Acclimating to cold weather and the forces of political change
Opposing popular Obama is like opposing the wildly lowest temperatures of the winter in Vermont. Learning to acclimate to the cold peacefully will enable you, now totally warm in front of a fire radiating heat outwardly to mostly frigid spaces in a room, to look on having heat as a life giving resource which needs to be efficiently used and conserved.
President Obama has keyed on leaping out on the lands of opportunity and opening paths towards individual access to economic prosperity for all people. Politicians of all parties need to swing their inflexible legs over the fences dividing each other, swallow their past prejudices about the role of giving life to the downtrodden, government and look to the promise of America as the possibility country.
The plight of more apples freezing in the orchards of Vermont is what I more immediately worry about but I do peer out beyond our borders and see our connection to the powerful forces of political change. I see the changing of old guards to new patterns of compassionately spread laws to protect our environment and freedoms to be looked on equally regardless of our differences.
Now I could use a cold beer after placing hot ideas on the always cool iPad.
On Resolutions and Kicking Out Old Paradigms
It’s the new year and it’s good to make resolutions about learning new things and breaking old bad habits like needing to eat, lately hard to limit after the holidays, massive amounts of artery-plugging food.
It’s practically impossible to execute plans to live up to your resolutions because personally, using autism as my excuse allows me license to stay stuck on old routines and to act tapped out on the energy to learn new ones. I am like the poverty of Appalachia, a powerless to change his autistic patterns person, linking his inner makeup, time and again, to external action.
Perhaps my primary resolution then is to kick out this paradigm of placing autism on the altar of blame and instead launch myself into the world of personal responsibility for one’s actions. Let’s, of course, leave some leeway for an occasional trip to McDonald’s and, noteworthy for their obnoxiousness, tantrums in airports when planes cancel and Larry has to drink Budweisers in a strange hotel.
Happy New Year to all our loyal movie wannabe star fans.
Thoughts for the holidays
It is the time for watching all the Christmas lights prettily lighting up our lawns and looking-bare trees. Let’s make promises to practice lots of eating and opening of large presents but more importantly, open out our voices in prayer for the people in Sandy Hook, Connecticut who looked with sorrow at personally heart-wrenching scenes in their community over the last few days.
Peacefulness of this otherwise chaotic time of year and little words of hope need to be preserved, cleansing us of pain and making into positive pictures of the future, powerfully presented ideas about acceptance of differences in our society.
I want to live amongst the same people in my community as everyone else, owning the same rights of expression as my more verbal neighbors so please let’s speak out like more proud to be Americans and occupy not Wall Street but the communities of politicians and urge them to make laws that collect prepared with love beliefs about people’s abilities and spread them across all communities in our country.
Voting with Your Conscience
Knowing the election will need lots of loudly caring, going forward like opportunistically last time to vote for president, favoring Obama, voters, I am nervous and tasting mainstreaming of, popular with tea party, ideology getting directed at the impoverishing of people with disabilities and people of, imbedded in for generations, poverty.
Powerfully pushed by climate change, Hurricane Sandy has lapped up on the shores of Mitt Romney’s campaign and plopped large loads of wet sand on, looking more shallow now, ideas about privatizing lots of, lending helping hand to less privileged, people assistance.
Please look carefully at ordered like lands in a tea party platform ads for Romney and place yourselves in a one room shack in a poor neighborhood. It’s place of men and women in this country to support each other in lasting out our difficult times. Let your conscience look at the issues and not your wallets.
Heating it up in Arizona
(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.
Celebration
It is time to put away our, periodically worn for summer, shorts and bathing suits and arrange our schedules to make apple pies. Leading the way into this last stretch of summer will be, now in her nineties, my mother with her birthday this weekend.
It is always an occasion to celebrate our large, more younger than older, family, uniting to eat large amounts of food and socialize together. The main part of the very productively put together meal is a roast pig which is meatily delicious if you are a pork fan. The other really nice part of the celebration is the gathering of my mother’s loved ones on both sides of her to show their respect and appreciation for her spirit and passion for life.
I am a more than luckiest man on earth to still have my mother around to communicate with and share meals with. Money can never buy you comfort for your soul. It is your family and friends that inspire your sense of community and belonging.
Thoughts on my Birthday
I am landing on a landing pad in my life, out in the, potentially looking at retirement age, planning stage. Someplace good to open is a perspective on old age that occupies reality of aging in a world of youthful enthusiasm. Approaching pinning of my hopes for the future on enough paintings sold to visit any mansion in any country is probably way optimistic.
Listing people’s important achievements in life papers would say I lived like a, looking for a good beer and cheeseburger, popularly known as movie star in sophisticated pal road trip film, person from the hills of Vermont.
Now taking a lighter tone, I want to note that the story of my love of hamburgers is hopping on the train of, plentifully made in Vermont, local beef. Next year on my birthday, I will look at, totally once and for all, sampling pal Tracy’s preferred travel food, sushi.
Ready for sun and waves
Has the heat in the summer had you pining for a lasting quiet place like a pretty, mapped out with all-sided beaches, and good for swimming in, lake? You should then position your vacation in Vermont this summer and maybe come to nice Lake Champlain and order beer and burgers at our gourmet by-the-water restaurants.
I am more open to swimming in the lake now not because I want to clown around on the beach in my powerfully muscled lifeguard-like body but only because the lake water isn’t like arctic liquid and it pounds my body into a state of kid-like, totally calm relaxation.
Sloppiness in attire is also accepted on our lake and toys, kicking required to make ripples in the water, can be brought for your kids.
Naturally, I want to look super buff after a lakeside summer but the weather often is unpredictable, starting with rainy periods in June and reaching listlessness creating, instantly sweat-producing, garden parching heat in August so make sure to drag a sizable suit case with you full of many kinds of outerwear.
And more to the point be prepared to have the vacation to die for here in lakeside shores of Vermont.
You too can be in the movies!
Appearing in a movie opens you up to participating in an experience of thinking you are handsome and in the image on the screen you look like, a larger than life turtle, with a bald head.
Knowing, closer than you can look in the mirror, camera lights up, using most powerful lens, your face and body, you need to make sure you are putting on your best clothes. Acting is only your most best side of yourself promoting the personality of who you want presented to the world so you look inward to see the parts of yourself that you think are worthwhile.
I play to the camera like most people in the popular movies. However, let’s put out the idea that eating sushi in large quantities is the only thing I am not willing to do.
Sometimes I like to say politicians like to act like movie stars. Nothing people pass on more is lack of sincerity so move in your own patterns of behavior and you will get an Oscar.
Our film has the possibility to launch people like Tracy and I into good, old-fashioned, popcorn covered, mainstream theaters and on this path of showing ourselves to the public, it is fast becoming trendy to type using an iPad.
NO Parking
At a recent, staff in-service day at a local developmental service agency, Larry had the opportunity to show some of his artwork. He was asked about the significance of the printed out words, “NO PARKING”, that are seen in a number of his paintings. Here was his response:
“Parking is a place to put your car in. Sometimes use of that place is not allowed. Looking at those words propels you to times in your life when you might not be allowed some place and for me, that has happened a lot. Losing parking isn’t a physical thing but an emotional isolation, more because of your perceived differences than your real commonalities with others so walk out of parking lot here and make spaces in your communities to let the people you are supporting aspire to the good life.”
