Dancing with Sir Isaac; or, Maintaining Equilibrium in a New Year

"Make problem behaviors irrelevant: Developers of the plan should identify those situations (stimulus conditions) that set the occasion for problem behaviors and organize the environment to reduce the likelihood that these conditions are encountered....Making the problem behavior irrelevant typically involves structural changes: altering the physical settings, enriching the environment, improving the activities or curriculum, increasing predictability and choice options available to the person.

Make problem behaviors inefficient: The efficiency of a behavior refers to the combined effects if (a) the physical effort required for a person to perform the behavior, (b) the number of times the person must perform the behavior before he or she is reinforced...and (c) the time delay between the first problem behavior and the reinforcement...When feasible, the support plan should define an alternative, socially appropriate, and more efficient way for the person to achieve the same reward. "


--- O'Neill, Horner, Albin, Sprague, Storey, Newton; Functional Assessment and Program Development for Problem Behavior: A Practical Handbook, Second Edition

*

p=mv

---Sir Isaac Newton

*

B1/ B1+B2 = R1/R1 +R2
(proportion of responses = proportion of reinforcement)
---The Matching Law , Richard Hernnstein

*
...Physician, heal thyself.
---The Bible, Luke 4:23


Dear reader, I do thank you for joining me this past year. You have helped me so very much with this thing called language, this thing that is one of the most social of behaviors. You are most excellent teachers, all; I wish for you the good stuff of your best hopes and dreams in 2008.
You know, when I was a girl growing up, New Year's Eve and Easter were always ever more exciting for me than Christmas, more than Valentine's Day or birthdays. New Year's Eve and Easter, these were the holidays that truly seemed holy: out of nothing, something comes.
That to me, was always the Good Stuff, something not to be taken lightly for sure.
But I must share with you before this new year is any older something that happened this year that very much affected me in the same sleight-of-hand manner. Hopefully this will answer my dear friend Artist's question that she posed to me in this post closing my writing about violence for the month of October.

Dear reader, it is difficult to explain how one can move beyond violence.

I often think about the urban legend that says that the sounds of the eruption of Vesuvius were recorded, Edison-style, on the clay that was being built up upon the potter's wheels of that day: spinning on the wheel, taking the voice of the hands, but ultimately overwritten by doom and petrified. Once impressed and solidified in such a manner, such a pot could only repeat those sounds; there would be no way to retrieve the sounds of the potter's hands before it.

If you looked at the pot as a vehicle for sound, then you would have no choice but to accept its record. If you cannot accept its terrible record in your possession, than you would have to change the record by destroying the pot: it could be broken into shards, the shards ground up and made into slip, some cycle of creation and destruction begun anew. All in all, a most inefficient way to address the situation---at least for me, dear reader.

Or you could look at the pot as a vessel; when you see the pot this way, you change it. When you see the pot this way you change yourself. All in all, a most efficient way to address the situation---at least for me, dear reader.

I was in the habit of googling X. I had done so mostly for concerns of safety. I wanted to know that BG and I had that buffer zone that physical distance gives. Sometime in the summer, I retrieved hits that I had never before seen in association with X. When I opened these links, I saw that they were conversations from an internet discussion group. In some, X was a participant; in others, X was the topic of conversation. The common thread in each and every discussion was the absolute social isolation of X. He was completely isolated from the others, and frenetically, vehemently oppositional, hostile: at every turn, his attempts to establish himself by aggression and vitriol landed him in an even more derisive position with the others. Just as suddenly as he sprung up, he was suddenly quiet.

I cannot tell you what it was to me to read all the invective hurled by him and hurled at him. It broke my heart. It was deeply distressing that such a being could still be caught in such patterns of suffering---and this was, when it all came down to it, the biological father of my BG. I felt incredibly saddened. I began crying for no reason while doing dishes, while walking from my car across the parking lot into the grocery store. It took a little bit of time to accept that feeling. Not long after, it lessened: in its place, I felt confused. Uncomfortable. Off balance. Out-of-kilter.

Where did it come from, this compassion? I had abandoned attempts at any concepts of forgiveness towards X, truly I had. You can't get blood out of a turnip, they say. You can't get that out of neroli, I said. And yet it came anyway.

Truly, without my experience with X, without that Vesuvian destruction that altered my record, that song that would play if anyone would apply pressure with the right instrument---without that, I would not be able to understand what it feels like to be in another place, another world, separate from everyone else you are my world and I should be yours, he says as he tightens the ties that bind, nor would I be able to appreciate difficulty in using language to communicate from that place. I would not be able to accept physical aggression on the job as calmly as one who has never experienced it. I would not be able to see behavior as communication as clearly as I do today.

I would not be able to understand the beauty of looking at something in a different way, in a way that looks for inherent goodness, rather than its flaws.
I would not be able to understand the chain of reactions that occur, the momentum one can achieve, when one chooses to look at something one way rather than the other way: yes to this, no to that.
I may be marked, but I won't replay the sounds of violence.
I've got capacity to be what is useful, and therefore, good: perhaps even beautiful.
And that's the good stuff: something from nothing, dear reader.
Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
Again?
That's what new years are made of.
I wish the best of this one for you.

Break on Through to the Other Side; or, The Importance of Being Earnest

Sweet Frida, Jean Wertz
http://www.wertzcandy.com/chocolate/personal/pers17.html

Dear reader, how are you?
This past week has been a long and busy one here: what with work, end-of-the-semester homework, domestic and familial responsibilites, and my sojourn on the couch for a long hazy weekend of sickness. I am feeling better, and for that, I am glad, for so very many reasons.

One major reason, dear reader, involves my opportunity. It seems only fitting that I share some detail with you, no matter the ultimate outcome.
Tomorrow I will be visiting an elementary classroom in a different school district. It is a small class of children with autism. All of the students are non-verbal.
Their teacher will be leaving around the Christmas holidays. And I, dear reader, am one of the candidates to take that teacher's place.
And that, as Forrest Gump would say, is all I have to say about that.

I wonder what selections we will all be plucking from that proverbial box of chocolates before the New Year?
What do you think, dear reader?

A Visual Strategy Formerly Known as a Graphic Organizer; or, I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends, Redux

If you go here, and type into the box any word that you will spark, reflection; connection, isolation; violence: these were the first words that came to my mind you will see, dear reader, what I think is a representation of what we are all meant to be for one another: when sometimes words are just that; and yet again, they are entirely something more.

Yesterday, at the farmers' market, I saw lovely cheddar-colored cauliflowers, dusky dark leaves intact, furled. I thought instantly of my friends at Jugalbandi. So after a day of connections with family and friends, near and far, I set to making a simple subzi of golden cauliflowers, new red potatoes, and dark green leaves.
It's these simple little things that matter so much, that call out I'm glad to be here.
Thank you, dear reader, for all the good that you do in this world.
I'm glad you're here too.

Why Janey Can't Speak; or, This Is the Picture

Why Janey Can't Speak is, as I'm certain you recognize, a riff on that worn catch-phrase Why Johnny Can't Read: a catch-phrase that has come to be just that, a catch-all-function phrase, one that is as is rhetorical; one that assumes the listener or the reader receives it in the negative. It signals: something is not right here.(Why doesn't she just leave?)

This is the picture.

Any similarity to persons living or dead is entirely intentional.

Hospital photo circa 1992

Janey can't speak because she is coming out of shock, quite literally. She had awoken on the floor in the same place she finally came to rest the night before. So far this morning, she has convinced the person who did this to drive her to the babysitter and drop off the toddler the baby hit her with a hammer, he said as the babysitter peered at her through the windshield of the car and drive her to work. She went into shock before she could assume her place on the line. She got to ride in an ambulance. They cut her clothes from her to assess the extent of her injuries on the way. She's embarrassed by this. They know her husband did this to her. Perhaps that is why they don't also assess her for rape. It's just as well. She would have been even more deeply embarrassed by that.

She's met by a trooper upon her arrival to the ER. He stands over her; he wears his uniform. She's laid out on her gurney, dressed in a paper outfit. He's talking to her about pressing charges.

She's cold. She feels like death, literally; it's hard to concentrate on what he's saying. She's embarrassed to have a man there, a stranger: usually, she is not allowed to speak to anyone. To enforce this, there is no telephone at home; she is watched at work, and at home---even in private moments in the bathroom, to shower, to toilet---and sometimes she is bound. Talking to people has become painful and uncomfortable to her. Remember operant conditioning? She and those rats would have a lot to talk about.

Deep inside her head, at the tail of at what seems a long winding thought, in the deepest part of the nautilus shell that is her skull is it cracked? two young girls snapping gum and bantering back and forth about, of all things, boyfriends---this x-ray tandem-team will direct her to contort in fixed positions, face pressed against the glass, to determine this (it's not) she can hear and see and feel the minutes ticking by, becoming lost: she remembers before being loaded on the gurney that the plant management said they would stall him so that she could somehow get her son and get away. She knows that even if she understood, and had the energy, the force of will to engage with what the trooper was asking---she knew that it would cost time that she could not afford.

Time doesn't pay sometimes.

When you are in these kinds of situations, you are always choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea. Your thinking becomes thinking that no one else can quite understand; it becomes response-cost thinking, save for the part about the cost being logically related to the response. You learn sometimes to agree that the sky isn't blue, because, well...it may result in less of a negative situation than insisting that it is.

We'll call that the devil in our two-option menu, as blue is reserved for that deep-blue sea.

So sometimes you decide what you can afford to lose; sometimes, more importantly, you decide what you cannot.

And that, dear reader, is why Janey can't speak.

Janey, of course, is me.

And as I dislike having the above image lingering in my mind, and the entire purpose of this month is to speak about hope and survival, I leave you with a different image:

Neroli, as drawn by Naples Yellow, 2007

And yes, dear reader, it is possible to be that happy.

We who survive are proof positive; you, dear reader, are our witness.

And Pinch-Hitting for Neroli...; or, A Short Post

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cE6Pg2q3lI

The Importance of Being Earnest; or, Can You Hear Me Now?

Julian Schnabel Ethnic Type #14 1984 oil, animal hide, wax and modeling paste on velvet; 108 x 120 http://www.artcritical.com/DavidCohen/SUN98.htm

Ecstasy of St. Theresa Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1647-1652
Marble, height 150 cm
Rome, Santa Maria della Vittoria
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Ecstasy_St_Theresa_SM_della_Vittoria.jpg

One of the things I enjoy about my friendship with the blogger Artist Formerly Known as Purple Worms is our ongoing dialogue about the nature of art, and the relationship of art to artist. We've been engaged in this topic, off-and-on, for several years now.
It never gets old.
So when I wrote an earlier post about kitsch in response to reading Howard Gardner's take on the matter, I was fairly confident that AFKAPW would definitely be game to engage in the matter. And so she did!

AFKAPW wrote about kitsch yesterday in response to my earlier post. She informs us as to the origins of the word, and all the cultural attachments that are both origins and results of the word's usage. Please follow the link to read; she is ever more erudite than I, and I therefore won't attempt to paraphrase her words.
In her conclusion, she ekes out the relationship, if any, of art to kitsch:
Is kitsch art? So that gets me back to one of my all time favorite paradoxes - trying to define Art. (Capital A art.) When push comes to shove, I guess I resolve the issue by narrowly defining what I believe to be art. FOR ME (please note that narrowing there),
Art must

1. Communicate some kind of message or meaning (The meaning may simply be that art in the past has been ovely wrought and fraught with meaning and I am protesting against this past idea or that art has ignored the craft of working carefully with its materials.)

2. It must have access to and address society and issues important ot more than one person (thus be seen or heard - if it stays in the bottom drawer - for me it is not art - it is creative expression.)

3. (And here is the one that upsets lots of my colleagues in the Art department) It must have ideals, and have more than a superficial level - it must communicate about something metaphysically important (yes the nature of art itself fits in this category) In short for me art must speak to truth, justice, beauty or some such form.For me this solves the problem of kitsch. If the object is superficial with no depth, then it is kitsch. Now we have the question of audience - for me - if there is a group that finds depth in the object (it has a social/societal component) it is art. Of course that doesn't make it good art, but it is Art.

As is our custom, her words are most thought-provoking for me.

So under these conditions, how do each of the works above measure up?
One is Bernini, one is Schnabel; each labeled as Serious Art: yet the frequency of the transmission, the style of the communication is very similar.

Or is it?

AFKAPW speaks to the referent.
Is the referent absolutely necessary?

If so, how can each of us agree to the referent? Perhaps one could agree with others that the best referents that Art may address are the examples that AFKAPW gives: truth, beauty, justice, or some such form. Yet if this is the case, does it not also seem appropriate that such referents, such ideals, by their very nature, need many ways to be spoken of, the proverbial elephant to the blind men?

She then writes that :
I get tremendous joy in kitsch and alas I have to report it is in a different way than my tender and compassionate friend Neroli finds kitschy joy. I am at heart a nasty and critical individual. While my generous friend Neroli joys in the abundance of feelings and its excessive expression in kitsch, I have to admit to enjoying it as Schadenfreude 9another one of those untranslatable German terms). May the universe forgive me, but I get a certain vindictive glee out of laughing at the grotesquely exaggerated nature of kitsch and looking down my nose at. I just can't quite escape that one-up-man-ship inherent in being an insider looking at the ostracized outsider. In short I am the worst kind of snob. While Neroli laughs with, I alas laugh at. Now I will go to my zabuton and try to meditate on the nature and necessity of compassion and yes after all that I still love kitsch and find it stupidly reassuring.

And it is here that my experience with kids on the spectrum of autism and pervasive developmental disorders comes to bear: my feelings and thoughts about kitsch have everything to with my life experiences and nothing to do with any positive character attributes; all of us have generousity and compassion.
Communication, in all its forms, has become more and more my focus of interest. When I first came out of the gates of early adulthood, I thought that art was my passion; since my experiences of living so long with violence and isolation, and the subsequent implications of their workings in living without them, I've come to understand that it is really communication(Perhaps that in and of itself could be a component of a working definition of art?), particulary outside of the verbal realms , that engages me. Working with autism has brought this fact into focus.


Often, our kids with autism will speak to the same kind of referent that our kids without autism do; yet will do it in such a manner that would appear, if I may, kitschy: they are often displaying behaviors that anyone would be able to produce, and would be considered socially exuberant, exaggerated, or without any congruency at all to situational context. Yet, these behaviors are communciation nonetheless.
To extend the metaphor: often, these kids will produce opulent velvet paintings when their general-education-population peers are producing Zen brushwork: both are happy responses to the same experience.
For example, I've known one little person that we'll call Naples Yellow. In response to a happy feeling, Naples would jump up and down, pigeon-toed, all the while with one arm half-extended to the front, elbow bent, as if drawing another person into a one-armed hug; the opposite arm extended out, its hand moving in rapid circles, hitting that one-armed-hug-hand on the downstroke to affect a rapid and rhythmic clap, all in time to the jumping.
The other students?
To continue the metaphor: once they understood that this was Naples' way of saying "I'm really happy about this," they made room to hang this baroque, kitschy work next to their own.

Generousity? Tenderness and compassion?
Children making room for one another, often despite the models given to them by less enlightened adults.
Arguably the best Art of all; art with a capital 'A.'
There's the makings of that kind of Art within us all; there's the means of receiving that sort of communication within us all; and there's most definitely room to hang it all on the wall.
You'll know it when you see it, dear reader.


http://handicraft.indiamart.com/gifs/velvet-painting.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cd/Original_face_enso.jpg

Agenda for the Meeting; or, the World Keeps Turning

Our blogging friend Captain Corky recently posted about his and Corky Jr.'s goals for the immediate future. As always, I learn best in a collaborative setting, so I've decided to take the Captain's lead. There's little time for posting some things ripe for posting, so the list of coming events here is most functional.
Little and Big Guys return to school tomorrow; the school district that employs me resumes after Labor Day. This means I have some open all-by-myself-time: a commodity that normally only avails itself to me in times of insomnia or commuting on the interstate to the university.
What this means, dear reader, is that in addition to having as many lunches out as possible, I may have more time to write that post that's been swirling in my head about theories of motion, equilibrium, behavior analysis, and a famous quote from the Gospels; or perhaps the post wherein I am attempting to reason how motion as symbolized by the visual may be used as a vehicle for the exploration of language acquisition at the preoperational stage, and perhaps sooner: ideally for children with autism, but certainly for any students who may find that such a thing speaks to them. Or perhaps the post in which I attempt to describe the origins and patterns of my continually growing obsession with spoken and written language: the whys and hows of its efficiencies in communication, and how those with intelligences much stronger in areas other than the linguistic can feel facile in this environment of language.
Can you hear that calliope playing circus music?

Once my school district begins, my fall semester of graduate school will have already begun.
You might, dear reader, see posts only on a weekly basis; you might see short daily posts. I've commited to this practice of language; you've reinforced my efforts with your presence and your kindness. We'll figure it out together.

What Would Papageno Do; or, the Grecian Urn is a Decorative Peanut Butter Jar?

I want everyone to focus on the content of an education---the meat and potatoes: on how that content should be presented, mastered, put to use, and passed along to others. Specifically, I believe that three very important concerns should animate education; these concerns have names and histories that extend far back into the past. There is the realm of truth---and its underside, what is false and undeterminable. There is the realm of beauty---and its absence in experiences or objects that are ugly or kitschy. And there is the realm of morality---what we consider to be good, and what we consider to be evil.

---from Howard Gardner, The Disciplined Mind: What All Students Should Understand

http://www.muttscomics.com

I often feel, dear reader, as if in this blogosphere, I often find myself in a collaborative learning group: something I very much appreciate about this endeavor. Thank you so much for it!

Purple Worms has been holding a discussion on art over at her place, concerning a defaced statue of Mozart. Swampwitch is presiding over playtime, MI-style. Then I begin reading from one of my favorite educational theorists, Howard Gardner, and find the above quote (side note of interest/synchronicity: he goes on to give examples that embody each of those three sisters---and Mozart is given as the example of beauty), which speaks to the reference that PW made to truth is beauty, beauty is truth.

It makes me very happy, these connections.

I was somewhat surprised that Gardner used the kitschy as the antithesis of the beautiful. I've always regarded kitsch as pithy beauty: sort a zen take on baroque, or alternately, a baroque take on zen; it speaks to the referent from a different perspective, the "flip side" if you will, in a different dialect than is typical, and I like that very much. (I've become an object of amusement for Snowy at the times when I see something kitschy: I exclaim, it's so ugly that it's beautiful! and then Snowy rolls his eyes, hoping with all hope I don't bring whatever it may be home.)

Perhaps that's what Gardner was speaking to; if so, I then posit: the beauty is in the delivery.

To me, it's very much like a parlor game that allows participants to hold a conversation using only famous quotes: the quote becomes a picture, a signal, of the speaker's intent.To me, it's very much like the use of picture icons in communication systems we use to communicate with those whose language abilities differ from our own.

Or perhaps it's a game of exquisite corpse; cadavres exquis.

Communciation, in all its transmissions. The enjoyment and the challenge and the beauty arise in broadening the bands of reception, allowing for all frequencies; for their variance is the given, and not the exception.

Don't expect to hear anything: expectations are so much static. Just listen; and in so doing, the beauty is heard.

Communication begins.

What do you think?

I'm listening.

Note: I've fixed the hyperlink for exquisite corpse, and added a new one as well---dear reader, you know how I like to look at things in more than one way!

Oh, One More Thing; or,Same as It Ever Was

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NpiVTR11MI

On Time, Motion, and Momentum; or The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

Dear reader, the more I attempt to become facile in this practice of writing, the more visual my thinking becomes: an unexpected outcome of this behavior plan I've made for myself.

As the visual is a preferred activity/modality for me, I'll start off what I've been wishing to write about, about motion and time, solitude and isolation, and how we take it--- with some visuals.

I think in this schedule of reinforcement, I'm ready to be able to engage in preferred activity.

Departure, Max Beckmann www.moma.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij738Q-wWmk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LHhcx52CF0

Pictionary, Abstract Expressionism Edition; or, More Signal to Noise

http://en.easyart.com/art-prints/Mark-Rothko/Untitled-Violet--Black--Orange--Yellow-on-White-and-Red-135567.html

Give a Little Whistle; or, A Short Post

Dear reader, courtesy of our K-1 students, a knock-knock joke:

Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Jiminy.
Jiminy Who?
Jiminy Cricket!
(guffaws and hoots ensue)

Those persons holding the belief that children with autism don't possess a sense of humor are sadly mistaken.

I'm Glad to See You; or, It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood Redux

Dear reader, when I began this blog as a means of practicing my relationship with language, and how this relationship with language manifested itself in the written word, I had no idea that I would soon meet such truly wry, intelligent, good-hearted, laugh-out-loud, lovely people.

A happy surprise indeed!

(My good friends AFKAPW and Lots Of, I expected: they are extremely good-natured and curious people. )

And indeed, words fail me when I think of this. For as one who was isolated as in times past as I, now: now, I can meet and speak with you at any given moment; and I do so love to hear and know what you have to say. I feel as if I am a kid again, and they just opened up the proverbial candy store.

I'm pleased and honored to be given this by Swampwitch:

Dear Swampy, thank you. Frida would have painted you, that's for sure.

And dear reader, thanks for visiting. I'm glad to see you, whenever you stop by!

Come back soon. I can't wait to see you.

http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Welcome-Mat-on-Forest-Trail-Posters_i1119571_.htm

Sometimes Pie Just Isn't Pie; or, I'll Meet You at King's Anytime, Anywhere

I would like to revisit yesterday's post wherein an apple pie featured most prominently.
In college, I had some difficulties, as we all sometimes do. The nature of the difficulty that causes me to revisit yesterday's post? One that many of us have dealt with: an eating disorder.

So it is the apple pie brings a specific image to mind, the image of one of the best acts of kindness I've ever experienced. During this time of eating disorder, my roommate would take me to a chain restaurant, the kind that one can find all over the US, the family-style, home-style joints. Once a week, she would take me to this establishment and order one of their signature desserts, hot apple pie topped with cinnamon ice cream; and when it came, she would nonchalantly put the plate in the middle of the table, the two forks akimbo on the china plate, and pretend that that pie, that ice cream, didn't, to put it simply, scare me to death. Then we would eat and pretend, and kept at it, until we could simply eat, and enjoy.
I think often about her kindness and generousity of spirit evidenced in that simple weekly act of hers.

In doing so, she taught me how to be with Batman (code name) when he had to eat a bite of ham sandwich from his lunchbox before he could eat his favored food. (His family had consulted a nutritionist because his sensory affinities gave him one-dimensional nutrition, and he was on a schedule to sample new foods; to do this was most frightening to him.)
Whenever I am on the road, and see that franchise, I must stop.
Here, I say to my family, my joy, have some.
And we are all the more happy for it.
Never assume, dear reader, that an act of yours can be too little or too late.
Right, Nae?

The Treachery of Images Redux; or, Let Me Call You Sweetheart

http://www.abcgallery.com/M/magritte/magritte26.html


Yesterday I made an apple pie, a great, gigantic pie. This pie was (and as the writer David Barry would word it), and I Am Not Making This Up, 6 inches high before I placed it into the oven. Just as the sandwich from that famous franchise with a name declaring the weight of its meat also comes with an asterisk to alert one that the frying of the patty will diminish the magnitude of its meat---- the pie did collapse somewhat during the baking, as the apples continued to soften, for I had only partially cooked the filling. All in all, still a pretty and a substantial pie, tagged with that Radiant-Baby-style heart for a steam vent.

As I stretched the top crust of the pie over the mound of apples (smelling of cardamom, smelling of clove and lemon and maple), Little Guy entered the kitchen. I've got this great, beaming grin on my face. I'm happy as I do so love when a pie crust works well: so well that it can stretch over a 6-inch tall mound of apples, and still keep hold to the bottom crust, and hold that seal all along the rim of the tin. I'm happy because this pastry is the other half of the batch I made from Almeda's recipe. I'm just happy because, well, it's apple pie, and I'm going to get some vanilla bean ice cream so that we can all scoop some to eat on top of it, warmed from the oven.

LG looks at the pie-almost-finished; he looks to me. My grin gets wider. I'm happy that he's caught me in the act. Won't he be so happy? What does he say?

I can't believe Devin Hester won over Ryan Howard for Breakthrough Athlete!

Sometimes a pie just is, well, a pie.

And even so, dear reader, I took the silver sliver of a paring knife, and tagged the pie, with that Radiant-Baby-style heart, right into the center of the crust, and slid it into the heat of the oven, so that we might dig into it, cracking the crust, and scoop up its tart-sweetness, and gild the lily, by adding more sweetness on top, and spoon up tart-cold-hot-sweetness all in one bite: I slid the pie into the oven to soften its heart.

All That and a Bag of Chips; or, Gotta Love Someone Who Loves Tarzan Matinees

http://www.filmposters.com/templates/LargeImage.asp?ProdID=9315


As I was just writing in reply to Swampwitch, Frida brought so much to the table that we will really never go hungry.

The fact that she absolutely loved Tarzan films and laughed all the way through them only further endears her to me, so as I still have an entire watermelon in the fridge, we will continue celebrating Frida's Centennial today. She deserves it, yes?



As part of the festivities, do follow the link, leading you to one of my favorite books. I have a Favorite Book Shelf, and I knew this one was going to be placed there before I even picked it up.

When you go there, you might understand why:






http://teacher.scholastic.com/authorsandbooks/events/frida/
Have a wonderful time.
And so it continues: Viva la vida, my friends.

My Apologies; or, Procrastination Gives Me Tunnel Vision

I would be most remiss if I did not share with you, my friends, two wonderful things that happened yesterday.
The first:

I was driving to class. My spouse, code name Snowy, called me on my cell phone. (I'll make his dialogue his favorite color.)
Where are you at? he asked.
At the intersection of_____, why?
Oh, I was just out to get some samples, and I thought I might see you go by.
Oh, okay.
Well, okay, see you tonight, bye.
Bye.

Dear reader, I must drive past Snowy's workplace on the way to class. His office building is on the corner of a well-travelled intersection. Snowy works for a world-famous company that generates much tourist traffic, and most of these tourists drive by and/or are stopped at this same intersection.
Imagine my initial surprise when, as I approached the traffic light at this intersection, Snowy jumped out from behind a rather large planter (you know how those urban beautification projects can acquire some rather gargantuan planters for their horticultural crowing), and pulled up one trouser leg to the knee to display his own leg in a shameless wanton display, grinning like a lunatic, grinning like love, and looking directly at me.
Dear reader, I am unsure how I managed to stay on the road, for I was so simply surprised: surprised to see him, and then surprised as to how tourist season and a corporate office don't figure into the hows and whens of things. I was delighted by his gesture.
Snowy saw a chance to express his affection, and he took it.
It's a wonderful thing, surprise.

The second:

Big Guy came in the room and slumped down on the couch as I was finishing a PBS show---Simon Schama's Power of Art. Each episode in the series centers in one one work, putting it into its social and iconographic context. I really appreciate the host's work; but that is beside the point of the story. Last night featured David's Marat. As the previews for next week came on, the show to feature Turner's The Slave Ship, the host commented that some contemporaries of Turner, when viewing the painting, compared it to a "kitchen mess."
Well, BG said, they need to remember that art is a subjective thing.
(Why yes, his favorite color is blue!)
Happy surprise number two: BG, who may very well be in the running for "Most Likely to Date Princess Leia," or so he would have it seem, is in all actuality, a person who listens, thinks, and then articulates his thoughts so succinctly.

Oh happy day!
I wish such surprises for you, dear reader. May you be as delighted as I have been.

Ebbets Field is Dead; or, That's the Krump

In yesterday's post, I spoke with you about a simple joy that is available to all of us: laughter. That the laughter was considered to be part of bodywork by the kundalini kriya that I referenced was quite a pleasing idea for me, one that I find most welcome.

It is my wish for you, dear reader, to laugh, and laugh really well, mind you, at least once a day. (Did you follow the embedded Darth Vader link from that post? It's a secret vice, looking at those images. But most definitely good for a laugh.)

Dear reader, since I made a resolution here to you and to myself to practice the craft of writing, I feel compelled to write further on the subject of violence that I began earlier; for it is specifically because of the violence that I have received in the past that I have difficulty with words in the present.

The life that was mine in the past of violence was one wherein one of the most oft-cited reasons for the beginning of violence was the extinction of Ebbets Field.

How can one not develop a sense of humor, an appreciation of the finer points of What Is Funny, when such a thing as the loss of that field is the gravity that holds you to that place, that one place, without seeming recourse?

And in that place I was kept in solitary confinement, a party of one; with a maitre d', of course: one who was very taken with all manner of ideas, and the loss of elegaic beauty that was Ebbets Field one of the most consuming of many that consumed. Needless to say, dear reader, I did not have great opportunity to engage with other people; to have conversation about stimulating things, much less the mundane things.

Use it or lose it as the saying goes. So I lost it.

I managed to escape once. I made small talk with the driver of the taxi. I cannot begin to describe to you to this very day, dear reader, the thrill, the joy, the absolute wonder in being able to speak to someone about the weather. The weather.

But as in most of these situations, these engagements between opposing forces (cat and mouse), I made a strategic error, and had to return, in order to win the war; in this case, the safety and custody of my son. Needless to say my return necessitated further isolation, and more strenous treatment to permanently affix my position.

One of the fundamental teachings of Buddhism is that suffering, dukkha, is caused by our attachment to things. We don't always get what we want when we want it, and perhaps we never do get it. It causes us to suffer, and our suffering plays out in inordinate ways: we might seek comfort from our suffering by using alcohol, by becoming a workaholic, by taking what we want by force. Perhaps we might take out our suffering on others without meaning to do so.

Yet again, we might mean exactly that.

And in the receiving end of that situation, words have no currency for your survival. You would be surprised how quickly verbal intelligences fade when they have no validity.

Visualization (backyard tree, running free) and laughter (say what?!?) are, again, a most welcome pair, in most every situation one may imagine.

And so, dear reader, from upstream I can practice non-attachment.

I am no longer attached to Ebbets Field with the same old ropes, with the black, the blue, and the stench of confinement. No, I believe that my dukkha was my silence; my particular brand of samsara was to deny that the range of voice available to each and every one of us as humans was also available for me.

By virtue of my experience, of being cut off from what is considered the average day-to-day, I am practicing non-attachment. In the classroom, I do my best to always see a child as a child, and not as a diagnosis. I am more reminded to meet these students where they are at, and to do so every day: the range of voice available to each and every one of us is no less available to them, and happily so!

I am reminded of the value of other intelligences outside of the linguistic realm, and it is in these places that I can most often look to meet these special students.

Where we go from there is up to them.

Non-attachment seems difficult to practice.

I believe that it is most often a case of seeming more difficult than it truly is. And if it becomes difficult, well, then, I am reminded of a skit from the television show, MadTV. The sketch features a male and female pair of dancers, who perform in a style that is known as krumping. In each of the skits, someone is always put at a disadvantage, to which the rejoinder is: "that's the krump."

So, dear reader, Ebbets Field is gone. People dress up their dog as el luchador. Darfur burns. Kids with autism are kids, first and foremost.

You and I, dear reader, are free.

We can talk about the weather, or not.

We can laugh all day long at whatever we please.

And that's the krump.

The Persistence of Memory; or, The Treachery of Images, Redux

Today is the final day of the school year for our boys. Next year, one will be in his final two years of high school; the other, still in elementary.

Sometimes I find it interesting and useful to think about the fluidity of time, of memory. I've had occasion to see many science-fiction type stories played out in various media, and I am often drawn to thought about that common story arc, that of the parallel universe/time travel: often, one character, upon discovering that alternate realities of the reality previously thought to be the one true reality truly do exist, travel through the ubiquitous time-space continuum to a different, alternate reality.

The traveler does so for many various reasons: to avert some tragedy; to gain information; to start over; to become deus ex machina; really, to be or to do anything. Truly any number of reasons are given; that's part and parcel of the pleasure of the playing of ideas, from fingerpainting to string theory, that question begins it all: how would you like to play?

There is some strange comfort to thinking about being able to have access to such a thing. If time is like a river, moving along into the ultimate sea; or if time is like, say, moving along in a spiral as if tracing the continous coil of a Slinky-type toy with one's finger, wouldn't it be good to be able to move back upstream to leave a little sign, a little touchstone, for the ride; or to be able to convey a wish to stop thinking about the circles of motion (round and round) and begin thinking and feeling about the direction of motion (up and up)? To say, look, this is the picture.

Frida is one of my favorite painters. She speaks to me, as she does to many others, with a unique language of icons. It is accepted in art history that she did not wish to be known as a Surrealist; some say it started with her abhorrence for Andre Breton. She was not averse to labels, when appropriate; she just didn't care for the word in reference to her.

An eloquent lady in many languages, that Frida.
shown above, right:

Memory, or the Heart, Frida Kahlo

www.abcgallery.com/K/kahlo

Strange Is Your Language and I Have No Decoder; or, Why Don't I Make My Intention Clear?

The majority of our students in the classroom in which I work have a diagnosis of autism. Autism is a condition that one hears very much about these days, and one that also can cause people who wish to speak about if for any number of reasons to approach dialogue about autism in increasingly polarizing ways. I myself am reluctant to write very much about my work, and only do so here because I wish to reference a certain way that our classroom, and many other classrooms providing service to children with autism and other differing abilities, approach communication.
Those with autism process sensory input differently than those who are "neurotypical." To oversimplify: in most cases, for those with autism, spoken language is not as well received as an input as is visual input. Although it is good practice to use visual input with all students, it is especially important for our students. When using spoken language, we often use what is known as "alpha statements:" statements pared of all but the essential, placed in the most simple words with best fit. These statements are then most often paired with visual cues, such as pointing or other gestures; sign language; or visual icons.
These visual icons can be used to facilitate communication when verbal language is not as much a player in the game of communicating. There are many assisitive technology devices that employ these icons to help along functional language; some more simple than others, some more expensive than others. The most commonly used system for creating icons is a software package called Boardmaker. One may find it here by following the link to the manufacturer's website:
http://www.mayer-johnson.com/
One can also design and make one's own "device" by creating icons and arranging them in the pages of a ring binder. The icons are backed with Velcro dots, and then affixed to Velcro strips arranged on the pages.
With this method, one can create pages dedicated to different conversations: for instance, a page for greeting statements, such as: hello, how are you? (or affix another icon such as "glad to see you, and so forth)--- I am (affix the appropriate icon); a page of request statements, such as I want (affix the appropriate icon, such as "a break," "to work," "to go to the bathroom;" a page of feeling statements, such as I feel (affix the appropriate icon---happy, sad, sick, etc.)

One can customize the icons and the pages for each child. Each main page can be further organized as each type of conversation dictates: if the child communicates the desire for a break by attaching the "break" icon to the "I want" statement during the course of communication, then another "I want" page is indicated, and the student may choose from several icons representing different break activities, such as a motor activity, a quiet choice, or a trip to the water fountain.
The organization is akin to how you might organize your folders and subfolders in your computer, dear reader.
Our students' schedules are posted using icons. The icons are arranged vertically on a Velcro strip affixed to a posterboard with their names on top. The icons show the students their day from start to finish. At each schedule change, the students remove the icon for what is now on their schedule, go to that area of the classroom, and then place the icon in the icon collection basket in that area.
There is something very satisfying about that.

I think that I have a tendency to use language as the icons are used in the classroom.

For instance, when I wrote about the rose petal in the arugula, there was much more to it than what I wrote; yet I chose the words I felt best parsed what actually occurred into a manageable packet that I might be able to transmit to you, dear reader. Though I was able to do so to some satisfaction when I posted about the rose petal, more often than not, I am more often seeing the icons of my own fashioning in my head.
In the Boardmaker software, one may customize the visual icons by typing whatever text you wish. To the side of the blog, I found a free icon of the 'Boardmaker-type" online; to the icon, I typed the text to a common phrase in our classroom: "time for group."
That was a fairly straightforward meeting of verbage and visual; yet it is often difficult for me to find the appropriate words for the visuals, and indeed, the sensory, that I perceive.

It's the old chestnut, that Appollian v Dionysian debate.
Words? Pictures? Perceptions?
Mutually exclusive? Tenuous relationship at best?

Dear reader, the students in our classroom brave the front lines of that age-old battle daily.
They are some of my best teachers.