It's bad enough to have one's father screeching at one over the phone like that (I've not followed the story since it originally broke, so have no idea what triggered his angry outburst), but it seems to me it'd be a hundred times worse to have it plastered all over the internet and news.  

What, exactly, made that qualify as legitimate "news", as in "the public's right to know"? 

Pitiful. 

From the Christian Science Monitor:  Orphanages brim, but Russia thwarts foreign adoption

This week, the last of 89 foreign-based adoption agencies failed to get reaccreditation.

"It's a whole new process, based on a government
decree passed last November," says Sergei Vitelis, an official with the
Ministry of Education and Science. "We do not yet have a single case
where all the ministries have given their approval; as soon as we have,
we'll start issuing licenses."

Russia has some 700,000 institutionalized
children, about 260,000 of whom are officially listed as orphans
available for adoption. Last year alone 140,052 children were placed in
orphanages, according Russia's official Statistics Service, while 7,742
were adopted by Russian families and 6,689 by foreigners.

So as of right this minute, if any adoptions are going to happen, they'll have to be done independently, which makes me weak to even think about.   They do happen, mind!  As a matter of sorry fact, those cases where Russian adoptees wind up beaten or killed by their America families were usually handled independently.  The primary safeguard are proper agencies, yet Russia's setting up one obstacle after another, to the point there are now no accredited foreign agencies in Russia at all. 

This story came from the CSM last December:  In remote Russia, 'Murziki' bring cheer to orphans

The Murziki tell the kids that they come from the
mythical country of Murlandia, a kind of cross between Neverland and
Santa's Village. In reality, they're something almost as rare in
Russia, where the volunteer spirit has been dead for the past century:
a self-organized band of middle-class people devoting their resources
and spare time to a sustained effort to change hard facts for a few
hundred children.

"We decided not to sit around waiting for the state
to do something about the human crisis we saw unfolding," says German
Pyatov, a Moscow surgeon who founded the group after the 1998 financial
crash in Russia.

It's now grown to about 700 supporters, connected by
the Internet, and a hard core of several dozen Muscovites who regularly
make the 300-mile drive out to the chain of poor Volga towns, with
their teeming orphanages, that they've targeted.

"I've found that interacting with these children
charges me with the energy to keep going," says Mr. Pyatov. "It's
enough to look in their eyes to realize that not enough is being done."

They have their work cut out for them. Russia's orphan
population has ballooned in the past 15 years, particularly in the
economically blighted hinterland beyond booming Moscow.

Rybinsk, a formerly closed defense-industry town of
250,000 on the Volga River, had one orphanage in 1991; now it has six.
This reflects a widespread post-Soviet tendency of impoverished
families to abandon children.

Forty out of the 52 inhabitants of orphanage No. 72
have living parents who won't, or can't, care for them. "Most of the
factories around here went bankrupt, and people lost everything," says
Nina Kornyushkina, the orphanage's director. "Many people sank into
despair and alcoholism, and the children were just lost."

About 760,000 children are classified as orphans in
Russia, according to the Ministry of Education, while a further 1.5
million are thought to be "homeless." Statistics cited by Pyatov
suggest that existing institutions do little to help them.

"Roughly 45 percent of children land in prison within
five years of leaving the orphanage, 35 percent become drug or alcohol
addicts, 10 per cent die - of accidents and suicide - and just 10
percent are considered relatively successful," he says.

"Being sent to an orphanage is a catastrophic route for
any child," says Sergei Korobenko, the Russian head of Hope
International, which runs programs in large cities to persuade parents
not to give up their children to orphanages. "There are very many
families at risk, and we try to work directly with them, to find ways
to ease their problems and keep the children in the home setting."

Doubtless Vitaly, the only one not adopted from the Bright Futures camp that brought us Joe, Zhenya, and Reagan, has "graduated" from Shumerly.  I wonder where he is now and how he's doing? 

We elected to pay this year's property taxes in two payments, and this morning I went to the county tax assessor's online site to pay the balance.

Apparently I somehow managed to make a payment last November that left a balance of a penny for the first half.  Can you believe the system wouldn't permit me to pay the entire amount, but would only take a PENNY?

Looks as if the penny payment'll have to be posted before I can pay the other half. 

In a few weeks Xanga will permit NON-Xangan comments!  

So.....I expect the number of comments here to increase exponentially.   

The Stars just scored a goal in tonight's play-off game, which began over an hour and a half ago.

It's the first goal of the game. 

At least the Mavericks won, after mostly being 3-6 points behind San Antonio for the majority of the game.  It was their 66th win of the season, putting them in 10th place for the most wins in the NBA.  

Go MAVS! 

We were fine here, but Jessica and Jason's cars (plus the Skylark, which they kindly allow us to park on the side of their driveway) were battered by large (as in baseball-sized) hail. 

Hail won. 

Baseball-sized hail also pounded DFW airport, doubtless to the dismay of both airlines (due to their airplanes being pummeled) and passengers (due to both their cars being pummeled, not to mention their flights being delayed).

The news stations had continuous coverage of the storms, and during one segment featuring a reporter outside on the High Five (five layers of freeway bridges in the north Dallas area), the soggy reporter observed that the storm was worsening with increasing rain, strong winds and hail, to which he added a pithy comment:  "Hail hurts!"

The people in the station advised him to get back in the van. 

While out (either going to or returning from Chuck E. Cheese's), Jessica saw the back of the tornado that moved through the Richland Hills area, past 820 and 121.  Better the back than the front! 

Wow.  There's a concept for you.

Turns out the CoolZone Winterplex is a serious project on the books, and one of the people involved is ex-Congressman Dick Armey, and the design team is one that has built for Disney and Universal.  The idea is to build a 250' "mountain" as the primary feature of a resort on a piece of land not far from Alliance airport, so that winter sports will be available year-round:

At first blush it sounds like a totally goofy idea, but the more I mull it over, the goof factor fades.  The Metroplex is a huge market base for skiers...thousands of people from here flock to slopes in New Mexico, Colorado, etc. every winter.  What do you wanna bet those people would be eager to be able to ski at home betweentimes?  Plus there are all of us who'd rather like to try skiing but are reluctant to pop the necessary bucks to buy a ski trip.  And let's not forget the ferocious heat of this area.....snow in July? 

I'm so there! 

Tell you one thing that really frosts me, and not in a good way, and that's how it's being promoted as being in DALLAS. 

'Scuse me, if it's around Alliance Airport, it's in the FORT WORTH area, not Big Dreadful. 

Alex called this morning to tell us the news....Beth had the sonogram, and their new baby's a girl.  

He allowed as now they need to think of a girl's name, seeing as how they were going to use Caleb Ray, which is what Hannah'd been, had she been a boy.

I told him that's kind of funny, as his father and I never "reused" a name.  We'd have girl and boy names ready, but whichever name wasn't needed fell permanently by the wayside.  One chance and that's it, by golly.  Can't think why, really. 

My sister Jeanne and I had such good times growing up together, as do Meredith and Margaret, Elaine's girls....I'm delighted to think of precious poppet Hannah having this same pleasure. 

Up in Chicago they're closing the schools and canceling flights due to the heavy snow, while here in Fort Worth it's in the 70's and clear as a bell.

Every now and again I find the extreme weather differences taking place simultaneously in the country to be nigh unto overwhelming.