Autism in Your Face is Good

I am not related to anyone with autism. Yet I am related by blood.  The blood factors that make me human relate me to these children who are struggling humans.

  

According to statistics, 1 in a 100 has autism in the United States. http://autism.emedtv.com/autism/autism-statistics.html 

Outside the USA, other countries are feeling the effects. ?  If countries all over the world are suffering from this childhood affliction, then it’s not just western civilization’s modern conveniences creating the cause. The cause itself is still unknown.  http://autism.about.com/od/whatisautism/p/autismcauses.htm   

 So cosmically speaking, why do we have such a predominance of Autism in this generation ?

Years back while in a bookstore in Greenwich Village, NYC, I ran across a book that suggested that children born with mental disturbances are the result of people’s souls returning who died in shocking trauma such as in war.  

Although  I have no system of belief in reincarnation, I enter the sense of brain shock.

I myself am a child who had brain shock, or trauma in my early youth. I have had a lock-down on those pains.  So I have to wonder if perhaps children are coming into this generation with similar brain shock. 

This week I worked in an Autism Unit at an elementary school.  The one nearly non-functional student I was assigned to was In My Face.  He had  a dearness and my heart softened to him.  Looking into his eyes,   I had no idea if he could read my eyes or face at all. 

The first day we were together, he acted out with hand to tongue spinning, whining, kicking, throwing. He seemed angry and unsatisfied. I learned to patiently repeat and repeat and repeat and firmly assist him in picking up his tossed items. The wonderful teacher and paraprofessional aides provided a model of saintly patience and direction. The second day, after about two hours together, he asked me for  things.  The teacher seemed surprised he verbalized his wishes.  When he said “sleep” and was ignored because it wasn’t rest time, he acted out.  The trained paraprofessional asked him what he wanted. By then he lost the word. I provided it: Sleep. So we were allowed to rest him on the rocking chair with him on my lap, head back to rest and gently stroking my head and hair. He got what he needed. And finally, instead of the anger he had the day before, he heard me laugh and wanted to laugh for hours. He liked laughing. And then, in my face, he knit his brows and said to me, “Cry”. So I pretended to cry and so did he. And then we both laughed again.  We were relating.

This begins my adventure into the realm of Autism.   I know that coming out of my brain shock has enabled me to see that I have special talents and awarenesses.  Mine are uncommon to most people’s.  I believe that cosmically we are given these children to learn to be better humans ourselves. And when they wake, we will reap their special talents and awarenesses.

"Play it again, Sam."

(The “S” in my name came from my grandfather Sam. )

First grade is the most cerebral of elementary school learners. 

According to the Art Education Curriculum, it is the 1^st Graders who learn about patterns and visual repetition.  These are abstract concepts which are a huge challenge to turn into concrete, meaningful art.

This year with class time reduced to 25 minutes a session, fun in learning was drying out to a crisp. Materials were reduced from the juicy gooey wet tempera to pencil, color pencil and artstix.

“Honey, I shrunk the kids’” fun syndrome boxed me in. After weeks of feeling the  terrible restrictions, I broke into song. If I couldn't juice up the art materials, I could juice up by sound. 

My Casio keyboard was advancing in age by dust accumulation so I dragged it out and livened it up in school. The first day, I let the children hear what “cleaning” sounded like as I turned the power on while cleaning the keys with babywipes.  The dust hit the floor like bouncing miceballs.

By the second week, it was cleaned out enough to start planking away.

The best way to excite children is to include them in the creative decision making process.   The Art Concept “ Contrast” was the goal to sing out.

So I asked the class if someone can start the song up.  Sure enough, Sarah  began to sing and it caught my ear…she sang “Light/Dark…..” hey! That works for Contrast!   A little feel of “Night and Day” in the opening and we had our song: “Light/Dark/Light/Dark…..in our Art we have Contrast”.  Ok…it doesn’t rhyme. But the tune was catchy in a minor chord. 

Most importantly, without drilling, without unwilling wordy repetition, the soft chant hummed all through the visual application of the lesson. These children were thrilled to write and sing a song about their Art. 

And like  Bo-g-art's ‘Sam”, these students will be on school TV next week to “sing it again”!

The Zombie Diet

Diet the Zhooker Way

The bloody handsome gentleman in the center of the zombie collective is my husband: Joshua.  He’s the one with the nice tie.  The other denizens are zombies and hookers becoming zombies. (Or “Zhookers”  as I was informed.) 

Backtracking to Wednesday, my husband asked me on a date for Saturday night to go see a movie.  As old as I am, and for however long I have been married (23  years now), I get very girlish and excited when asked on a date. 

Friday night as we watched TV, he received a call for use of his limousine: The Silver Bullet.  A director saw the silver limo and liked its looks (it’s a pretty car) and hired Josh for a scene.  Josh accepted.  Our movie night was still on but now he’d be in the movies, not at the movies. 

It was a cold clear Saturday night.  The cast was gathering.  No mist in the air at all and the nipping chill hadn’t set in yet.    I, Wife, was careful to stay out of the way of the lights, ground wires and director. 

  Ground fog began and the hookers dressed in goosepimply skimpy clothing aroused the onlookers. 

The Silver Bullet Limo drove up and Josh the Limo Driver let the girls in. 

In another scene, the Vampiress drove  the Silver Bullet Limo up the blacknight driveway. Josh the Limo Driver was not in sight. The director whispered over the phone to Josh who was hiding inside the vehicle, “stay down in the back…..you can touch anything there.” I finally spoke up, “No he can’t….I’m the Wife.”  The director winced at the real dangerous scene he nearly caused.

Too many pizzas later, the last scene for the night took place with the fattened limo driver laying on the floor being growlingly devoured by ten zombies. Josh was a meal and a half for them all.

The following day, Josh said to me, ‘You think I should get back on NutriSystem?” 

The Wife said: “Yep”.

Technology Behind

Beheading the Behemoth

Over the winter break, my ailing computer system got some new life to keep it going another year. It had mysterious reasons it never shared with me, my tech or the computer store for spontaneous freezing.  Yes…the winter cold was longer than a snap down here in Sunny Florida and maybe my feelings toward it also grew cold with so many failures to work. But that’s why I had a tech geek repair it. We put in a new powerpack, put the fan and computer console where it didn’t overheat, added a fresh stick of 2 gig memory for RAM and I got talked into buying Windows 7.

I don’t like Windows 7. I have the Ultimate version. It’s slow on uploading files. It won’t let me access my camera images. My Adobe CS4 Bridge is so slow I could jump off it and come back all in the time it takes to bring up the camera photo extractor.

I have the Windows 7 for Dummies book but after reading it through and making changes, I think Windows 7 IS the dummy. Vista didn’t give me so many arguments and silent obstinate refusals. 

The bottom taskbar never looks like I want it to. I want  a packed subway car full of Desktop icons and when I send them over to populate for ease of access, they don’t “arrive”. Over and over, in Adobe Bridge CS4, I clicked File>GetPhotosfromCamera….and the little blue circle would twirl and then disappear. Nothing happened. Maybe two hours later, the feature would pop up. I consider this useless technology. I’d rather mop my floors. In fact, I had so much time in-between functions, I did mop my floors; rolled up the large silver outdoor tarp, cleaned the patio, took out all the garbages and ate dinner. 

The only fun I had on the computer today was uninstalling the swaggering behemoth:

 Picasa 3.