Thought For The Day

BRILLIANTLY BLESSED are those who walk with courage through the depths of their own sorrow, for they will walk also through the greatest joy and their Spirits will grow exponentially; for them, a healing will come.

Adoption Conference :: Secret Histories, Public Policies

A conference sponsored by the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
April 29-May 2, 2010
Official Website

Keynote speakers:

Anita L. Allen, Deputy Dean for Academic Affairs, Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania Law School. Allen’s work has focused on the law and ethics of privacy and data protection, race relations and feminist philosophy. She is the author of numerous articles and several books: Privacy Law: and Society (2007); /Why Privacy Isn’t Everything: Feminist Reflections on Personal Accountability ,/ (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003); /Uneasy Access: Privacy for Women in a Free Society / (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, l988) and /The New Ethics: A Guided Tour of the 21st Century Moral Landscape/ (Miramax Books/distributed by Hyperion Books, 2004).

Ann Fessler is an installation artist, filmmaker, adoptee and author of /The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade . /(The Penguin Press, 2006) based on oral history interviews she conducted between 2002 and 2005 with surrendering mothers across the country. In 2008 Fessler received the Ballard Book Prize given annually to a female author who advances the dialogue about women's rights and in 2006 her book was selected by the National Book Critics Circle as one of the top 5 nonfiction books of the year. Hear Ann Fesssler on Fresh Air .

Lynn Lauber, birth mother, writer, teacher, and book collaborator, has published three books with W.W. Norton. White Girls (1990) and 21 Sugar Street (1993), both fiction, that deal with the topics of birth families and adoption. Listen to Me, Writing Life into Meaning (2003), is part memoir, part exploration of writing as self-discovery. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times and a number of anthologies. She currently teaches personal writing workshops and is writing a memoir on her experience as a birth mother.

Deann Borshay Liem is Producer, Director, Writer for the Emmy Award-nominated documentary, First Person Plural (PBS 2000), Executive Producer for Spencer Nakasako’s Kelly Loves Tony (PBS 1998) and AKA Don Bonus (PBS 1996, Emmy Award), and Co-Producer for Special Circumstances (PBS, 2009) by Marianne Teleki. A Sundance Institute Fellow and a recipient of a Rockefeller Film/Video Fellowship, Deann is the Director, Producer, Writer of the new documentary, In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee , which will be broadcast nationally on PBS in Fall 2010. She is currently Executive Director of Katahdin Productions, a non-profit documentary production company based in Berkeley and Los Angeles, California. Learn more about DeAnn Borshay Liem on PBS’s Point of View.

Other speakers include Marla Brettschneider, Naomi Cahn, Maryanne Cohen, Marley Greiner, Meredith Hall, Craig Hickman, Margaret Homans, Liberty Hultberg, B J Lifton, Kate Livingston, Karen McElmurray, Marianne Novy, Joyce Maguire Pavao, Adam Pertman, John Raible, Lisa Marie Rollins, Elizabeth Samuels, Sarah Tobias.

There will be a day of documentary films on Thursday, beginning with Sheila Ganz's film in progress Moms Living Clean. Panels later in the conference will cover topics such as: Secrecy and Policy; Lesbian/gay Secrecy Issues and Adoption; Complications of Search, Reunion and Aftermath; Transnational Adoption as Immigration Policy; Secrecy and Adoption: Historical Perspectives on the U.S., Europe, and Asia after World War II; Birthmothers: Agency and Activism; Biological Preference Critiqued and Analyzed; Secrecy and Openness: Legal Issues; Transracial Adoption in Contemporary American Literature; Adoptive Parents, Race, Difference. There will also be an evening of creative writing and performance on Friday, 4/30/10, featuring Lisa Marie Rollins; this evening and all keynotes are free and open to the public. All sessions free to MIT affiliates, and special rates are available for non-MIT students and the un/underemployed.

For more information, visit our website or contact: asac2010@mit.edu .

Sponsored by Mass Humanities; MIT Office of the Dean of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Literature Section, Program in Women's and Gender Studies; University of New Hampshire Center for the Humanities, College of Liberal Arts, Philosophy Department; Rutgers-Camden, Department of English; University of Pittsburgh Department of English

Geoffrey Fletcher: The First Black Writer To Win An Academy Award

YEAH, I KNOW. The biggest headlines of the day are that a woman now holds an Academy Award for Best Director. And deservedly so. I was stunned to see her standing there with that gold thing in her hand. Kathyrn Bigelow, acclaimed director of The Hurt Locker broke that glass ceiling, defeating her ex-husband for the same award in the process, and took the statue from the hands of Barbra Streisand who many thought got snubbed for her work behind the camera in both Yentl and The Prince Of Tides. I'd say that was more true of the latter than the former.

But I digress.

Geoffrey Fletcher made history last night, too. And while Bigelow's award was stunning, Fletcher's award was downright shocking.

The 39-year-old New London, Connecticut, native was a surprise winner for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Conventional wisdom put the award in the hands of "Up In The Air" writers Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner who had won a Golden Globe for their work.

Fletcher wasn't even nominated for what has become an accurate precursor to the Oscars.

As Fletcher spoke, I moved to the front of my seat and realized that he looked familiar to me. More familiar than just a passing thought that I'd seen him somewhere before. Turns out he's the younger brother of Todd Fletcher, an a capella singer at Harvard when I attended, who's the younger brother of the renowned investment banker Alphonso "Buddy" Fletcher, Jr. I met the two younger brothers only once, which meant that I had actually shaken the hand of the man who would become the first Black writer to win an Academy Award.

One of those moments.

If only Spike Lee had been able to present him the award.

I didn't want a single frame of a single film nominated for a single award this year, but it was nice to watch so much history nonetheless.

And Mo'Nique was simply glorious. Paying tribute to Hattie McDaniel, the first Black woman to win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Gone With The Wind 60 years ago, she delivered another emotional wallop of a speech. Mo'Nique even wore a royal blue dress and a flower in her hair, just as McDaniel did when she won. Mo'Nique who's performance as an abusive mother in Precious Based On The Novel Push by Sapphire was apparently so riveting, every single person who saw it quipped that if she didn't win an Oscar, they should just stop giving them out. She becomes the fifth Black woman to win an acting award. Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls), Halle Berry (Monsters Ball), the only Black woman to win Best Actress, and Whoopi Goldberg (Ghost) are the others.

Sunday With Take 6 :: Get Away Jordan

BACK AT HARVARD, when I was the music director of the Callbacks, my college co-ed a capella singing group, I was flipping through radio stations on a Sunday morning and I heard this tune. It was love at first sound. No group executes harmonies this tight. A first tenor myself, I couldn't even conceive of some of those high notes. What a finale.

Thought For The Day

BRILLIANTLY BLESSED are those who forgive themselves, for they will be able to forgive all others their greatest wrongdoings.

Sunday With Ella :: Angel Eyes

Angelic. Effortless. Perfect.

Thought For The Day

BRILLIANTLY BLESSED are those who walk with courage through the depths of their own fear for they will Love from the bottom of their hearts.

Sunday With Sting :: My One And Only Love

Do. Not. Wait.

(via: daniel miessler)

An Experience I Thought I'd Never Have Again

Getty

Singer Jennifer Hudson arrives at the 52nd Annual GRAMMY Awards held at Staples Center on January 31, 2010 in Los Angeles, California.

::

Family members and friends aside, there are few Black women I love as much as Serena Williams.

Jennifer Hudson is one of them.

Tonight, she tore through "I Will Always Love You" as a tribute to honoree Whitney Houston on BET.

Tore through it.

With Whitney's voice now unable to deliver her masterful performance as she did back in the early 90s, I never thought I'd hear another live performance of that song that caught my breath.

Tonight, I did.

Jennifer outdid herself and gave Whitney proper respect. You can't touch that song if you can't take that song beyong the moon.

I'll see y'all when I get back to earth.