Memnison Journal

Longtime readers will recall that I’m a great fan of the Dutch-American author Hendrik Willem Van Loon, a taste that I got from my mom and her brother, my uncle.   There’s an online exhibit at the Ohio State University site of Van Loon’s illustrations (crude, but charming) for his best-known work, The Story of Mankind.   I always recommend his stuff - dated in many ways, but very neat and clever in many more.

At various times, I get into research projects; some simmer on for decades in various forms, and some break off and pick up speed because I happen to run into something that really fuels the fire, so to speak.

My library here is largely one that I use for reference. I have a huge amount of material that isn’t in book form, and I’m going through that all the time and hacking away at it to be able to organize and marshal the stuff. At present, the idea is to digitize everything, and use various management utilities to be able to find and figure out what’s what.

Here’s a *short* list of the topics I’m still digging for:

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The U.S. dollar’s value is dropping so fast against the euro that small currency outlets in Amsterdam are turning away tourists seeking to sell their dollars for local money while on vacation in the Netherlands.

“Our dollar is worth maybe zero over here,” said Mary Kelly, an American tourist from Indianapolis, Indiana, in front of the Anne Frank house. “It’s hard to find a place to exchange. We have to go downtown, to the central station or post office.”

That’s because the smaller currency exchanges — despite buy/sell spreads that make it easier for them to make money by exchanging small amounts of currency — don’t want to be caught holding dollars that could be worth less by the time they can sell them.

First off, there’s a link here to a translation of the latest SPOORLOOS and a link to the actual show on-line.  As noted previously, my Dutch is nonexistent, and I (and others) had asked her to help out on a translation of the show about the reunion of a Chinese adoptee in the Netherlands with her birth family in Chongqing.   Very touching story.

Some reflections of mine on the ‘finding Chinese birthparents’ issue are at this earlier post here: check out the comments on the Memnison site for more material, links and discussion on the topic.  The Mortimer’s Mom link in the comments in particular is riveting.   Just amazing.

I got this comment on the LJ branch of the site yesterday:

I just ran across this blog entry and I was wondering (although it’s none of my business, of course) whether you guys have given any thought to searching for Meredith’s birth family, or if you’re going to let the girls decide when they’re older whether or not they want to pursue a search. Since they’re so thrilled with each other, knowing they might have another sister and/or brother still in China must be somewhat heart-wrenching. I have no idea what I would do in that situation - I was considering adopting from China before I had my daughter, and I’ll admit that the thought that I wouldn’t have the birthparents breathing down my neck seemed to me to be a plus. Now I’m not so sure…<

The short answer is that we have no intention of searching, just as we had no intention of searching for Mere’s twin sister. That one dropped in our lap. As far as I know, the birth parents will never ever reveal themselves to us, and we have no way to search for them - nothing to go on if we had the desire to. So to us, it’s a moot point. And it is theoretically possible that they might turn up some day and announce themselves to us, but I can’t imagine that’s very likely.

I don’t endorse that sort of search, either for siblings or for birth family. What happened to us was unique. And I’d move heaven and earth to be able to make their greatest wish come true, because I know how deeply they feel about each other.

OK, here’s the long answer, after the cut, in detail:

I wonder what they would have had for my family when they came here in 1688 from the Netherlands….