A few weeks ago I got into a conversation with somebody online about

[conuly]

the responsibilities adoptive parents have to maintain some sort of connection to the child's natal culture, however small. We were specifically talking about interracial adoption, so this person made what he thought was a good point, bringing up what if a (white) American couple adopted a child from Russia? The child would look like them and would not "look" Russian, so....

There were two ways to go with this. I chose to respond to his point and stay on-topic, but ever since, for the past three weeks, I've had a nagging desire for a do-over, to try out the other option - namely, to tell him, quite honestly, that my mother has been stopped on multiple occasions by strangers with no other desire than to inform her that she has "a Russian face" (and on one occasion by strangers who wanted to ask her directions in Russian, presumably because of her Russian face.)

She is half Russian. Or half Russian-ish, anyway, we're not sure exactly where her father's family comes from but it's somewhere in or adjacent to Tsarist Russia.

That answer would not have gone anywhere useful, and it would've been unnecessarily rude to somebody who didn't deserve it... but I still kinda wish I'd said it.

And if you're asking what a connection to that side of her heritage would bring her, she might have been able to respond to those tourists if she'd spoken Russian. She likes speaking to French-speaking tourists and immigrants, after all, and she likes to watch French-language TV. Speaking of which, are there any streaming services that focus on TV and movies from Francophone countries? France okay but not preferred over other nations.

*******************

A Mason’s Hidden Portrait Found After 900 Years

Watch an Amazing Time-Lapse of Growing Mushrooms

A Glass Floor in a New Dublin Grocery Opens a Window to Medieval Viking History

Elections in Colonial America Were Huge, Booze-Fueled Parties

End gerrymandering? Here’s a radical solution (Yes, but vertical map or horizontal? Maybe we switch it up after every census just for kicks.)

Why Left-Handed Quarterbacks Are So Rare (Admittedly I don't know much about the sportsball, but it seems to me that while one lefty on a team might be a mild hassle, carefully fielding an entirely left-handed team could be a sneak advantage - or at least a novelty! I'd root for them.)

Knifefish Suck So Hard They Can Make Water 'Boil'

The Hyper-Regional Chippy Traditions of Britain and Ireland

A Brief History of Children Sent Through the Mail

A Canadian study gave $7,500 to homeless people. Here’s how they spent it.

The ‘I Voted’ Sticker: An Election Tradition, Even in a Pandemic

Weary from political strife and a pandemic, some Americans are fleeing the country

'Vote and get home,' anxious voters say on Election Day

Is It Better to Plant Trees or Let Forests Regrow Naturally?

To teach my sick husband how to eat again, I turned to 19th-century recipes for bone broths, gruels, and custards

How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

Inside a Prison Coronavirus Outbreak in ‘Disbeliever Country.’

This Addiction Treatment Works. Why Is It So Underused?

William O’Brien was a well-heeled doctor with a thriving Philadelphia medical practice. He was also at the center of a massive painkiller supply chain run by an outlaw biker gang.

How a C.I.A. Coverup Targeted a Whistle-blower

He waited 512 days behind bars for his day in court. It never came ("Swift and speedy" my ass.)

Kentucky State Police quoted Hitler and Robert E. Lee, and encouraged cadets to be ‘ruthless’ in a training program (Look at the materials. I don't care who they're quoting, these attitudes they're instilling are not useful.)

Four people 'killed in cold blood' in Vienna during night of terror

The boarding school ‘monster’ who always walked free (Content warning: Child abuse and rape)

Comments

[topaz_eyes]

Can you access ici.tou.tv (CBC/Radio-Canada)?

[conuly]

Doesn't look like it :(

[(Anonymous)]

More franco-Canadien (which may be blocked outside of Canada):
www.telequebec.tv
www.canald.com
video.tva.ca

Web searches for "television [country name] en ligne" got me some hits

[larryhammer]

Hmmm. As you know, we have a stake in the question of adoptive families keeping their children connected with their birth culture -- in our case, white American parents and a China-born child. I don't call it a responsibility, but I very strongly believe it's an important thing to do, especially when the adoption is interracial. One of the things we met, over and over, when we researched this possibility was the large numbers of children regretting their families had not given them that connection, especially the language. Not universal by a long shot (a friend's Korea-adopted sister doesn't care at all) but enough that it's clearly important.

So, yes, Eaglet is enrolled in a Mandarin-immersion program in school, we take part in the Chinese Cultural Center's programs, and are active in the local Red Thread Society (China-adopted families). We've had to defer/cancel our planned return to China for two years now, and Eaglet is starting to REALLY look forward to that (yays). And both of us are also learning Chinese. And all of that, it still doesn't really feel like enough.

All of which has not much to do with the main thrust of your post, as I've little experience when the adoption can pass for bio-family. But some -- we have friends who immigrated from Taiwan and Mainland China, and have adopted a child from each of their home countries. They think it's important too, and not just in an immigrant way.

[conuly]

That was the point I actually made - you do it because adult adoptees largely say it should be done, and they should know.

[lilysea]

Hmmm. As you know, we have a stake in the question of adoptive families keeping their children connected with their birth culture -- in our case, white American parents and a China-born child. I don't call it a responsibility, but I very strongly believe it's an important thing to do, especially when the adoption is interracial. One of the things we met, over and over, when we researched this possibility was the large numbers of children regretting their families had not given them that connection, especially the language. Not universal by a long shot (a friend's Korea-adopted sister doesn't care at all) but enough that it's clearly important.

I read an autobiography recently, All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir by Nicole Chung

and she talked about her anger/sadness/grief that she had not been connected to Korean culture or Korean language after being adopted by white parents;

and also about how several people in the Korean-American community rejected her as an adult when she tried to learn the Korean language as an adult, because they felt she should have learned it as a child.

"Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. From childhood, she heard the story of her adoption as a comforting, prepackaged myth. She believed that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of giving her a better life, that forever feeling slightly out of place was her fate as a transracial adoptee. But as Nicole grew up ― facing prejudice her adoptive family couldn't see, finding her identity as an Asian American and as a writer, becoming ever more curious about where she came from ― she wondered if the story she'd been told was the whole truth.

With the same warmth, candor, and startling insight that has made her a beloved voice, Chung tells of her search for the people who gave her up, which coincided with the birth of her own child. All You Can Ever Know is a profound, moving chronicle of surprising connections and the repercussions of unearthing painful family secrets ― vital reading for anyone who has ever struggled to figure out where they belong."

[larryhammer]

Yup -- that's the sort of story we saw a lot of.

We're treading very lightly on the question of searching for Eaglet's birth parents. One Child policy, even loosened as it's been, makes the chances of finding them very slim, and we don't want to push the possibility (and possible disappointment) unless it's something Eaglet really wants.

[moon_custafer]

I began to suspect a few years ago that one reason for the Temperance Movement/Prohibition was a desire to weaken political corruption by removing alcohol as an easy way to bribe voters. (I’ve also come to suspect that another reason was veiled anti-Irish-Catholic feeling; let’s just say there were probably different factions with different motives, in addition to the “reducing domestic violence” explanation that is the only one I ever see show up in history books).

[siderea]

I’ve also come to suspect that another reason was veiled anti-Irish-Catholic feeling

!!! I hadn't heard that proposed, but now that you mention it, it certainly fits, doesn't it?

[ironymaiden]

I think CANAL+ has a streaming service?

[the_siobhan]

I gave my daughter up for adoption when she was born. She was adopted by a couple who were born in Canada from French and Polish backgrounds.

They always told her she was from an Irish background. They bought her books about Ireland and brought her to visit when she decided she wanted to see it. She grew up proud of her background and I think that really meant a lot to her.

[siderea]

This Addiction Treatment Works. Why Is It So Underused?

...I literally had never heard of this! Thanks so much! My behaviorism professor would have been absolutely delighted.

On one hand, I'm surprised it works as well as it apparently does; on the other hand, that it works fits in with one particular model of addiction and validates it.

ETA: I would also like to observe that this is, when one thinks about it, under the hood, a harm-reduction model that substitutes gambling addiction for stimulant addiction. It's using endogenous dopamine as an agonist therapy, the way one uses methadone for opioid addiction.

[conuly]

I thought you'd like that one!

If it works, I'm all for it - it certainly seems a fairly inexpensive fix compared to most of the others that don't work very well.

[marahmarie]

ETA: I would also like to observe that this is, when one thinks about it, under the hood, a harm-reduction model that substitutes gambling addiction for stimulant addiction.

See, that's why I noped out of the whole idea upon seeing it. It wouldn't work for me (tobacco) and I have my doubts it'd work for others with that and/or other addictions.

Some of my reasons are purely personal, like if/when I quit smoking I want to do it under my own steam and never feel the need dwell upon or gauge my progress again - just one and done. The reward system would serve as a reminder of what I'll already have enough trouble forgetting and maybe just make the whole undertaking feel a bit too chintzy.

The lottery style gets to me, too. I'd actually take the steadier reward of knowing what the next time I light up's going to feel like over not knowing what's in that bowl.

[ioplokon]

Ooof, French TV is a hard one. Cinema, you can usually find good options on mainstream platforms but TV... I would worry that any OTT streaming service would be geolocalized and you wouldn't have access to the French/Francophone content. I generally go the youtube/dailymotion route. The downside is that you have to know what you're looking for but you can definitely watch like all 5000000 seasons of Money Drop on there (posted to the official channel!) as well as a bunch of sitcoms from the 00s and stuff.

[conuly]

I don't know if it might not be more effort than it's worth to try to deal with my mom + dailymotion.

[readerjane]

This is a drop in the bucket, but... Netflix has a show called Criminal: France. It's a homicide-detective show, focusing on the interview past of the investigation. (Not related to Criminal Minds.) There are actually four shows: UK, France, Spain, and Germany, each with their own plots and cast and in their own language, but with the same format. I've really enjoyed the UK one.

[conuly]

We do at least already have Netflix.

[(Anonymous)]

I have watched some of Dix Pour Cent (Call My Agent) and Au service de la France (A Very Secret Service) in the original French, on Netflix but it's Canadian Netflix so your mileage may vary.

[dorchadas]

My ex (whose family came from Russia) often had people tell her she looked Russian, and I've similarly had people tell me I look English. I'm not sure how they tell, but they do.

[mindstalk]

When I traveled Europe in 2010, I did notice that the (white) faces in Paris and Madrid looked different from those in Britain and Amsterdam (and from each other) and from I was used to in the US. "Gallic face" and all. I realized that French and 'pure' Spanish aren't big parts of the US demographic, compared to English, Germans, Italians, Poles...

[conuly]

Finns, having one of the more singular genetic pools in the world, also have a fairly distinct set of facial features - once recognized, never forgotten, though I didn't realize that until I watched a YouTube video of a youth dog obedience course and realized that all the trainers looked very similar.

[mme-n-b.livejournal.com]

"she might have been able to respond to those tourists if she'd spoken Russian" As someone who does speak Russian and does get this kind of comment and did make a conscious decision to emphasize Ukrainian and Jewish heritage over Russian I consider this ability to be overrated.

[conuly]

Well, we don't have Jewish heritage - she does have a Jewish cousin, but that's on the other parent's side, not through the shared grandparents - and speaking to people in French makes my mother super happy, probably because it combines her desire to be chatty with her need to show off how much she knows, and most Americans don't know two languages. Three would be ever so much more so.

[dandelion.livejournal.com]

You mentioned on dreamwidth you have Netflix - this page lists some Netflix programs are available in French:
https://languagelearningwithnetflix.com/catalogue.html#language=French&country=United%20States

[conuly]

You're a doll - are they Francophone produced or just dubbed, though?

[dandelion.livejournal.com]

I've mainly used it for German - the ones I've watched do seem to be actual German rather than dubs though I wouldn't guarantee every single one of them is.