The pictures below are among the first I took of my brother Mike in my adult life. I started taking his picture on his 40th birthday at the Developmental Center. I wanted, somehow, to document his life, but I wasn’t exactly sure how to do it. I wanted to include relationships between Mike and the […]
Intentionality According to The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Intentionality is the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs.” [1] Daniel Dennett, eminent philosopher of consciousness defines “the intentional stance” as a way to view the “behavior of a thing in terms of mental properties.” […]
The great race Dad always liked to have his orange juice. Once when I was a kid, about 4 or 5 years old, he challenged me to a juice race. I don’t know if this was a way to get me to drink my juice or not, but I accepted the challenge. My Dad, not […]
I only use 10% of my brain? When I was a kid, the rumor was that even the smartest people only use 10% of their brains. Einstein was said to be such a genius because he used 15% of his remarkable brain. I thought this was pretty nutty. Surely 85-90% of a person’s brain isn’t […]
Vacations My older brother, Michael is very low functioning, autistic and nonverbal. Now and then, he would yell and bite his hand. I suppose he was frustrated about something when he did this. We never quite knew what frustrated him. When I was a kid, we used to go camping in the summer. Mom told […]
The picture of Mike, my older brother, on the swing set in the back yard shows him looking at the camera. (I posted this picture a couple of days ago.) He looks like a regular little boy, probably about 7 or 8 years of age. What the viewer does not see is that Michael is autistic, diagnosed […]
Imagine My older brother Michael is autistic, low functioning and nonverbal. By ‘low functioning’ I mean, he was diagnosed as ‘profoundly retarded’. They doctors gave him that diagnosis by determining that his IQ is 18. How they came up with ‘18’ is a mystery to me, but that is another story. I picture autistic aloneness […]
Some people think that I am obsessed by my relationship with my older brother, Mike. That is probably true. The saying, “You always want what you don’t have,” is true for me. It sounds weird, but I never have known my brother personally. But if you know about him, it is not that surprising after […]
My original thought for this post was to explore my sense of skepticism about the possibility of communicating with my older brother, Michael. He is low functioning, autistic and has never spoken. This is a theme that I have explored before, and I am concerned about repeating myself. What I have tried to say is […]
Beautiful summer twilights depress the hell out of me. The same holds true about beautiful music by Bach, Hayden, Mozart and other great composers. I think it is the fact that these things are so beautiful is depressing me. The summer day at about 4:30 to 6:00 to me, represents death. I guess to the […]
