I don’t see reports of phone calls being made overseas yet. But if they were actually mailed when the agencies said they were, then we should see phone calls today.
I’m going to go ahead and start the LID Poll this morning. If you are logged into the NSN program and still expect to accept your referral, please go here and let us know your LID.
If you are expecting a referral in this batch, or if you are in another program and would like to share your news, please list blog name and blog URL in the comments to this post. If your site plays music automatically, please post a warning.
In case you don’t go somewhere today that is protesting the upcoming censorship legislation, I’d like to point you to some trusted sources who can explain it to you:
If you go to Google.com today you’ll see a big black square over their logo. Wikipedia is closed for the day. A few other sites I haven’t mentioned here are also closed for the day.
The copyright issues these bills are trying to fix are real, and there does need to be a solution to them. I see my own book being pirated and there is nothing I can do about it. I can usually write the site owner and have it taken down, but it’s back up within a day or two. I decided to not give it any energy, as I don’t want to focus on the negative, so it’s out there and can be downloaded for free and I just have to ignore that and be thankful there are honest people who are paying for it. I’ll probably make around fifteen hundred dollars on it over a two year period — if the people pirating it would pay for it I would likely make a lot more. With that being said, these bills are not the solution. I know we steer clear of politics here unless it directly relates to adoption, but these censor bills could easily change the way I have to handle the forum, and might force me to have to close it. If either of these bills are made into law, and then someone were to post something on there that they didn’t own the copyright to, I would be held responsible. There is no way that I, or even a large team of moderators, can possibly view every post to be sure it isn’t violating some obscure copyright somewhere. This isn’t the only thing wrong with the bills, but it’s the reason I’m posting about it here.
So if you have time today, please take the time to follow the links at one of these sites and make your voice heard to congress.
Enough agencies are saying the cut-off is the 15th that I think it’s probably the cut-off. I’m putting it at an R4. It’s not an R5 because I’m told there is still one European agency telling their 8/18 people they are in this time.
Several agencies are saying referrals have been mailed. I’m thinking that probably means we’ll begin seeing them tomorrow, but there is a possibility they could arrive today. I do not see reports of them arriving in Europe yet, though.
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In other news, I’m seeing reports that the USCIS isn’t going to allow any more extensions to the grandfathered I-600A paperwork. I haven’t seen anything official yet, just reporting what some people are beginning to hear. If this is true then people who have used up the allowed extensions, keeping their paperwork up to date, will have to start over again with the Hague compliant paperwork if their final extension expires before they can make it to their consulate appointment in China.
Enough places are saying the 15th is included that I think it probably is, so I’ll give it an R4 that the 15th is included.
A few places are saying the cut-off is the 18th, but I’m keeping that at an R2 right now, because I’m only seeing one source that appears to be an agency, with the rest sounding like they are just repeating the one original source.
If it is the 15th or the 18th then I’ll need to make another column. My latest projection post was for the 24th, but I said that if I were to do it based on recent numbers then it would be the 14th or 15th, and if that turned out to be the case then it was time for a new column.
I don’t see any rumors saying they’ve been mailed, nor do I see any rumors of when they are expected to arrive.
I’m told the shared list came out last night, good luck to those hoping to be matched to a child on the list!
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would be 83 years old, if his life hadn’t been cut short, and if he’d managed to live that long. What would he say about our world today?
How much of his Dream has come to pass? A good deal of it has, but we aren’t quite there yet. If Dr. King could spend a day at my children’s school I believe he would weep with joy. But if he spent a day in another school I can think of not too far from here, he’d probably get right to work.
Next year will mark fifty years since he gave this speech. I hope it doesn’t take another fifty years to get the rest of the way there.
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
That’s the famous part of the speech, but there was a lot more to it. I’ve posted the entire speech below, or if you’ve got the time and really want a walk down memory lane, here is a video (speech starts at around one minute in):
If you’d like to read the entire speech, click to read more. But let’s talk about this from our children’s standpoint: Do you think they are judged by the content of their character, or by their race? I think the vast majority of the time they are judged by the content of their character. Sadly, there are still people who seem to see only the Chinese parts of them. Of those people, many of them are older, so we can hope that by the time our children are adults they won’t have as big of a problem with that. But still, we have to prepare them for racism, but we have to do it in a way that doesn’t put a chip on their shoulder about it. Read the rest of this entry »
Is everyone staying warm? The US weather map is pretty active right now, with only a handful of states escaping the winter weather.
I don’t see any rumors this morning.
What shall we talk about today? How about responsibilities for a six (almost seven) year old? What do you expect your six year old to be able to do? Fold and hang their own clothes? Keep up with their art supplies? Do you allow unlimited use of scissors and markers or do you closely supervise those things? Do they have to help set the table? Do they have to help any with kitchen clean up after meals?
What do you take away for consequences? What do you give out for rewards?
