I keep meaning to get back into writing and I don’t know what is holding me back. It’s not even that I have nothing to say. In fact, the problem may be that I have too much to say. Worse yet, it feels complicated, or at least different. If someone else expresses feelings similar to your own, that makes life easy. You can reference it. Even if it is only part of what you want to say, it cuts down on time. It also makes it less likely that you’ll be misunderstood.

So, I went to a movie tonight and got home feeling very sad and glum. It was strange because I enjoyed the movie, but it left me feeling oddly nostalgic. The movie was Gimme Danger, a documentary about The Stooges. As a film, it’s not good enough to enjoy if you don’t like the band. Last year, I went to go see the movie Amy and although I barely knew Amy Winehouse’s music beyond a handful of songs my mother enjoys, I liked the movie. Gimme Danger is not likely to engage anyone who isn’t already a Stooges or Iggy Pop fan. I’ve always really liked the band, so I enjoyed the movie. Luscious and I always used to argue about Iggy Pop. She always used to insist there was something sexist about him, although I could never get her to articulate exactly what that was. It seemed to blend into a general tirade about men dominating rock and roll, but she liked the Dolls, she like the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Ramones, so I’m not sure what it was about Iggy Pop and the Stooges that bugged her.

The down feeling was definitely a side effect of nostalgia, although why the movie left me feeling quite so nostalgic is beyond me. The Stooges were before my time, almost, and I actually found out about them a little bit late, after The Stooges were defunct, although Iggy Pop was still very active. Still, there were some shots of New York City in the seventies. Certain types of New York scenes, especially downtown, definitely make me feel the loss of the era.

One odd thing about the movie is that it really doesn’t give you a feel of the time period well. The only sense of danger is in the title. We’re told that they were an influence on other bands that came later, but somehow the movie just doesn’t convey how different this sounded at the time.

Anyway, I paused from writing this to poke around on the internet and I listened to some songs I haven’t heard in a while. I was going to go off on some of those complicated feelings I’ve been unable to express, but I’m looking at the clock and I think I’ll have to skip it tonight. What follows is unrelated to the film I just mentioned. It was just some music I first heard back in the early to mid nineties.

As some people know, I like to pretend to play the piano sometimes. What I don’t think as many people know is that my mother came from a family of musicians. Her grandfather was a violin maker from Poland. Her uncle learned his father’s profession and also played violin in the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. The musical ability in our family is unevenly distributed, but those who have had it have tended towards classical music. My grandfather, however, was always the black sheep of the family. When he was young, he played drums with jazz bands. I’ve been told he was terrible and only performed if someone was sick. Still, his taste was eclectic and when he died I went through his record collection. One of the records was Carney, by Leon Russell.

If you’ve read Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, then you have heard of the Musee des Arts et Metiers in Paris. The Museum of Arts et Metiers in Paris “was founded in 1794 as a repository for the preservation of scientific instruments and inventions.” It is housed in the buildings of the former Priory of Saint Martin des Champs. Some dramatic scenes take place in what had been the former church adjacent to the monastery. Here are some pictures I took there a few years ago.

I may have posted some of these before.

I hope that gives you a little feel of the building.

That number jumped out at me since it was higher than I would have thought. It’s National Adoption Month. I came across that fact more or less by accident, though in this case the notion of “accident” is relative since, being adopted myself, I have a tendency to click on adoption related headlines. According to the website of National Adoption Month, there are over 400,000 kids in foster care and 100,000 of those kids can be adopted.

One thing that might be worth clarifying is the phrase “special needs.” Many of the children available for adoption are listed as “special needs” and I would have assumed that that meant children with severe emotional, intellectual or physical handicaps. Although the term does encompass those children, it also means kids that are older, from “a particular racial or ethnic background” or who are part of a group of siblings who need to be placed. They prefer to keep siblings together.

There’s a lot of useful information on the Adopt US Kids website.

Some studies have shown that LGBT youth are over represented in foster care. Furthermore, once in foster care, they are sometimes poorly serve. In an article in USA Today, Eric Charles-Gallo writes,

The reality faced by LGBT youth— fewer accepting, inclusive foster homes than are available to their non-LGBT peers, and the heartbreaking consequences — is revealed in two important studies.

In New York City,78% of LGBTQ youth were removed from their foster homes or ran away because of hostility toward their sexual orientation or gender identity, and 70% reported experiencing physical violence in group homes. And a 2014 study by the Williams Institute shows that nearly 1 out of 5 youth in the Los Angeles foster care system is LGBTQ. That same study found that LGBT youth in Los Angeles foster care, like Darnell, were bounced around much more than non-LGBTQ youth, were more than twice as likely to be placed in group homes, and experienced homelessness and hospitalization for emotional reasons at far higher rates.

Further down he adds:

In fact, the federal government believes that the issue of LGBTQ youth in foster care is so critical that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a historic call to child welfare agencies to guarantee that every child has access to a “safe, loving and affirming foster care placement, irrespective of the young person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.”

Since I know a disproportionate number of my readers are atheists, agnostics or otherwise not orthodox members of an established religion, I thought about covering that subject when I saw on article about National Adoption Month use words like “God,” “miracle” and “blessings.” On the other hand, since National Adoption Month is intended to raise awareness of kids in the foster care system in the U.S., it would seem to be less relevant. Since I was adopted by non-religious parents, through a secular agency and my biological mother requested that I not be placed with a highly religious family, the religion-adoption connection some people seem to have, especially since prominent pastors like Rick Warren started promoting adoption around the year 2007, really is not established in my subconscious. There was an article on the subject of adopting as an atheist in Salon a couple of years ago by Veronica Chenik Gilmore. Unfortunately, her description is unclear in places. She seems to indicate that she felt some discrimination as an atheist when she was fostering children, but I wasn’t clear what group she felt was discriminating. Was it a state agency or a private group? However, she does mention finding Adopt US Kids to be a useful resource.

Slightly OT: At one point Gilmore says:

People celebrate adoption and many celebrate their own atheism, but the two worlds rarely intertwine. Both worlds are filled with rejection, intolerance and misunderstanding. There are angry atheists and there are angry adoptees. We are, however, on the happy end of both spectrums.

I felt this was very dismissive of the feelings of adoptees, especially since a common complaint adoptees have is that no one wants to hear their side of the story. I find the “angry adoptee” categorization to be especially annoying. First of all, anger may very well depend on context. Normally, I have a very positive attitude about adoption. On a couple of occasions friends who were thinking of adopting wanted to talk to me about the subject, I found myself being very encouraging and even getting choked up while proclaiming what wonderful parents they would be. On the other hand, just the other day I found myself getting quite annoyed at some highly religious people who were busy applauding themselves over what wonderful people they were because they adopted kids from overseas. Emotions are changeable and are often in response to a stimulus. One complaint adoptees have is the expectation that we display permanent gratitude, well beyond the degree expected of biological children. That is simply not a realistic expectation. Feeling like you were a pathetic thing that needed to be rescued is not healthy. Anger is a normal human feeling and feeling angry occasionally doesn’t make you an “angry adoptee,” but the fear of being an “angry” or “poorly adjusted” adoptee sometimes causes adoptees to avoid being forthright about their feelings. I’m sure Gilbert didn’t mean it that way, still, I felt the need to add that.

Oddly, I only went a few pages down on the search results, but I haven’t been able to find any information about atheist kids in foster care. Logically, they must exist. However the search only turned up atheists who are foster parents. I also found a couple of posts in forums from atheist birth mothers.

Well, I got a bit off-track there. The upshot is that if you’re looking to adopt and you’re considering adopting an older kid there are probably more children out there available for adoption than you think. If you’re adopting from the foster care system, it probably costs less money than you think (described on the website as minimal or free), and they are willing to consider non-traditional families.

I wasn’t sure whether or not to post one of the videos on the subject, but here is one.

Is it just me, or when people use words like Baroque or Gothic do you wonder whether or not if the words are used to indicate a specific historical style or if they’re used in a more vernacular way.

Now that Halloween is over, I’m back on my castle kick. I will probably, sometime in the near future, take a trip to Europe with a particular interest in Medieval structures. My particular interest is in the early Middle Ages, but since there’s less from that time period, I will probably wind up including sites that are a little bit later in time. When I was at that late childhood age that kids develop a fascination with knights in shining armor, I happened to go to the library and find the relevant King Arthur books checked out. Instead, I wound up reading the Song of Roland. My romantic knight fascination therefore has a decidedly French feel to it. It’s also a little bit more historical, and very much rooted in the early Middle Ages. I think it’s something in my fastidious brain (as opposed to body – remember, I’m the sexy sloth) that mixing up different historical eras has always bugged me a bit. I guess that’s why I’m always asking, “Do you mean Gothic or gothic?”

If anyone has any historical sites worth seeing, I’d love to hear about them. My main direction is France, but that’s mainly because I’m comfortable enough with the language that I feel at ease going places that might not be a main destination for foreign travelers. My first trip to Europe was to Austria and Italy and it was very poorly planned and was very stressful. Later I went to France and there’s such a dramatic difference when you can ask complicated questions – and understand the answers! If I go places outside of a Francophone or Anglophone area, it needs to be well planned. For France, I could just get on a plane and worry about what happens when I get there.

It’s funny, when I was younger, I didn’t have that strong an interest in traveling. I did a little bit. That trip to Italy and Austria I mentioned was my first opportunity to go overseas and I jumped on it. I wanted to go places earlier, but finding a traveling companion was always a bit of a problem. Now, I’ve got three trips in mind. One is a hiking trip to Utah. Another is this early Medieval Europe trip. I’ve been looking at the cost of flights to Nairobi. Oh, yeah, I have a trip to Florida planned as well. So that’s four. I feel that as I get older and know more about the world, there’s more that I want to see. I also have gotten a better idea of what is really good to see in person as opposed to reading about or looking at pictures. I still think the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen was Venice. The thing that was so impressive about Venice is that it’s 360° beauty. It’s not one picture or one sight. You really do get more from being there than from seeing a picture. That’s why people say things like the Eiffel Tower is a disappointment. It’s not really any more impressive than it is in photos. In fact, it’s exactly like it is in photos. Now, there are lots of great things about Paris. I think it’s a wonderful city, but the big monuments that you see on post cards are not really what makes it enjoyable. One convenient thing about Paris is that the big monuments are located at major crossroads and you can almost plan your trip and see them by accident. But I don’t really care to see the major monuments. It’s the smaller revelations, like: “Golly, the Seine is a lot smaller than I thought.” Or standing along the Cap Gris Nez, looking out towards the water as the sun is setting and saying, “What’s that white line out there? Is that… no, it can’t be. Can you see England from here?” (Yes, you can.) It’s almost hard to predict what will strike you, but you probably haven’t seen it on a postcard.

Oh, right, speaking of Venice, the Venice Carnival is something I’d really love to go to. Of course I’ll make a costume. There are days I think I should have learned Italian. You may be thinking that, if I know French, Italian should be easy. However, I once tried taking a Spanish class and it was almost like there was a short-circuit in my head. Everything came out French. The teacher actually thought I was French because of the sorts of mistakes I was making.

It reminds me of the time I had an Anglophone Canadian compliment me on my English. Since I was living in Quebec at the time, he assumed I was a French speaker. Yeah, my English is so good I sound as if I come from New Jersey. I still can’t help wondering what he was assuming about my accent.

Getting back to where I started, it seems that the large portions of the Český Krumlov Castle are indeed Baroque, which is just as well since the Czech Republic is not currently on my itinerary. I mean that as no disrespect for the country. It’s just that I already have four trips planned and haven’t yet figure out how to pay for those!

Although I say that my interest is in the early Medieval period, I confess a special fascination for those towns whose roots go far back enough to disappear into prehistory.

Enough rambling for one day!