Autumn On The Farm

All photos taken by the hubby who managed a self-portrait while floating in the canoe.

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Putting It All Together in Pittsburgh

I KNEW IT WOULD BE GOOD. When Marianne Novy invited me to be part of a panel of men who write adoption memoirs, I knew her Encountering New Worlds of Adoption: 2nd International Conference on Adoption and Culture at the University of Pittsburgh this past weekend would be a conference at which I would not only want to present, but also to stay for its entirety.

I was not disappointed.

The Cathedral of Learning (pictured - no that's not the Empire State Building) hosted English professors, sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, historians, lawyers, authors, filmmakers, poets, novelists, memoirists, feminists, activists, birth parents, adoptive parents, adoptees, and others in the best conference on adoption I've attended since becoming aware of such things in 2003.

The session on Men Write Adoption Memoirs was held on Friday afternoon. Chaired by Faith Adiele, a 1986 Harvard graduate who also happened to be a friend of my best friend Gail, the session was packed. Faith dubbed it "the man show" as women made up the vast majority of conference attendees. She got a laugh. As did all the readers, prompting Jean Strauss, who presented on the opening plenary panel Adotpion Memoirs Classic and New, to ask us whether or not we concsciously infused our narratives with humor.

"What struck me," she said, "was that you all say the same things we [women] say, but you make it funny."

Laughter is the best medicine. Was it Reader's Digest that coined that gem?

Adoption and the attendant issues are serious business. But there is humor in everything, if you let yourself see it.

Ralph Savarese, Peter McCullough, Ned Balbo, and I responded that whatever effort there was to infuse our work with humor was largely unintentional. Peter, an academic writer who read from a manuscript-in-progress, said that he used humor to tell his personal story because he wanted to make space for an audience he didn't think would be all that interested in the solopsism of autobriographical writing. Still, I think his delivery is what garnered most of the laughs. Having taught at Oxford for some time now, his acquired British accent and wit made many of his metaphors even more funny than they might have been on paper alone. Ralph dismissed with the "conceit of remembered dialogue" and read primarily from his 9-year-old autistic son's own words that his son had typed on his computer. Ralph was able to infuse humor into a story of torture and redemption. No small task. Ned read with the quiet deliberation of a literary poet, but still managed to draw a few laughs.

I've never considered myself funny. But bringing the characters of my life to life in a way that I hadn't in a long time got lots of laughs. My people are hilarious. What with all their downright uptight religious dogma. At some point you just can't take it all so seriously. And this reading told me that I might need to perform again sometime in the near future. Perhaps it will inspire me to finish adapting parts of my book into a performance piece that tells the story of my reunion from the perspective of eight people in my adoptive and biological families. Attending the conference with her mother was a little girl who couldn't have been any more than 7 or 8-years-old. At the closing dinner, she told me that I was one of her favorite speakers.

Children don't say such things unless they mean them. I took her compliment seriously. Perhaps my semi-retirement from performance will come to a semi-end sometime in the near future.

I can't possibly write about all the great sessions I attended in one entry. But conferences are, ultimately, about meeting and connecting with people. I'd like to think I made friends with Susan, Emily H, Lorrain, Jean, Emily P, Janet, Carol, Shayla, Cindy, Marianne and her husband, and a few others whose names escape me at the moment. But if by some chance you're reading this and I haven't named you, you know who you are. The conversations I had with you all on shuttles to and from the airport, at the hotel lounge, around the dinner table, between sessions in the labyrinthian cathedral stairwells and halls, walking to restaurants, and at the final lunch are fresh in my mind.

I thank Marianne for a wonderful, fulfilling experience and I hope to attend the 3rd International Conference on Adoption and Culture whenever, wherever it may be.

Aleigh Mills: A Tribute

FUNNY HOW THINGS WORK. I posted an entry on a women I didn't actually know but whose murder spoke to me in a spiritual place. About a month ago, a reader sent me an email after reading that entry that I'm posting in its entirety below:

I just came upon your blog from Google as I was (as many times have) was looking for info on Aleigh's murder. I wish you had met her because your thoughts are right on the money and I admire you for your compassionate insights.

I knew Aleigh pretty well a few years ago. I was a permanent substitute teacher at the middle school she attended in Stratham, NH. I have a son who was in the same grade and was friendly with her. They competed on different basketball teams but had a friendly rivalry.

To say Aleigh lit up a room is a gigantic understatement. She was the room!! She was constantly loud, laughing, the center of any group with a big smile on her face.

This middle school was 99.9% white and she was the 1%!! Twice Aleigh let me know she was insecure about this and did not like being in such a stark minority. She once half-kiddingly accused me of picking on her because she was black. The truth (and she knew) was she was very boisterous and had to be told to quite down. Another time was basically the same with a different teacher.

The day last summer I found out she was murdered It was meant to happen. I was sitting going thru the news channels at 6 pm (we live near Maine, Mass and in NH) so I sometimes flip thru all. But not so much Maine I will go to unless I am searching for weather (which is alot of their newscast). The news immediately went to a story about a young girl found murdered in Northern Maine named Alexandra Mills. I was doing something else and was only listening and I put my head up and thought: hmmm that sounds familiar. But the story was about a murder!! So as I watched they showed a basketball team of UMaine players and there in the back was a black girl - Oh My God!! I got goose bumps right away and called up the stairs to my son to come down immediately. I said: Look Corey it's Aleigh Mills and they are saying she has been murdered!!! Awe knew it was her,( especially on a basketball team ) and going to UMaine was right also because Aleigh was an excellent student (she hated math though and struggled with it) and we knew she would be at a university. And you could not deny her big, smiling face in the back of the team. Which I believe she was captain of, which makes perfect sense. She would have the most spirit you knew and was a natural leader also.

I felt so sick to my stomach and my son, who is not jaded yet by violence at all, was obviously shaken.How could someone Soooooooo alive and happy be dead?? Who could do this?? My son and me had recently drove by her beautiful house in Newfield's, NH and my son was wondering where she was and doing what. THAT is a impact she had. Even though we had not seen her in years (5) you would never forget her.

I hope this is not too long, it is a release for me to write this and also a tribute to her. I also thought the same thing: black, adopted and murdered. I take comfort in knowing she was happy and had some fulfilling/fun times in her short life.I still would like to know how she died but of course I kind of know (beaten?). I can still see the father coming in to watch her play basketball games. He was crippled and on a cane. He must be a special person for obvious reasons

One last thing: after her murder alot of my son's friends IM profiles said RIP AM. She left this area after the 8th grade, 5 years earlier. If you met her you would never forget her. I hope wherever she is, she is laughing and flirting with the boys. Shine on Aleigh you crazy diamond.

Thank you.

Courage: Letting Love In

Field Trip

SERENELY sauntering
into the Worcester Art Museum
to expose a predominantly white, suburban
audience to the intricacies of
inner-city poetry,
toting a big black bag,
inconspicuously clad in everyday attire,
I, nonetheless, was singled out
by the security officer, rapidly
approaching from behind the safety
of his desk, as if to interrupt some
impending disaster on his
desperate journey toward me.

Hey you! What you got in that bag?

The air around me sputtered
in search of retort, while my
tongue lay hostage
against a confused palette.

As the approaching crowd smelled
the progression of fear,
to caution,
to his Robin-Hood rush to save
a museum in distress,
a thick, curious tension rushed in
on a whirlwind, besieging the small crowd,
now marveling at what might become an
adventure Worcester hadn’t seen in decades.

I said, what’s the bag for and what you got in it?

Now, empowered by the women around me,
I could stay silent no longer.

It’s my purse. Just like hers, hers, and hers.
And what’s in it is none of your business!

Well, that’s an awfully big purse!

And I’m an awfully big girl,
now back off!

What could his mind
have conjured?

Perchance he thought
I was going to swipe some
art museum treasure, more priceless
than a Van Gogh original,
fold it up in, say, sixteen sections,
secure it neatly in my bag,
from which I’d just retrieved by compact Uzi,
threatening to take out any man
who dared sopt me (subsequently
raping
his wife and children),
and rush out past the front
desk into a welcoming
black night.

Or perchance he thought
my bag was loaded with
several poinds of coke,
a hundred vials of crack, and
all kinda dope I was eager to
deal to a museum crowd
desperate for a fix.

Or perchance he thought
I was just some loose-cannon vandal,
up to no good, armed with several cans of
metallic mauve spray paint,
or more likely,
a big old watermelon, which
I’d smash on the floor,
scooping out large chunks to
smear across the designs displayed
on the walls of his big white castle on the hill,
leaving behind my own art,
my mark,
a trail of little black seeds
following me out the back door.

As I moved past this
suspecting man,
the strap of the bag
biting into my shoulder,
its contents pulling me down
a bit closer to the earth
I walk on,
I realized the bag I carry around
daily

is weighted
with memories, wishes, dreams & stories
yet untold;

is weighted
with city streets, country roads, highways & rivers to places
yet unseen;

is weighted
with groans, laughter, cries & screams
yet unheard.

And deep down,
somewhere near the bottom of that
big black bag,
my purse,
there’s a neighborhood,
a city,
a country,
a world,
where no person
carries the fear
to dare ask
what’s inside it.

The Resurrection Table

HE CAME BACK to us. He walked right into the kitchen where Mama, Gina, Job and I were eating a fried catfish dinner I’d thrown together at the end of long, hot, emotional day.

“Hazelle?” Mama was much calmer than I would have expected her to be.

“Daddy?” Gina was, too.

I thought he was an apparition. But when he smiled and said, “Where’s my plate?” I knew he was real. Apparitions don’t speak.

We cleared a spot for him at the table. But not before we all walked over to welcome him. He hugged me so tightly I thought I wouldn’t be able to breathe. That's why his friends called him Squeeze. I didn’t mind. Apparitions don’t hug.

“Craig, do me a favor and go downstairs and get me a beer, will ya, son?” Music to my ears.

It was as if he’d never left us. It had been about four months, long enough for his tombstone to have been erected at the Veterans Memorial Cemetery, long enough for Job and I to have driven all the way from Maine to Milwaukee to take Mama the 30 mile drive to see it. For both of us to put life in the barren soil he left behind in the backyard next to the garage. To pack up and bring his most valuable effects back to Maine.

We thought he’d be upset that we had turned his vegetable plot into a perennial flower garden where Mama could sit and meditate and feel his spirit. No way was she going to grow vegetables like he did. But she watered those flowers in the wilting summer heat and humidity as if her life depended on it. It was all she could talk about after we left.







Daddy was pleased. He loved it. Told us it was perfect. We’d break the news about his albums later.

As we enjoyed our meal around the resurrection table, the first time we'd all broken bread together since Easter weekend 2001, not one of us uttered a word of disbelief. Daddy came back from the dead and was now sitting in the kitchen eating fried catfish, drinking Pabst, and laughing.

And then I woke up.

Later that day, I peed on myself three times. I couldn’t control my bladder. In the middle of the night, my temperature rose, my legs couldn’t hold me up and I fell on the bedroom floor on the way back to bed from the bathroom.

Job took me to the doctor in the morning and sure enough, I had a bladder infection. As we both suspected. Never had a bladder infection before in my life. I’m taking antibiotics, which I hate, but they’re working.

Daddy is here. We brought back his collection of a thousand jazz albums, his 1950s turntable and amplifier, his huge modern speakers and CD player and set it all up in one of the front parlors. When I walk through the parlor to get to my office, I smell him. I smell the basement of my childhood and I get full.

At least once a week, usually on Sundays, I play a record or two on his turntable. Art Farmer, Kenny Burrell, Coleman Hawkins, Clifford Brown, Art Blakey. The sounds of my childhood.

We brought back his slide collection as well. Maybe a thousand, maybe more. All the pictures he took of his family when we went camping, dating back to August 1969, just a few months after they adopted me into their home. The sights of my childhood.



I overflow.

It’s been six months since he left us. I remain a wreck. A friend reminded me that the pain lessens a little over time but grief sets these little ambushes for you and leaps out at strange times.

Even makes you believe in the resurrection of the dead.

September 11, 2001

May the dead rest in peace. May the living find justice. [Source]

Luciano Pavarotti (1935 - 2007)

Notes On A Scandal

SENATOR LARRY CRAIG is a fool. Not for trying to have sex in a bathroom, but for trying to deny his intent to do so.

But as a man who has had public sex, the cops are the problem here, not the men who seek sex in public places.

There is no such thing as public sex - whether it be in a restroom, at a reststop, under a bridge, behind a building in the wee hours of the morning, in the dunes at the beach, on a tree-lined hill in a park - without consent. No. Such. Thing. Men who have no interest in it are neither harassed nor molested by anyone because they wouldn't pay any attention to the subtle mating call - a foot tap, a cough, the no-sound of liquid or solid excrement falling into a toilet after 15 minutes in the occupied stall next to you - of another man well-versed in the nuances of public sex.

Cops who entrap men have to do something within that unwritten code of conduct to get the "criminal" to make an advance. And an advance, in and of itself, isn't criminal behavior, people. There is no law anywhere against cruising an attractive person, no law against stepping back from a urinal to expose your entire cock at someone who's staring at it, no law against tapping your foot on the floor of a stall or gesturing your call-and-response with a wave of the hand under a stall divider.

But don't you know that all the police who operate these stings are also participants in public sex when off the clock? How else would they know the codes? They are no less hypocritical than Craig himself. You see, when the guilt and shame of last week's blow job in the park haunts them, they return to the scene the next week with handcuffs and badges, entrap and arrest another man as a way to lock up their own guilt and shame and put it where it belongs.

But in trying to rid their guilt and shame, they also ruin someone's life. I've seen men hang themselves after their names have been printed in the paper over a sting in a bathroom at a college campus. And make no mistake, I have no sympathy or respect for hypocrites like Craig who publicly hate queer people and who, like the cops, also have the power to ruin our lives. But the quiet and upstanding high school teacher who decides his wife and children are better left alone because he can't face himself after being exposed and decides to leave this world are the ones who pay the biggest price for this exercise in futility:

Homosexuality cannot be codified out of existence. Men will continue to seek and have sex with other men in public places all over the globe no matter how many hypocrites try to stop them. And they're not hurting anyone.

The cops need to be taken to task for their own bullshit in all of this.

You'd think they have bigger fish to fry.

But guilt and shame are whales.

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Small Tasks

“I LONG to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.”

H E L E N K E L L E R

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