A few weeks ago my partner’s son B was here for the holidays, and as usual he and I spent a great deal of time together.  I’m often curious about when and how kids learn about race, and I always observe how B discusses race.  He is a dark skinned black child, and I am a very fair skinned white person, which makes it fairly obvious to any on-looker that I am not his biological mother.

In the past three years his understanding of race has changed.  At the age of 4, he was fairly clueless about race.  He knew people had different colors but had no concept of race.  At 5, he used the racial terms “black” and “white” to refer to people on some occasions.  However, his use of black and white didn’t necessarily follow with the rest of society.  He called both the East Indian girl and the Chicano boy at the playground black.  Basically everybody who wasn’t pale white was black, and the deciding factor was skin color.  Anybody darker than honey was black.  (At 5, I also remember him asking me why people were looking at us (he and I), but he never connected it to race.)

Now fast forward to our Easter Holiday this year.  He is 7, and his understandings of race have changed.  They conform more closely to social standards.  His racial awareness is also heightened, when I am around him.  I think there were a few interaction and exchanges where this was very clear. 

In the first case, he and I had taken the train to pick up daddy from work.  Since I have never ridden the train with a child, I was overcharged.  The conductor told me to exchange the ticket for the reduced family fair when we exited at our stop.  I went up to the counter, and said to the ticket agent,   “I need to exchange this ticket for my son because I was overcharged.” 

He was standing right by me, and started laughing, “Why did you tell her I’m your son?” 

I said, “I know you’re not my son.  I was just trying to make it easier for her to understand.”

B replied, “But she won’t think I’m your son.”

I responded, “Why do you say that?”

B said, “She might think you took me because I’m black and you’re white.”

I thought this whole exchange was revealing.  He already has the sense that blacks and whites are separated–that black kids and white adults don’t look right to others.

The second incident was even more interesting.  B and I were shopping at a drug store, and the following exchange ensued.  When we went up to pay, he said,

“Why were those people looking at us?” 

Rachel: “What do you mean?”

B: “Were they looking at me because I’m black and you’re white?  They want to know if you are my mommy.”

Rachel: ”Why do you think that?”

B: (very matter matter of factly) “Because black kids have black moms.”

Rachel: “Can black kids have white moms?”

B: (laughing at what he thinks is a joke) “Black kids can’t have white moms.”

Rachel: “So if I have a kid, will that kid be black or white?”

B: “White.”

Rachel: “If I have a kid with daddy, will that kid be black or white?” (For the record Daddy is black.)

B: “White.”

Rachel: ”But daddy’s black, and he would be the daddy?”

B: “So the kid will be black.”

Rachel: “But I’m white, and I’m the mommy.”

B: (Telling what he thinks is a really funny joke.) “It will be a purple alien baby.”

Rachel: “Not it won’t be an alien. It will be black and white. Did you know that some people are black and white?  And some people aren’t either black or white.”

B: “Really.”

Rachel: “Some kids have black mommies and white daddies, and some kids have white mommies and black daddies.  And sometimes a black kid can have a white mommy and a white daddy, or a white kid can have a black daddy and a black mommy.  That’s like adoption. Do you know what adoption is?”

B: “When a black kid has a white mommy?”

Rachel: ”No, adoption is when a mommy has and child but asks another mommy to take care of the child.”

I think this was the end of the conversation, but I found it interesting how conscious he was of other people looking at him and me.  He very clearly connected it to race.  On a few occasions in the past, I have had children ask me if I was his mommy.  It was very clear that race had a factor in these questions because they were posed with a sense of doubt.  B even struggles with his interaction around me, frequently calling me mommy and then correcting himself or having me correct him.

These are the kinds of issues that frequently come up in mixed race families. They are also faced by monoracial families even if they don’t realize it.  The two white children who asked if I was B’s mommy were also confronted with their (mis)understandings of race.  I do wonder if it would be different if I was the black one and he was white.  Given that we live in a fairly rich area, where many upper middle class and upper class white parents have women of color as their nannies, it is not too uncommon to see black and brown women taking care of small white kids.  However, a white women taking care of a black child is almost unheard of, which is why we probably get some many stares.  To be honest I don’t notice the stares, but B does.  I think I don’t notice the stares because having been in an interracial relationship for a while I’m used to stares.  As a defense and coping mechanism, I tune out the stares.  I generally act like I don’t see people starting because I don’t have the time or energy to explain to them why it is annoying.  Moreover, you never know why people are staring. If the stare is the curiosity stare, I let it go, but if it is the hateful racism stare, I’m much more inclined to respond.  It will be interesting to see if B develops the same defense mechanism.  Hopefully, he’ll be here for the whole summer this year, which will give him time to get used to being with me

Personally, I think these kinds of conversations are important to have.  I don’t bring up race too much with B, but when he brings it up, I try my best to get him to understand that many of the common understandings of race are wrong. I haven’t taught him about racism, yet.  Well, I did tell him about Rosa Parks because he saw a book about her, but apparently at 7 Junie B. Jones and Captain Underpants are way more interesting than Rosa Parks.

Just a couple of pictures this week, from a trip we took to the park last week. (Portland has so many small parks, almost anywhere you live in the city you’re walking distance from one).

I love this photo of Sydney. It’s a nice photo of her at play, and at the same time it explains why it’s so difficult to take nice photos of her at play.

Sydney is looking so much like a kid these days, it’s amazing — although partly that’s because she’s quite tall for a three-year-old.

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There are lots of things I don’t understand about this world, many of which are the number of intelligent, awesome, analytical feminists who support the Democrats. From Katha Pollit:

So now you know. It really does matter who’s President and which party controls Congress. A Democratic-controlled Congress would never have passed the Partial-Birth Abortion Act, which banned intact dilation and extraction abortions and, in flagrant violation of Roe v. Wade, lacked an exception to preserve the health of the woman. A Democratic President would never have signed such a bill. Nor would he have nominated the extremely conservative antichoicers John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, which on April 18 upheld, in Gonzales v. Carhart by a 5-to-4 vote (Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas–all GOP nominees), a ban essentially identical to one rejected 5 to 4 in Stenberg v. Carhart seven years ago, when Sandra Day O’Connor was on the bench.

A Democratic president may have never signed this particular bill, but that doesn’t make them staunch upholders of abortion rights. Poor women’s right to abortion were extinguished with the 1976 Hyde Amendment. The Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate, when the Hyde Amendment was passed. Then Democratic Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter indicated that he would support the amendment, and this support was one of the reasons Ford backed-down on his threat to veto the legislation. In 1980 the supreme court ruled on the constitutionality of the Hyde Amendment; at this time there were two justices who had been appointed by Democratic presidents. If both of those justices had supported poor women’s rights to abortion then the Hyde Amendment would have been ruled unconstitutional, but they did not.

I am not meaning to downplay the seriousness of the latest decision when I say that the effect it will have on women’s lives is extremely limited, when compared to the effect of the Hyde Amendment. The most serious attack on American women’s right to an abortion was a bipartisan effort, and the Democrats more than played their part.

Updated Since writing this post I have learned that the Hyde Amendment (which needs to be authorised every year, so has been supported by every democratic controlled house and senate, and every democratic president since 1977) was debated in 1994. At this stage the democratic controlled house and senate upheld the ban. They added rape and incest exceptions (the original amendment already had a life of the mother clause), but did not add a health of the mother exception. The Democrats support of the Hyde Amendment is not history.

From Stuff

His pending tour of duty in Iraq has split world opinion, now Kiwi monarchists are urging British authorities not to send Prince Harry to war.

The Monarchist League of New Zealand said it was wrong to send the third in line to the throne to an “unpopular and futile” war in Iraq, and has urged the Blair Government to reconsider his deployment.

It will come as no surprise that I believe that every British soldier should be withdrawn from Iraq immediately.

But if there are going to be British soldiers in Iraq, then they don’t come more dispensable than Prince Harry. I’m not commenting on his worth as a person to those who love him, which I’m sure is very high.* But I would be hard pressed to think of anyone more useless. Unlike his older brother, he won’t even get to wait, to wait, to become a figurehead.

Almost all of the US and British soldiers who have died in Iraq would have had far less choice in their profession than Prince Harry. The Iraqi people who have died during the invasion and occupation, have even less choice still. Every day in Iraq there are tragedies that are far greater than the hypothetical death of Prince Harry.

* Although I have to say wearing a Swastika at a Colonials and Natives Party? Not OK.

One of the great debates about racial discrimination revolves around police and community relations and in particular racial profiling. In response to such concerns the federal government, and some state and local governments have started collecting data on police interaction with the public.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics has released the 2005 data on contacts between police and the public. Of particular, interest in the data on the racial make-up of police/public contact in traffic stops. The findings seem to be fairly consistent with past studies on racial differences in traffic stops. Here is a summary of from the AP:

Traffic stops are the most frequent way police interact with the public, accounting for 41 percent of all contacts. An estimated 17.8 million drivers were stopped in 2005.

Black, Hispanic and white motorists were equally likely to be pulled over by police — between 8 percent and 9 percent of each group. The slight decline in blacks pulled over — from 9.2 percent in 2002 to 8.1 percent in 2005 — was not statistically significant, Durose said, and could be the result of random differences.

The racial disparities showed up after that point:

_Blacks (9.5 percent) and Hispanics (8.8 percent) were much more likely to be searched than whites (3.6 percent). There were slight but statistically insignificant declines compared with the 2002 report in the percentages of blacks and Hispanics searched.

_Blacks (4.5 percent) were more than twice as likely as whites (2.1 percent) to be arrested. Hispanic drivers were arrested 3.1 percent of the time.

Among all police-public contacts, force was used 1.6 percent of the time. But blacks (4.4 percent) and Hispanics (2.3 percent) were more likely than whites (1.2 percent) to be subjected to force or the threat of force by police officers.

People interviewed described police hitting, kicking, pushing, grabbing, pointing a gun or spraying pepper spray at them or threatening to do so. More than four of five felt the force used was excessive, but there were no statistically significant racial disparities among the people who felt that way.

This does not deal with “stop and frisk” policies, only traffic stops, and since it is a nationwide survey, it would be difficult to see what municipalities exhibited the most and least discriminatory patters.

The stop and frisk issue is important in cities like New York where many people do not drive. The state Attorney General of New York released a report on stop and frisk searches. For those interesting in the racial aspects of stop and frisk data, you can check out this section of the report. The stop and frisk data is still contentious. Some worry about what is being done with personal information collected from stop and frisks, and others are concerned about delays in releasing information and the racial make-up of the people subjected to stop and frisks. (If you want to read a white racist justification for racial disparities in stop and frisks; go here.)

When you combine the data, the result do show greater scrutiny of people of color by police officers. However, that scrutiny doesn’t always occur in the ways that we expect. With the traffic stops, the greater scrutiny comes after the stop is made. The data on stop and frisks need a more thorough analysis that has a national level sample and more methodological sophistication before we can make find how and why racial disparities occur.

Note to commenters: This thread is not a thread for debating whether or not racism or racial profiling is real or whether or not blacks and Latinos are crime prone. Instead let’s focus on the kinds of methods that can be used to measure racial differences in police/public contact, and how we can assure that the criminal justice system treats all people fairly.

Okay, so we’re making a few changes around here.

First of all, as many folks have noticed, there’s now a “report this comment to the moderators” link at the bottom of every comment. The link leads to this form; complaints put into that form are emailed to all the moderators. Hopefully, this will allow all of the moderators to be more aware of and quicker to respond to problems.

Second, we’re increasing the number of moderators. We now have five moderators: Rachel, Maia, and myself, and also two reader-moderators, Mandolin (welcome, Mandolin!) and Charles. If you’d like to be a moderator as well, please let me know; being a moderator is limited to feminists only, and only to those who aren’t opposed to enforcing moderately polite behavior on “Alas.”

Third, we’re adding a “progressive anti-racist commenters only” checkbox for some posts about racism. The goal of this is to prevent almost every discussion of racism from being turned into endless repeats of the same discussion (to paraphrase what someone said, “Rachel posts that something is racist, Brandon argues that it isn’t racist, repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.”)¹

Fourth, we’re resolving to do a better job moderating out the Chrises and the Stevens and so on.

Let’s give it a couple of months and see how things go.

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1. I actually think it’s important to have that discussion over and over again — in my opinion, if we want to change society we have to be willing to repeat these and similar arguments a thousand times over — but that doesn’t mean everyone has to do it, and it doesn’t mean we have to do it in almost every racism-related thread. (back)

On Rachel’s thread about ‘tween girls and shopping, Mandolin and Joe had this exchange:

Mandolin: We’re talking about a society-wide pattern of representation, wherein shopping and materialism have, yes, been condensed as part of a larger narrative wherein women are portrayed as frivolous (interested in unimportant things) and unable to handle money. Check out a few episodes of I Love Lucy.¹

Joe: I think the simpsons/everbody loves raymond/king of queens/life according to jim/whatever have done a decent job of spreading that stereotype across gender lines. Fat dumb lazy guy married to thin pushy competent woman has become a staple.

It’s conventional for both feminists and (more frequently) MRAs² to construct playing the frivolous, lazy and incompetent character in sitcoms as a sign of oppression; that is, feminists say the incompetence of the Lucy character (are her need to always be rescued by level-headed Ricky) is a sign of how women are denigrated in society, while MRAs point to the incompetence of Homer Simpson or Raymond (and their need to always be rescued by level-headed wives) as a sign of how men are denigrated in society.

Although in this instance a feminist, Mandolin, brought it up first, in my experience MRAs bring this argument up more often than feminists, presumably because the male-idiot-spouse is much more common on TV nowadays than the female-idiot-spouse. As “Mens’ Rights Online puts it, “Turn on your TV and you will see the sitcoms and advertisements that portray dads as speechless dolts in the face of the superior wisdom of their wives and 11-year-old children.”

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1. I disagree with Mandolin here; I think that I Love Lucy, which portrayed women as constantly constrained by an enforced housewife role, was actually quite subversive and feminist for its time. I far prefer Lucy, who was constantly fighting against the constraints of her life, to the “happy to be secondary” housewife character found in many older family sitcoms. (back)
2. MRA = Men’s Rights Advocate. I’m not assuming that Joe is an MRA, or that he’d necessarily disagree with anything I say in this post; his exchange with Mandolin just brought this stuff to my mind. (back)

I’ve written very briefly about climate change once before. It’s not an issue I follow much, because it often invokes an “ARGH we’re all doomed lets spend these last few days we have watching Buffy” response in me. But what has really frustrated me is how easily efforts to fight climate change have been co-opted by industry.

On Tuesday Checkpoint (a national NZ radio show) had an interview with someone from the trucking industry, about how the trucking industry thinks we should fight climate change. Now lets take a moment to point out that if we’re going to move cargo in the most efficient way possible, then trucking is pretty much out.¹ The only things worse than trucking is flying; rail and sea are much more efficient.

So if the trucking industry shrank considerably then that would help lower carbon emissions straight away. What did the trucking industry suggest?

1. The government should change the depreciation rates on trucks so that trucking companies can buy newer, more efficient, truck soon.

2. The government should invest in the road system, because if trucks are in traffic they’re wasting carbon.

3. Change the safety rules so that trucks can carry more cargo and be more efficient.

What do we notice about these rules. Well the first thing is that 1 & 2 would only save carbon emission if you were able to make truck and road building carbon neutral. I don’t know what sort of carbon emissions road building creates, but I do know that metal production creates a shit-load of carbon emission.

But as well as not being at all useful, all of these changes are things the industry were wanting anyway, and have just dressed up as helping reduce emissions (which they wouldn’t).

Note for comments, this is not supposed to be another generic thread on climate change. The topic is how (or whether) industry co-opts ideas of climate change

1. To what extent can we afford to move cargo at all? Is it another part of our lifestyle which will result in the sea rising and the penguins dying? I’m not even going to begin to answer those questions. But would recommend watching Innocence while you still can. (back)

Here is the page that includes the report summary and links to the full document and related resources, and here is a quote from the executive summary.

One in three Native American or Alaska Native women will be raped at some point in their lives. Most do not seek justice because they know they will be met with inaction or indifference.

Barriers to justice
The majority of perpetrators go unpunished as many Indigenous women never report the abuse committed against them, while those who do report it find other barriers to justice. The US government has created a complex maze of federal, state and tribal authorities. As a consequence, Indigenous women are being denied justice.

Failure to act
The US authorities have not only failed to respond adequately to the threats faced by Indigenous women, but federal policies and practices have actually denied Native American and Alaska Native women protections available to other women in the USA.

Urgent action is needed to stop sexual violence against Indigenous women in the USA. But action must be shaped by understanding, not prejudice; by fact, not assumption. Indigenous women’s organizations and tribal authorities have brought forward concrete proposals to help stop the abuse against Indigenous women – but the federal government has failed to act.

Over the years, I’ve frequently referred to the National Violence Against Women Survey’s statistics regarding rape prevalence.¹ And I’ll probably continue to refer to NVAW Survey: it’s probably the best measure that’s ever been taken of national rape prevalence in the USA. It used a large, random, nationally-representative sample; the survey included people “from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds”; and it asked about some things no previous national survey had effectively asked about, such as rape by intimate partners.

Nonetheless, there are important flaws in the NVAW survey, and in particular with how it measures rape prevalence. This is a first of a series of posts which will describe the flaws in the NVAW survey. This post will look at some general shortcomings with the survey; future posts will look at different ways the NVAW study may be both undercounting and overcounting rape prevalence, and at how the NVAW study does a particularly poor job of measuring rape prevalence among men.

1. The NVAW study needs to be repeated at regular intervals.²

Although there have been multiple good studies of rape prevalence done over the last twenty years, they each use different methodologies, making it impossible to use these studies to get a reliable estimate of how rape prevalence has changed over the years. Not all the studies are structured the same way; not all of them use nationally representative samples; not all of them use exactly comparable questions. As a result, we can’t use these studies to see if rape is increasing or decreasing over the years.

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1. A relatively brief summary of the NVAW survey’s findings can be read here. (back)
2. Shorter Amp: “The NVAW study is deeply flawed, and we need to do it more often.” :-P (back)

April 25th is ANZAC day; the day New Zealand does the ‘yay soldiers’ thing. While I’m writing these thoughts in the New Zealand context, I think they also apply in other countries where commemoration and celebration of war are never far apart.

Anarchafairy and Span have both written about how left-wing people should respond to ANZAC day. I’m going to write more about that tomorrow. But Span’s comment thread puzzled me, and I wanted to respond to the predominant feeling there first.¹ As Stef said:

I think that ANZAC day is about honouring the soldiers, not the politics of the day.

I don’t understand why it is we honour soldiers, when we don’t honour so many other groups of people. We don’t honour the people who died in the influenza epidemic, that followed the war. We don’t honour people who die in their workplace. Those deaths are just as senseless, just as cruel, and just as much a result of our fucked up system, as the ANZACs.

We don’t have an annual holiday to honour all the women who have died in childbirth. Who really did die so the next generation could live.

Why are soldiers special?

1. I’m not even going to go near the idea that we need to honour the ANZAC soldiers because they died so we could be free. I understand (and don’t necessarily agree with) the argument when it comes to World War 2, but World War One? What freedoms is that supposed to have won? (back)

I’ve been reading a bit of dingbat spiritualism (The Secret - I’m looking at you), and I’ve been wanting to write about why I think I’m more anti-spiritualist, than an atheist (or maybe agressive materialist would be the best way to describe it). But before I do that I have a rant I have to get out of the way first.

One weird feature of the left, probably going back to the 1960s, is a completely inexplicable view that Eastern religions are in some way better than Abrahamic religions. While this is less strong than it was, you can still see it, particularly in the way the Dalai Lama is treated.

Every major religion, every religion that has ever had any power, served the interests of the ruling class. Religions can and do justify existing power structures and give people reasons not to fight back. While most religions also have ideas that undermine those power structures, all major religions spend most of their time upholding existing power structures. If you like meditating then go for it, but don’t pretend it’s that different from saying the rosary.

Having got that out of the way, I should be able to get on to why I really hate religion sometime in the next few days.

More from the batch I took a few weeks ago, with Sydney wearing a floral dress one of her grandmothers found on Ebay. These are kind of moody compared to most “baby blogging” posts, but I like them.

There are a few more pics beneath the fold.

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I read this in the New York Times yesterday, and it didn’t sit well with me. Here is a quote:

But on this day I’ve come not to bury Abercrombie. I am here to observe my daughter and her two friends make their way around a suburban mall to help me understand why shopping seems to have become an acceptable hobby, even an obsession, among some young girls. And to see how stores like Abercrombie and American Eagle Outfitters, as well as luxury brands, successfully court these young girls and turn them into customers.

This is why it bothered me:

1) It seems to be promoting the idea that girls are materialistic and superficial, and I don’t know that young girls are any more materialistic than boys.

2) These kids who don’t have a job or any money are getting designer clothes. Why would any parent pay for a 10 year old to have “Juicy Couture”? Why?

3) It is the most class biased piece of writing I have seen in a long time, and the author seems utterly unwilling to acknowledge that.

There are other things that I just can’t put my finger on since my brain is toast (always happens at the end of the semester). BTW, I love Juliet Schor, the sociologist mentioned in the article. Here is a really good article I have the students in my mass media class read on the politics of consumerism.

Go read it and tell me what you think.

The new Erase Racism Carnival is up over at Double Consciousness.  Go check it out!  The next one will be at Angry Black Woman.  For more info. about upcoming carnivals, you should check out Ally Work.

[Bumped to the top! –Amp]

5pm at Legin, located at 8001 SE Division Street (the cross is 80th Ave.) Legin features both dim sum and the more usual Chinese restaurant meals offered off the menu.

If you’re reading this blog post, you’re invited. There’s always a bit of uncertainty, but folks I’m expecting to attend include myself, Charles, A. J Luxton, Little Light, Cat, and perhaps (but perhaps not?) defenestrated, Bean, Raznor, Aaron, Ms Xeno, and others. Also, Sydney and Maddox and their parents will be in the house.

If you have a Portland-area blog, feel free to come, and feel free to post an invitation to your readers on your own blog, as well.

From a CNN story on the Supreme Court’s upholding of the “Partial Birth” abortion ban:

“A lot of us wish that Alito weren’t there and O’Connor were there,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, who opposed Alito’s nomination, said.

Harry Reid was one of 17 Democrats who voted in favor of the Federal “partial birth” abortion ban becoming law (without those 17 democrats, the bill wouldn’t have passed). If Reid thinks that the Court should have found the Federal PBA ban unconstitutional, then WHY DID HE VOTE FOR IT???? As Johnathan Adler writes, “Call me old fashioned, but I believe that if a member of the Senate believes a law is unconstitutional, he or she should vote against it.”

And why didn’t CNN point out Reid’s hypocrisy?

I haven’t had much energy to read about the latest disaster from the US supreme court. Back there I used the word ‘disaster’ which is about the extent of my analysis (although it does cover lots of issues quite well).*

But I was reading Phantom Scribbler’s excellent post What the Mommy Bloggers Know

If you’re mainstream media or one of the major political blogs, and you’ve just put together some sort of roundup of the blogs’ discussion of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision, we, the legions of irrelevant mommy bloggers, would like to let you know that we have found it lacking. What, you say? Surely everyone knows that mommy bloggers are only good for talking about naps, dirty diapers, and Linda Hirshman. Far be it from me to assert otherwise. But on the other hand, the mommy bloggers all know that the blogger whose voice is really essential to this discussion is Cecily.

Cecily writes at and I wasted all that birth control, and her post on the supreme court decision should be required reading:

Personally, I do not know which procedure I had. At 22.5 weeks gestation (when my pregnancy ended–and that is based on my last menstrual period, remember, not the date of implantation, so the fetuses were really 20.5 week along) I was right on the line between trimesters. Plus the fact that there where two fetus (one barely alive, and one dead) could have impacted which surgery I had.

Other than having a medical termination, the options open to someone in my position are usually either a) emergency c-section, and b) induced delivery.

My doctor believed–given my particular circumstances–that it would be better for both my short term and long term health to not cut open my body if at all possible. My health was in a precarious state, and the option of a medical termination was the fastest, safest, and least complicated procedure to use. It also preserved the health of my uterus for future pregnancies.

I’m not a parent, but I read some ‘Mommy blogs’ written by feminists, because they have some of the best feminist analysis on the web.

This post contains about 20 links to feminist analysis of the Supreme Court’s opinion approving a ban on so-called “Partial Birth” abortions.

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Kevin at Slant Truth — possibly the single nicest person I’ve ever met through a blog — is trying to get the word out: he’s looking for his missing brother, Michael Patrick Vaughn. Using blogs is a long shot, but it can’t hurt. If you have a blog, consider posting about this, please.

Kevin thinks Michael might be in the California area, or somewhere on the west coast. Please email Kevin “if you know of anything about Michael or have the slightest clue.”

Good luck, Kevin.