Putting it all in perspective

The key to all communication is knowing when to shut up. This blog entry illustrates that.

ISOLATION - Norma Desmond

My son needs the label of Asperger’s Syndrome so that people stop using inappropriate ones. There are many gifts that come with this condition. Difficulties arise from an inability of ‘normal’ society to understand or accommodate the way his brain works.
two sides to every story

Want to be a free thinker but still a nice person: Advice from a graveyard

I stopped at the grave of Victorian babies – I counted three dead and the mother taken in childbirth with the last one. Reflecting on that poor woman having to look into the chilly darkness of her children's graves put my modern problems into perspective. I didn't want to be careless with my own children's lives by doing something irrevocable simply because I was angry with my husband. The weight of what the mother had gone through gave me an anchor for the afternoon.

When I noted how many young people buried there had been brought down by cholera, malaria or some other condition we no longer worry about, I decided it's a privilege to live long enough to have problems exacerbated by a long life and marriage. I strolled past the grave of a girl 'who left us in her 13th year'. She was the same age as my daughter at the time. Her sad mother had written: 'The flowers appeareth on the Earth. The flowers fadeth.'

Walking home, I finally decided not to be a modern wimp, but to keep strong and fight for my family's future. I thought my friends in the graveyard approved, for as I walked away, the sun suddenly shone on a tombstone that I'd never seen before: "Whether we wake or sleep," the inscription affirmed, "we live together."

After finding the perfect photo to illustrate this story, I find myself with nothing to say that hasn't been said better in the caption for the photo.

This series is produced for a utata summer project - which aims to tell a story with six photos. My project tells the positives and negatives of having aspergers syndrome mainly to increase awareness of the realities and nit the myths surrounding the autistic spectrum

www.utata.org/show/speaks/dramaqueennorm a/1.php
the first six make up the story but the extras are ones with the same treatment that I still like very much.

I do too. The photo caption links to the set on flickr - please go comment. The quote links to the photo essay on utata - and that sure looks like something I need to pass around too.

As for the post excerpt, from which I was going to weave a post about anti-vaccine activists, perspective and cost-benefit ratios - all that now seems rather crass, and a disservice to both contributions. So, I will leave this as it is, and leave all the implications for each reader as they are, without further comment.

My favorite Social Transgressive.

As long-time readers may know, ana voog is one of my favorite online people, and she's pregnant. Like most starving artists, she's short on margin for unexpected expenses. So am I, or I'd simply send her some money via her website. I'm sure that a lot of her lj and Myspace friends are in the same place on this and I'm sure there's a bunch of us that have stuff we make or do, so I was thinking, maybe an auction? I've got this astonishing bit of art that I did when I heard the good news.

I'm thinking I could put up some signed prints. Who's in?

Why I am thankful for ana voog

i'm glad i got to see the earth when it was plentiful.
i'm both happy and sad that i got to experience living in america in the most gluttunous time in history.
when one could take a full bubble bath every 5 minutes if you wanted to, full of fresh clean water each time.

i have luxuriated in water, drank from the faucet when it was actually tasting ok to do so, i swam in pools of crystal clear springs in south dakota,
i washed my dishes and clothes in as much water as i wanted. hot or cold.
i have lived the life of a king on 5,000 a year.

Thank Goddess for friends who say the things we should have, better than we could have, if only we had rememberet that it's the time to do that.

I'd comment more, but everything I need to say, I've said there in the comments.

But make sure and linger a bit to learn more about ana voog.