Heating it up in Arizona

Wednesday, September 5th, 2012

(Larry and Tracy were in Phoenix, Arizona last week, presenting at the Director’s Institute conference. They delivered a keynote presentation to 750 Arizona educators on the theme of “All People Want Communication.” They also had the opportunity to show their film and have an extensive question and answer with conference participants. Larry’s opening comment at the keynote was “It is treat to be in oven-baked Arizona.”)

Tracy and Larry at the Wigwam Resort outside Phoenix

It’s practically last place on earth, peeling off clothes does not help, Larry would live because it is like a pottery oven here in Arizona. Powerless people last one second in, looking so dry, parched landscape.

Lots of time we spent inside in air conditioning, lip syncing our typed words on our iPads to lots of people driven to learn and participate in lively discussions about the presumption of competence in lettered school environments.

Towards the improvement of schools in Arizona, I am picturing a world where kids without speech can look around appearing really different but acting like they can learn ordered texts like all apple pied students of Arizona schools.

It was a pleasure to come here as primarily snow-oriented Vermonters and heat up people’s opinions on inclusion and communication for all.

Bring back the Polaroid

Friday, February 24th, 2012

People are printing good pictures to put in albums of instant gratification on the internet. Biographies of ivy-treated youth promise opening of understanding about travels and upending moments over greatest pictures are those you keep in your wallet because they can be old bins for long ago memories of others and yourself. Isn’t it odd that using photos as understanding nicer moments in your life eventually places you more in your past? Holding it keeps youthfulness in your present. Kodak moments live on as people print their photos so let’s bring back the Polaroid.

Issued a Polaroid camera when I was younger, I learned to shoot pictures of people looking at my lens with perplexed, poorly oriented towards the, directly in-the-person’s face flash, expression. I wanted the person’s face to open up to the camera in a pleasantly surprised way, occupying the space of the image, painting our perceptions of the person’s characteristics in a solely positioned to imprint on memory way. Now the rituals of neatly, easily pulling out a print from the camera have been replaced, not with a quicker process but only with one with more steps involving computers, little memory sticks, and lots of wasted paper. Printing my photos takes time now and learning to place them in my paintings, lopping off positions on the canvas to display them, is copping a plea to artistic originality. Yes, taking the steps of pushing the technology cart tidies the process of making art but isn’t a slew of messy materials the link to making masterpieces.

It’s a long way to November

Thursday, February 9th, 2012

Pal Tracy and I paper the internet with our oven-roasted, party-punched words of wisdom about people with disabilities and picking up cues in their potential to communicate through the supported use of keyboards and voice output machines like the iPad. Getting interested in our words opens the door to looking at movie stars inspiring people to see more the soul of actors rather than their ordered, slickly hair and clothes.

When people like, prattling on like an out of control parrot, Mitt Romney, appearing popstar-like, paper the news with their positions on poorer people, get rallies of tea partiers going, and insinuate that loss of prosperity is a character flaw, they leave the station of understanding and move to a platform of intolerance I thought only existed out of the slavery era.  Outrage very quickly builds into a loud roar of opposition in my, proud to need government services, person with, looking like newsworthy leader in the disability world of nifty advocacy, Tracy on board with me.

Look, I am probably not your best perpetrator of political commentary but easily, I am nothing short of being Walter Conkritesque compared to Rush Limbaugh.

Thoughts on climate change

Thursday, September 15th, 2011

It’s interesting that nightly news covers natural disasters so well but can’t tell the real story about the problems in the world that were once attributed to temperamental weather patterns. Now northernmost states get more snow and violently raining like cats and dogs, cooking more meat than green vegetables, South, lands more tornadoes and hurricanes. It is little, doing everything it can to levitate itself back to the world of everyday life, Vermont that is showing the world the effects of climate change, amounting like the pouring of many lava flows on our environments.

Lining our awareness of this change is are concerns that our oil resources are slowly disappearing. For me, it is looking at the world as a slice of the cosmos and listening collectively to the sounds of the voices of birds, promising ourselves, on whatever good book we choose, to ice cream sundae less our lives with resource-depleting, materialistic in value, looking out for leisure only in popstar-like movie sets, equipment and playthings.

Opening up a presidential campaign I am not. I am just trying to pour out my very real concern of planetary destruction to speech over the top of no brains idiots for President like Perry and Bachman.

Ocean waves on a got-padding-to-spare body

Monday, August 29th, 2011

Piling on waves many times into my body makes nicer inspiration to wring ideas from my lettered brain than any pint of beer I could ingest. Meeting of thinking, angling your body for next wave and kicking up pools of people-friendly splashes gets music of Neptune taking land in my, weirdly oriented towards tasteful tunes of the progressive rock style, ears. It’s winnowing down my autistic tension like a large, open bottle of beer on ice that the ocean lowers its booming waves over in a soothing rush of salt water. Order influx of ocean into your life and try out your surfing large waves for pleasurable sensations abilities.

The view from the pulpit

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

People in my church in Milton, Vermont looked at my movie for the first time this weekend and probably had a more than religious experience. Putting my stuttering voice to work, I made a very loosely articulated, keeping peoples attention, doing an impression of good-for-voice practice on podium’s speech, thanking people for coming.

And popularly known as Larry’s awesomely proud sister, Sally propped me up with articulation of kinds of words and syllables that are good to type presentations with but not good to try when looking for verbal clarity at nice church functions. It could be the start of my loudmouth, news anchor career.

Larry, sister Sally, and mom Alma attend church together in Milton, Vermont

Reflections on a Day of Flight Cancellations

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

Acting like tour guide extraordinaire, Pat Edwards got us positioned on podiums of beautifully, shiny, light wood in the theatrical-release-ready rooms of spectacularly new building of education at Ashland University. We had highly all-American meals and met many lovely people.

In planing back to Burlington but left in Cleveland, I had another Oscar-winning meltdown. Finding time in the Newark airport to apply kind words to giving friend, Tracy, like a calm Buddhist monk, gold medal for Olympian patience. Glomming onto my loud spouting-off-about-airplane-delay in Cleveland, Harvey and Pascal, a massive note of appreciation for spotting a nice Sheraton hotel. Collecting my anxiety in a soft, bringing to senses, bed, I am giving much introspection on the topic of how one manages uncertainty in one’s life. Occupying my consciousness, really in an all-consuming way, was my mental-age-of-a-little-boy, motions of a spoiled brat, temper tantrum, someone get a leash to tie me up with about, lost day of travel.

Oddly enough, this, as a moment of educating the public about autism, we showed our movie trailer to fellow travelers in the airport, mostly ignorant about my and Tracy’s mission but watching and taking us seriously. I am grateful to all people looking to open their thinking. Poorly though I act sometimes, I lop off more limbs of ignorance by letting my typing finger do the picking of intelligent thought from my mind and putting it out on screens to show the Larry of movie star-like worthiness.

~Larry

Post-flight cancellation beer at hotel

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.

Denver, TASH, and Running Clothes

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

Little people look small inside places of large, really-meant-for-popstar-spectacles, spaces. Larry and Tracy put on their walking shoes this morning in more-mountainous-than-Vermont Denver, peacefully quiet, less crowded, nearly modern in most architecture. People at the TASH conference here will be seeing our movie, eating meals with Coors beer and looking to be captivated by our post-movie, later than my bedtime, remarks.

People like us might look small in this picture of the skyline of powerfully terrain-dominating buildings but our ideas about looking small, but parachuting in big perspectives in presuming competence into the landscape of attitudes about disability bring places into lasting nearly as long as the pyramids in terms of their attitudes about movies on oddballs like Tracy and Larry. Only slightly less odd are Pascal and Harvey, especially when they have on their synthetically made, with pleasing-to-their-figures, running clothes.

~Larry

Larry and Tracy tour the city of Denver while attending TASH 2010!