When the girls first started school, I had no real expectations regarding grades. I was just happy when a day went well. By second grade it was readily apparent that schoolwork was not hard for them, although getting them to do it could  be very challenging.

So then, I felt rather obligated… Read full post »

The other morning, I stumbled onto a new poem by Taylor Mali on his facebook page that was better than coffee for waking me up. The best thing about reading a Mali poem is that in my head I hear and see him performing it--he's a delight to watch and one of my… Read full post »

Video of Doc explaining Catch-22 to Yossarian:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-eXI4uy3Mlg


Heller got this down, this catch, that we all too often find ourselves in. He perfected it, peeled it down to its core. Alan Arkin, throughout the film, personifies the horror, despai… Read full post »

Broken.

The word sticks in my mind.

Beats in tandem with my heart.

A little girl gets her unbroken burger,

and we are verklempt at the kindness of strangers.

Broken.

A young man stays in a theater and dies

because the cops working security break him

As if he were driftwood in the way.

Broken.

Fo… Read full post »

 I've been blogging about autism for four years now and co-running The Autism Blogs Directory for nearly three years. I've seen the month of April come and go, and people in the autism community really ratchet up the rhetoric.

 I'm going to be the first to admit to bone-weariness. There's n… Read full post »

An Interview With Rosie, Lily, and Bobby conducted early Saturday morning before I consumed enough coffee.

When I was a child, my brothers and I were shuttled to and from a local Baptist church so that my parents could have some alone time. There were a lot of parents who took advantage of the church bus that would come by every Sunday morning, if my memory holds… Read full post »

As everyone in the online autism community is all to painfully aware of, April is Autism Awareness Month. What that means to the vastly different people in  autismland is, of course, vastly different.

For some parents, it means going blue in a variety of ways, posting information about au… Read full post »

This semester in my composition 2 classes, we've been reading Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Heller's Catch-22, looking at them from different angles, one of those angles being PTSD.

In order to supplement my instruction, I've been reading the recent biographies on both men, and one… Read full post »

At times I feel certain I am in a Salvadore Dali painting, specifically "Soft Watch at the Moment of First Explosion."

Perhaps that's why Dali's work resonates with so many people? We can feel in our guts what this means, this sense of time breaking apa… Read full post »

Most of the time, the posts that appear here appear other places first, but this time, this piece appears only here.

I write here, away from my usual places, because here you will not see this. Here I can say what I need to say, relatively assured that you will… Read full post »

                               


The last three years, I've weighed in, offered my thoughts. The last three years, I've asked my students to think about it, too. It was again the topic of a class discussion this sem… Read full post »

It occurred to me, as I perused the blogs in autism land and came across various skirmishes, that much of the time what we have going on is competing tone wars, where the substance is not as important as the tone or words a person uses.

Intent is irrelevant to… Read full post »

For the last seven weeks, Vonnegut's been on my mind. With six comp 2 classes focused on reading Slaughterhouse-Five, I've been deeply steeped in all things Vonnegut, in part to provide a thorough examination of Vonnegut the man and Vonnegut the author and how these intersect.

I hope the… Read full post »

Everyday, we hear about tragedies, some that hit too close to home for comfort, and our reactions range from "That just shouldn't happen!" to the belief that when it does happen, it must be someone's fault.

If we can blame someone, then we can reassure ourselves we can protect ourselves from that… Read full post »

You know, I've become increasingly grateful over time that we don't have satellite or cable tv--no 24 hour news channels, and with how both Bobby and Rosie react to the news, we don't even watch the local channels over the antenna anymore. Even Lily necessitates having the morning news off--she doesn… Read full post »

I'm digging around for posts people have written on what to say/what not to say to autistic people and their family members for an episode Kathleen and I are working on for The Blogger Ladies and I ran across a question by the mother of two autistic children who finds parenting them challen/… Read full post »

Sometimes, I think I've not only tried to make our home a hodge-podge of items that become their own brand of art, I've also started doing the same with my hair and clothing. Performance art, boredom, midlife crisis? I have this burning desire to bring incongruous objects together and see what… Read full post »

People tell me, good friends and family, that I must make the practical, rational, sane decision. And I know they are absolutely right, I should. I know continuing down the path we've been on, this adventure into trying to help another human being, someone in need, by bringing them into our… Read full post »