Adoption Day

Writing

Advocating for Children

From the Mouth of a Babe

Vacations

Another volunteer job (new)

Adoption Day

November 1, 2008
At the King County Courthouse most of the product is heartbreak. People come there to be convicted and sentenced and to sue and be sued. Even the winners leave having paid a great cost for the chance of justice. Plaintiffs, defendants, jurors, and witnesses queue up at the screening tables all wishing they were somewhere else. Lawyers carrying thick file folders wear their officious faces and speak with contrived authority. Courthouse workers greet each other and speak of weekends and food oblivious to the pain around them. The idea of making new families is completely out of character there. The tiny courtroom sits on the third floor with a view of Third Avenue and the Pioneer Square area. A glass wall separates it from a waiting area where happy, nervous people and fidgety babies and children laugh and chat. One at a time the families file into the courtroom while the people in the waiting room watch through the glass hoping to learn something of what would happen to them. A chalkboard next to the window helps distract the kids as they wait for their case to be called.

Robbie and Meranda's prospective mom and dad had lost out on adopting another child before and they were pretty nervous that this adoption might not go through. Every phone call and voice mail message threatened disaster and sadness, but all the news was good and 9:00 a.m. finally rolled around.. A couple of aunts were there (when we describe relatives, we always use their relationship with the children) along with the family minister. With me and the social worker we are quite a crowd. Meranda wore a nice maroon velvet jumper and Robbie's necktie might have looked better with another shirt, but he was more than presentable.

Then our case is called we file into the courtroom where a white haired judge greets everyone. One aunt lines up behind the judge to catch a video of the proceedings.

The lawyer hired by the parents announces his business and the judge asks for everyone to introduce themselves, even us spectators. I rise and state, "I am the children's CASA. I have been with them five-and-a-half years." The judge also asks the kids if they are good with being adopted and they both nod. He even asks them their new name which they manage to recite.

After pronouncing the children adopted, the judge invites the parties around to his side of the bench where everyone poses for snapshots. Within a total of about seven minutes the process is done and we relinquish the court to a couple carrying an infant and more happy relatives.

The new mom fights back tears as do I. I have represented these kids since Meranda was an infant and so neglected she could not hold up her head. They experienced three other prospective sets of parents until Tom and Janet were able to come through and the best home for them. Amazingly enough the kids do not exhibit any special needs and have every prospect for a normal happy life ahead of them.

My job being done, I gave Meranda and her mom hugs and went about my day.

I have one other case that has lasted nearly as long as Robbie and Meranda's, but that one is steering towards a return home, another happy ending.

Writing

November 1, 2008
Nothing new to report. The publisher is still circulating the manuscript of Down The River among its committee. And no word from the agent who has Tiny Details. The video documentary is also still in final production.

August 8, 2008 (8-8-08 is good luck)
Encouraging words
Some developments on the publishing front. The publisher who has the Down The River manuscript sent me a message. The story goes through a committee and they have the summer off so there won't be any progress before October. But the first reader liked the story. The literary agent in New York is still reading the full manuscript on Tiny Details. No word yet.

About two weeks ago I attended the Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference and was able to pitch both novels to a New York agent. She was intrigued enough to ask for sample chapters for each one. She didn't do mysteries herself, but would circulate my material among the agents in her office.

I learned how important the pitch is. This is a pithy, one-paragraph summary of the story and with the help of a New York editor I was able to fine tune my elevator speech for each.

So the marketing program is on hold. I've started a new story, but you will have to wait for the opening chapters.

Update July 14, 2008
Last Friday I shipped off the manuscript for Tiny Details to a literary agent in New York. The publisher still reading Down The River is still reading it. I have sent out over 160 queries on River and over 100 on Details.

Marketing a mystery 6-4-08
I have just completed entering the edits on my other book Tiny Details, a mystery. This is the first book I wrote and I tried to sell it in 2000 without success. After eight more years of experience I dusted it off, revised it, and sent it off to my editor who offered several thousand corrections. Now it's ready for prime time.

I will do as before, assembling lists of publishers and agents and sending off query letters and sample chapters. The mystery market is very different than the historical fiction market so perhaps it will catch an influential eye and find a place in the publishing world. I mail off the first query letters to publishers. I approach publishers first since they pay royalties directly to the author. A literary agent, the only avenue to the large houses, takes a fifteen percent commission. That's a standard and probably fair share, but it does come out of my end. So the small publishers get first crack.

Down The River, is still under review at one publisher who thought enough of the first fifty pages to ask for the whole manuscript. One agent in New York who I had not heard from in months and months wrote back today that she liked the story, but had some reservations and declined. It was the most thoughtful reply I have ever had from an agent or a publisher. At least she read it and for the most part, she liked it. I sent her a thank you email.

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On Writing 5-6-2008
Having just related the still-unfinished journey of an author I realized that I left something out. Why? Not why I left it out. Why write? Writing should not about making money, although for many it is a living and none of us will say no to a handsome royalty check. Alas, focusing on the money will undoubtedly lead to disappointment. Writing should be about telling the story that you have inside. Getting published is one indication that the story is a good one and commercial support is a good endorsement. But telling the story is the important part.
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Prospecting 05/05/2008
Numbering among thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of aspiring novelists I have a manuscript. Now I want to get it published.

The most direct route would be to seem to send the book to publishers and wait for a reply. Or perhaps send the book to a literary agent who will use his or her luncheon dates to extract a great contract and a hefty advance – less his or her fifteen percent. It’s just a function of printing and postage, right? Wrong.

First of all, the biggest publishers will not talk to, read letters sent by, or open emails from authors. And they certainly do not answer the telephone. This traffic is called “over the transom” referring to the old-fashioned window over an office door for ventilation. Manuscripts are usually too large to fit in the mail slot so the carrier just throws it over the open transom to crash to the floor inside. Small publishing houses will talk to authors, but these are publishing HOUSES, as in single-family residences with a garage full of unsold books. That’s a bit extreme, but small houses do only a few titles a year. That leaves literary agents.

The good news is that agents, and even publishers, want to meet good writers and they offer their names to listings that writers buy. The most popular one is the Writer’s Market, a thick, $50 book with thousands of book, magazine, and other publishers, and literary agents. And it has a current how-to guide for placing your book or article, writing compelling letters, and even formatting a manuscript. Even better, there is an online version included in the purchase of the book that is updated daily. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that there are tens of thousands of wannabe Stephen Kings out there simply inundating agents and publishers with proposals. With modern word processing technology the task of preparing and mailing manuscripts and information becomes easier for the writer, but harder for the reader.

I have been doing everything I am supposed to, reading the listings, finding companies and agencies that handle what I have written (historical fiction and maybe literary fiction), and sending them letters. Sometimes the agent or publisher wants something on one page. A few want sample chapters, or a synopsis, or an author biography.

To date I have sent out 128 queries. About 10 wrote back for sample chapters or even the full manuscript (by email). I call those “nibbles.” Of those 10, one is still considering the sample chapters. All the rest either sent back form letter replies – “Dear Author. We have carefully reviewed…” – or did not respond at all. My compliments to agencies that at least have a mechanism for acknowledging the query.

I am down to about half a dozen agencies left to contact so I save this list for Friday mornings. That’s when I select two or three to send queries to. Then it’s a case of just watching the mail.

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Getting Published - Now and Then 05/02/2008
I have written two works of fiction and I am actively trying to get one, Down The River, published. The process of getting published has changed dramatically over the past five or ten years. At one time a novelist pounded away at a typewriter (or prevailed upon a skilled typist) until he or she had a manuscript. The process of creation and revision entailed laborious finger and mind work until the likes of John Updike or Kurt Vonnegut had several hundred pages of typescript masterful prose. Tom Wolfe has his signature IBM Selectric (if you don't know what that is, don't ask). The number of submissions to publishers and literary agents was physically limited by the number and endurance of writers and typists. A manuscript was singular as in one original and perhaps one copy (Assuming the use of carbon paper – if you don't know what that is, don't ask.) Photo copiers came into vogue in the 1970s making the idea of an original rather quaint. And copiers remained the province of government and well funded private enterprise.

Enter the digital revolution, desktop computers and the word processer. Even in the days of the 8086 microprocessor (if you don't know what that is, don't ask), the desktop computer with one or two floppy drives was a credible and efficient way to transcend the barrier of the skilled typist, muscle- or power-driven keys, a dancing type element, ribbon, and eraser or correction fluid. The writer could create, type (more accurately keyboard, now a verb), edit, and produce a clean printed copy in a fraction of the time and trouble as with a typewriter. Even with dot-matrix and impact printers, letters, reports, and books. The writer didn't even have to know how to type because mistakes were corrected with backspace and delete. The programs automated carriage return, paragraphs. margins, page numbers, footnotes, and even centered titles. Everyman and Everywoman became a potential blockbuster novelist.

And the digital revolution not only changed writing habits, but it changed reading habits. Books, magazines, and newspapers encountered more competition as the number of television channels grew exponentially from four or five to four or five hundred. Subscriptions lapsed and articles became shorter to accommodate busier days. The short story as a commercial product nearly became extinct. The number of writers increased as evidenced by the proliferation of writing schools. Fifty years ago there were two writing schools in the U.S. In the 1990s there were more than two thousand.

Book publishers slashed their lists and even published writers found themselves in a crowded marketplace. The bad news was that even if you were a good writer you might not get published. But the good news was that even if you weren’t a good writer, you could get published.

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Advocating for Children

6/9/08
Indian Cases

Probably the most complex kinds of cases we see in dependencies are those involving Indian children. Before about thirty years ago, Indian children were commonly adopted off the reservation to non-Indian families. Naturally the tribes took issue with this latest depredation by the United States of their identity and culture.

Congress passed a law which gave the tribes the last word in handling any Indian child who goes into dependency — foster care. A tribe can get involved in the case in almost any way they want, from taking the case entirely away from the state court, to helping, to doing nothing. And if an Indian child is to be adopted, the tribe has final say on where the child goes. Some children have found homes in non-Indian families only to have the tribe come along later and say, no, we want the child with us. The child has no say in the matter other than through an advocate — me.

So the trick in these cases is to find out if a kid is an Indian. Easy to say. There are more than five hundred tribes recognized by the U.S. Government and many more not recognized. There are Canadian first nations which have cultural and political relationships with U.S. tribes and can lay a claim to a child and Native Alaskan community. If someone says the kid has Indian heritage, we have to write letters to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and to all the possible tribes and ask if he or she is one of theirs. Some tribes write back and some don't.

Even if we don't hear back from tribes, they can still come into the case and undo everything that has been done. So it is critical to engage these tribes early, if we can.

Some tribes are large with sophisticated governments and large, profitable casinos generating cash to benefit the members. Other tribes are very informal with the barest of structure, very poor, and might only have a post office box for contact. The hardest situations is where a tribe is made up of idividual bands and each band has rights under the law.

I am fortunate with the one Indian case I've had. The kid was clearly a member and the tribe had a large casino (getting bigger) along an interstate. They have a lawyer who attends all proceedings and they have money they shower on services for the kid. Or just shower him with money. But with the growth of Indian gaming some of the tribes are now more reluctant to extend membership to someone with tenuous ties to the reservation.

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6/4/08
The Last Visit

The other evening I visited R and M who I have represented for over five years. M was about six months old then and was "delayed," a child development term meaning she wasn't growing well. She couldn't even hold up her head. Through the inspired help of the staff at Childhaven she got back on track. They are now seven and five.

But through a number of missteps by The System, some unavoidable, the kids did not find permanency until just a few months ago. They moved in with a lovely couple who just wanted to be caring parents. The case is approaching the point where R and M will be adopted which will conclude my involvement with them. A hearing is coming up so I needed to file a report and for that I needed to see how they were doing.

Monday afternoon was lovely and the kids were playing on the front porch. They greeted me with "Hi, Dave" and rushed to show me their bicycles (R just got the training wheels off) and the storage shed their new dad was building for them. The shed is not just for storage. It will include a playhouse in the upper story. M wanted to show me the lovely flowers, but only if I was unafraid of bees. I assured her I was fine.

The judges like to have photos of the kids to go with the reports so I brought along my digital camera. I posed with each of them while the other took some pictures.

Naturally, I visited with the prospective adoptive parents and got a good picture of how they are doing. Both R and M wanted to show me all the family snapshots of the great adventures they had had such as a Pacific beach, motocross races, and just a trip to the park.

The next step for them is adoption and then I will be out of the picture.

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5/8/09

What still amazes me after six years as a CASA is the extent to which I can actually influence the outcome in court. Chalk it all up to persistence. Let me set the stage.

Child dependency cases are heard by commissioners, lawyers appointed by the elected judges to handle these kind of routine matters. In many cases the commissioners come out of the ranks of family law practitioners so they have a leg up on the business. Not only do they know the language of social workers and child protection law, but they know the types of people that routinely end up in court. So we start with a judge's bench and the concurrent clerks and courtroom specialists who keep the paper moving.

Instead of one table for one side and one table for the other there are three tables; the State people, the parents and their lawyers, and, in the middle, the CASA and his lawyer. Actually most CASAs are women, but this CASA is a man and this is his blog. So right off the bat this volunteer is given equal status with the other "parties." These cases used to be closed so the courtrooms have little in the way of spectator seating; just chairs or benches along the back wall.

As the cases drag on it is usually only the CASA who can provide any sense of continuity. New social workers and Assistant Attorneys General get assigned, and the public defenders juggle so many cases they have substitutes as often as not. After about a year – most cases go years – the CASA is the only one with any institutional knowledge. It may come as a surprise that this civilian volunteer has all the information that the people who are paid to be there need. I have slipped notes of correction to the AAG who has no clue who these kids are and who is sitting next to a substitute social worker.

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5/7/2008

I have a volunteer job that is some job. I am a Court Appointed Special Advocate sometimes called Guardian ad litem or just CASA in the King County Superior Court Juvenile Division. It is my role to investigate cases where kids are removed from the home for neglect and abuse and then report to the court on what is happening and what should be done. The kids have social workers, but their job is to comply with state and federal law and departmental policies and procedures. And note that I say social workers. Any case going longer than two years (I have two cases five years old) the kids can get two or three workers. More on The System another time.

I had to go through an application process, be interviewed, undergo a background check, take twenty-four hours of training (plus twelve more hours every year). All that does is teach you what you don't know.

Then you make a choice from among dozens and dozens of gut-wrenching cases involving drugs, alcohol, insanity, and just plain criminal behavior. I have a leg up on most of the other volunteers. I have a background in investigations so reading reports and case files and interviewing witnesses was a snap. And I have a pretty good ability to keep emotions out of the situation.

What I wasn't prepared for was the mystifying array of social services that come into play when children become dependent. There are psychological evaluations, educational evaluations, drug and alcohol evaluations, domestic violence evaluations, and others I don't remember. And these evaluations trigger services with acronyms like PCIT and TF-CBT. The people who come up with these concepts must be really smart.

The CASA's job is to look over the shoulder of the social workers and their department and see that the kids are getting everything they need. The squeaky wheel does get the grease and CASAs help keep kids from slipping through cracks and help kids stuck in cracks. For it's a big dumb system. I could tell you stories and you probably read about some of them when, tragically, a child dies. In those cases the kids either don't have CASAs or the CASA program is so small as to be ineffective. The latter is the case in most small jurisdictions. Better no advocate than one not doing a good job.

Most dependent children are not in foster homes. Dependent just means they are under state supervision and their parents are ordered by a court to undergo certain services like drug and alcohol treatment. If kids are actually taken out of a home the first stop is usually a relative. Most of my cases have involved a relative placement. Or they are dependent in-home. Only when there are no relatives do kids go to licensed care.

And some kids have problems so profound that an institutional setting is needed. The stories of kids being bounced among foster homes don't speak of how the child assaulted other children or tried to burn the house down.

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Vacations

6/14/2008
France 2006

Over the years, Lorraine and I experimented with different ways to vacate or take vacations. Lorraine likes to luxuriate. I like to be active, particularly outdoors and in a wilderness setting. I've always enjoyed camping, but Lorraine is not a camper. Naturally, I enjoy great hotels and fine dining, but I want more. The years I was the neighborhood Scoutmaster in San Francisco I was able to camp my heart out and paddle canoes and ride horses (proving that I am really twelve years old).

We tried a tour to England in 2000 with the UW Alumni Association and found that we were the youngest couple in the group. The trip was wonderful, but the company was indifferent. Just too many senior citizens.

We finally hit on the trip that appeals to both of us — bicycle touring. For years, decades even, I have admired the ads from Backroads Bicycle Tours and their approach to touring, ride bikes through exotic locals and the company takes care of everything else. Expensive? If you have to ask, you can't afford it, right?

Our first trip was to France. Backroads offered a six-day-five-night trip to Normandy and Brittany. Knowing a bit of geography I figured this part of France would be relatively flat (Lorraine hates the hills) and Normandy is, of course, something all Americans should see. The trick to a big vacation is book it! Pay a deposit and lock yourself in. Then let the rest of the world work around your plans. In our case I think we were the first ones on that particular trip. We plunked out money down in January for a September visit.

Pictures speak better than words so here is our album of the cycle trip. We flew to Paris, spend the night in the Opera District, got up the next day and took a train to Caen, spent the night there, and then linked up with our group at the train station. We were treated to lovely weather, fascinating company, stunning scenery, incredible food, and first-class accomodations. We rode Normandy for three days, then Brittany for two days.

When we went to the UK, the measure of the trip was while on the bus from our London hotel out to the airport on our way home we asked each other, "Where do you want to go next time?" In Normandy we asked that question the first evening.

From St. Malo we took the train to Rennes for the night, then to Paris. And you can't go to France without spending time in Paris so we crafted a bike trip followed by a week in the City of Light. Through the web we rented an apartment in the Quartier Latin just a few blocks from the Seine and Notre Damme. For a week we did the tourist thing and here are those photos. Paris is, well, Paris. I have never met anyone who had anything but good things to say about Paris. Maybe Marie Antoinette, but I never met her.

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6/14/2008
Vermont

For 2007 we chose the Backroads trip to Southern Vermont Vermont is in the United States and neither of us had been there bofore. The Rocky Mountains trips had mountains and the southeast trips had bugs. We had biked in California and the San Juans so Vermont was left.

We spent the first two nights in Burlington and hooked up with out tour group there. Alas we did not have the weather we had in France, but the company and the country and the lodging and the services were fabulous. And we spoke the language. This was another five-night-six-day trip.

Following Vermont we took advantage of a gig Lorraine had in New York — The Big Apple. Like France, you can't go to the east coast and not visit New York. We did the tourist thing there and on day two handled Lorraine's business at Forbes.com.

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Another Volunteer Job

November 1, 2008
The review board job is slow to get off the ground. We have had just one meeting and most of it was taken up with training on how to conduct meetings, how not to have meetings (too many emails can be a meeting), how to preserve records, and how to talk to the press. With seven accomplished and busy people, just finding times when we can all meet proved a challenge. We want to have two meetings a month, one in the afternoon and one in the evening, to allow for public participation. When we finally came up with one good date, I will be out of town. But I pledged to call it in (which we can do) from Oregon.

The other aspect of the job has been training. I participated in sessions for the officers who staff the internal investigations section, for lawyers wanting to help mediate complaints, and, every Thursday evening, the community police academy.

On top of all that the city council sent me to Cincinnati for five days for the National Association of Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement conference. Folks from all over the nation and several foreign countries gathered to share information on structure, trends, problems, and accomplishments. Being so new to the job I had little to offer.

I learned many things including the unique issues of domestic violence by police officers (far greater than with the general population), the tightening standards for officer dishonesty, and the extent to which civilian oversight bodies have reduced the number and types of complaints.

One thing that gets a lot of play in the press is racial profiling, the idea of targeting police services based on race. When I was a DEA agent in the 1970s we did racial profiling as we looked for drug couriers at the airport. The process was even written down. In the 21st Century this is frowned upon (profiling, not writing things down).

The problem is that, absent some spoken slur, it is nearly impossible to demonstrate a racial element in a police interactions with the public. In all the racial profiling complaints of the LAPD there were perhaps three that could be tagged as having a racist element.

Instead, the presenters said, we should be looking at the constitutionality of the stops themselves. If an officer stops a SUV with heavily tinted windows at night in a high crime area for a tail light infraction, why did the occupants spend half an hour seated on the curb in handcuffs? Some issues just require a new approach.

August 12, 2008
The City Council confirmed my appointment last night. Here is my testimony before the Public Safety Committee of the Seattle City Council a week ago.

July 14, 2008
I was recently nominated to be a member of the Seattle Police Department Office of Professional Accountability Review Board. This is a seven member panel of citizens which oversees the office that investigates allegations of police misconduct and the discipline system. This is actually the second interation of this board which consisted of three members for six or seven years. Complaints about the structure and authority of the office and the board led to two different evaluation committees over the past year. The new setup has been signed off by the police officers guild and now the city council will enact legislation to implement the changes. One change is expanding the board from three to seven members.

I saw an article in the newspaper that mentioned the city was looking for people with a law enforcement background. That was me and I needed a new intellectual challenge. This seems to be a good fit. Of course there will be meetings, lots of them.

We won't apparently be reviewing individual investigations but will be monitoring the whole process, conducting community outreach, and keeping up with other developments in the field of police accountability.

Stay tooned.

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