At our school, we celebrate fifth grade graduation, which is less pleasant than attending a “baby’s first birthday party.” Both events sometimes come off as photo ops, designed for the adults instead of the kids theoretically honored… but at least you don’t have to dress up for the birthday parties. Nevertheless, my son Austin “graduated” from fifth grade last night, so we put him up in a starched shirt and tie and watched from the wooden church pews as they... Read more
Rebecca Cusey responds to my post about the controversial “He’s adopted” line in The Avengers: The line is not entirely throw away. It’s a reference to events in the Thor movie (one of the many running up to The Avengers that told the backstories of the characters.) Loki, the villain (played by Tom Hiddleston) was raised by the god Odin (Anthony Hopkins) and as a brother to Thor (Chris Hemsworth). Loki finds out he was taken into the divine household... Read more
Since I’ve mentioned the wonderful movie “The Avengers” on this blog, I’ve been getting e-mails about a certain exchange in the movie that has cause some consternation in the adoption community. Since we are a family that grew through adoption, we’ve been asked how we dealt with this questionable dialogue: Thor: He is of Asgard and he is my brother! Black Widow: He killed 80 people in 2 days. Thor [deadpan]: He’s adopted. Honestly, I had no idea this was... Read more
I’m always torn when confronted by the aggressive stupidity of many internet commenters. On the one hand, when one “feeds the trolls,” they tend to respond with even more aggressive stupidity. On the other hand, the prevalence of certain arguments is evidence of a troubling mindset and paints a misleading picture of public sentiment. To some folks, literally any action by a conservative Christian must be opposed, and every form of sexuality must be displayed. Don’t believe me? Read the utter nonsense... Read more
Thank you, Channel 2 News here in Nashville for following this story! And thank you, Books-a-Million, for listening and changing that aisle! Read more on the Faith and Family Channel I’m a White Republican Raising a Black Kid: Deal With It More on Race and Adoption A Poignant Moment for Me The Joy of Pretty Things What It Was Like to Co-Write Bristol Palin’s Memoir A Military Wife’s Letter to her Local Church Also, follow me on Twitter and... Read more
How rarely do things in life work out this well? As I mentioned, on Friday I was doing some pre-Mother’s Day shopping with the kids when I noticed a graphic photo of people having sex on the cover of a book. Yes, the book was about various sexual positions, but it was right out there for the entire world to see. The photo wasn’t suggestive, it was completely showing two naked people having sex. I promptly turned over the book... Read more
I was delighted that The Tennessean saw my blog post and did a little investigation themselves. Apparently, the store in Spring Hill is not following corporate policy when they display pornographic images in full sight of children. (Think I’m overreacting? This is just one cover — warning, obviously! — that my kids almost saw.) The Tennessean went to other stores in Nashville and uncovered the fact that other stores did not have such sexual displays: SPRING HILL, Tenn. —... Read more
One morning not too long ago, I was doing my normal morning cruise through my favorite news websites when I came a story about a commencement speaker controversy at a Northeastern college. There’s nothing remarkable about such controversies. In fact, if a university doesn’t have a commencement speaker controversy, either the university chose one of the nine universally-popular people on the planet (Will Ferrell is one of them, I’ll leave it to you to figure out the other eight), or... Read more
I must confess that I awoke this Monday morning feeling a bit useless — feeling very small and insignificant in fact. Not that it’s a bad thing. After all, in this graduation season if I could give one piece of advice to young and ambitious graduates it would be this: “Learn to get over yourself — and quickly.” But still, it’s not necessarily fun to feel insignificant. Why did I feel like blowing off work, skipping even my shower, and... Read more
What’s more fun that taking the kids for a leisurely day at the bookstore? That’s what I was thinking when I went to Books-a-Million in Spring Hill, Tennessee – a great store, and I’m not just saying that because they’ve helped me hold nice book signing events (for this, this, and this). We arrived in the wonderful brick-and-mortar store, ready for a day of walking down aisles and finding new reads. However, I came across something pretty shocking. Someone had... Read more
The French Revolution
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In