National Park Cities Thunderclap

Introducing the concept of National Park Cities, publicising a thunderclap about the same and displaying some of my own photographs.

INTRODUCTION

To take part in a Thunderclap you have to be on at least one of facebook, twitter or tumblr, so for the benefit of those among my readers who cannot take part I am also including some recent photos of my own that tie in well with this particular thunderclap.

NATIONAL PARK CITIES

The idea behind this thunderclap, set up the folks at team4nature is that there are recognized health benefits to people having easy access to nature. Among the potential pioneers of the concept of a National Park City is London, and you can declare your support here. To take part in the thunderclap click here, or on the image below, which shows the story in full:

PHOTOGRAPHS

Here are some of my recent nature pictures, which also feature the two main parks in King’s Lynn, The Walks and Lynnsport Park and sections of Bawsey Drain and The Gaywood River.

Blogger Recognition Award

stimtheline is the first of my nominees to produce a post of their own in response to being nominated and it is a splendid effort 🙂

Stim the Line

Gratitude

First of all, I’d like to tell you all how pleased and surprised I am to have been nominated for a Blogger Recognition Award by Thomas of Aspiblog! I always see people doing these, and now that I’ve been given the opportunity, I feel so included! One of my favorite parts of blogging is getting to participate in my community, and the fact that I’ve connected with enough people to be included in something like this, well, it makes me feel like I’m doing something right.

What does Stim the Line mean anyway?

Stim the Line began as a compromise. My therapist, who is an autism specialist, get it into her head that I needed to write a book. She insisted that I was self aware, good at explaining things (especially to neurotypical people), and that people empathize with me. I pointed out that I’d never written anything, ever…

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8 Favorite Quotes About Autism

These are some splendid quotes about Autism – though I would prefer the fourth one down to be in shades of #RedInstead rather than blue!

Stim the Line

If you interact at all with social media, you’ll know that quotes are everywhere. They’re usually posted on top of images on mountains or sunsets, and are more often than not credited to ‘anonymous’. Not to say there aren’t some good quotes out there, especially ones that describe experiences, instead of forcing vague positivity on the reader. It can be hard to sort through Autism quotes, because a large percentage of them are made about Autistic children by Neurotypical adults. These often border on inspiration porn- and they infuriate me.

So, in order to combat these, I’d like to share some quotes about Autism that I enjoy.

Image result for quotes about autism See the source image

See the source image

So here they are! If I had to pick one, I think that the square peg one is my favorite, but there’s some may quotes out there, that I’ve probably missed some great ones! So, dear reader, if you’ve got a quote you…

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A Video From We Own It

A short video from campaign group We Own It.

INTRODUCTION

This short but powerful video was brought to my attention by an email from We Own It, and I am sufficiently impressed by it to share it here, so that those of my followers on this blog who do not use Twitter, Facebook or Youtube can see it.

THE VIDEO

Some Suggestions Re Public Transport

Some thoughts on public transport, prompted in part by Lord Adonis’ resignation statement.

INTRODUCTION

The timing of this post is due to the resignation statement of Lord Adonis, a man who I have very little in common with, but who hits the nail on the head with his resignation statement, which you can read in full, courtesy of The Guardian, here (an excerpt is reproduced below, courtesy of twitter):

EAST COAST FRANCHISE LOWLIGHTS

The first time the East Coast Franchise hit difficulties, it was being run by National Express. The then government took it into public ownership, albeit with the (stupid) rider that it be reprivatised as soon as it was back in the black. On reprivatisation it passed into the hands of Virgin Trains, run by a combination of tax exile Richard Branson and the Stagecoach Group (as a non-driver who lives in Norfolk I know them too well and like them too little for comfort). The East Coast Franchise is now back in trouble, and the current transport secretary, Chris ‘Failing’ Grayling, as well as being a strong contender in the ‘most incompetent minister ever’ contest is such a ‘private good, public bad’ zealot that rather than take the logical option of taking it back into public ownership is bailing it out at vast cost, thereby setting a horrendous precedent which will enable any other rail franchise that hits trouble to demand a bail out.

RENATIONALISATION AS START POINT

Not only should the East Coast Franchise be renationalised now, with it being made clear that it will not be privatised again, the whole railway network needs to be renationalised. The Labour party have laid out how this can be achieved – namely by refusing to put each franchise up for tender as and when it expires. For further detail check out We Own It’s Railways page. However, this is only a beginning – both because railways are only one part of public transport – there are also buses, and because one needs to consider how the system should be run. As I was typing this, the following came through on twitter from We Own It:

Bus and railway services need renationalising, and they need to be run jointly. As to how they should be run – well there are two groups of people who should be represented in the body that runs public transport services: those who use the services and those who provide the services. If services are to be publicly owned (and these should be), they need to be fully publicly accountable.

SOME EXTRA RESOURCES

I have three final links to share which relate to this piece:

A second piece from the Guardian on the Adonis Resignation
Mike Sivier of Vox Political has offered his take here.
The Mirror has demonstrated yet another way in which privatisation is failing us, with fares going up by an average of 3.4% (when we already pay on average five times as much as our fellow Europeans for a service that is probably not even on fifth as good as most of them get – I have travelled extensively in Europe over the years and most countries provide far better services than are available here in Britain) – we have on average the oldest carriages since records began (that average is 21 years old, with the Caledonian Sleeper holding an unwanted record with 42 year old carriages).

PHOTOGRAPHS

Here is you reward for reaching the end of this piece:

A Survey and Some New Pictures

A survey for autistic people and some photographs, some of which feature flooding in The Walks.

INTRODUCTION

The pictures that feature in this post were taken earlier today, and I saw the survey while editing them.

THE SURVEY

The survey is a facebook survey intended for autistic people being conducted by Emma Dalmayne and asks one question: do you prefer person first or identity first? At the momnet the poll is running at 86% for Autistic Person and 14% for Person with Autism, and the fact that the latter percentage is even that high has led some people to suspect that some of those who have answered so far are not autistic (for example none of the authors of the many excellent blogs by autistic people that I follow have ever expressed a preference for ‘Person with Autism’. I urge those of my readers who are autistic and on facebook to take part in this survey by following the link – and if you are not autistic kindly do not take the survey.

THE PICTURES

Although nothing like as dramatic as the stuff that John Jonasson has recently been displaying on fotobloggarna.se about floods in his area, there has been some small scale flooding in The Walks, and some of the pictures show that.

KLKJ — A shop front turned display board and a planning application (two pics)

duck feeding point — My first clue about the flooding in The Walks.

Willows in the water — The willows here are normally close to the edge of the river – not in it.

Swimming gull — This gull is swimming over what is normally part of a field.

Mini waterfall — Here overspill water was running over the path so fast that it formed a mini waterfall cascading down over the side of the path.

I don;t think this bench will be getting much use today!

Flooding near 'troll bridge' — Heading towards Seven Sisters.

The Nar (the last pic I was able to take as I ran out of battery power)

CmP — Our friend of the species Cairina moschata was not unduly troubled by the flooding (17 pics of it today)

Computer Aided Composing

An account of my recent doings at Musical Keys with a photographic interlude.

INTRODUCTION

A few sessions back at Musical Keys, an event run for autistic people that I am a regular attender of, I switched from using Scratch to using a different package called Reaper. This Saturday just gone I reached a point at which I feel that my work on Reaper is now worth talking about. Also I have some good pictures that I can slip in as part of the back story.

SCRATCH AND REAPER

Scratch enables one to play notes on various musical instruments and also has some saved sound loops for variation. Effectively therefore Scratch enables one to play music and sounds but not really to create anything beyond the framework within which to do so. Reaper is both less and more – less in that it has no versions of musical instruments, more in that is really all about combining different recorded sounds into a larger whole, and therefore has much more of a creative element to it.

BEFORE SATURDAY’S SESSION

I had spent one session assessing the available sound segments, working out which ones I liked and which of those combined well together, and a second session combining shorter segments into longer ones by putting together segments that would or could naturally flow together, but at the start of Saturday what I actually had was a set of useful components that I could start to think about assembling into proper length pieces…

INTERLUDE – WALK TO THE SCOUT HUT

I had decided to lengthen my walk to the venue by taking in a stretch of the Great Ouse before rejoining the regular walking route to Gaywood by way of Seven Sisters and the Vancouver Garden, and a quick sampling of the air outside my flat convinced me of the need to don an extra jumper – it was cold, as some of the photos will make very plain. I had also allowed myself time for a visit to Gaywood library, since I would naturally pass very close to it. It may have been cold, but the birds were out in force, especially near the Great Ouse.

Leaving the river by way of Hardings Pits I headed for the South Gate and thence Seven Sisters and the parkland areas…

Among other things the walk through the parkland provided me with absolute proof of how cold it was – gulls walking on water.

DECEMBER 9TH AT MUSICAL KEYS

John, who usually supervises the sessions was not feeling well, so having driven the equipment over he spent the afternoon sat in his car, while his assistant Kirsten took charge of the sessions.

Once I had opened up Reaper, checked and adjusted the speaker volume (at least 99% of the time it is set too loud for me and I have to reduce it, often considerably – on this occasion it had been set to 70% of full volume and I reduced that to 35%) it was time to put my plan of exploring options for combining various elements to make a larger whole into practice. Before moving on here is a photo I took at the end of the session.

The piece that I called Organ and Strings was one of three background sounds that I used in the bigger pieces, the others being the drum and brass backgrounds. “Ensemble” and “Composite” as those names suggest were medium sized components, while “Horizontal” and “All in” were the two large scale components that I combined to make the final full size pieces. The two big pieces (12 and 16 minutes long respectively) were comprised of “Horizontal”-“All-in”‘-“Horizontal” and “Horizontal”-“All-in”-“Horizontal”-“All-in” respectively. By the time I had listened to the 16 minute piece at the end it was pretty much the end of the session. The next session is on January 6th and I shall work out some way to build on what I have already created.

Icky Bad White Stuff

A rare sight in King’s Lynn!

INTRODUCTION

The title of this post is how snow is referred to on Anna’s blog, where there is rather more of it to be seen than here as she is Swedish. Today we have it in King’s Lynn, a thing that is almost unheard of.

ICKY BAD WHITE STUFF ON CAMERA

An Autism Pledge And Minimalist Personal Cards

My #TheAutisticUnion pledge and my new cards.

INTRODUCTION

Just a quick post to keep things rolling…

AN AUTISM PLEDGE

This, courtesy of Eve Reiland at AmericanBadassActivists, is #TheAutisticUnion Pledge:

Every individual pledge has been published on this site, including as of yesterday mine. Mine has also been reblogged on FireBrightStarSoul for which many thanks. I reproduce it below as well:

#TheAutisticUnion Pledge |Thomas Sutcliffe

I pledge . . .

I pledge to always uphold the principles of #TheAutisticUnion pledge. I believe firmly in every one of the ten points of this pledge.

As someone who is both autistic and branch secretary of the National Autistic Society West Norfolk branch, I am doing my bit to ensure that autistic people are involved in the running of their own welfare/ support organisations.

You can find out more about me on my blog, http://aspi.blog and also on my London transport themed website www.londontu.be.

— Thomas Sutcliffe, Autistic Activist, UK

MINIMALIST PERSONAL CARDS

Vistaprint gave me a £10 voucher off my next purchase, with a use-by date as a reward for using them to make my 2018 wall calendars, so I used it to create a card which contains some information about me on one side and a sample photograph on the other. I collected them from the delivery office on Austin Street this morning (delivery was attempted yesterday while I was out), and they have come out superbly.

International Charter of Autists Rights & THE 10 POINTS OF Âû (The Autistic Union)

This is a must read document, courtesy of Eve Reiland (nee Hinson) at americanbadassactivists…

International Badass Activists

Note: The International Charter of Autists Rights has been officially adopted at AmericanBadassActivists.org. Please support, share and help educate others on Autists Rights.

THE 10 POINTS OF Âû (The Autistic Union)

I am Autistic. [or] I support those who are Autistic.
I embrace my Autism as a very significant part of my identity.
I embrace those who would sacrifice to protect all Autistic life.
I embrace the belief that Autism does not need any “curing”.
I embrace the self-advocacy goal of “Everything about us, with us”.
I embrace the definition of Autism as a neuro-social difference.
I embrace measures directed at protecting Autistics from attack.
I embrace a person-centred approach to all Autism issues.
I embrace rigorous scientific approaches to co-occurring conditions.
I embrace Autistics leading their own welfare organisations.

1. THE RIGHT TO LIFE

We will prevent eugenic elimination of autistic people by opposing pre-natal testing for autism.

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