I was invited to join a cooperative art gallery called Pulse Art, in New York City (now defunct). I had my first exhibition there in late 1995. The show was a combination of family photos and photographs I took of my autistic brother Michael in an attempt to understand him and my relationship with him. […]
My parents always had birthday parties for us kids when we were growing up (and beyond). In Mike’s case (my older brother who is autistic, nonverbal and low functioning), the parties I remember were at the Developmental Center or his Group home. Mike loves food. He loves cake in particular. In fact when we visited […]
I think I can encapsulate my process of exploring my relationship with my brother as a (sometimes) systematic organization of information I had already (i.e., family photographs, my early writing) combined with a search for new information. This involved getting more involved with Mike’s life to see what it was like, documenting my experiences with […]
I am writing this at JFK waiting for the flight back home. To all those we didn’t get a chance to visit in New York hopefully next time we will be able to see you all. We had a wonderful, relaxing trip welcoming William to the world in Chicago and off to see Mom in New […]
[Note: Today, I’m taking a break from writing about autism twin studies in order to do some more reading. The most recent autism twin study that I am aware of is the 2011 study by Hallmayer et al., which showed that environmental factors contribute more to autism risk than genetic factors. This is an important matter to study […]
In a previous post, I mentioned that I would be skipping around the timeline in my recollections of growing up and trying to understand my older brother. I wrote the following shortly after Mike was placed in permanent housing after the mandated closing of Willowbrook, a large mental institution on Staten Island, NY. First Impressions […]
As promised, an essay written circa 1996 about my older brother and me: I am an artist and my brother is an autist: Only one letter difference; two letters apart in the alphabet. If you speak with a New York accent, we are the same. When I was born, my big brother Michael was […]
May, 1994 Michael is in the hospital. He collapsed when he got home from the day program. I saw him earlier that day and he looked really terrible. He was pale. His lips looked like they were made of wax. The said he didn’t look too bad in the morning. They would have kept him […]
Mike was a very popular guy when I used to visit him in his group home. I imagine that he still is. Pretty good for a guy who doesn’t talk. When I lived close by, I frequently got calls about Mike’s condition, usually if he had a seizure or a cut or a bruise. He […]
Imagine that you had an unmanageable child: a child who didn’t understand anything, who sucked up all the care you could give, who seldom responded and did so only after you expended maximal effort. Suppose you had other children. You could not afford private care. If you were offered a solution, would you take it? Suppose there […]
