Alice Walker -- We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness

Video from C-SPAN Book TV. Can't embed, external link here. The first 8 minutes are street interviews.

Self Advocacy - Autism Awareness Month is almost over.

Click the picture to see it full size on it's original site at Asperger Square 8.

Autism Awareness month is almost over. Have you asked an Autistic person about it yet?

"Three generations of morons is sufficient"

The above quote is from a Supreme Court Opinion, 88 years ago, regarding the involuntary sterilization of people with developmental disabilities. How much better are things today? "Autism Steals." "Autism Leaves an Empty Shell." "Autism is No Hope, No Future."

This video was put together by Autistic Self Advocacy Network, the Dan Marino Foundation, and Kent Creative. It was written and performed by individuals on the autism spectrum.




Have a few more minutes? Wonder what situation is behind this that would make these people think that a PSA is needed to advocate for basic human rights? aka: the inherent worth and dignity of all persons?

Ari Ne'eman is the President of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. He refers to himself as an Asperger's Autistic, is the narrator of the above PSA, and speaks to this question in a Keynote address to ASAN in this video. It is housed at the Dan Marino's Childnett.tv and outlines the challenges and dangers that face people on the autism spectrum by well-meaning people under the names of "education" and "treatment."

If you choose not to watch the above video, let me simply tell you that the quotes above were taken from real live "autism advocates" --- that is, people who are not autistic who want to cure autism because "This is the special curse of autism. You have your child, and yet you don’t have him. You have a shell, a ghost of all the dreams and hopes you ever had." (from Autism Research: A Legacy of Neglect, an Opportunity for New Discovery by Jonathan Shestack, co-founder and president of Cure Autism Now.)

While there are no easy answers, and human life is infinitely complicated, I cannot help but think that people with autism ought be in the middle of the discussion, not the periphery. It seems that the philosophical difference between autism as illness and autism as natural neurological diversity is a pretty great distance. It seems that the difference between "curing" something and helping them live the best life they can, maximizing their skills and learning to live with the challenges is pretty great distance.

After all, we don't still try to cure glbt folk, do we?

Read it like there's gonna be a quiz.

The Mosaic Project recommendations are out.
This is one of the most clear, vibrant, passionate, intellectually and developmentally sound documents that has come out of the UUA. And I'm the kind of geek who reads these documents on a fairly regular basis. Laura Spencer's report clearly articulates the challenges youth and young adults of color, multicultural youth and young adults, trans-racially adopted youth and young adults face within our movement, locates this experienced reality soundly within the best literature and theory known, and it's recommendations are unmistakable.

If you care about our youth, and/or our ability to be a relevant multicultural religous movement, and/or AR/AO work, and/or being a person who takes Right Action, and/or just being a better person next week than you are today, then this document is for you.

Read it. Like there's going to be a quiz.
Don't whip through it online like it's a blog, and toss off an opinion.

Print it out, put it in a binder, write in the margins, look up the references. Ponder and think and grow and be an active reader, engaging the material; a reflective Unitarian Universalist who listens deeply when people articulate their reality. Be a UU who pushes themselves to think outside even their own box.

Unitarian Universalists have poured their lives out as the text upon which this exegesis is written. We should respect and honor that by seeing, hearing, and responding.

The Question

What are the ministry needs of African, Caribbean, Native/American Indian, Asian and Pacific Islander, Latina/Latino and Hispanic, Middle Eastern/Arab, Multiracial and Multiethnic and trans-racially adopted Unitarian Universalist (UU) youth and young adults?

* How does our Unitarian Universalist faith need to change in order to meet these needs?
* What structures need to be strengthened or established to support families, congregations, campus groups, districts, and continental bodies in their ministries to these youth and young adults?

The Mosaic Project Report offers recommendations to help congregations, districts, and Association create an environment that is an effective part of the scaffolding that supports Youth and Young Adults of Color both in their development of a healthy identity and through the transition from childhood to adulthood. The positive impact of creating such an environment can reach beyond the Youth and Young Adults of Color community into all ministry areas. By creating congregations, communities, and institutions that embody the seven Principles, Unitarian Universalists can indeed move closer to building the world we dream about.

It's all about systems and structures, and ultimately, what those of us with access to decision-making do to make those systems and structures more appropriate, supportive and embracing, and empowering for all of our youth and young adults.

And there will be a quiz. Whether by your higher power, your conscience, or by the youth of today and tomorrow who will judge our actions in the future, there will, by god, be a quiz.

I pray we pass.

Non-Anxious Presence vs. Actual Calmness

Chalice Spark posted a great post about being a non-anxious presence in our work. In the comments, Anna Banana raises a good question about the difference between maintaining a "non-anxious presence" and being calm. As I understand it, the former is a behavior, not necessarily a feeling state.

We may or may not feel calm, anxious, stressed, fearful; but our behavior relative to the congregation can be a grounded one that avoids overreacting, taking "bait," or permitting changes of the subject and the like. Our non-anxious presence can be to keep the eye on the ball, so to speak, to hold up the core values and specific issue at hand, slowly, carefully, with humor even, regardless of our internal feelings about it.

If we act stressed, people around us will feel stressed, even if they'd not needed to in the first place. It's why Opening of the church year is so challenging for me, because I am stressed! I'm working 70 hours a week dealing with things like 17 families that didn't register their kids on time so I need to reconfigure classes the day before teacher training. But the members are there with excitement, looking forward to a new year, anticipating new things.
If my stress/anxiety shows in my behavior then their feelings may change and become MY feelings, and the subject (opening excitement and joy) will change to be about me (and my frustration, anger, anxiety.)

Conversely, when the congregation is under stress, (say because of finances,) I am of course also under stress, and most definitely am not "feeling calm." My behavior in terms of being a non-anxious presence for them helps them keep the focus on their challenges, their feelings, and their tasks and roles.

Many of my colleagues, (particularly among the ordained ministry and those other religous professionals I consider foreparents or mentors,) seem to be able to maintain an actual inner sense of calm while behaving in a non-anxious manner.
Both.

I aspire to this, but I have a limbic system that goes from zero to 70 in .1 seconds. So the distinction between feeling and behavior is a really important one for me. Behaviors are something that can be practiced.

These include behaviors that are
a) behaviors of welcome, listening, focusing, acknowledging feelings and elephants in rooms, visioning, constancy, and perhaps above all, predictability,
b) behaviors that access my higher cognitive functioning despite the fight or flight or cry response my emotional self is looking for
and c) back my limbic system down to 55.
(I am told that meditation can be used for helping the limbic system chill out, but cannot attest to that personally. I find nature radio on pandora.com helps as a limbic system governor, and once the gas has been hit, jumping jacks in the office w/ the shades drawn to discharge adrenaline is useful. Jumping jacks in public would likely be counter productive. I'm just saying.)


The most challenging, as someone for whom inner calm does not come easily, isn't finance committee meetings, or congregational meetings about the latest issue; these can be prepared for. The greatest challenge is keeping space in my brain prepared to the inevitable subject out of left field while I'm full of 79 things to juggle on Sunday Morning. When I'm juggling balls, and someone tosses me a grindstone. When a member starts talking about about something they've been keeping pent up, or something they feel is exceptionally timely and must be addressed on the spot, it can be very difficult to implement the mantra, "this isn't a good time, please call me and we'll find a time to have tea."

"This isn't a good time, please call me and we'll find a time to have tea."
"This isn't a good time, please call me and we'll find a time to have tea."
"This isn't a good time, please call me and we'll find a time to have tea."

As a matter of fact, I think I'm going to start practicing it like an actual mantra. I'll let you know how that works.



(grounded...eye on the ball... left field. Must be spring, Go Red Sox.)

Being a Professional Religous Professional in difficult economic times

A very wise colleague recently told me that she thought that at the core of what we do, is that we educate people on how to "do church." My work is not the same thing as my job description and commensurate task list.

I really like that as a hook upon which to hang my hat. Our work is that we provide leadership in how to live in a certain kind of community that doesn't exist elsewhere. We provide opportunities for people -- adults, youth, children -- to practice the skills necessary to be able to be in right relationship. It's relatively easy with people who think like us and laugh at the same jokes, but our religious community, when done right, includes people we don't particularly enjoy being with, people we don't understand, people we find challenging, angry, or obstructionist, and "doing church" with them takes a lot of work.

When we ask ourselves, "What is a congregation uniquely positioned to provide it's members," we come to that answer. We are a religous movement that affirms the worth and dignity of our most challenging people. We are a faith tradition that expects that people will be oriented toward right relationship, toward health and wholeness; toward, dare I say, liberation from that which limits and challenges us. We are a faith tradition where people covenant to stay at the table together and work things out, to practice and practice and practice again the skills to be able to work things out.

Religious Professionals whose work is in congregations are in a unique position relative to the members and congregations in which we serve. We spend 20 or 40 or 60 hours a week "working" on the doing of church. By the time we've been doing this work for several years, we have engaged in myriad collegial conversations and spent intense time in educational development opportunities at 15 and 25 and 40 hours a pop, learning from our colleagues and foreparents, from those who specialize in understanding particular aspects of our work. We may have spent 1 or 3 or 4 or 10 years in advanced studies in preparation for the work we do, learning how the early Christian church, liberationists in Latin America, marginalized populations and mainstream congregations in the US all have "done church." We've learned about congregational systems theory, and the impact of congregational size on the necessary administrative and program structures; we've worked to be a non-anxious presence.

And the people we serve, for the most part have not spent years and years in this endeavor. They attend worship once a week. They serve on a committee, or teach a class, maybe both. Some few immerse themselves in "being" Unitarian Universalist in an active, core sense. Maybe, after a number of years, they serve on the Board or on committees and boards of the larger association. Or they blog regularly about our Association and our lives together.

But church time is slow time.

C h u r c h T i m e i s S l o w Tiiiiiiiimmmmmmmmmmeeeeeeee.



I came out of Seminary great guns, intending to change the world, to start adult education programs that mimicked the kind of intense bonding and exploration I experienced in Seminary. I was going to start outreach ministries that met the felt needs of the poorest in the community from church basements, empowering the members of any congregation I served to imagine wildly the kinds of needs they, banded together as a congregation, could meet.

And here I am two decades later on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, talking with people, not about the next outreach activity, not about deep intense theological questions about the meaning of life, but about the importance of the Safe Congregation Policies. We explore why it isn't a good idea for a person who doesn't actually believe that the rules are necessary to be the actual person who teaches them to newcomers. Sometimes I practice, teach, and engage in right relationship with my community by saying "No."


Here I am, again, trying to find language for why the word Faith doesn't mean belief in what isn't provable. Or in a conversation about why, just because the word Covenant is printed on the side of big rigs and is claimed by reconstructionist Christians we still get to use it. That, in fact, we must use this language, for it is our language. The very deepest innermost truth of our faith is in our covenant one with another.

Here I am, again, asking a group of incredibly passionate and talented RE Volunteers to remember that they are working with a group that exists in the context of a larger RE Program, which is in the context of the larger congregation, which is uniquely qualified to offer it's membership a certain kind of being-in-relationship.

Here I am, again, (trying to be careful) asking questions about why a congregant who buys fair trade coffee and won't shop at Walmart would entertain the idea that when staff hours are cut, that staff member should just offer up volunteer time to fulfill their job description.

Here I am, not engaged in a deep discussion about multinational economic oppression, but explaining why I think that all staff will support another staff person's raise to the local Living Wage even though none of us are going to get a COLA this year; why it's a justice issue; why we are also bound together in right relation.

Under economic pressure, congregations need their religous professionals to be professional -- that is, to continue to help them learn how to "do church." If my hours or program budget were to be cut further, what would that mean to me as a professional? What would it mean to my family? These are my questions to answer, and they belong in conversation with my family and colleagues.

But, how would the congregation "own" the consequences of choices to cut? This, ultimately is my role as a religious professional under economic pressure -- how might I help the congregation understand that those consequences have to do with how they live their lives together, how they support their children and youth, how they walk together in justice and peace and right relation. Changes in my job description would mean modifications in how they support their own religious community, but it ought not be about whether or not I am hurt or angry. Their reaction to any cuts that are made ought not be to personally apologize to me. Because it's not about me.

My family life is about me, my economic realities are about me, and my solutions will be about me. But the congregation must learn through this as through everything else, how to "do church," how to be in right relation, how to make hard choices and then follow up with right action.

What I do as a religous educator is far more complicated, rich, and meaningful than the exciting work I'd once dreamed. Starting up community education programs to teach basic car repair to single mothers would have been much simpler.


PS. Late breaking news people, Literary License. It's a lovely thing. Remember, I never talk about my congregation on this blog, and so there are no exact literal conversations with exact identifiable congregants; just as I hope you understand that it could not possibly be true, in that literal factual sense, that I had all of the above conversations, literally, this Wednesday afternoon.

Moses is Departing Egypt: A Facebook Haggadah

Since I'm on the subject of Facebook, here's a very funny page. But it's a Fake Facebook page, so don't try to click the link to see who God's friends are. It won't work.

Below is a screenshot of the beginning.




Here's the link to the whole thing.

Facebook as the new Scanners

My grandfather had a scanner.








My dad has a scanner.













I have a scanner.















My uncle and brother are technogeeks, so they graduated to ham radios and shortwave and I don't understand a word they say so they don't get to be in my blog today.

If this is new to you, let me explain that a scanner is a radio device one can set to certain frequencies to listen to police, fire, ambulance (and for the truly compulsive, the two-way radio broadcasts between the base and, say, the Heating Oil delivery truck, or the local college security officers.). Scanners are the explanation of how local tv news sometimes get so quickly to the scene of the accident. It provides, not long narratives of reality, but little bits of information that provide a mental image of reality, a little fuzzy in the manner of television when it went out magically over the air the way television is supposed to be transmitted. Yet it is still a little specific at the same time...like when that fuzzy tv had great audio.

A scanner is how my dad kept up with the local situation for weeks while there was no electricity after the ice storm of 1998 in the Northern Adirondacks (and Vt, and Quebec). Battery back up, very hard core.

My grandfather's scanner usually brought out opinions from my grandmother,
"I told you there was no good letting kids play in that park down there," or
"He was probably drunk," or "As fat as that, it's no wonder she had a heart attack."

I have used mine in times of electrical outage, or when I hear lots of sirens, or, sometimes, if there's nothing on tv and I wonder what's going on in my town[s].
I get to find out that the electricity is out because someone crashed into the pole at the end of the road, so I know it won't be long. I can tell if any neighbors already called in a noise complaint...

My partner pointed out the other day that I haven't turned it on since I joined Facebook.

Is Facebook the new Scanner? Have all my bits of technology and hobbies been replaced?

Married Gay People Who Are Sorry

I haven't had time in months to post any original thoughts on this blog, (I'm unclear if I've even had any original thoughts) but who needs original thoughts when there's Portia Di Rossi and Jimmy Kimmel?

Wizards of Winter and Barbra

Two very cool videos of a house with Christmas lights sync'd to music. First the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Wizards in Winter, then Barbra Streisand's Jingle Bells.

Child safety redux - Who is in charge of looking out for dangers?

Thinking Out Loud.
I came across this fabulous set of PSA's. They are fun and simple. Click the video tests, in order, below. Make sure your children aren't in the room, b/c unexpected words may fly out of your mouth.


Now that you've got the hang of it, watch this one.



Page down ...

These are from http://www.dothetest.co.uk/


I was all proud of myself when I saw the bear in the second video. After the first video, I was looking for a bear, and I found it, then noticed it change. I was not a little dismissive of the video, given, ::eyes roll:: how easy it was.

Normally, I'm the queen of continuity errors. In the middle of a film, if someone's cigarette grows a quarter inch when the angle changes, or if the coffee handle turns left instead of right, I have a good grumble, out loud. If continuity errors continue, I often add a dramatic Tony Soprano arm wave to the grumble. And whomever is in the living room with me is resentful of my interruption of their experience. They'd not noticed continuity errors, and so it was I, not the film's inattention to detail, that interrupted their experience.

I'm embarrassed to say in this case, I stopped at the bear, even though I knew the gist of the exercise. I stopped looking. I stopped seeing. I watched, but didn't see.

So I find myself pondering this in relation to our congregations and the safety of children (and elders, and other vulnerable people.)

It's so easy to miss something you're not looking for.

Is this why DRE's and church staff are more aware of the number of people in the building who are not congregants, in fact, the number who live on the edge of sanity, sobriety, and the law? (This is likely most true of those of us in downtown congregations).

Is this why, given people's natural (and I would say appropriate) desire for congregations to be places of safety and sanctuary, that they resist efforts to increase security in ways that require them to be inconvenienced or, frankly, to have to notice that bad things happen even in church?

So is this part of an explanation of why we seem to be the only people who notice when matches are left out on the edges of things, or when a door is unlocked because it's inconvenient to have to continually walk to open it during committee meetings? Because we are looking?

And if members are not looking, even when there are policies that say they ought, then of course members are going to be uncomfortable or even resentful of us when we point out risks. It is not the fact of a unlocked door, or the matches, or the suddenly covered security-window-in-the-door that interrupted their sense of sanctuary. It was the staff, the DRE, or the identified safety wonk on the RE Committee who interrupted their sense of sanctuary.

I wonder if this is a partial explanation for why congregations sometimes seem to expect us to write and implement policies, to monitor and ensure safety, but push comes to shove, not really bother membership about their behavior when that behavior impacts safety.

And if it is, what's the solution?

As Harriet the Spy said so frequently, Hmm, think about this.

What makes your heart sing?

I think, and of course I'm not the first, that this is a core question for religious educators. We should be asking everyone we come across in our work, "What makes your heart sing?"

When we have some insight into the answers to this question, we create space within which to imagine ways to make everything we do be meaningful. We can look for ways to create connections between people, practices and principles; we can pull on members' natural inclinations and desires to seek moments of meaning. We can collaborate on opportunities for service that aren't driven by how we've always done something, but by maximizing connections between past, present, and future/vision.

When we listen to people's answers, we can go to our RE Committee and Minister and colleagues and say,
"Look what I found out! XXYYZZ is the new AABBCC! Or: 10 people have told me that they cherish JJKKLL. What would happen if...."

(Perhaps our RE Committee and Minister and colleagues are, in fact, the first people to whom we should direct the question.)

I often think that I know how to do my job -- what the goals are, what the needs of the families are. But people will answer these two questions very differently:
What do you need? elicits a different answer than What makes your heart sing? My "job" is to flex and learn and remember that I need to be able to hold both of those questions (and all the answers) in order to truly support faith development.

...

It surprised me how much this video makes my heart sing.
As it started, I so didn't see it coming...what happened in my heart.

If you have a fast internet connection, this link will get you to his page and a hi-res version, which is even more glorious.

Someone you love has Mito

Every year 1000-4000 children are born with a Mitochondrial Disease. The person in my life who I know lives with Mito is Gwen, who I've written about on this blog many times before. Gwen and her family are no longer part of our congregation because our local hospitals didn't have the specialized treatment necessary to support Gwen, so they are now the beloved members of another UU congregation.




Many, if not most people with Mito are misdiagnosed, or not diagnosed until after death, so take a minute to learn about this often misunderstood disease. This is Mitochondrial Disease Awareness Week, to do yourself and your loved ones a favor, take a moment for awareness.

Mitochondrial diseases result from failures of the mitochondria, specialized compartments present in every cell of the body except red blood cells. Mitochondria are responsible for creating more than 90% of the energy needed by the body to sustain life and support growth. When they fail, less and less energy is generated within the cell. Cell injury and even cell death follow. If this process is repeated throughout the body, whole systems begin to fail, and the life of the person in whom this is happening is severely compromised. The disease primarily affects children, but adult onset is becoming more and more common.

This means that organs fail to work properly -- or fail outright. Without energy to run the cells, cells die, and can't do their jobs within the organs. So people with mito may not have GI tracts that work, or kidneys that will flush, or livers that wil cleanse. They become extremely vulnerable to the slightest bacteria or virus.

Depending on which cells are affected, symptoms may include loss of motor control, muscle weakness and pain, gastro-intestinal disorders and swallowing difficulties, poor growth, cardiac disease, liver disease, diabetes, respiratory complications, seizures, visual/hearing problems, lactic acidosis, developmental delays and susceptibility to infection.

Click the image to the left for a larger version of Symptoms of Mitochondrial Diseases.

Treatment
"At this time, there are no cures for these disorders.
Goals of treatment
note: goals may never be met

* alleviate symptoms
* slow down the progression of the disease"

For more information about treatments and therapies, click the link in the above quote about Treatment.

As research continues, there seems to be more and more connection between mitochondrial diseases and autism spectrum disorders.

David Holtzman, MD, PhD, a Pediatric Neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA, notes, “Mitochondrial Disease may present with the clinical features of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Several recent studies have documented biochemical evidence of abnormal mitochondrial functions in at least 30% of children with ASD.”

FMI about thinking about connections between ASD and Mito, start here

Support these organizations:
Mito Action
United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation

People you love are living with this disease. They may or may not know it.
Support research.
Take a few minutes and play with the above websites and google and youtube.

Daydreaming as active engagement with our internal landscape

Religious Professionals absolutely cannot jump from task to task to task, rushing willy nilly from one to do list to the next. It cripples us. We have to have time intentionally carved out that's full of daydreaming, imagining, making the improbable connections that amount to leaps of creativity and connection in our professional lives. Professional development, formal or not, needs to include opportunities to "contemplate our internal landscape."

Jonah Lehrer in the Boston Globe:

scientists have begun to see the act of daydreaming ... is a fundamental feature of the human mind - so fundamental, in fact, that it's often referred to as our "default" mode of thought. Many scientists argue that daydreaming is a crucial tool for creativity, a thought process that allows the brain to make new associations and connections. Instead of focusing on our immediate surroundings - such as the message of a church sermon - the daydreaming mind is free to engage in abstract thought and imaginative ramblings. As a result, we're able to imagine things that don't actually exist,

...

Every time we slip effortlessly into a daydream, a distinct pattern of brain areas is activated, which is known as the default network. Studies show that this network is most engaged when people are performing tasks that require little conscious attention, such as routine driving on the highway or reading a tedious text. Although such mental trances are often seen as a sign of lethargy - we are staring haplessly into space - the cortex is actually very active during this default state, as numerous brain regions interact. Instead of responding to the outside world, the brain starts to contemplate its internal landscape. This is when new and creative connections are made between seemingly unrelated ideas.

The article is here. Jonah Lehrer is an editor at large at Seed magazine and the author of "Proust Was a Neuroscientist."

On Competency Expectations : Take a cue from the Canadians

Setting aside the fact that expecting competency and professional ethics from professionals is simply appropriate, it seems to me we could take a cue from the 1998 Canadian Supplement to the UUMA guidelines.
Others have quoted the new rule, but I'll put it here for any who aren't following along on other blogs.

"The fellowship of a minister may be terminated by the Ministerial Fellowship Committee for unbecoming conduct, incompetence, or other specified cause."

Employment law is different in Canada, so a minister can be "dismissed for cause." Dismissal from a congregation is not what this particular rule change is about, but I mention it here because we might take some wisdom from this in terms of its usefulness in identifying where the bar might be set, what might constitute incompetence.

“Cause” is a term of art and in general means particularly egregious behavior such as repeated drunkenness in the pulpit...

I think it's the funniest line in any professional document I've ever read, and it makes me happy every time I can find an excuse to refer to it. This may be the first time I've been able to refer to it and have it actually be directly relevant.

And it also appropriately sets the bar clearly so as to avoid messes regarding personality or disagreements of style, theology or low/high churchiness and the like.

If you've never seen it, the entire paragraph is:

In Canada a distinction is drawn between being dismissed for cause and being dismissed. “Cause” is a term of art and in general means particularly egregious behavior such as repeated drunkenness in the pulpit, failure to conduct services with no notice given or molestation of children in the church school. In situations where there is clearly cause, no benefits of any kind and no salary need be paid after the date of dismissal. Where “cause” in the legal sense cannot be established it may be that longer benefits than those described as normal in the US will have to be paid. In either case the minister is entitled to be treated fairly, to know the details of the charges and to have an opportunity to reply. Failure to proceed fairly can result in a review by the courts. Separation of church and state is not observed rigidly in Canada, and there are an increasing number of cases where courts have concluded that ministers were not treated fairly.

Also, as an aside, may I take this moment to state my strong opinion that all LREDA members ought not only read our own Guidelines, but the UUMA Guidelines as well (and hopefully the updated ones will be finalized if not already, and Google-able and on the UUA website soon) And vice versa. We are all accountable to professional standards and expectations of ethical behavior, and as religious professionals it is incumbent upon us to be aware of how those standards and expectations are and are not the same given our different responsibilities within a congregation.

I'm just saying.

Keeping Mum

Dark British comedy with a Rowan Atkinson as the Vicar and Maggie Smith as, er, Mary Poppins, sort-of. What could be better?

If you've never seen this 2005 film, and if you ever think I'm funny, then try to catch it. If you don't ever find me funny, I recommend you give it a pass because I find it hilarious.
and sick.
and hilarious.

I like to believe that people who don't find me funny won't find Maggie Smith funny. I'm just saying.


TMC Monday 1:30 am
Showcase Tue 11:15am
Sho2 Wed 9:15 am
TMC may 8 9:20 am

Autism: The Musical

Watch it on HBO. It's amazing. It's honest. You'll fall in love with the kids and appreciate the depth of the time and effort parents put into helping their kids grow and develop. You will watch as people struggle with communication, social skills, and impulsivity. The film shows snippets of the joys and challenges, the positive communication and melt-downs -- both child and adult. It is a film about children with autism, but it is just as much about how neurotypical adults sometimes have similar behaviors and responses to the world -- just not as frequently.

Here is the schedule. The next showing is Wednesday at 6:15 East, 9:15 West. It is also On Demand, although it doesn't show up yet on my On Demand Schedule. There are also some cut scenes available On Demand, which you'll want to go to immediately after seeing the film.

Don't have HBO? Go visit a friend....

My only significant critique, (which would have completely changed the film), is that they only gave a tiny nod to the inadequate resources that are provided to help children fully develop their potential, or to the reality that public schools fail to meet the legal standards of education on a regular basis.

Daddy’s Roommate Buys a Prius

A satire of the fundraising letters of James Dobson (Focus on the Family).
Said satire is brought to you by the funny evangelicals at The Wittenburg Door.

Green Homosexuals, The Newest Threat to American Families

EXCERPT:

We must defend our way of life. Many of you know my stand against homosexuality.

AND, more recently, you may have heard how I have criticized evangelical leaders who have formed unholy alliances with the environmental movement to “save” the planet at the expense of our God-ordained standard of living.

What you may not know is that these two radical movements have now joined forces.

My friends, we are now facing a Gay-Green threat: Homosexual activists who also seek to limit carbon emissions and promote recycling, as well as a sustainable lifestyle!

I know it sounds like “gangrene” and that is entirely appropriate, since this is a rottenness which will eat away at the integrity of our American way of life.

And, in case you've never seen what Mr. Dobson writes, here's an excerpt of a real letter:

April 2004

Dear Friends:

I write to you today with a profound sense of concern and apprehension for the welfare of the family, and indeed, for the future of our nation. I do not recall a time since the beginnings of Focus on the Family, 27 years ago, when the institution of marriage faced such peril, or when the forces arrayed against it were more formidable or determined. Barring a miracle, the family as it has been known for more than five millennia will crumble, presaging the fall of Western civilization itself. This is a time for concerted prayer, divine wisdom and greater courage than we have ever been called upon to exercise.

For more than 40 years, the homosexual activist movement has sought to implement a master plan that has had as its centerpiece the utter destruction of the family. The institution of marriage, along with an often weakened and impotent Church, is all that stands in the way of its achievement of every coveted aspiration.

Latency aged boys collect things

It's part of the developmental deal, 10-12 year old boys build model worlds - railroads, lego-lands, duct-tape tech deck skateboard parks - and they collect things. They collect baseball cards, Pokemon cards, matchbox cars...

My grandson collects "Quotes I Like by Barack Obama."

He writes them on little flash cards so he can learn them.

I'm so proud.

Laugh like a pig Auntie Cindy

When Naomi was much smaller, she loved my laugh, which, when there is enough humor in the ether, does have an occasional snorting quality to it. My brother Dave and sister-in-law Mari used this as a way to help her differentiate between Auntie Beloved and Auntie Cindy.

Before, it went like this:

Age 18 months - 2 years--
"How does Auntie Cindy laugh?"
[Naomi would scrunch up her face and pull air in and out of her 18 month old nose, like 18 month old smelling the flowers on speed]

Age 2--
She'd be on the phone and say,
"Laugh Auntie Cindy."

Age 2.5--
on the webcam, she'd scrunch up her face and say,
"Laugh Auntie Cindy."

Age 2.75--visiting in person
This time, after spending 8 days with her, we were riding in the car when out of the blue she suddenly made the connection.

"Laugh like a pig Auntie Cindy."

Everyone swears they never taught her what a pig sounds like.