The dotted lines being on a wall (as shown here): Sometimes that’s what I’ve felt I’ve had to do to make things work out for Charlie, to let the sunshine through via places that no one else could see a way through.

A couple of years while teaching this poem to an English Literature 101 class at a mid-sized university in New Jersey (it’s not where I teach now), I asked my class what “green” signifies. While we live in New Jersey, I grew up in California (think Berkeley not Los Angeles) and — having started to recycle in the 4th grade, lived through a couple of droughts and a gas shortage, and developed a preference for whole grains in elementary school — “green” to me means nature, plants, leaves, grass, stuff that grows in the ground naturally.
So I was honestly crestfallen …read more

A Difficult Youth Is A Good Thing for a Fisher——um, a fish, according to a study about the Bluehead Wrasse reported about in Science Daily back in February:
[Scientists] discovered that fish larvae that survive a long, rough, offshore journey eventually arrive at a near shore reef in good condition, and that they thrive afterwards.In contrast, locally produced young have a relatively easy life and they arrive on the reef (near the area where they were spawned) in a variety of conditions –– from poor to good. Only the young that are in good condition survive after a month on the …read more

“It wasn’t like a switch being turned off….It was more like a dimmer switch being turned down.”
I’ve read this quote from Dr. Jon Poling, the father of Hannah Poling, in more than a few news stories and most recently in one today in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Dr. Poling uses the metaphor of a dimmer switch to describe how his daughter changed after receiving five vaccines at the age of 18 months:
Almost immediately after, she was screaming, feverish and irritable. Then her behavior gradually changed so she would stare at fans and lights and run in circles.
Dr. Poling’s choice of metaphor—-that …read more

Classes started at the college where I teach last Wednesday, so I knew it would be a busy week. As the posts below suggest, the past week turned out to be far busier, and intenser, and more emotionally wrenching, than I had bargained for.

Wishing the family of Katie McCarron much peace: Katie will be remembered.

Autism and Representation: New BookAutism and Representation is the title of a new book just published at the end of 2007 by Routledge Press and edited by Mark Osteen, a Professsor of English and Director of Film Studies at Loyola College in Maryland and the father …read more

Charlie pulled two books out of the book shelf. Saying “Blue ocean!” he pointed to a patch of blue on the cover of The Littlest Angel. Saying “green bed!” he pointed to a pink cloud that, I suppose, could be considered to have sort of a chaise lounge shape. I pointed to each letter of “angel” and he read them out: “It says ‘angel’” I said. “A,” said Charlie; I was pointing, I realized, at the “a.” I ran my finger under the entire word: “Angel!” The other book was an old Barney book about “what will you do when …read more

It helps me to understand our life with Charlie and autism as a journey whose map is being made as we take each step, whose roads are a constant crossroads, with bumps and bends and uphills. Autismville referred to a related metaphor for life raising an autistic child—running a marathon—in a comment on a previous post:
“Pardon the overused cliche, but for us autism is our life … a marathon, not a sprint. The reality is it’s difficult to move forward when one’s focus is attacking the other runners in the race or those standing on the sidelines…   
I wish we could …read more

I went to Atlanta this past weekend in order to give a paper on the use of metaphor in the representation of autism and……. Okay, I’ll just cut to the quick.
I was one foot away from Jenny McCarthy as she interviewed parents about vaccines and autism at the National Autism Association conference. A camera man and a microphone were at hand; parents were listening closely and later gathered in a group and held up photos of their children.
No, I didn’t plan this.
I was in Atlanta to give my paper and chair a panel on non-fiction writing about autism for the …read more

Who don’t you know who:
(1) Knows someone with autism.
(2) Knows someone who has a child, relative, or friend with autism.
(3) Knows about autism.
When my son was first diagnosed back in July of 1999, it was more than a few times that I heard, “do you mean he likes art”? Indeed, in the movie Paradox Lake, which is about a summer camp for autistic children and its counselors, one of the counselors is recruited from a New York subway platform; he thinks he is going to work with “artistic” kids.
So it is disquieting to read a headline like this: Autism: …read more

Under Dr. Elizabeth Mumper, A new citadel for autism—the Rimland Center for Integrative Medicine—is opening on Confederate Avenue in Lynchburg, Virginia. The new center is named after Dr. Bernard Rimland, who wrote the 1964 bookInfantile Autism: The Syndrome and Its Implication for a Neural Theory of Behavior, which argued that autism was a biological condition; Dr. Rimland promoted biomedical treatments for autistic children through the “DAN!” conferences. Dr. Mumper, a pediatrician, became “intrigued” with Dr. Rimland’s views and with those of Dr. Andrew Wakefield and, as the The News and Advance notes:
The address is curiously appropriate, because Mumper started …read more