually, that's not uncommon in Eastern Europe.  Lots of kids in orphanages do have emotional and behavior issues.  Not all of them, but quite a few.  You might too if your life was that unstable.  To be fair, it's also not uncommon for future parents to be lied to about prospective adoptees. But here's the difference: even when they were lied to about the mental health of the child they adopted, all the other adoptive parents I know TOOK CARE OF THEIR KID.  They got them help if they couldn't take care of the kid themselves.  If you fear for your life, here's my hint: take your child to a mental health professional.  I bet your insurance covers that.  I bet Medicaid covers that if you don't have personal health insurance.  Get the kid help; don't jettison them.

Putting a kid on a plane and sending them half-way around the world is NOT OKAY!  In my oh-so-humble opinion you cannot unadopt a kid.  Just like when you have your own biological children, they're yours.  Yours.  Yours!  Parenting is not like Walmart people!  You can't return kids like you do a faulty coffeemaker you've been using for a few weeks.  That's why deciding to be a parent isn't a decision to make lightly.  You don't get to say, "Oh, never mind.  I guess I just wasn't cut out for this."  GAH!  Some people make me so angry!

In which I claim affinity with a historically famous person or two...

As you, dear readers, know, I am sort of obsessed with my name.  My favorite part about my name: I'm pretty sure it peeked in popularity in the 18th century.  My last semester was focused mostly on the 17th and 18th centuries.  I read my name a lot.  I circled it every time.  :)  I brought it up in class.  I was that obnoxious. 
One famous example that uses my name is the 1748 novel Clarissa by Samuel Richardson.  The story is super-trashy and generally a cautionary tale for not hanging out with smooth talking scoundrels.  I have never read it. I plan to at some point--hopefully this summer. 
The most famous American example of my name belonging to an "important" historical character is Clara Barton.  Yeah, that's right.  Her first name was Clarissa.  I read that in some silly historical kids book as a second-grader.  Obviously, I have not forgotten this tidbit.  I think it made such an impression on me because that's the first time I'd even heard of someone else with my name.  Suddenly, I was not alone.
Currently I am doing research on a cool lady named Martha Ballard. She was a midwife in Maine in the late 1700s.  She was Clara Barton's aunt.  I get to read her name over and over and over in Martha's diary.  I feel very close to my childhood right now.

It's a Small World After All

This is Lenin's Tomb in Red Sqaure in Moscow in Russia.  I have been there.  I have seen Lenin's waxy 80+-year-old dead body.  However, I was there after the fall of Communism.

Today, a guest lecturer came to the class I TA for to talk about what life was like in the 1970s while he was there working for the US government as an 'intelligence officer.'  (That means he was a spy.)  He showed us some fabulous pictures of Red Square on May 1st back in the 1970s.  May 1st is international Labor Day. (Yes, everyone but the US is in on it.)  In his pictures the lines to get into Lenin's Tomb snaked around a good chunck of Red Square.  Also, he had pics of the Politburo and military leaders standing along the top of the tomb overlooking the people in the square.  It was pretty sweet.

I had lunch with Mr. Guest Lecturer afterward and found out that after he retired he started volunteering to monitor elections around the world.  So, I lived in a Russian city called Nizhni Novgorod in 2004, and I went with my host mom to the polling place.  It turns out that Mr. GL was in Nizhni Novgorod monitoring the election that put Putin back into power for a second term.  WE WERE IN THE SAME CITY AT THE SAME TIME!  And today we met in Fort Collins, CO, for the first time in our lives.  (PS, he said he'd hook me up with the right people so that maybe I can monitor elections someday. Sa-weeet!)

The Suburbs

Hey all,  I'm writing a paper about economics in the twentieth century.  I will not even pretend that some of the books I have to use were interesting.  They were not.  However, I just read one about how consumerism shaped the 1950s and 60s. It was super-interesting, and I didn't have to read about boring governmental agency after boring governmental agency.  Instead, I read about things like the GI Bill's impact on creating suburbs and the ability to control who lived near you on a whole new level.  Gender, race, class, malls, riots, TV, mass culture, advertising....  Yea! 
Now back to the paper.

Where are you?

So are you guys super-busy?  I've gotten to read something new from three of you in the past week.  One of you had surgery and still managed to post.  What's up?  Are you ladies just more responsible than I am--doing your work instead of blogging? 
I've become accustomed to reading many of your musings on a more frequent basis.  I miss your pearls of wisdom, updates, etc.  To demonstrate the way I feel about this, I have included a very unflattering picture of myself being irritated.

This is not directed at the three of you that have blogged.  To you, I say thank you.  Good job.

Moscow Bombings

Six years ago while I was in Russia the Moscow subways were bombed.  I was safe in Nizhni Novgorod.  About forty Russians were not that lucky.  It seems rebel terrorists are at it again--probably from Chechnya, though no one has claimed responsibility for this set of bombings.  Click here for the story.  I think one of the most important things I learned while I was in Russia was that Chechnya is "complicated."  Western media doesn't give much air time to the story with all the other problems in Southwest and Central Asia, and none of them give context.  Still, if you think about it, please pray for the resolution of conflict between Chechnya and Russia.  It seems impossible, right?  A group that's been asserting its independence since the Soviet Union's collapse versus a government desperately trying to hold onto its 'rightful' territory.  Abuses on both sides are egregious.  Sickening. Chechnya is in shambles. Still, we can hope and pray.  (Threatening sanctions certainly doesn't work.)

Two reasons I love my husband:

1) He cleans the shower/tub.
2) He vacuums the floors.

2 1/2 years of not personally having to do these two things=a happy, super-in-love wife (me).
It's nice to be able to divide up housework, hunh?