One of the whole points of being in Chicago at this time of year is to experience Halloween with the grandkids. My other daughter will also be here with her boyfriend, so it will be a great reunion. William has a skeleton T-shirt, and another outfit that resembles Frankenstein, in a way. But frankly (pardon […]
Perfection It was the picture perfect family event. Grandparents visiting, doting over the baby they hadn’t seen in over five months. Grandpa had a special name, distinguishing him from the other two grandfathers. His first wife had a child from a first marriage and never ever wanted to go through that experience again. There must […]
I’m here outside Chicago with my grandchildren finishing up my 2nd full day. By the time you read this, however it will be the next day, so ‘yesterday’ below really means ‘two days ago’. Sorry for the confusion… Yesterday I mentioned William’s multimodal way of taking in information: his eyes staring at things I could […]
What do spinning, roller coasters, New York City, the Golden Gate Bridge, stolen building stones, helicopters and trains under water, a broken lock to a construction site, an elevated train that ran out of track flew through the air landing on a person in the East River and a bitten cheek have in common? Answer: […]
I had so much fun since we arrived. Sidra is such a doll. She could hardly wait to do a stop-motion video with me. I was the cameraman and she was the director. Rebecca, her American Girl doll was the star. All it took was 150 snapshots, rudimentary editing and we had the whole of Rebecca’s […]
My older brother Mike is autistic, profoundly retarded and nonverbal. I had gone to parties at his group home before. I thought I had seen everything, and then I went to his Halloween Party. It was being held at a group residence in one of the bad areas of New York City, a place where […]
Chicago Although I’m not traveling as I write this – I write all my posts the day before and post them at midnight – I am looking forward to our visit to the grandchildren. We’re flying out today (10-16-13). I hope that Sidra will have time to update me about her six months as a […]
It has always been difficult for me to have faith, in almost anything. The disillusionments of childhood, starting with my unreachable older brother, may have had a lot to do with it. Mike is autistic, profoundly retarded and nonverbal. It would have been so much easier to abandon myself to a strong belief, dismissing evidence […]
I hope I havn’t misled The major focus of my blog is autism from the point of view of a sibling. My older brother, Michael is autistic, low functioning and nonverbal. He was at home until I was about 10 years old. After he went to Willowbrook, a large mental institution on Staten Island, we […]
I just started reading The Science of Evil by Simon Baron-Cohen, the autism researcher who also wrote Mindblindness. The subtitle of the Science of Evil is, On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty. Baron-Cohen’s thesis is: cruelty exists when empathy fails. Baron-Cohen’s definition of empathy First part of definition: “Empathy occurs when we suspend our single-minded […]
