THIS MODERN WORLD

Poster auctions end in a couple of days. As longtime readers know I do this on occasion, but not very often — last one was October of last year. Links up at the top of the page.

I still think Sparky would make a great vinyl figure, and it seems like this would be a good moment for it. I corresponded with a couple people about this earlier in the year but those emails seem to have been deleted or otherwise lost in the void. If anybody has any contacts at KidRobot or anything like that, can you get ahold of me at tomtomorrow-at-ix-dot-netcom-dot-com? (Just to be clear, I’m not interested in handling the manufacturing on this myself — I want to partner up with somebody who already knows what they’re doing…)

Headline in the New York Times this morning:

DECLARE VICTORY AND DEPART IRAQ, U.S. ADVISER SAYS.

And on the opposite side of the page:

BANKERS REAPED LAVISH BONUSES DURING BAILOUTS.

Example the first:

DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — Two DeKalb County police officers have been placed on paid administrative leave after an investigation revealed they ran a background check on President Barack Obama.
A representative for the DeKalb County CEO’s office identified the officers as Ryan White and C.M. Route.
Officials said Obama’s name was typed into a computer inside a DeKalb County police car on July 20 and ran through the National Crime Information Center.
The secret service was immediately notified and contacted the DeKalb County Police Department.

Example the second:

(CNN) — A Boston police officer who sent a mass e-mail referring to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. as a “banana-eating jungle monkey” has apologized, saying he’s not a racist.

Officer Justin Barrett told a Boston television station on Wednesday night that he was sorry for the e-mail.

“I regret that I used such words,” Barrett told CNN affiliate WCVB-TV. “I have so many friends of every type of culture and race you can name. I am not a racist.”

Barrett was placed on administrative leave after the e-mail surfaced, and he might lose his job as a result.

* * *

In Barrett’s e-mail, which was posted on a Boston television station’s Web site, he declared that if he had “been the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC (oleoresin capsicum, or pepper spray) deserving of his belligerent non-compliance.”

Barrett used the “jungle monkey” phrase four times, three times referring to Gates and once referring to (Globe columnist) Abraham’s writing as “jungle monkey gibberish.”

From email … I don’t know these people, but have no reason to doubt their veracity …

Hi all,

I am sorry that I have to write this email to you, but we are obligated to try everything in our power to help our daughter get out of China.

My wife, Candace Litchford, and I are currently in China in the midst of an adoption of a 4 1/2 year old girl named Guang Yue Ye (her American name will be Harper Yue Ye Scruggs). After the adoption was completed on the Chinese side (she is our legally adopted daughter according to China), we were provided information that she had 2 months ago been diagnosed with tuberculosis, a diagnosis made through blood tests, chest x-rays, and skin tests. She was tested again a few days ago via skin PPD test and with another chest x-ray, both once again confirming the tuberculosis.

We were not provided this information prior to travelling to China, and now we are in the awful position of being the parents of this poor girl and not being able to bring her back to the US. To backtrack a bit, as of July 1 the CDC/DHS has a new regulation requiring all immigrants to pass a TB screening, and if they fail the screening, they are required to wait until full treatment is administered in the country of origin before coming to the US. We have been advised by both our pediatrician and our international adoption specialist (Dr. Patrick Mason of the International Adoption Center in Fairfax, VA) that since Yue Ye has been taking a triad of anti-TB drugs for over a month, she is not contagious. We have obtained letters from our pediatrician indicating their intent to continue monitoring and treatment for Harper’s condition. Yet even with all of this and filling out the required Class A 601 Waiver Form, we have been told it will take over 6 months for the form to be processed by the CDC/DOS/DHS.

There is a waiver process, and our adoption coordinator Irene Jordan at Adoptions Together has been communicating along with us with our local congressman Jim Moran of VA, as well as with the various consulates and agencies involved.

The problem with the waiver process is that it requires clean (negative) sputum tests for TB before travel. The sputum tests themselves take 6 weeks for a result, and if they are positive, two more months must pass before taking the tests again, and so on, in addition to the approval time required for the waiver. We have had our daughter in our possession here for some time now, and she has bonded quite strongly with us. We do not have the financial means to stay with her, as it would mean most likely losing our jobs in the US and defaulting on our current financial obligations such as our mortgage, etc. We also have a 6-year old son in the US that we must get back to.

We cannot abandon our daughter back to the state-run Chinese orphanage, nor can we stay. It would be extremely cruel to Yue Ye, and we have no way of knowing that she would be provided the treatment she requires. In addition, she would be exposed once again to whatever source it was that infected her with TB in the first place, and we may never get to bring her home.

We are left to grasp at whatever straws there may be out there to get our daughter home. Continue reading “Heartbreaking situation”