On A Mission To Link Words With Thoughts And Feelings

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

Peace of mind makes life much easier to take in all of its changes and tests to see if one can be normal and competent. Part of mine comes from being able to have my regular routines and the other part comes creatively through my art and my picturesquely confusing to read typing. Images push my thoughts into words which I mold into a pot of really strong, weighted-with-opinions-about-my-life-with-autism, material.

Let me either inspire or encourage others who support people with limited power of expression to foster forcefully their creative use of imagination-driven language. Listen to poets and you might not learn about science and math, but you will learn about such things as the particular poorly starting car sounds in below people’s tolerance of the outdoors, zero degree weather. It is like posting totems of speed limits on a super highway with ten lanes to limit people’s creative use of language.

I am not suggesting taking the leashes of language rules and spelling completely off. Loosely written poems lose their impact if people cannot pick out any kind of order or sense to the text. Time well spent on spell check and the proper use of parts of speech is a paper-saver because people won’t be throwing your writing in the trash.

I am an artist at heart on a mission to link words with thoughts and feelings. Please play like puppies in a pen of party favors. Chase the tails of your imaginations, barking wildly and jumping on orders of writing lessons from old school teachers of the three R’s.

~Larry

A Blast of Northern Sayings about Life, Autism, and Communication

Wednesday, January 19th, 2011

Quite the test to ears, hands, and feet, we have been having in the way of freezing cold weather here in nearer-Canada-than-Mexico Vermont. Your relatives in warmer places invite you to come on down and you arrange to fly away like very tropical birds taking leave of a northern climate.

Leading the life of a mostly-acclimatized-to-powdery-snow Vermonter puts you in the place of always yearning to leave for a paradise-like, as sunny as any southern beach, island that seems to invite vacationers to, lining their pale bodies with layers of suntan lotion rather than lots of polar fleece. It’s like that for people without speech in that we always yearn to have voices that work naturally without enhancements of vocal machines but at the same time, like practically adaptable-to-any-weather-conditions Vermonters, we speech-impaired people can work out our thoughts in words as long as we pack communication devices and link up with trusty sled dog-like partners.

Isn’t posting this blog like giving you the latest weather report? Larry is not quite the weather TV star that you will see on your local news, but you are always guaranteed to get a blast of northern sayings about life, autism, and communication from me.

From IQ Charts to iTunes Popularity Charts

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

Larry loves music and I am proud to be the impetus with pal, Tracy pushing the beat of advocacy behind my artistic ramblings on the canvas and keyboard for partner-in- creatively-pushing-aesthetic-boundaries-crime host writer for the multitude of talented voices from the pop and folk world, J.Ralph, composing a film score which positions our disability as speechless individuals alongside the search for a voice experienced by kindred-in-spirit musicians.

Personally, this linking of art and disability moves the debate about competence from the IQ charts to the iTunes popularity charts. Looking weird, immersed in their own worlds, myths about autism are vacating the playlists of people in society and are being replaced by movie-inspired mixes of profound intelligence-driven songs.

Larry and Tracy laptop their thoughts and ideas to the iPod generation. Putting pictures to our experiences of traveling the globe were Gerry Wurzburg and her talented film naturally-attuned-to-autistic-quirks crew. And mining new veins of lit with positively shining with ah hah moments of appreciation for the power of personal voice was J. Ralph and only the most dynamic group of singers ever assembled to express autistic meltdowns in public places.

Party down with the soundtrack, pop popcorn for the movie, and work your typing fingers over, commenting on our mostly coherent ramblings in our blogs.

~Larry

A Life of Independence and Meaningful Engagement

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

Larry pours out good kinds of thoughts on knowing about power of communication on our ideally filled with meaningful social connection lives. Pal Tracy and I opened many doors of acceptance to understanding presumption of competence as an opportunity of a lifetime to see intelligence over and under the covers of people’s actions through our film last year.

Planning to light more fires under seats of ignorance is obviously on our agenda this year but on a perhaps more mundane level, we need to live our lives on a daily basis, picking up our laundry without nags or keeping up with proper diets, with less cheeseburgers and more, picky-eaters-probably-pass-over-in-favor-of-donuts, vegetables. Looking out on this potentially productive use of my time, I am thinking that my life is moving on different escalators but actually I am really poling to the same place – that is a life of independence and meaningful engagement.

Probably real movie stars don’t have to do dirty laundry. Larry mostly still has to make his very comfortable bed at home. More like a public television lecturer on culture and society, I love my life as an amiable stroller of more snowy-than-Hollywood Burlington, Vermont streets, looking for a good cup of coffee.

Houston: An Opportunity for Connection

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

The opportunity to present our potentially more northern in personality style than picturesque sports bar oriented – Larry possibly wants to move there because of lots of good barbeque available – Houston came last week, possibly at the most spiritual time of year, at the BBYO (Jewish Community Organization & Jewish Youth Leadership Network) conference where there existed more youthful energy of being positive about inclusion than anywhere else that I have been lately.

Neither autistic perseverations on giving the important sentence ending period key a workout that I did or our speech impaired attempts to open up interactions of opportunity for connection prevented the partying-in-all-corners-of-the-hotel teens from listening to our words and asking us interesting questions like “Larry, What was your favorite country to visit?” Looking closely on our every typed word they paid more attention than to their text messages lighting up their cell phones like perky toys on Christmas day.

It is known that inclusion is not a place but an orientation towards making people with disabilities feel like they belong at barbeques or any event or situation where people of all political or social persuasions gather to make small talk, learn big ideas, or celebrate loudly birthdays and holidays. I would like to pitch out, like a teacher presenting a lesson on kicking out less people of differences accepting attitudes, the idea that learning to include is a lesson in making looking and acting differently like choosing pizza toppings. Larry loves pepperoni, Pascal and Harvey love vegetables, and Tracy loves both yet we movie stars can still all eat pizza together.

Happy New Year to all of our potentially healthier eating than Larry fans.