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Hey, I think I may have a slight case of this cabin fever ya'll speak of. A guy I work with lives out by the Holston and tells me he has some spots, and has been catching fish the last couple of weekends. He spinfishes with rooster tails, but I am really itching to get my new (fly) gear wet. I don't want to wait on the weather anymore. Any suggestions on flies to try? Tips on staying warm...
Re: Holston
I haven't fished the Holston in quite a while but if I were to go this weekend I'd probably fish it like the Clinch. All sorts of midges and some small streamers. I don't see you going wrong with any of that. I would even try a few cased caddis imitations.
Hugh Hartsell will probably have some information for you.
Re: Holston
One more thing, I am really new to flyfishing, so I have no clue how to even fish a midge or a streamer. The guy I'm going with dosen't either.
Re: Holston
Patillac, I wish that I could give you some up to date info, but it has been so cold and windy that I have not been on the river in at least two weeks. I think with the weather being as cold as it has been that you will probably have to use the basics when you start. Just a simple strike indicator and something like a very small Beadhead Pheasantail Nymph about 24-30 in. below it;cast upstream or up and across and allowed to dead drift back down below you. Your biggest task in front of you is learning to handle that flyrod and until you get that in control, only the most basic task will be in order. If you can find a set of shoals such as the ones at Nances Ferry that are wide open, you can practice your casting techniques and at least get the feel of handling your flyrod. Start with short cast and when you fell like you have that pretty much in hand, then begin to make some slightly longer ones. Take your time and watch the loop that your flyline makes as you false cast. If it is dipping down as it goes behind you or in front of you, then your being a little too fast with your stroke or allowing your wrist to bend too much. Either of these actions will cause the flexing of the rod to not give it's full effect. It's easy to tell because your flyline will slap the water in front or behind. THIS TIMING THING IS MUCH EASIER TO CORRECT IF YOU JUST START OFF WITH SHORT CAST. When your timing is right, the loop in your flyline will become tighter and the cast will be longer and smoother. This takes a while to smooth out. If you will practice this for a awhile, it will give the air time to warm up some and maybe some insects will start hatching. Look for small black or creme colored midge type flies buzzing around on the water. If you get lucky, you may see some larger tan looking flies skittering around and flying off to parts unknown. That will be Caddis flies and you'll sure see some trout activity if this happens. I hope that someone on the board is going your way tomorrow that can help you get started. Good luck and let us know how you did.
Hugh Hartsell---East Tn.
Hugh Hartsell---East Tenn.
Re: Holston
RFowler, boy were you right! Maybe after a few trips to the Holston, I can fish the Clinch like I fish the Holston.?
I had to read that like 3 times to take it all in. Lots of good information, that's exactly what I need. I went to LRO today and got my beadhead pheasant tails and a few tan elk hair caddis' along with some strike indicators (fancy name for bobber huh?) and a few other knick-knacks. I'm gonna spend tommorow trying to get some good loops going and head to the river after work on Monday (I'm convienently working right on Cherokee Lake). Right now the TVA website says 0 generators from midnight to 1am, whatever that means, so hopefully no water will be released on Monday. Anyhow, thanks for steering me in the right direction and I'll let you know how we do, especially if I catch a trout and my buddy dosen't.
It means just as it says. No generation from midnight to 1AM. I usually look at the average daily outflow information located at the bottom of the page. The average for Saturday and Sunday are showing 300cfs. This average spans 24 hours. 300cfs is most likely base flow for the Holston so TVA will probably be pulsing. If the predicted average is a higher number, lets say, 1500, then TVA will be generating for a bit somewhere within that 24 hour span. Keep in mind that the weather can change these predicted flows but they're pretty accurate for the most part. The predicted flow for Monday will be posted tomorrow.
Patillac - be cautious when fishing below TVA and Corps of Eng operated reservoirs. Normally you can count on the published release schedules, but be aware that changes in local as well as upstream weather / precip conditions influence short-term release decisions.
My advice for fishing a TVA tailwater is to check generating schedules before you leave home, mark a spot on an object such as a tree or rock, and check it every 3-4 minutes while you're fishing to see if the water is rising. 98% of the time this will not be necessary, but it's the 2% that will get you in trouble - couple of personal scary tales from the Holston and Clinch to support this!!
Last edited by psnapp; 02-23-2007 at 09:51 PM..
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Hello, I've been drinking green tea since late 2005. I've just started taking the green tea extract capsules this week.
I'd like to read opinions and get more information about green tea extract capsules.
Kestrel wrote:Matcha, because you're consuming the entire tea leaf, has a much higher level of caffeine than normal tea does. In fact, according to a study done at the college I attended, a comparison per-volume of prepared matcha and prepared coffee (like, 1 liquid ounce of matcha to one liquid ounce of coffee) showed matcha has more caffeine than coffee does.
So if you're relatively sensitive to caffeine, that might be your culprit.

subset: commoncrawl


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Edgar that is actually sliced sausage links on the pizza. I cook them in the oven let them cool and then slice them thinly on the slicer. Its by far the best way to make sausage topping for pizza in my opinion.
Jamie,Very nice, and good luck to you and your brother with the business.Are you using the store's formulation and methods or are you using ideas of your own, or possibly a combination of both?Peter


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Aerosmith sends an energizing electric rush through a receptive sold-out crowd at American Airlines Center
Joe Perry and Steven Tyler ascended in a cloud of billowy smoke from underneath the end of a long catwalk. It was a quintessential rock entrance tailored for a sold-out arena crowd. Tyler, his trademark scarves-draped microphone stand at his black nail-polished fingertips, immediately launched into 1977′s "Draw the Line."
Rock 'n' roll familiarity never fails to send an energizing electric rush through a receptive audience. So the packed house Saturday night at American Airlines Center reacted in kind, giving Aerosmith instant approval.
It's been two years since Tyler and company played Dallas. It's also been eight years since the iconic rock band released a new studio album. Music From Another Dimension! will arrive in early November, and Aerosmith performed a couple of catchy, rhythmic numbers from the project – "Oh Yeah" and "Legendary Child."
But the "Global Warming Tour," opened by special guest Cheap Trick, was all about the staples. For the first trek after Tyler officially vacated the American Idol judge chair, the group dipped into material from albums released in the '70s, '80s, '90s and 2000s. They even dusted off their cover of the Beatles' "Come Together," which they recorded for 1978′s soundtrack to the film fiasco Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Tyler, Perry, drummer Joey Kramer, bassist Tom Hamilton and rhythm guitarist Brad Whitford were all in fine form. Tyler pranced around in his usual glam-fortified fashion as if he owned the stage. Perry gave us a memorable guitar solo standing by an amp dressed with an American flag. Kramer's drum solo was a muscular, no-frills triumph.
Assisted by a couple of female background vocalists as well as keyboardist Russ Irwin and percussionist Jesse Sky Kramer (Joey's son), the Aerosmith guys seamlessly floated between the earlier, classic sound and the latter, more commercially punchy style. "Same Old Song and Dance," "Sweet Emotion," "Walk This Way" and "Dream On" blended with "Love In an Elevator," "Livin' On the Edge," "Pink" and "Rag Doll."
Aerosmith always managed to reinvent itself for the masses without losing its inherent musicality. Power ballads notwithstanding, especially the cringe-inducing "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing," the Boston-formed band stayed true to its creative forces. That's why 42 years after its inception, Aerosmith still sells out arenas.
Cheap Trick, the lads from Illinois, delivered a rousing hour-long rock set that featured great performances from lead singer Robin Zander, guitarist Rick Nielsen, bassist Tom Petersson and drummer Daxx Nielsen, Rick's son, filling in for original drummer Bun E. Carlos.
We got the key hits – "Surrender," "Dream Police," "I Want You to Want Me," "She's Tight" and "The Flame" – played with vigor, precision. Zander hit the high notes during "The Flame," and Nielsen amazed us with his five-neck guitar. Plus, the cover of Fats Domino's "Ain't That a Shame" with Aerosmith's Whitford along for the ride was a definite jam in an already musically vigorous show.


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After service in Vietnam as a surgeon in 1968-69, Dr. Gordon Livingston returned to the U.S. and began work as a psychiatrist. In that capacity, he has listened to people talk about their lives and the limitless ways that they have found to be unhappy. He is also a parent twice bereaved. In one thirteen-month period, he lost his eldest son to suicide, his youngest to leukemia. Out of a lifetime of experience, Livingston has extracted thirty bedrock truths: We are what we do. Any relationship is under the control of the person who cares the least. The perfect is the enemy of the good. Only bad things happen quickly. Forgiveness is a form of letting go, but they are not the same thing. The statute of limitations has expired on most of our childhood traumas. Livingston illuminates these and twenty-four others in perfectly calibrated essays, many of which emphasize our closest relationships and the things that we do to impede or enhance them. These writings underscore that "we are what we do," and that while there may be no escaping who we are, we have the capacity to face loss, misfortune, and regret, and to move beyond them.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
GORDON LIVINGSTON, M.D., a graduate of West Point and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, has been a physician since 1967. He is a psychiatrist and writer who contributes frequently to the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Baltimore Sun, and Readers Digest. Awarded the Bronze Star for valor in Vietnam, he is also the author of Only Spring. He lives and works in Columbia, Maryland.Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
From the foreword by Elizabeth Edwards:
"For the past eight years, Gordon Livingston has been one of the most important people in my life--and yet I have met him only once. Neither of us is young, but we are the beneficiaries of the communication mode of the young: we met on the Internet, in an online community of bereaved parents. He and a handful of others were just what I needed when my child died, people who truly understood the chasm into which we were all falling, trying--sometimes halfheartedly--to grab hold and stop the fall."
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Book Description Marlowe & Company, 2004. Book Condition: New. Brand New, Unread Copy in Perfect Condition. A+ Customer Service! Summary: Psychiatrist Dr. Gordon Livingston, who began his medical career serving as a physician in the Vietnam War, has spent the past thirty years "listening to other people's most intimate secrets and troubles." He has also endured his own fair share of loss and sorrow-losing two of his sons, one to leukemia, another to suicide. Over many years, Livingston has come to recognize 30 truths that we all need to learn before it's too late. Some of these truths are that we are what we do; any relationship is under the control of the person who cares the least; control is a popular illusion; forgiveness is a form of letting go, the statute of limitations has expired on most of our childhood traumas. With clear-headed, beautifully crafted prose, Livingston deploys his acutely sensitive heart and brilliant mind, underscoring the commonalities that course through every individual human life. For everyone who feels a sense of urgency about improving his or her life and is looking for wise advice on how to comprehend and navigate an increasingly complex, unsettled world, Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart will elicit laughter, tears, and a newly focused appreciation for the precious and perilous gift of life. Bookseller Inventory # ABE_book_new_1569244197
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Book Description Book Condition: Brand New. Book Condition: Brand New. Bookseller Inventory # 97815692441971.0
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Book Description Marlowe & Company, 2004. Hardcover. Book Condition: New. book. Bookseller Inventory # 1569244197
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Book Description Marlowe & Company, 2004. Hardcover. Book Condition: New. Bookseller Inventory # P111569244197
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One is a middle class poster boy in Delhi and large swathes of urban India. The other is a dead demagogue who engendered admiration and revulsion in equal measure. [Read more]
About Arnab Mitra
India has not learnt any lessons from the 1962 war with China. [Read more]
I see striking parallels between the opposition to FDI in multi-brand retail and the early resistance, in the mid-1980s, to the introduction of computers. Then, as now, the main opposition came from the ruling party, albeit a different one, in West Bengal. [Read more]
It may sound harsh, but there's no running away from it. Whichever way you look at it, it's a betrayal. The angry public reaction to the petrol price increase is, in my opinion, completely self serving, capricious and, ultimately, self defeating. [Read more]
Why are we being so harsh on Mamata Banerjee?
Every act of omission or commission by her government is magnified by the national media and presented as yet more evidence that West Bengal is looking down a long and slippery road. [Read more]


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About the Author: William J. Burns serves as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.
On Friday, I visited Thailand as the first stop on my trip to Southeast Asia. As Secretary Clinton said in Bangkok one year ago, I came "to strengthen and deepen this important friendship and alliance that has stood the test of time," and to discuss with our Thai friends how we can cooperate even further to improve the lives of Thais and Americans.
During my visit, I participated in the third round of the U.S.-Thailand Strategic Dialogue with Foreign Minister Kasit and met with Prime Minister Abhisit. We had engaging discussions about how Thailand and the United States are working together to address regional and global issues, and ways that we can increase our strategic partnership in the years ahead. Foreign Minister Kasit and I spent some time exploring ideas to strengthen our commercial ties and improve economic opportunities for all of our citizens, and discussed the U.S.-Thai Creative Partnership we are launching to continue expanding cooperation between our governments to increase mutual investment and trade. This initiative will introduce U.S. businesses to export opportunities in Thailand and support President Obama's National Export Initiative. The reach of this partnership -- involving American and Thai universities, businesses, and research institutions -- demonstrates the richness and breadth of the U.S-Thailand relationship, truly a friendship and a partnership.
One of the highlights of my visit was speaking with Thai students, professors, and other guests at Chulalongkorn University, and a follow-on roundtable at which I had the opportunity to discuss with civil society representatives the future of this country. Many of the recent headlines coming out of Thailand have focused on the domestic political debate, protests, and unfortunate violence in the streets of Bangkok. The United States was deeply saddened by this violence, and supports Thailand's efforts to promote reconciliation. I come away from my discussions here with an appreciation of the complexity of the issues that Thailand is confronting, but hopeful that the dedication I heard from Thai voices to forging a better future based on a peaceful and democratic process will ultimately allow Thailand to navigate these issues and continue to grow stronger.
My stay in Thailand was far too short, and I am grateful to the Thai people for their kind hospitality. I left confident in the enduring bonds between the United States and Thailand. We share more than a critical alliance -- we share values in democracy, economic opportunity, and human rights. I look forward to building on these shared values to strengthen and broaden our partnership even further.
Related Entries: U.S. Commitment To Building a Comprehensive Partnership With Indonesia and Sixty Years of Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and Cambodia
Patrick W. in Maryland writes:
Hi, Guys & Under Secretary Burn_:)
I think this is a great start on improving
our economic partnership with Thailand.
Hopefully this will help the global economic
situation in a positive way.
Also , i hope they are able to resolve their
domestic issues ,and continue on with a positive outlook on the future..:)
Nice posting ..:)


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Mendes Signs With Cosmos (updated at 7:30 p.m. with quotes)
The Columbus Dispatch - December 11, 2012 07:30 PM
Cross one name off the list of potential Crew re-signings this offseason.
Today, the New York Cosmos of the NASL announced they had signed former Crew defender Carlos Mendes to the first contract in the new club's history. A native of Long Island, N.Y., Mendes spent his first seven MLS seasons in New York before being selected by the Crew in last season's re-entry draft.
"It's nothing against the team or the organization," Mendes said Tuesday evening. "At this point in my career, it was a good option to move back closer to my family."
Mendes declined to discuss what other options he had on the table.
In his lone season with the Crew, Mendes was limited to 12 games – all starts – due to a reoccurring hamstring injury. Mendes was out of contract at the end of the season, and Crew officials had said they were negotiating to possibly bring him back for next season.
"It was a frustrating year, but I really enjoyed it in Columbus," he said. "To be able to play with the Cosmos in New York is a great opportunity."
Late in the season, head coach Robert Warzycha told me he felt he had three top options to play central defense: Chad Marshall, Julius James and Mendes. After the Crew declined James' option for next season, just Marshall will be on the roster when the team assembles for preseason training. In all, the Crew currently has three defenders on its roster of 18 players.
After playing in the final regular-season game of the year, Mendes was noncommittal about rejoining the Crew but not about continuing to play. He also said he was looking forward to having the offseason to rest his hamstring.
"(Tell the fans I say) thank you," he said. "I had a great time in Columbus. It's a great organization. I had a great time and wish them the best, for sure."
Said Cosmos head coach Gio Savarese: "Carlos is an experienced and solid defender. We fully expect him to be a srtong presence in the locker room and provide us with the leadership we'll need."
Mendes is a noted guitarist and drummer off the pitch. I asked him who the best guitarist is on the current Crew roster.
"Definitely not Andy (Gruenebaum)," he said with a laugh. "Anyone other than Andy. Nah, I'm kidding. He got a lot better. It's a great team."


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Forest is open again! Check http://3.ly/forestguide for up-to-date Forest how-to knol including what the Working Groups are for and how to get involved in the doing process this year.
● Volunteer WG - First Sunday of the month, 5pm
● Café and Events WG - First Thursday of the month, 7pm
● Artist Facilities WG - First Wednesday of the month, 7pm
● Action WG - Second Sunday of the month, 7pm
● Behind the Scenes WG - Third Thursday of the month, 8pm
● Visual Arts WG - Last Thursday of the month, 7pm
It's advised that you check the events calendar on the website for the most current event info. Forest co-ordinators have access to add and edit these items. For WG meets, it's advisable to start a thread in the Events forum to remind other interested parties and garner Aganda Points or arrange any group action required.


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We can achieve more together than we can alone.
That simple statement underscored the premise of the first Global Partnerships Week, which we marked December 9-15, 2012. I saw the power of partnerships firsthand in Dubai, where I participated in the Global Entrepreneurship Summit and our Partners for a New Beginning initiative, while our embassies and missions around the world, from Japan to Brazil, spotlighted the value of partnering with the private sector.
Through educational and media events, competitions, and challenges, we've seen the State Department recognize the importance of collaborating with the private sector. In Honduras, for example, the Embassy launched a partnership with a local telecommunications company to provide Internet, cable, and phone access at youth outreach centers. In Haiti, Ambassador Pamela White hosted a reception for businesses and encouraged enhanced cooperation between the private sector and the government. And in Afghanistan, Embassy Kabul organized an on-the-record media roundtable to highlight the work of partnerships in promoting judicial reform.
These events are just a sampling of the many activities that took place during Global Partnerships Week, but it is important to note that partnerships are forming every week at the State Department. There is not a day that goes by that I have not heard about a new partnership launch or a new partnership idea. Three years ago, this wasn't the case.
In 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton launched the Global Partnership Initiative -- my office -- to serve as convener to bring people together to work on shared issues, a catalyst to kick-start new solutions to global challenges through collective action and innovation, and a collaborator to work with partners to plan and implement initiatives that strengthen diplomacy efforts and enhance development outcomes. Our office has gone from fielding a few calls a week about partnerships to becoming the central resource point in the State Department for all things partnership-related. And today, it gives me tremendous pride that we've established partnerships with over 1,100 entities and have secured over $650 million in public and private resources for initiatives that enhance U.S. foreign policy outcomes.
The uniqueness of our approach and commitment to partnering hit home as I participated in a partnerships event at the annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, last week. The Summit, which serves as a premier forum for promoting economic growth and opportunities through entrepreneurship, brings together entrepreneurs, banks, venture capitalists, investors, and others to catalyze partnerships that strengthen diplomacy and development outcomes.
On December 11, I convened a roundtable event of over 100 high-level business executives, representatives from non-governmental organizations, entrepreneurs, and government officials. We discussed partnerships as a vehicle for promoting entrepreneurship through initiatives such as Partners for a New Beginning (PNB), which is a cross-cutting global network of business leaders, community representatives, and entrepreneurs in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia.
These business leaders are committed to building local partnerships that promote economic opportunity, foster advances in science and technology, enhance educational opportunities, and catalyze exchanges to enhance mutual understanding in Muslim-majority nations in coordination with the U.S. State Department.
Through this innovative new partnership, we are redefining the way America interacts with Muslim-majority countries around the world. Since its inception in 2010, PNB has launched more than 180 new partnerships, has received commitments from the private sector to provide training opportunities for more than 40,000 in areas plagued by unemployment and will create almost 20,000 new jobs.
In our roundtable discussion, I was thrilled to hear the enthusiasm from business leaders to launch new partnerships to achieve even more in Muslim-majority countries.
The challenges the United States faces across the globe are enormous. We cannot tackle youth unemployment on our own, let alone climate change, income inequality, sustainable housing issues, or the many other challenges on our list. But through cooperation and collaboration with different actors, we can tackle important issues and impact millions. Join us.
David in South Africa writes:
The global partnership is a strategy to help the sufferances of different kinds which should be disintegrated on behalf of the people who need assistance of peacekeepers. And the UN has the resources.
Leo in Puerto Rico writes:
This is just Great!!!


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Mardi Gras — Everything That You Need to Know From Beads to King Cakes
Mardi Gras is my favorite time of the year! I went to Mardi Gras in New Orleans a few years ago. Twice actually. It was a lot of fun. One trip was what I call the "Parade Route" because the entire 4 days was spent going to parade after parade. The next trip to New Orleans was all about seeing the downtown festivities and oh what an experience that was. Now Texarkana has its own Mardi Gras celebration. This year it will be held on Saturday, March 1 in Downtown Texarkana.


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Krista Tippett, host: I'm Krista Tippett. Today, "Being Autistic and Being Human." My guests, Jennifer Elder and Paul Collins, a painter and a literary historian, have grappled with autism since the diagnosis of their son, Morgan, in 2002. We'll step back from controversies over autism causes and cures and explore the mystery and meaning of autism in their family and in history and society. As Paul Collins and Jennifer Elder have discovered, autism is a spectrum that sheds light on human nature, intelligence, and accomplishment.
Ms. Jennifer Elder: I think that cuts right to the heart of both of our works, that there's a spectrum, and that we see the world in a completely different way now. You know, it's not just Morgan. We now see these traits running through our family and through society.
Ms. Tippett: This is Speaking of Faith. Stay with us.
Ms. Tippett: I'm Krista Tippett. One child in every 110 in the U.S. is now diagnosed to be somewhere on the spectrum of autism. This hour, we'll step back from public controversies over autism causes and cures. We'll explore the mystery and meaning of autism in one family's life and in history and society. Jennifer Elder and Paul Collins say that life with their child with autism has deepened their understanding of human nature, of disability, and of creativity, intelligence, and accomplishment.
From American Public Media, this is Speaking of Faith, public radio's conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas. Today, "Being Autistic and Being Human."
The term autism comes from the Greek word for self — autos — a condition in which a person seems quite literally to live in his or her own world. Two physicians described autism and gave it the same name nearly simultaneously in the mid 1940s, though they were an ocean apart. One of them was the Austrian Hans Asperger for whom a form of high-functioning autism, Asperger's syndrome, is named.
After their son, Morgan, was diagnosed, Jennifer Elder and Paul Collins found a vivid history of autism before it was identified as a unique condition. I spoke with them in 2007. Jennifer, an artist, has authored two books for children and families. Paul, a literary historian, pursued the story of Dr. Asperger and other pioneers, as well as figures like Peter the Wild Boy, a probable case of autism. This child, found living alone in a forest, was studied as the philosophers and scientists of the 18th century reflected on what it means to be human.
As Paul Collins puts it, autism entails both disability and ability. Isolating difficulties with human relationship, for example, can be the flip side of a fierce aptitude for logic and a capacity for intense independent focus. These personality traits run through families and society and underpin fields like engineering, art, and science.
A doctor first suggested that Paul Collins and Jennifer Elder's son, Morgan, might have autism when he was two and a half, at a routine checkup. Until then, his normal was normal to them.
(Sound bite of music)
Ms. Tippett: From American Public Media, this is Speaking of Faith, public radio's conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas. Today, "Desmond Tutu's God of Surprises."
Mr. Paul Collins: We really had no basis of comparison because, for one thing, we'd been moving around a lot. So we didn't have a situation where we could watch someone else's child developing over the course of several years and actually notice that the — sort of the milestones were progressing really differently for other people's kids.
Ms. Elder: But, you know, we used to notice that what we just thought was his unique personality, like when he was a baby …
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Ms. Elder: … we used to joke that he was inscrutable, because he would just look at you for a long time without sort of smiling or laughing. And, but we didn't know that was anything strange about it.
Ms. Tippett: But I also, I mean toddlers are kind of strange, eccentric beings and inscrutable in a way. And, you know, you also knew that he was smart. And you knew that he was happy.
Mr. Collins: That was one thing that, yeah, that really threw me off actually was that he, what he had what's known as cognitive scatter, which is that some of his abilities were quite advanced for his age, or at least progressing, you know, quite typically, and others had barely progressed at all. And, you know, you usually think of developmental delays in a child as being kind of an all-around thing.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Mr. Collins: And so when I saw that some abilities were really coming along, I just assumed, "Well, you know, he's a late talker."
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Mr. Collins: "… But, you know, he's doing so well in all these other things, so things must be going fine." And not realizing, of course, that that's really one of the almost defining characteristics with autism that some abilities can actually become quite advanced.
Ms. Tippett: Right. And I guess what I'm learning and I think you described on so many levels is, it's not one thing, autism, right? It's a spectrum of human character and behavior. So you still have to get to know your child and what it means that your child has this diagnosis.
Ms. Elder: And I think that cuts right to the heart of both of our works, that there's a spectrum, and that we see the world in a completely different way now. You know, it's not just Morgan. We now see these traits running through our family and through society.
Ms. Tippett: Mm-hmm.
Mr. Collins: That was something that really was kind of a turning point for me, too, which was that, you know, I think initially when we had the doctors saying, "Well, you need to have him looked at for developmental delays," it seemed like something had happened to our child.
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. Collins: You know, we had brought him in and he was fine. And then we brought him out of the office and he was not. And it was just very mystifying. And over time, what I came to see was that, yeah, not only is there a broad spectrum of autistic behavior, but, yeah, that because these traits actually run through families, and not in the form of full-blown autism necessarily, but you can see some of the traits very commonly, particularly in male relatives. When I first heard about that and started looking around at my own family, it really transformed my understanding of my family. And, in some ways, people like my brother and my father started to make a lot more sense. And I think that it was the same for Jennifer with her family, as well.
Ms. Tippett: Well, let's talk about that. That's one of the things you write about in the book, that you discovered that, in fact, there is data. There are studies about, not just traits of autism, but professions, right? Engineers and artists and scientists tend to be in families where autism turns up.
Mr. Collins: Yeah. There's been really fascinating research on this done by Simon Baron-Cohen at Cambridge University. And what he noticed essentially was that there seemed to be a lot of autistic siblings, in particular, of students of his who were in science-related majors and, you know, math students as well, and engineering students, and that kind of thing. And so initially, he simply looked at, just sort of did an informal study comparing English majors and the rates of autism in their families with a number of science majors. And the science majors that he was looking at had rates that were like five and six times that of autism in their families. Interestingly enough, the English majors had much, much higher rates of manic depression in their families.
Ms. Tippett: Oh, gosh.
Mr. Collins: Which is suddenly all makes sense. So, and then when he expanded to studying the broader population, he found that this held up. That actually, when you looked at the professions that family members of people with autism were in, they tended to be in things like accounting, engineering, computer programming, and had very low rates of employment in fields like sales, for instance …
Ms. Tippett: OK.
Mr. Collins: … which is all about social contact.
Ms. Tippett: Right. One way you described this as "solitary professions requiring deep focus and abstraction," which also includes artists in that category.
Mr. Collins: Yeah. And there's actually, musicians were very highly represented in particular, but also visual artists among these families that he was looking at. And the interesting thing about that for me is the first reaction a lot of people have when they hear his research is they'll say, "Well, sure, my dad's an engineer." I mean, in my case, my dad is an engineer.
Ms. Tippett: OK.
Mr. Collins: And my brother is finishing a Ph.D. in computer science. And so the reaction you have is, well, there's a little bit of shock initially, because he's right. He pegged their professions pretty well.
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. Collins: But at the same time, you think, "Well, but they're not actually autistic."
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Mr. Collins: And that's sort of his point, really, is that these traits in a much less highly expressed form or less over-expressed form, I guess you could say, naturally make people much better fitted for these professions.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah. And, I mean, you also, among your adventures, Paul, you went to Microsoft.
Mr. Collins: Strangely enough, it was actually for my first book that it had come out the year before at that point, called Banvard's Folly, which was a book about sort of failed or forgotten inventors and artists. And so they brought me up to just do a discussion with their employees. And in the middle of all this, as they were inviting me up, all this started happening with Morgan, with his diagnosis. And so I asked them, "Well, you know, while I'm up there, do you happen to have anyone working on autism-related issues?" Because I had heard rather a lot of whisperings among people that there was a fairly major autism community …
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. Collins: … in a lot of computing companies. And they said, "Well, yes. We certainly do have a lot going on here in that regard. "For me, the strangest moment there, I was speaking I think primarily with the, what they described as the math wing of Microsoft. So they had a lot of people doing sort of theoretical mathematical work and working the algorithms and things like that. And I was addressing this room and all these people were working on their laptops as I was talking, even before I started talking.
Ms. Tippett: And so they were looking at the laptops rather than at you while you were speaking? Mm-hmm.
Mr. Collins: Yeah, for the entire speech. And at first, I thought, "Wow, these are really busy people."
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. Collins: And, but then I realized from some of the questions that they were then asking that they were, in fact, listening to me. And afterwards, I mentioned it to someone. And they said, "Well, they were watching the webcast of you." I was like, 15 feet away from some of these people. And she said, "Well, that's just how they prefer to interact." But, you know, I think, at one level, when you see something like that, you go, "That's kind of strange." But at the same time, I think it's also really great that we live in an age where people who may, you know, I think in the past probably wouldn't have gone to a lecture like that at all just because of all the social contact that it would've entailed, that in the past, it would've been just much too uncomfortable or, you know, kind of painful for them to deal with.
Ms. Tippett: Mm-hmm. And, I mean, again, the point you've been making is that it is that very same personality-type set of skills that enables them to do this work somehow.
Mr. Collins: The way that Simon Baron-Cohen described it to me was he said, "All these professions I look at have a systematizing tendency." You know, they're seeking an internal logic within a system. And that lends itself beautifully to fields like mathematics or computing, which, in a lot of ways, is basically a subset of math.
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. Collins: And — you know, at the same time, it makes it extraordinarily difficult for them to deal with the highly illogical world of people.
Ms. Tippett: Yes.
[Sound bite of music]
Ms. Tippett: You can read a moving essay by the late scientist Stephen Jay Gould about his son with autism at speakingoffaith.org.
I'm Krista Tippett, and this is Speaking of Faith from American Public Media, today exploring autism in one family's life and in human history and society with Paul Collins and Jennifer Elder. Their first son, Morgan, has autism.
Jennifer's most recent book, Autistic Planet, evokes a world that imaginatively incorporates some of the motor and sensory traits that can make people with autism say they feel alien in human society. These include rocking, hand-flapping, and extreme sensitivity to sound, touch, and texture. Paul took the title of his book about autism, Not Even Wrong, from a criticism the physicist Wolfgang Pauli used to make of his colleagues. He would suggest that their way of thinking and seeing something was so far off the mark as to be not even wrong. One of the classic characteristics of autism is what researchers call a lack of a theory of mind, an incomplete understanding that other people don't know what they know, don't want what they want. Therefore, Paul Collins points out, words like "believe" and "think" and "know" do not mean the same thing in an autistic vocabulary.
Mr. Collins: Morgan, I think, like any autistic person, really interacts a lot with the outside world. In fact, most of his speech consists of either of demands from the outside world, you know, versus asking for things in a very instrumental way …
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Mr. Collins: … or of repeating things that he hears, which is a really common tendency that's known as echolalia that, you know, lines from books or things from songs or things on TV. In a way, his mind is kind of filled with all these cultural artifacts that kind of replays over and over again. So he's actually, in his own way, he's really fascinated with the outside world. And he interacts with us. There are times that he really wants us to be sitting with him or to explain something. But it's entirely on his own terms, you know? When he doesn't feel like interacting, he simply won't respond. And you know, you don't expect that from people, normally. You expect people to at least take a polite interest when you approach them about whatever.
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. Collins: And for him, it's really, you know, either he wants to interact or he doesn't. And there's kind of no in-between.
Ms. Elder: You know, I've often explained it to people who weren't familiar with an autistic child that it's like somebody watching a video and you're trying to get their attention. But at the worst, they don't hear you at all or at best you're sort of bugging them and they try to swat you away.
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Ms. Elder: And that's what Morgan's like all the time. He's got, sort of a video running in his head. And you really have to get up in there to get his attention.
Mr. Collins: The funny thing, too, is that I'm kind of like that.
Ms. Elder: Yes.
Ms. Tippett: Well, again, there's that spectrum, isn't there?
Mr. Collins: Yes. And, I mean, that was one of the really strange moments for me, particularly when I saw Baron-Cohen's work, was recognizing these traits within myself. And that …
Ms. Tippett: Like what? I mean, give me an example.
Mr. Collins: When I'm focused on an object or a project or whatever, it has the effect for me of almost as if I'm turning my ears off. I just don't hear what's going on around me. And the ironic thing for me is that I can't imagine having a career as a historian without having that tendency, you know?
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. Collins: Because I'm able to go into archives for hours at a time and just focus. And it's like diving underwater or something. I just don't even hear the outside world.
Ms. Elder: And we think this might be part of the connection between autism and what you might call genius, is the ability to focus on something, you know?
Ms. Tippett: Single-mindedness, yeah.
Ms. Elder: Absolutely. Because in order to come to a conclusion, you may have to think about something without, you know, without your mind wandering for, you know, a terribly long period of time. And Paul can do that. But, of course, when I want to get his attention for a minor matter …
Ms. Tippett: Yes.
Ms. Elder: … it can be difficult.
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. Collins: It's almost like having to shake me awake or something when I'm working on something. And, and so, I think, you know, what Morgan experiences is a much higher degree of that, but it's something that's, I think, helped me a lot in working with him. That I don't take it personally that he's somehow ignoring me or something.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Mr. Collins: I actually understand.
Ms. Tippett: When you described Morgan, again, as a toddler, he also had this not uncommon, he had these abilities, right? He knew things. I remember this, there's a scene in the book where you had somebody testing him and he was running by saying, "Isosceles triangle, rhombus," right? He's going through a geometry phase or something. But I wrote in my margins of the book, when I read that, you know, "Where does this come from?" I mean, there's, there's some real mystery in this, isn't it? I mean, across that spectrum, as you're talking about.
Mr. Collins: You know, one of the most curious things to watch, really, with Morgan has been, you know, as parents, we can create an environment for him. We try to encourage certain things or just try to provide a rich environment for him to learn in. But he's very self-motivated in terms of what he decides he wants to pay attention to and what he finds interesting. And if he finds something interesting, he just has this incredible focus upon it, and will develop so quickly.
And I think that's very common in terms of autistic spectrum-kind of behavior that, you know, Asperger described, you know, people who could do advanced mathematics, among the children of his, who were patients. But if you ask them what their name was, they couldn't tell you. They didn't even know now how to respond. And, I mean, it's sort of an extreme form of it, in a way. But it's, that really almost epitomizes that, that condition that if there is something that captures their focus, it becomes an immensely powerful tool, in many cases, you know, particularly if one is interested in the sciences or the arts or whatever. But one of the strange things about autism is that it's very difficult to harness that, you know.
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. Collins: I mean, you can try to put things in front of a child and, in the hope that, well, maybe they'll be really interested in this, and that will be a constructive thing and, you know, perhaps it will be good for them in terms of learning a profession or having a hobby or whatever. But it's almost impossible to be able to guess what it will be that captures that focus, because they're really not interested in your judgment of what's important and what isn't.
Ms. Tippett: Right. But, you know, the same thing is true of any child, you know? I mean, we don't …
Mr. Collins: Yeah.
Ms. Tippett: None of us knows what is going to grab our children's attention or where their talents will be.
Ms. Elder: Morgan is passionate about musical instruments, but he's equally as passionate about YouTube videos, you know?
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Ms. Elder: It's something that seems very trivial to us and just as important as the symphony orchestra to Morgan.
Ms. Tippett: I see.
Mr. Collins: And specifically, he's become fascinated by the, was it the bumpers or whatever, the …
Ms. Tippett: Logos?
Mr. Collins: The logos that film production companies run right before a movie or a TV show starts, like the whole Paramount mountain logo and things like that.
Ms. Tippett: Really?
Mr. Collins: Or the Universal opening that shows the revolving planet. And there's a whole community of people that are fascinated. People will put …
Ms. Elder: There are hundreds of these posted on YouTube. And …
Mr. Collins: Yeah. People compile, like histories of them into videos. And they're passionate about it.
Ms. Elder: And they rework them. They make their own versions on their computers, and parodies. And we had no idea. You know, it's funny. We don't usually think that Morgan has any social influences, but he actually picked this up from another boy at school who happened to be watching these YouTube videos one day.
Mr. Collins: Another autistic boy.
Ms. Elder: Another autistic child, yeah.
[Sound bite of music]
Ms. Tippett: Artist and author Jennifer Elder and literary historian Paul Collins, parents of Morgan, who has autism.
Temple Grandin is perhaps the best-known person with autism in the world today. She's written several books and won wide acclaim for her work to create humane slaughterhouses. The neurologist Oliver Sacks drew the title of his 1995 book, An Anthropologist on Mars, from his profile of Temple Grandin. As Grandin puts it, she "thinks in pictures." Here's part of a reflection she offered on her approach to ethics and meaning for our colleagues at NPR's This I Believe.
Ms. Temple Grandin: Because I have autism, I live by concrete rules instead of abstract beliefs. And because I have autism, I think in pictures and sounds. I don't have the ability to process abstract thought the way that you do. Here's how my brain works: It's like the search engine Google for images. If you say the word "love" to me, I'll surf the Internet inside my brain. Then, a series of images pops into my head. What I'll see, for example, is a picture of a mother horse with a foal, or I think of Herbie the Love Bug, scenes from the movie Love Story, or the Beatles song "Love, love, all you need is love."
When I was a child, my parents taught me the difference between good and bad behavior by showing me specific examples. My mother told me that you don't hit other kids because you would not like it if they hit you. That makes sense. But if my mother told me to be nice to someone, it was too vague for me to comprehend, but if she said that being nice meant delivering daffodils to the next-door neighbor, that I could understand. I built a library of experiences that I could refer to when I was in a new situation.
That way, when I confronted something unfamiliar, I could draw on the information in my homemade library and come up with an appropriate way to behave in a new and strange situation.
Ms. Tippett: Temple Grandin compares her brain to a Google search engine, and the Internet has fostered valuable online communities for people with autism. At speakingoffaith.org, you can explore the community of movie logo enthusiasts that Paul Collins and Jennifer Elder talked about and watch the YouTube videos that captivated their son, Morgan.
Also, check out our staff blog, Pertinent Posts from the Speaking of Faith Blog, our fresh and fun take on blogging, where we let you into the production process. And download an MP3 of this program for free through our e-mail newsletter, podcast, or website. That's speakingoffaith.org.
After a short break, more conversation with Jennifer Elder and Paul Collins, including how life with their son with autism makes them think fundamentally differently about what it means to be human.
I'm Krista Tippett. Stay with us. Speaking of Faith comes to you from American Public Media.
Ms. Tippett: Welcome back to Speaking of Faith, public radio's conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas. I'm Krista Tippett. Today, "Being Autistic and Being Human." My guests, Jennifer Elder and Paul Collins, are a painter and a literary historian and their first son, Morgan, has autism. In art and writing, they've also explored autism in historical, medical, and social perspective. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that one in 110 children in the U.S. falls on the spectrum of autism. This ranges from severe impairment to the high-functioning personality known by some as Asperger's syndrome.
And somewhere above 10 percent of people across the spectrum of autism exhibit extraordinary skills or talents, often mathematical or artistic in nature. But they may be hindered from applying those productively because of interactive deficits, compulsive motor traits, and sensory sensitivities that also mark their lives.
(Sound bite of the Goldberg Variations)
Ms. Tippett: This is a recording of the pianist Glenn Gould. Gould hated the sound of clapping and being watched, dressing up for concerts, and shaking hands. He gave up public concerts at the age of 32 and recorded his most famous music alone in a recording studio, often humming unselfconsciously while he played. This 1955 rendition of Bach's Goldberg Variations is one of the best-selling classical albums of all time.
(Sound bite of the Goldberg Variations)
Ms. Tippett: Again, Jennifer Elder and Paul Collins.
Mr. Collins: I think, for me, one of the most curious things to watch with Morgan has particularly been his interest in music, because there seemed to be things with music that he just naturally seems to understand. I'm fairly sure he has perfect pitch.
Ms. Tippett: And that's quite common, isn't it?
Mr. Collins: Yeah. That turns up a lot with autistic children.
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. Collins: And he'll just pick up tunes by ear and play them on the piano, and that kind of thing that, for example, there are few things that are almost as soon as you hear about it, you just go, that again. And one of them is the, you know, perfect pitch or the ability to pick up things on the piano, like that. Another thing is a fascination, for example, with mass transit systems. A lot, a lot of autistic kids are fascinated by bus schedules and bus numbers and railways.
Ms. Tippett: And they memorize them, don't they?
Mr. Collins: Yeah. They memorize a lot of stuff. There's actually a tremendous fascination with Thomas the Tank Engine among a lot of autistic kids. And I think it's because there's a whole little self-contained universe of this island and all these named engines. And the other thing is too, this occurred to me recently, if you've ever seen Thomas the Tank Engine, the trains have faces on them. But they're not terribly expressive. There's only, you know, they don't have hundreds of facial muscles …
Ms. Tippett: Right. Right.
Mr. Collins: …the way humans do. They only have a few expressions. And so for, I think, for an autistic child, it's much easier to interpret the train than it is to interpret people.
Ms. Elder: I remember somebody commenting one time that there are a lot of autistic children who were big fans of Japanese animation or anime. And one of the …
Ms. Tippett: Oh. Right.
Ms. Elder: … reasons they thought was because in the — these animations, the expressions of emotion are so strong and clear cut, you know.
Ms. Tippett: Stark. Yes.
Ms. Elder: There's not a lot of nuance.
Ms. Tippett: They have wild hair and outfits. But their mouths and their eyes are …
Ms. Elder: Yeah. Yeah. If they're — they're either furious or afraid or, you know. And it's — there's not a lot of in-between. So autistic kids can watch it fairly comfortably knowing what's going on. There's no sort of — there's nothing subtle to pick up on.
Ms. Tippett: Mm-hmm. I have also read somewhere that many autistic children are — feel a kind of affinity with characters like Dr. Spock in Star Trek or — I wondered about Commander Data is one of my heroes …
Ms. Elder: Absolutely.
Mr. Collins: Yes.
Ms. Tippett: … in Star Trek: The Next Generation. And, I mean, is that true of Morgan or other autistic children you know?
Ms. Elder: He's a little young for science fiction.
Ms. Tippett: OK.
Ms. Elder: But absolutely. The fact that you say that you're a Data fan makes me think you might be one of us, Krista.
Ms. Tippett: I know. I know, I know, it made me wonder too. Because — and there is in those characters, in Spock and Data, the brilliance and the kind of perplexity at — and in fact, how strange and complicated normal human beings are, right, with the range of emotions and interactions and what a mess that is sometimes.
Mr. Collins: I think, I mean, particularly when you have a character, like Spock, who's supposed to be sort of, of both worlds.
Ms. Tippett: Yes.
Mr. Collins: You know, he has one foot in the human world, and the other one isn't. And he's trying to figure it out and trying to somehow reconcile this. And, yeah, that's one of the reasons that a lot of autistic people find him to be such a — sort of a sympathetic character, because his situation kind of mirrors their own. They are very much part of our world and, you know, draw from it and actually help make a lot of the things in our world as well. And yet, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to them. And particularly the social interactions are just — there is so much to social interactions that can't really be explained very logically. You just have to intuit them. And when you actually try to sit down and explain it to someone, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
(Sound bite of music)
Ms. Tippett: Here's a scene with Spock that takes place around a campfire from the Star Trek movie The Final Frontier.
Lt. Commander Spock (played by Mr. Leonard Nimoy): I believe we are required to engage in a ritual known as the sing-along.
Captain James T. Kirk (played by Mr. William Shatner): That's great. I haven't sung around a campfire since I was a boy in Iowa. What are we going to sing?
Dr. Leonard McCoy (as played by Mr. DeForest Kelley): (singing) Row, row, row your boat.
Capt. Kirk: Row, row, row your boat. I love row — do you know row, row, row, row, row your boat?
Lt. Spock: That song did not come up in my research, Captain.
Capt. Kirk: The lyrics are very simple. The doctor and I will start it off. And then when we give you a signal, you jump in.
Dr. McCoy: (singing) Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream.
Capt. Kirk: (singing) Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream.
Dr. McCoy: (singing) Merrily, merrily, merrily lightly down the stream.
Capt. Kirk: (singing) Merrily, merrily, merrily life is but — merrily, merrily, merrily life — come on, Spock. Why didn't you jump in?
Lt. Spock: I was trying to comprehend the meaning of the words.
Dr. McCoy: It's a song, you green-blooded Vulcan. You sing it. The words aren't important. What's important is that you have a good time singing it.
Lt. Spock: Oh, I am sorry, Doctor. Were we having a good time?
(Sound bite of music)
Ms. Tippett: I've had several conversations over the years about children as little philosophers and little theologians, you know, that in childhood, we start asking these great existential questions — Where did we come from? Is there a god? If there's a god, who made god? — you know? And also ethical questions like, why do people hurt each other? And I wondered, do you experience those kinds of questions, that kind of side to Morgan?
Ms. Elder: Now, I'm not sure how abstractly he thinks about these things. You know, my feeling — and I won't speak for Paul since we have different feelings on this — but I feel that we all come into this world with a sort of immediate natural relationship with God. And so that for Morgan, he has that, you know, that's just the way it's always been for him. He has that relationship and it's unaffected by whatever society has to say about it. But I think that we have to introduce ideas of ethics to him, because this sort of thing just simply doesn't occur to him. He's certainly not cruel.
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Ms. Elder: But getting back to the theory of mind, he just doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about what other people are experiencing.
Ms. Tippett: Right. So I suppose if he's not — he can't really — he's perplexed by other people's reactions. Then I suppose, part of being kind or compassionate is about — would be such a complicated interaction, kind of beyond the way he — the way he — his mind works.
Ms. Elder: Absolutely. I don't think it's impossible for him. I just think that it needs to be taught, because it doesn't come to him immediately the way it might come to us.
Mr. Collins: And one thing we've actually had to teach Morgan with his little brother is how to comfort his little brother. And we're still at the stage where we have to remind him that, you know, if something happens and Bramwell gets upset or if, you know, he falls down and skins his knee, or that kind of thing, that the appropriate thing to do is to ask if he's OK, or to, you know, to give him a hug or something like that. And otherwise, it doesn't really occur to him. And not, yeah, not out of any sort of cruel or …
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. Collins: … or callous sense of, but just that — I think it really doesn't occur to him. And that issue of empathy is a very difficult one, I think, for a lot of autistic people, because I think for those particularly not familiar with them, it may seem kind of pointedly callous, when in fact it's, I think, it kind of comes down to a lack of understanding of the situation a lot of the time. And they don't see the point in it.
Ms. Tippett: So, I mean, Jennifer, when you say that you believe that he — that we all come into the world with a relationship with God, but with Morgan, is that just more something that you intuit? I suppose, because he doesn't talk about things the way non-autistic people talk about things. Is that what you're saying? It's just something you believe?
Ms. Elder: Yes. Absolutely. That's right. And, you know, he doesn't speak very abstractly about anything. And the sort of window into his soul that we have is usually through a sort of a code that's based on the books and videos that he consumes. So he often somehow puts together phrases and characters from books to express something. And of course, nothing's coming to mind right now as I say that. But, you know, he will express something by way of mentioning, "The Cat in the Hat feels sad."
Ms. Tippett: Oh. OK.
Ms. Elder: Or that sort of thing. And that's how he lets us know that he's thinking about somebody being sad. So we understand that when he's putting together these, to other people, meaningless expressions that they are his way of interpreting the world, which he does primarily through literature. Because he doesn't pick up on scenes in person, you know? He picks up through scenes in books and videos what human interactions are about.
Mr. Collins: I think that human interactions are much too fleeting for him to have a chance to interpret them. Whereas he'll read a book over and over again, or watch a scene in a video over and over again and can really try to figure it out. Or at least, kind of memorize it as almost a kind of a script for dealing with the world in a way that, yeah, that — in-person interactions, they're not repeatable in a consistent manner for him. So it's very difficult for him to figure them out.
Ms. Tippett: Kind of makes you think that 21st century is not a bad time to be born as an autistic person with all this rich world of media that we have.
Ms. Elder: Absolutely.
Mr. Collins: Oh, yeah.
Ms. Elder: I have no idea what autistic people — how they spent their time before the computer.
(Sound bite of music)
Ms. Tippett: Artist and author Jennifer Elder and literary historian Paul Collins, parents of Morgan, who has autism. I'm Krista Tippett, and this is Speaking of Faith from American Public Media. Today, "Being Autistic and Being Human."
Until recent decades, autism was conflated with very different conditions such as schizophrenia and Down syndrome. Popular theories about autism blamed childhood trauma or bad mothering. Genetic research and brain studies may now gradually unravel the mystery of what causes or triggers autism and how it is related to the same familial and societal traits that give rise to art and science and logic. Jennifer Elder's book Different Like Me: My Book of Autism Heroes describes historical figures of great achievement, who she and others believe might have been somewhere on the spectrum of autism. Among them are the scientist Isaac Newton, the primatologist Dian Fossey, the comedian Andy Kaufman, and the artist Andy Warhol.
In his book Not Even Wrong, Paul Collins writes this:
"Autists are described by others — and by themselves — as aliens among humans. But there's an irony to this, for precisely the opposite is true. They are us, and to understand them is to begin to understand what it means to be human. Think of it: a disability is usually defined in terms of what is missing. … But autism … is as much about what is abundant as what is missing, an overexpression of the very traits that make our species unique. Other animals are social, but only humans are capable of abstract logic. The autistic outhuman the humans, and we can scarcely recognize the result."
Ms. Tippett: Jennifer, you also have this book Different Like Me: My Book of Autism Heroes, and it includes, you know, people like Albert Einstein and female mathematicians I've never heard of, and the first — was it the first African-American scientist and …
Ms. Elder: Yes. And I had never heard of most of these people.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah. I mean, some of them, I mean Temple Grandin is in there. And there are those amazing stories in this category of savants, which is associated with autism, and that is so fascinating. And, you know — but then, what I also know is that all autistic children are not gifted. And there's some new research about girls in particular — autistic girls — that they have higher rates of depression and suicide and not necessarily these skill sets that autistic boys often have.
Ms. Elder: And that is something that, you know, Paul and I have sort of spoken of this openly and Paul wrote about it. But Morgan does take antidepressants. And we feel like when he was first diagnosed, we resisted medicating him. And many of the other children that we knew, autistic children, were medicated. But there came a point for him after we made a move across country where he just became very distressed and couldn't function and …
Mr. Collins: And actually been kind of building up for a while as he got older. He became more and more sensitive to things that frustrated him in the outside world and more and more overstimulated by them, and really didn't know how to handle them, and would get very upset about it. And the move really brought that to a head. And so, at that point, it actually wasn't a difficult decision, because we also had a small child, and Morgan would be thrashing around. And so there was a real physical danger at that point.
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. Collins: And he kind of became his old self, and it was sort of a remarkable thing to see. And his old self, not in the sense that it suddenly he was no longer autistic, he's, you know, very much so …
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. Collins: … but he could be sort of happy in the self that he already had been. And that's also another thing about the era that we live in that makes me feel extraordinarily fortunate.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Mr. Collins: I mean, for me, there's no question in a past era, you know, even just 20, 30 years ago probably. I mean, for one thing he might've been institutionalized from the outset.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Mr. Collins: But certainly once he became difficult to manage physically and getting really frustrated and that kind of thing, he probably would've been institutionalized at that point.
And as it is, that's still a situation that a lot of parents find themselves brought to where they have an autistic child. Yeah. You were sort of bringing this up earlier, that not all autistic children are going be these wonderful prodigies and sort of miracle stories …
Ms. Tippett: Right. Composing music and solving …
Mr. Collins: Right.
Ms. Tippett: … complex mathematical equations, and — yes. When you talked about Morgan as a toddler, you called him, you know, he was really happy and playful, right, he may not have been communicative …
Mr. Collins: Yeah.
Ms. Tippett: … in the way some children his age were. But would you still describe him as happy and playful at eight and a half?
Ms. Elder: Yeah.
Mr. Collins: Generally, he's a really happy kid. And usually when frustrations come about, it's just dealing with the outside world. When he's doing his own thing, he is actually quite happy. And that's one of those things I think that's true for a lot of autistic kids. But by the same token, it's not true for some. There are some that are just in a lot of distress much of the time and have to deal a lot with issues of depression and things like that.
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. Collins: And that is one thing I'm very hopeful about that, you know, autism being a condition with a very strong genetic element and one that clearly shapes your sort of neurological development from the get-go, I don't know that science is necessarily going to come along with something that will somehow reverse all of that. It seems unlikely in that sense. But I do think that we live in an age where there's much more hope that some of the more challenging or really difficult aspects of it can at least be mitigated a great deal. And, I mean, that's already the case to some extent. It makes me feel very fortunate to live in this time.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Ms. Elder: Yeah. That we're able to say, you know we have a happy, healthy autistic child, which I think is something that previous generations were …
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Ms. Elder: … not encouraged to think of it that way.
Ms. Tippett: Put all those words in a sentence together.
Ms. Elder: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mr. Collins: Right.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah. I was really struck by these lines, Paul, in your book, as you — I think along the lines we've been speaking. So Isaac Newton was another person in Jennifer's book, completely single-minded person who happened to be focusing, as you say, on something other people found important.
Mr. Collins: Right.
Ms. Tippett: And you said, "There are Newtons of refrigerator parts, and Newtons of painted light bulbs, and Newtons of train schedules, and Isaac Newton happened to be the Newton of Newtonian physics and you cannot have him without having the others too."
Mr. Collins: Yeah. And I think that's — I mean, there's two things that brings to mind, actually. I was in Italy not too long ago. For some reason, the book has actually been really popular over there. And a journalist there asked me, "What if we were able to do genetic screening for autism?" And I said, "Well, that's actually a really difficult question, because what are you prepared to lose?"
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Mr. Collins: And, you know, I don't know if anyone would argue necessarily against addressing issues of really profound autism and of some of the very real and profound difficulties that autistic people face. But those sorts of abilities and the traits that show up in the families around them — yeah, I don't know if you want to lose those. But the funny thing about that, too, is that it's very hard to control where that focus is going to go.
Ms. Tippett: Yes. I mean, how does living with Morgan and the way you've had to think about autism — how does that change the way you think about some of these great existential questions or, you know, what it means to be human? How does it change the way you live — think about yourself?
Mr. Collins: I think I've become — I would hope, at least, much more patient and empathetic with other people when they're acting in ways that I don't understand. I think that in the past when someone seemed to be acting oddly or seemed to be sort of very socially awkward or just doing things that seems kind of unnerving or didn't make sense to me, I would think, "Well, what's that guy's problem?" and, you know, maybe avoid them. That's, I think, a natural reaction for anyone to have.
Ms. Tippett: Yes.
Mr. Collins: But at the same time, when I see that now, I actually find myself asking that as a genuine question: What is that person contending with, you know? Or what is it like for that person?
Ms. Elder: You know, I want to say that one thing that has come up with us is Morgan really loves the Goodwill, which is not a place that I gave much thought before he came along.
Ms. Tippett: The Goodwill — the store the …
Ms. Elder: Yes.
Mr. Collins: Yeah.
Ms. Tippett: Uh-huh.
Ms. Elder: I have to say that Portland, Oregon, has some of the finest Goodwill's I have ever experienced in my life.
Ms. Tippett: OK.
Ms. Elder: And Morgan will ask for the Goodwill. And we love to take him there, because it's — I never would've thought of this before Morgan, but it's a place that's very friendly to people with disabilities. And when I'm there, I often see other people with developmental disabilities and people who I might not have noticed before, and now I do. Now I think about …
Mr. Collins: Yeah.
Ms. Elder: … you know, how to make their world as comfortable as possible. And that's just a place where they can be, you know, that's comfortable and accepting. And you really do, when you're there, you feel like you're part of a community even if you've never seen, you know, if it's a store full of strangers to you that I — it gives me another perspective on interacting with people who might be invisible otherwise.
Ms. Tippett: Jennifer Elder is the author of two illustrated books for children and families, Different Like Me: My Book of Autism Heroes and, most recently, Autistic Planet. Paul Collins' book about autism is Not Even Wrong: Adventures in Autism. He edits the Collins Library for McSweeney's Books and is an assistant professor of English at Portland State University.
Out of all of the conversations I've had, this interview was one of the most difficult to edit. There was so much wide-ranging material to choose from; we had to leave out helpful stories about how Paul and Jennifer initiate contact with their son — and interesting anecdotes about famous personalities like the comedians Andy Kaufman and Sacha Baron Cohen. Here's your chance to hear what was cut to make this an hour of radio. Download the two-hour uninterrupted conversation and this produced program for free through our podcast, e-mail newsletter, or website, speakingoffaith.org.
We've also compiled a collection of writings about autism, including Paul Collins' essay about the difficult decision he made to put his son on antidepressants. He's called it the most important thing he's ever written. Find links to that essay, our staff blog, and much more — speakingoffaith.org.
Speaking of Faith is produced by Colleen Scheck, Chris Heagle, Nancy Rosenbaum, and Shubha Bala. Trent Gilliss is our senior editor.
Special thanks this week to Dr. Andrea Bieberich, Dr. Barbara Luskin, and Dr. Sam Morgan.
Kate Moos is the managing producer of Speaking of Faith. And I'm Krista Tippett.


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hey.. i am looking for peoples to jam with.
me - saxophone.
me - here until Sept 15th.
you - interested in modal or swing or blues or electronic sound scape improv
you - have a place to play too
i work my own hours, so anytime i know about in advance, i can make a time slot for :)
--- is this the best place to post this?


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Short Black Lace Dress
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Name: Short Black Lace Dress
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Editor's note: This is the 15th installment in Bleacher Report's NFL 1000 for the 2013 season. This signature series runs through April 24, with NFL Draft Lead Writer Matt Miller ranking the best players at every position. You can read more about the series in this introductory article. See the NFL 1000 page for more rankings.
Determining the best inside linebacker in the NFL might be a tougher decision than you think. The NFL voted Luke Kuechly the Defensive Player of the Year, but was that backed up on film? How about the two studs in San Francisco? Or even Derrick Johnson?
There are a lot of very good inside linebackers in the NFL, but who is the best?
That's what the NFL 1000 aims to identify. Throw out the narratives and the fantasy football stats, and dig into the film. Then we'll see who is the best.
The B/R 1000 metric is based on scouting each player and grading the key criteria for each position. The criteria are weighted according to importance on a 100-point scale.
Potential is not taken into consideration, nor are career accomplishments.
Inside linebackers are judged on run defense (30 points), pass-rush skills (10), coverage (20), tackling (40) and all of the technique, athletic ability and football intelligence needed to play the position.
In the case of ties, our team asked, "Which player would I rather have on my team?" and set the rankings accordingly.
Subjective? Yes. But ties are no fun.
Each player was scouted by me and a team of experienced evaluators with these key criteria in mind. The following scouting reports and grades are the work of months of film study from our team.
All statistics from Pro Football Focus (subscription required). Players' heights, weights and seasons from NFL.com.


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When were you most dissapointed with Macca??
Why didn´t he turn up when The Beatles was inducted into Rock Roll of Fame?? He should have been there!!
I must say I didn´t think anything good would come out of working with MJ. Pipes Of Peace was such a let down after Tug Of War.
I must say that Press To Play was a dissapoinment too. I thought Paul was finished, he wasn´t playing live and the albums he was making was average.
But that changed.


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AASE athletes celebrate success at graduation ceremony
18 June 2012
A total of 125 athletes from all five disciplines celebrated their successes while on the AASE apprenticeship programme at the Apprenticeship Graduation Ceremony 2012 in Sheffield.
The graduation was hosted by Olympic medallist and BBC commentator Steve Parry with Richard Cadden, former world Thai-Boxing Champion, as the guest speaker. Richard presented the Advanced Apprentice of the year awards for all five disciplines. The winners were:
- Tom Baxter – Disability Swimming
- Anya Tarasiuk – Synchronised Swimming
- Aimee Wilmott – Swimming
- Decland Ellwood – Water Polo
- Chris Mears – Diving
Each of these athletes has not only excelled in their sports but also has completed the AASE programme to the highest standard.
Tom Baxter represented GB in the Deaf Olympics and he is a member of the Great Britain Deaf swimming club committee, helping to raise awareness and contribute to the future plans for deaf swimming.
While on the AASE programme, Anya Tarasiuk competed in European Championships and the World Cup. Anya has been an excellent role model to the younger synchronised swimming athletes.
Aimee Willmott (pictured receiving her award) gained many skills while on the AASE programme including time management skills. AASE helped give Aimee direction within her swimming career and options outside swimming. She has been selected to compete in the London 2012 Olympics and will be swimming in the 400m Individual Medley.
Decland Elwood was the centre forward for the GB Water Polo youth squad while on the programme. Decland also had a great attitude towards his work with AASE and he completed all his work on time and to the highest quality.
Chris Mears has competed in many international events while on AASE including the Diving World Championships, Fina World Cup, Commonwealth Games and the European Championships.
Take a look at films of the apprentices in their working environment or at the pool talking about their apprenticeship.
Chris Mears and Chloe Hurd
Lauren Steadman and Tom Baxter
Aimee Wilmott, Lauren Turner and Justin Austin
Issy Collings and Anya Tarasiuk
Ruth Van Mierlo and Decland Ellwood
Level 3 Coaching:
Frankie Murphy and Samir Ahmed
Parkwood Apprenticeship:
Aristie Wright


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City Year Reaches Millennials Through Social Media
December 18, 2013
Gillian Smith, chief marketing officer at City Year, shared key lessons learned, and insights on how its message resonated with Millennials and drove significant increases in awareness among the influential group through social media.
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