AdopTalk

Got to Avery Fisher later than I had intended despite leaving two hours driving time for a one hour trip. Traffic was insane for midweek, both getting into the city and once there.

I knew that it hadn't gotten any press, and that the main thing was the ad, and that was IN, so I didn’t really sweat it. I figured I do what I could...

Avery Fisher itself is a madhouse. There was, it seems more than one concert there and no way to determine who was going to which without asking..... Outside was a madhouse of people going everywhere and inside I didn’t want to be obvious and get kicked out or worse.

Saw one group of men in priestly collars – about half a dozen of them, so I asked them if they were there for the pro-life benefit. They said yes. I smiled and handed them each a flyer, and thanked them.

The I saw another group of men and women with name tags and the name TOM ATWOOD jumped off one tag! Not surprisingly, the NCFA was there in full force. There was a planned reception following the concert and they may have been speaking or presenting or being presented...thus the name tags. I approached them in the same fashion and with a big polite smile and a “thank you” gave each of them a flyer! (I later snapped a cell phone photo of the NCFA group ...but have no idea how to download it!)

Jessica of Do-Not-Adopt was there with her two ADORABLE kids. her little girl - about 3 had a sign above her head that said: “ADOPTION HURTS CHILDREN.”

We spoke briefly and then got lost from one another in the crowd again and I left shortly after that.

I met a dear friend, a reunited mother named Janet who I’ve known since the 70s and don’t get to see too often. We had fun catching up on our lives. Then we went to a cute little restaurant not far from her apt. It had an old movie theme – posters on the walls and a large screen showing old black and white movies...

We were engrossed in our conversation and paying no attention to the movie screen, when all of a sudden something caught my eye! There on the screen, was a woman walking down the street holding a baby wrapped in a blanket in her arms. It was a silent movie, so the actors are very expressive. I could just tell by the look on her face! I told my fried: LOOK! I think she’s going to abandon her baby! I couldn’t believe it! The next minute, she did just that – left the child in the back seat of a car and kissed him goodbye...then walked off...sullenly...

Turned out it was a Charlie Chaplin movie I had never seen nor heard of before – any of you? It’s called “The Kid.” Charley Chaplin finds and raises the abandoned baby – after he tried to dump it two or three times... Didn’t see the end...have to try to rent it or something... But it was SURREAL!!! Coming from an Safe Haven event and watching that film! Though we didn’t see the end, there were scenes of the mother missing her child and wanting to hold other babies...it was painstaking.

The "kid" was played by Jackie Coogan!

Many of Chaplin’s admirers regard The Kid as his most perfect and most personal film. Yet it seems to have been born out of a state of acute emotional turmoil in his private life.... In October 1918 Chaplin had compromised himself into a hasty marriage with a 17-year-old actress, Mildred Harris. ... Mildred became pregnant and gave birth to a malformed boy, who died after only three days. Chaplin evidently suffered acute trauma from this loss. But the responses of the creative mind are unpredictable. Only ten days after his own child was buried, Chaplin was auditioning babies at his studio.... The emotional element of the film reaches a peak of poignancy in the scenes where the social workers try to take the boy away to an orphanage. The anguish and ferocity of the Tramp’s fight to keep him are unquestionably inspired by memories of Chaplin’s own childhood heartbreak at being taken from his mother at seven years old and placed in a home for destitute children.

Watching it last night, I felt as if I had entered the Twighlight Zone!

The good news is the ad is in. We will get one copy of the journal mailed to us and the whole mailing list of this foundation will get there’s.

Be sure to check out: www.ppffpp.org


Goodnight...