Monthly Archives: November 2012

November 30, 2012 · 6:25 pm

Autism again–a rant

First, read this (Ada Hoffman’s LiveJournal, the linky is not working in my WordPress.  Arrgh.)

I heartily endorse everything she says.  I am a parent of an adult diagnosed with high functioning autism/Asperger’s and am a special education professional.  I go back and forth between self-diagnosing myself with high-functioning autism or ADHD.

With the possible exception of Michelle Sagara’s Silence (which I have not yet read), I have yet to read ANY fiction about autism that doesn’t anger me to the degree that I want to throw the book across the room.

ANYTHING.

Well, for that matter, most parental memoirs affect me in the same way.  I don’t want to read about the search for a cure.  I don’t want to read about “smiling through the tears.”  I don’t want to read about quirky temperaments or special diets For The Cure or special programs For The Cure or Special Snowflakes who feel their autism or their child’s autism earns them a behavioral pass for bad attitudes and crappy behavior.  I had a really hard time with the recommended books (except for Temple Grandin) during my sped training because they all fell in those categories.

Yeah, I’m guilty of working with my son and others to help them pass in a neurotypical world.  Part of that is my job as parent and as teacher.  But that doesn’t mean I’m holding it up as the ideal way–it’s more of an approach of “this is how we don’t freak the mundanes.”  When my son was very small and having school problems we had discussions about The Teacher Game, and what to do when the words went away and all he could see was red.  Some of this is stuff I had to learn the hard way, the very hard way and I’m trying to help others not have such a hard time of it.

But once, just once, I’d like to pick up a work of fiction and find an autistic character who is just that–autistic–without ***AUTISM AUTISM AUTISM*** flashing all over the place.  Who is accepted and valued for who they are.

And no, I’m probably not the person who is going to write it.  Every time I try to do it, I go blank.  I can write ADHD–my character Melanie Fielding is definitely ADHD-girl–but autism?

Um.  No.

Period.

 

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November 28, 2012 · 8:20 am

Paris Snippets: Transit

 

 

Warning: Rantage ahead.

It’s no coincidence that the only time we spent in a private car during the trip to Paris was back here at home, driving to and from the airport.  We had looked at non-driving options, but due to Tri-Met cutbacks the connections from our house to the airport just didn’t work for getting us to PDX in a timely manner.

It wasn’t like that in Europe.

On arrival at Schiphol, we went out to our hotel’s van.  Fairly standard for a lot of places, not that different from the US.  Except that, given the isolated location of the hotel from the downtown and from the train station, the hotel van operated on a regular shuffle from the hotel to the airport.

Schiphol is not just an airport, it’s a train station.  I didn’t do a very good job of photo-documenting this, except for one picture where I was really focusing on the Christmas decoration.

 

Schiphol’s train station has six platforms, two of which serve the European high-speed rail systems (i.e., bullet trains).  It’s possible to go directly from airplane to train either to downtown Amsterdam or immediately transfer to a train to travel to Brussels, Paris, or other European locations (we didn’t do that because we wanted at least some time to recuperate from jet lag).

We were able to, later on, take the hotel shuttle to Schiphol to hop a train to downtown Amsterdam for dinner.  Except the local run was down for maintenance.  A problem requiring a taxi?  No.  Bus service was provided to the closest train station not affected by the maintenance.  Once in town, we used the handy tram system that runs through Amsterdam (buy your tickets on the tram itself).

The next day we hopped in the shuttle, went to Schiphol, bought tickets for the Thalys high-speed rail, and headed for Paris.  Three and a half hours later, we were at Gare de Nord, hopped off, and got on the Metro, which deposited us five minutes away from our apartment.  The rest of our stay, we used water taxi (the Batobus, which operates on a regular cycle between monuments close to the Seine), Metro, and the RER train to get around Paris.  We bought carnets of tickets which we could use on Metro, the RER and buses, though we didn’t use any buses.  At the end, we hopped on the RER to go to our hotel near Charles de Gaulle airport, rode a big shuttle bus that dropped riders off at hotels, then caught it again in the morning to go to the airport.

There are damned few places where you can do this in the US, at least as easily as we were able to do in Europe.  And that is just plain wrong.  Mind you, I’m not saying you can’t do it in the US–but the possibilities are very limited.  A visitor to Portland can’t catch a high speed train at PDX (um, high speed train on the West Coast?  Choke, splutter, gasp).

Granted, we were sticking to urban locations which are transit centers.  But I look at the options available to us in both Amsterdam and Paris, as well as the opportunities for rail transit from both locations, and I’ve just gotta say….something’s wrong.

As we approach retirement age, one consideration we have with regard to a future residence is the degree to which we would need to depend on a car to get around.  Cars are expensive to buy, maintain, and a hassle.  As someone who drives too damned far to work every day, my love affair with the car is rapidly dwindling.  I much preferred cruising around on the Metro and RER, even with the crowds and potential pickpockets.  After all, on Friday we came across this on the RER:

 

Buskers on the RER sure add a festive note to a Friday.

Ah well, maybe one of these days we’ll gain some sense here in the US.

(and if you believe that, I have a bridge or two up for sale….)

 

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November 27, 2012 · 7:30 am

More Paris snippets–teacher thoughts

So that opening I talked about in my last entry?

This is it.  A museum oriented specifically for children, hands-on.  More of a coolness.

Overall, though, one thing which really struck me as a teacher were the many groups of students I saw in the various museums and historical sites we visited.  While the behavior at liberty of various middle-school-aged kids wasn’t that different from the kids at my own school, what I did observe was a deliberate and detailed education in cultural and arts resources which is sorely lacking in much of our own system these days.  Yeah, I got a bunch of this teaching, but I’m a product of the late Boom and was clearly on the college track.  Plus I never did have access to art museums and major historical museums because, hey, Springfield and Eugene, Oregon, were somewhat lacking in those areas.  It took the Freedom Train’s 1976 visit to Springfield for me to see many of the major American historical treasures, and I still haven’t seen a lot of those.

But I did get exposure to arts and culture through film and filmstrips.

Anyway.  In the Petit Palais, I observed a group of kindergarten kids learning how to behave in a museum.  My French isn’t that good, but nonetheless I could recognize what was going on through vocal tones, body language, and what I could pick up.  The children were encouraged to sit down around a docent, who then explained that this is how you sit, this is how you listen, and then went on to talk about the art (Monet and Cezanne).  It was the mirror image of an older group I’d seen the day before in the Cluny, a group of middle school-aged kids who sat on the floor around a docent explaining a particular aspect of medieval life (and I noticed texting, whispering, and other behavior I’d see in one of my student groups.  Hormones are universal.  But it was less and attention was more focused).

In Notre Dame, I observed one frazzled teacher pulling a group of somewhat hyper middle schoolers together to quietly scold them for behavior.  Again, I didn’t pick up all the words but boy did I recognize both kid behavior and adult behavior.

Same for the Orsay and the Louvre.

Now it would be surprising NOT to see this sort of teaching going on in a city with the resources Paris has available.  What I did find interesting was that a majority of the groups I observed were middle school aged.  Whether that was simply a function of observation as a middle school teacher myself, or whether that represents a specific focus, I’m not certain.  It does make a lot of sense to me because I do believe a lot of middle school learning would be improved by hands-on exposure to visual inputs, and trust me, there’s more than just art which can be learned from these visits to Parisian museums.  There’s a significant degree of European history that can be learned.  In the case of the Louvre, there’s exposure to antiquities from Greece, Egypt, and Rome (and those are just the pieces I saw).  There’s hands-on, everyday exposure to architecture that I know I only got from pictures (Doric, Ionic and Corinthian for classical exposures).

Most priceless was the group of middle-to-high school kids I saw settling in for lunch at a bistro.  I know I would have moved heaven and earth to have the same experience at that age.

I wonder how many other kids I know have that same secret thirst.

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November 26, 2012 · 9:13 am

Everyday life in Paris

One of the quiet joys of renting an apartment instead of staying in a hotel in Paris is the ability to be immersed in a neighborhood, as well as being able to control things such as food, washing, and other small comforts.  Our apartment on rue Herald was much quieter and significantly more comfortable than any hotel room I’ve ever stayed in.  While our refrigerator was the size of a hotel refrigerator (albeit with better freezer), we had a stove top and oven setup which meant we didn’t have to eat out.

Meanwhile, we shopped at the neighborhood markets.  Not even necessarily the fruit/veggie markets as well as boulangeries (off limits for me and DS because of wheat allergies) but the little neighborhood general markets had small meat and veggie departments.  And Beaujolais.  We settled on this little market at one end of our street after several trials at other neighborhood markets:

 

 

 

 

 

We bought meat and other staples here just about every other day.

Most of the time we ate two meals in the apartment, and one time we actually ate all three meals in.  We still had the Paris food experience because OMG, the bacon.  Actually, OMG, the meat.  Even wrapped in plastic in a little supermarket instead of directly from the butcher, it was wonderful.

Our approach to the Louvre was that there was no way we could see it all, so we weren’t even going to try.  We went on Wednesday afternoon, to short lines.  Went back to the apartment, ate dinner, then went back (Wednesday the Louvre is open late).  What I noticed was that Wednesday night was clearly a locals night, with much fewer tourists and more art students as well as Parisians themselves avoiding the tourist hordes.

Yes, we did see the Mona Lisa.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I suspect the lady in the painting is prettier than the flesh-and-blood lady.  Plus I was tired so the smile wasn’t particularly enigmatic, anyway.

But the other things I took away from the Louvre was an understanding of some  European visual themes that a girl raised in backwoods North America wouldn’t necessarily understand.  Heck, that’s what I brought away from Paris in general.

We did a lot of walking and used various forms of transit.  The Thalys train from Amsterdam to Paris, which was quite comfortable.  We had reserved seats but had to roust one person out of one of our seats.  He moved, and we soon noted the phenomenon continuing with other folks in our particular compartment.

Around Paris, we tended to prefer the RER trains over the Metro itself, but also used the Metro.  We also used the Batobus (water taxi).  But, mostly, we walked.  The Louvre was less than ten minutes away, so that was a walk.

The view from our window was directly into the back office of a bank.  I suspect from the big piles of files that it might have been the litigation department.  Nonetheless, they were quiet and we were quiet.  There was some sort of gallery opening down the street on Thursday night that had an actual Red Carpet rolled out, bouncers, and all sorts of clearly Beautiful People thronging to get in (look, when you look out the window and see a Full.  Length.  Sable.  Fur.  Coat, that makes it a crowd of the 1% in my book).  I’m not sure what the place was, because except for that evening, it was mostly about young children coming and going.  If I get time I’ll Google it.

But most of the time, this is what it was like:

 

 

Just another quiet little street with some shops and apartments.

 

I’ll try to write a bit more about Paris over the next week.  It all depends on how crazy work is.  Overall, it was a very thoughtful and pleasant time.

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November 14, 2012 · 9:12 pm

Winter arena training once again

It’s back to the dark and cool evening arena rides, with a steaming horse at the end of the session.  I’m not quite sure why Mocha’s sweating so much this winter, unlike the past two, except that her coat has come in very thick and heavy, almost felted.

So I did a trace clip.  I’d been assured that a trace clip (for the non-horsey–looks like a racing stripe) would help keep Mocha from sweating so badly.  Well–yeah.  She didn’t sweat badly where I clipped.  The remaining coat was as drenched as ever.

I guess that means a full body clip this year, as otherwise I spend a good hour getting her dry after an hour’s ride.

Otherwise, she worked pretty well.  A bit overreved in the rollbacks; another horse was schooling them during our warmup and she got a bit excited (I’m also working on perfecting the cue by taking my outside leg off as we stop, when she’s in a strong mood like tonight that’s all it takes).  Mocha’s also getting excited about other stuff we’re doing, like two-track canter and two-tempi/counter canter work.  But it’s the kind of excitement I really don’t want; basically a strong rushiness.  It has taken me a few years to tell when she’s getting strong and rushy because she’s mentally worried about what we’re doing (Oh! No! Different!) or if she’s getting strong and rushy because it hurts her to do it.  Finally figured out what each one feels like.  Right now it’s about Learning A New Thing, and it’s different from what she usually does, and it’s difficult, and I have to have my back in gear and supporting her hind end.  And, for some reason, that seems to be easiest for me to do in a half-seat.  In a Western saddle.  So it’s more leg, hand and weight shift than seat right now.  Not a feel she’s accustomed to, which causes resistance in itself.

But…she has to figure out how to engage her hind while rounding her back and elevating her shoulders more than she would left to her own devices.  Come to think of it, once I started doing the foreleg stretches, Good Things Started Happening in our work.  Hmm.  Need to figure out how to do more forehand strengthening.

She does have the more difficult side.  Every horse does.  That’s also the side where she picks up the speed and tries to BS me through the two track or the change.  I finally had to bust her on that with a yell, fast stop, and a backup.  Then she settled down and did it.  It’s funny how that works.  It wasn’t something that worked with her as a young horse.  Rather, it’s something that’s evolved as she matured and we developed a deeper confidence and communication with each other.  Sometimes she gets rushy because it’s her way to resist something challenging she’s not in a mood to do.  Other times, it’s a clear sign of fatigue or pain.  Part of the art of horsemanship is figuring out the difference.

Part of this is completely mental.  She’s a mature, finished mare with Opinions of Her Own about How Things Should Go.  Sometimes she thinks she knows what we should do better than I do.  However, we’ve schooled enough complex work that I know we just have to press on through in small but progressive so that she understands what it is I want her to do.  She knows it as well, and she’s more confident that I am not going to overface her when I ask her to do something new and different.  The feel of uncertain horse who needs things broken down into even smaller steps is a different feel from the horse still acquiring a skill who doesn’t want to do what you’re asking right at the moment because it’s more difficult than the previous, less complex habit she’s acquired.  Why change things?

The other piece of her acceptance, too, is that I make time for her to thunder around the arena at either an extended trot or a gallop once we’re done with the collected schooling.  That, too, is another factor.  Schooling fast work at the end means we close the schooling session with something she enjoys–running or trotting fast and hard.  Not a long period of it, but several rounds in each direction.  Lots of pleasant associations as well as developing control and conditioning.  She’s a mare who likes to use herself and work, and finishing with a brisk gallop or trot on a long rein so she can stretch out her head and neck suits her right well.  Suits me, too, since we also need to school controlled speed and transitions within both gaits.  Tonight, I managed to sit her big extended trot easily–a first.  Despite my sore back.

And when it’s all done and we walk out on a long draped rein, her head stretched out long and low as she swaggers around the arena, we both feel pretty good about the work we’ve done.  When she’s worked well she swings her back freely and loosely, with a lot of energy still underneath me.  It’s a powerful walk for such a little mare.  She marches right out, no dawdling around even in a coolout.

Then she stands quietly in the alleyway by the tackroom so I can strip her clean and throw the cooler on her.  It takes a while standing in the crossties before she’s dry.  Now’s the time I find little barn chores to do while she’s cooling out.

Yeah.  Winter arena training.  Something different of itself.

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November 6, 2012 · 9:48 am

Another Netwalker Uprising snippet

In which Melanie finally breaks down, after a difficult childbirth and overwhelming threats against everything she holds dear…..

**********

Marty forced a cough.  That drew three sharp glares from Melanie, Deirdre and Sarah.  “I’d like to know just what is going on,”  he said.  “Did you capture Liam and Conley?”

Melanie sighed and slid back to her mound of pillows, pulling her knees to her chest.  “No.  We did not.  But we did lock them down.  For the moment they’re out of play.  This problem is Gizmo.”

“Gizmo will cut them loose if it thinks it’ll get Bess that way!”  Sarah growled.

“What’s going on with Gizmo and Bess?”  Diana asked.

“Gizmo’s hunting Bess,”  Sarah said.

“And I’m feeling it,”  Melanie said in a low voice, resting her forehead on her knees.  “One hell of a headache.”

“Oh, no,”  Diana said.  “That reaction from–the device–is not what we expected.”

Melanie lifted her head wearily.  “Then just what the hell did you expect from my child, Mother?  God knows, you’ve been pushing me to reproduce for how many years now?  Why is my child so damned important?”  She hurled a pillow across the room.  “Jesus.  Motherfucking. Christ.  I go through hell to bear this child, and god knows what I’ve done to her by taking her virtual, and now this fucking thing wants her for some sort of weird torture or power or what?  God.  Damn.  It.  And God.  Damn.  You, for putting me through this!“

Marty shuddered at the bitterness in her voice.

Diana paled and backed away from the baleful glare Melanie gave her.

“Melanie—“

“What is it going to take to keep my child safe?”

“I’ve been through this myself,”  Diana said in a placating voice.  “Mel, you’re not the only one who’s had to go through this.  I–“

“Don’t give me that bullshit.”  Melanie’s voice rose to a hysterical pitch.  “What does it take to keep my child safe from Gizmo?”  She moaned and clutched her head.

Marty slid close to her.  Cradling Bess in one arm, he pulled Melanie close.  She buried her head in his chest, shaking.  Her tears dampened his shirt.  Bess whimpered along with her mother.

“That’s enough, Diana,”  he said firmly.  “And you too, Sarah.  This is fucking enough.  How do we stop it?”

How do we destroy Gizmo?

“We manage it, not control it,”  Diana said.

“That’s failed,”  Deirdre said sharply, straightening her slight form.

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· 8:12 am

Thinking about disability, part one, The Rantage, or why I hate disability novels

This, too, is an Orycon thought post but I’m not going to go meta on it because I don’t feel like opening that particular can of worms.  Rather, I’d sooner contemplate some of the results of my thinking–or, at least where I am on the pathway of my contemplation.  And because I am thinking globally and not in the context of any one disability category or culture, I’m not identifying any one type of disability.  Rather, I am using “disability” as a catch-all, metaphrase to speak in this generalist POV.  Far from perfect, but because of the widely variant nature of disability, including the widely disparate attitude of those who have it (from those who see it as profoundly disabling to those who see it as a simple difference or even a superpower), no one term is really going to work.  Except human.  And I just don’t see the general population as sufficiently evolved to work with that term–no matter what their relationship to disability is.

Some of this is Disability 101, and for those who know, you can probably skip this post until the end, when I get into the rantage.  Which is happening pretty damn fast, really.

First of all, not all disabilities view disability in the same manner, and even within the disability there are widely disparate approaches to it.  Some disabilities have strong internal communities sufficient to maintain their own cultures–for example the Deaf and Autistic communities.  Others strive to get rid of disability or overcome it.  But even within those strong communities, voices differ.  Some prefer person-first language (i.e., “person with—” language).  Others abhor it.

This wide variance is confusing to the general public that has little to no understanding of disability, and it’s not made easier by the media bias overall toward a certain type of disability story.  I think the best summation of that sort of story comes from Jeffrey Cohen, The Asperger Parent, where he characterizes the typical “Asperger parent story” that the media seeks to write as all about “smiling through the tears.”  That is, there’s a lot of weight given to the overcoming overwhelming odds to achieve some semblance of normality despite the disability.  That there are happy moments but those happy moments are overshadowed by the sorrow of the disability.

Enough explaining.

Cohen’s book was one of the first ones I read as a parent of an autistic kid that I didn’t want to scream and throw across the room in utter frustration (and then I discovered Liane Holiday and Luke Jackson, yay!).  There’s been a lot of that sort of book that got thrown.  Too damned much of it.  What was even more frustrating, when I went through my special education training, I got referred to even more of that sort of book I wanted to throw across the room.  Oh, those who did the recommending were well-intentioned.  But they’d never lived with disability, either in themselves or in others.  They’d only remediated disability and their focus was more on making people fit into the mainstream, not on helping people cope with the mainstream to make it work for them.

For the record, I don’t read novels about disability any more.  There’s too damn many of them that make me angry.  I don’t fracking WANT to read about the miraculous cure.  I flinch whenever someone starts raving about this wonderful book that REALLY SAYS IT ALL about a disability.

Because it usually doesn’t.

Take autism/Asperger’s.  I know this one pretty damn well as a parent and spouse and quite likely someone who is on the spectrum in a minor way (I vacillate between autism/ADHD as an explanation for my quirks).  I don’t like anything I read (when I still let myself do it) with an autistic character in it.  If the characterization came close, then the driving factor was about a cure.  Not about the strengths of the disability but about the weakness.

WTF??!!!

I am tired, tired, tired of reading about the weaknesses of disability.  I work with different disabilities daily.  I see many strengths, if only the people who had them would be allowed to believe in those strengths and develop mechanisms which allow them to use those strengths.  Now getting to that understanding is going to take one hell of a lot more tolerance on the part of society…and evolution on both sides of the disability.

But that’s a subject for another post….the contradictory demands and desires of the different disability stakeholders.

I’ll leave you with one last thought, though…disability is not weakness.  It is a difference.

And the sooner we learn to live with that, the better.

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November 5, 2012 · 8:37 am

Orycon: First Digestion

(Deliberate homage to E. R. Eddison, A Fish Dinner in Memison, for the title)

So I’m thinking big thinky thoughts about the past Orycon.  I had a good con, with my first significant participation in panelage there and the first time for Orycon’s Writer’s Workshop as a critiquing professional (I’ve been on the other end at Orycon and a critiquing pro at other cons).  Good stuff all around, even with a few glitches.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that the news about Alma Alexander’s River anthology earning a Finalist slot for the Epic Awards came out just before the con.  Or, at a panel with Ken Scholes, where Ken and I both had the happy moment of mentioning stories and had audience members suddenly squeeing about the Kewlness Of Teh Story.

The other piece, though, was that many of the panels I participated on had an eager and intensely satisfying audience participation, more so than panels I’ve been on before at other cons.  A function of the con attendance?  Co-panelists?  I’m not sure.  But at the end of each panel I felt like (and tried to remember to do it) applauding the audience for their participation was entirely appropriate.  I like panels much better when we hit that freewheeling riff between panelists and audience.  We had good energy fairly consistently and that is something that requires both sides to make it happen.

I also had good barcon time, yakking with friends and fellow writers.

What was meh for me, for the most part, was party time.  Oh, I had good conversations and I met some friends I hadn’t seen for a long time.  Nonetheless, I’m not sure if it’s me or what, but the parties just didn’t pop out.  Probably just me as I think some parties got livelier later on in the evening, after I’d gone home for the night.  I’m now an old lady who needs her down time, I guess.

But…there are some other Big Thoughts that came out of discussions and a certain particular incident at that con.  I’m not really ready to share those yet, except for a couple of nibbles.

First of all, maybe I really DO need to find a way to articulate how my particular perspective differs from a lot of my day job professional peers with regard to disability, coping strategies, and attitudes toward difference and othering.  Some of these thoughts sharpened during the panels on “Geek v Nerd v Freak” and “When does a society stop being civilized.”

That whole thing about “what is ‘civilized'” is also a big thought.

I also had to defend my choice to go indie from someone who told me he viewed indie pubbers as scabs.  The analogy….doesn’t fly for me, especially looking at the power dynamics.  I want to write more about that.

Finally, I really do need to make more time for writer socialization and interaction.  I don’t do enough of hanging out with my writing tribe, and it does affect how I think and process.  I feel like I’ve finally fought my way out of the cobwebs of the nastiness of the past year or so.  Sadly, I don’t get the same sort of positive jolt from my day job, even in parts of it I’m passionate about.  My perspective is just different enough that I find myself keeping quiet and–well–I’ve got to do some thinking.

Off to write now.

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November 1, 2012 · 9:48 am

Orycon Schedule–Final

Expect light connectivity from now on, between Orycon and parent conferences at work.

To Outline or Not to Outline, that is the question
Lincoln              Fri Nov 2 2:00pm-3:00pm
Some authors were taught to draw up outlines of their entire story arc
before fleshing out their writing.  Others have developed different
methods which serve them well. Experienced authors discuss what works for
them, when, and perhaps, why.
Karen Azinger, Dave Smeds, Joyce Reynolds-Ward

Joyce Reynolds Ward's Readings
Grant                Fri Nov 2 4:00pm-4:30pm

Joyce Reynolds-Ward

A touch of Farmer, a pinch of LeGuin
Morrison             Sat Nov 3 12:00pm-1:00pm
Panelists discuss their biggest influences and what books have changed the
recent landscape in SF/F/H literature.
Keffy R. M. Kehrli, Deborah J. Ross, Joyce Reynolds-Ward

Group 5 Fantasy Short Story/Novel Excerpt
WW2                  Sat Nov 3 1:00pm-2:00pm

Joyce Reynolds-Ward, Irene Radford

Can Dumbing Down be Reversed?
Ross Island          Sat Nov 3 3:00pm-4:00pm

Kristin Landon, Joyce Reynolds-Ward, Arthur Bozlee, Rory Miller

Playing God: Apocalyptic storytelling
Hawthorne            Sat Nov 3 5:00pm-6:00pm
Writing the end times. Flood, plague, the degradation of moral values? How
to write a believable and satisfying end to your imaginary world.
Blake Hutchins, (*)Ken Scholes, Joyce Reynolds-Ward, Bob Brown

Geeks v nerds v freaks
Madison              Sun Nov 4 12:00pm-1:00pm
To which do you aspire?  What are the differences and similarities, and to
what proportion are they found?  What function (or anti-function?) do we,
er, they, serve?
Annie Bellet, Joyce Reynolds-Ward, (*)Janet Freeman, Anthony Pryor

The Autistic Spectrum: is Autism really on the rise, or are diagnostics just getting better?
Hawthorne            Sun Nov 4 1:00pm-2:00pm

Kamila Miller, G. David Nordley, (*) Joyce Reynolds-Ward, 
Karen Black

At what point does society stop being civilized?
Madison              Sun Nov 4 2:00pm-3:00pm

(*)Rhiannon Louve, Joyce Reynolds-Ward, Judith R. Conly

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