Marcy’s Mountain Gazette ~ Extras
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Crazy, isn’t it? That eight big newspaper pages wasn’t enough space to hold all the good news? This page is to bring you a few more things that mean a lot to me and just wouldn’t fit in the Gazette. Please forgive any clunkiness in formatting. Working with webpages is a pain and I’m using an existing table template from one of my parenting course pages. It’s a bit linear for my taste, but it is the fastest way to get all this posted. If you’re looking at this on a phone, I suggest at least turning it horizontal. If you’d like to see what I’ve been up to on my now-very-side-gig as Dr. Marcy (like issuing a 25th Anniversary edition of my Adoption Insight articles and blogging about our collective digital dependence), click up there to the left on “Home” (while holding the “Command” key to open it in a different tab so I don’t lose you here). And, I’d love to hear your news, too: my email address is marcyaxness@gmail.com.
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These are pictures of John with Ian and Eve just four days before he passed. A loving goofball right until the end! A few weeks earlier he had delighted everyone with some impromptu vocal licks. You can hear his wife Bernice on here, too. My favorite part is hearing his laughter. And his last words on this recording? “I’ve had fun.” |
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Some photo album memories, at right. John and Bernice were so wonderful with Ian and Eve. I remember the time my back went out while the kids and I were visiting them in San Francisco, and they were just the best sports, taking them to all sorts of fun places while I lay flat on my back in bed in their lovely home! |
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 Lise and me after another Turandot, 10ish years ago.
Remember “little Lise” who I regarded as like a darling little doll? Well, she’s definitely still darling, but also an international opera star. Left, Larry and me at the closing matinee performance of Turandot—one of Lise’s specialties, which she sings literally all over the world—in March ’18 with San Diego Opera. (Note yellow arrow to Lise on massive poster!) Karl and Arleen were kind enough to host us in Encinitas. |
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 My cousin Alex McDavid on the left, my brother Mike Vane on the right.
 My cousin Alex visiting me in the forest. |
In John’s memoriam piece in the Gazette, I mentioned a couple things about my experience of being an adopted person. I have written ad nauseum on the topic and also spoke at conferences about it throughout much of the 90s) and if you’re curious about that, scroll down to the information about Adoption Insight 25th Anniversary Collection. But for now I’ll share that I’ve been blessed to be able to reconnect with birth relatives on both sides, and have developed a particularly strong feeling for my Scots roots from the McDavid side (my birthfather was Bob McDavid). Even some of my closest friends don’t know that my original name before being adopted was Katherine McDavid. In May of 1990 I met Mike Vane, my half-brother on my father’s side. We have remained close all these years. His (then-now-ex) wife Anne and I have also stayed close. In fall of 1991, that whole side of the family threw a huge family reunion. It was held in Yosemite because, as it turns out, we’re connected to the Ansel Adams family! My father’s mother was sisters with the mother of Virginia Best, who married Ansel. Their two children, Anne and Michael, are my second cousins. The reunion was held right at the little log house where they all lived together in his beloved Yosemite. |
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 Michelle Barrett Savoy, one of my McDavid cousins who shares this same nose as mine. My brother Mike snapped this at our father (her uncle) Bob’s memorial service in Santa Barbara about 15 years ago.
With my birthmother Liz (on her birthday in hospice, April 2011) and my half-sister Liz. |
I saw “my” nose on someone else for the first time in my life at that gathering! Looking across the dinner table growing up to see one’s face (or gestures or vocal inflection) reflected in others is something most people take for granted. For adoptees, to see facets of themselves in a biological relative is just one of the many thrills that reunion can bring. I first met my cousin Alex at that reunion. (His father Bill and my father Bob were brothers.) Alex has emerged as the family historian, and posts lots of cool family lore and vintage photographs. He dropped up to visit a few weeks ago after spending time with his cousins Mike (my half brother) and Rich (my cousin too) and we had a grand time catching up and talking family.
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Dear Marcy,
The warmest greetings for Christmas and New Year from Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania! I’ve kept the idea to reach out for a long time. I want to thank you for a great book [Parenting for Peace], which I accidentally came across while visiting my husband’s parents in Los Angeles many years ago. And even more I’m happy to read your thoughts about children’s digital preoccupation [blog series “Wired Wednesdays: Exploring Our Digital Dependence”]. I worry very much about my three youngest kids, though we are a Waldorf [education] family, as new technologies intervene in our family’s and community’s world so rapidly. This is also why I feel good writing you in the old-fashioned way (and I apologize for my English which is not my native language).
I am planning to promote the ideas on natural childhood in opposite to the new technologies in my community and your ideas on your website as well as your book will be very helpful to me.
Thanks for your great job again! Hopefully I will meet you one day in person either on the streets of Los Angeles or, maybe, in the beautiful downtown of Vilnius!
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A Love Letter to Parenting for Peace,
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I only signed up for Instagram so I can see Eve’s stories… but while exhausted in bed one day recently, feeling discouraged in a pervasive way about the state of the world, and about Parenting for Peace’s “failure to launch” as a business … I was scrolling through my Insta feed, and came upon this: the responses she got in the thread that emerged were a true gift (at right). |
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This past 5 years I have felt “out of touch” with the experiences of today’s parents and a sense of how kids are doing, in light of the handheld device era and what feels like a hyper-acceleration of life and culture in general, so this thread was like a balm to me. Here was what I added: |
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A couple travel moments that would not quite fit into the Holiday Gazette…
Santa Rosa, August 2018
And before I toast you
…a final farewell… |
This isn’t really the view from my deck. This is a forest in Juneau, Alaska—September, 2017.
… the morning of this Juneau hike is when I learned that my beloved Monty had passed. The rainy day was fitting for a tearful farewell to my ever-faithful companion and protector ~ bringer of delight, comfort and love. |
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