Inspired by Jennifer Lisi on twitter, who created the graphic at the heart of it, this post sets out aspi.blog’s stall, taking autism acceptance is starting point and looking ahead to autism appreciation.
INTRODUCTION
This is a post about something magnificent I have just seen on twitter and wish to share with all of you. The text of this post is #RedInstead because it is specifically about autism.
AUTISM ACCEPTANCE MONTHS
To start with, below is a screenshot of the tweet, by Jennifer Lisi, that prompted this post:
Now we move on to some extra thoughts of my own:
Although I will on occasions, when I believe people are doing it for the right reasons share stuff about “autism awareness” I will not use the phrase on my account because…
We have been banging on about awareness for ages, and I do not believe there is a problem any more with people not knowing of the existence of autism and autistic spectrum conditions, though there are a raft of problems when it comes to understanding of such conditions.
For me Autism Acceptance as shown in the graphic above is what we should be considering as our basic start point, with the hope that acceptance of us for who and what we are will lead to…
Appreciation of our strengths and good qualities.
Thus the journey we look to trace out runs not awareness-understanding-acceptance but awareness-understanding-acceptance-appreciation.
PHOTOGRAPHS
I end this post with some photographs, in this case with a cormorant in the starring role:
We lead in with four pictures featuring lapwings…
…this picture introduces the cormorant who is present in all the remaining shots.
My official response to being nominated for a blogger recognition award.
INTRODUCTION
My thanks to thetshirtblogger for nominating for a blogger recognition award. This post is my official response to that nomination. This is the tshirtblogger’s own description of what they do:
The Tee Shirt Blogger focuses on diversity in the main, and rather the celebration of diversity, in many ways it is no different to my other blogs, l love the intrinsic rawness and freshness that eclecticism offers us in life for all the good, bad and of course downright ugly.
ABOUT ASPI.BLOG
I blog about a wide range of stuff, with my principal interests being cricket, public transport, nature, science, politics, autism and photography. Nearly all the posts that I produce feature some of my photographs, and this one will be no exception. As branch secretary of the National Autistic Society West Norfolk and an autistic person I have strong opinions on autism and they way in which autistic people are treated, and this frequently comes into the blog. When I share something from another source I will always acknowledge that fact, and link to my original source. If I make an error in a blog post I will correct it, and give the correction at least as much prominence as the initial error had (for an example of me calling myself out go here). For more detail please visit my page “About Aspiblog“.
PHOTOGRAPHIC INTERLUDE – BIRDS
These were taken on Monday:
ADVICE FOR NEW BLOGGERS
Your blog is yours – blog the way you want to.
Visit lots of other blogs and leave likes and comments – this helps you get noticed and increases the number of people who read your blog.
MY NOMINEES
I could just list my 10 nominees, but I actually going to say something about each of them as well.
Fargaregardsanna. Anna’s pet subjects include nature, her home town of Trosa and her artwork. As a sample of her work I give this recent post titled “Save Trosa nature – Behåll och stärk Trosas natur“, which features a picture she created based on a comment of mine:
Cindy Knoke. Cindy is a photographer with a great interest in nature. Her most recent post is titled “Punto Tombo~“.
Ioinvaggio. An Italian blog which regularly features lovely pictures. I give you a link to a post titled “Io sono Volpina Blu”
The remaining nominees all have some connection to autism, starting with stimtheline, and by way of an introduction I give you “8FavoriteQuotes About Autism“
Yarn and Pencil. This blog covers autism, sensory issues, knitting and various other stuff. As an introduction I offer you “Dunster Castle“.
Autism Mom. An excellent blog about one family’s experience with autism. I have an additional reason for including this one – to show that autistic people do not object in principle to neurotypical parents of autistic children writing about their children – we object to neurotypical parents of autistic children writing in a way that contributes to the ‘othering’ of autistic people. Thus the post to which I link to introduce you to this blog is the self-explanatory titled “I Want to be Called Autistic“.
International Badass Activists. This was American Badass Advocates, run by Eve Hinson, when I started following. It has since become first American Badass Activists and then International Badass Activists, while Eve Hinson has become Eve Reiland. I have been introduced to many interesting and important stories by this blog. As an introduction here is her Autistic Union Pledge.
Finally, we come to thesilentwaveblog. This splendid blog is run by Laina, who also has blog specifically for sharing aspergian/autistic writing called Laina’s Collection. As an introduction to thesilentwaveblog I give you my all-time favourite from that site, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Neurotypicality“.
PHOTOGRAPHIC INTERLUDE TWO: MUSCOVY DUCKS
PARTCIPATION IN THE BLOGGER RECOGNITION AWARD
These are the requirements for those who wish to participate in the Blogger Recognition Award:
1. Show your gratitude to the person who nominated you and provide a link back to the person’s blog. 2. Give a brief story on your blog. 3. Share two or more pieces of advice for beginner bloggers. 4. Choose 10 other bloggers to nominate. 5. Comment on each blog, letting them know they’ve been nominated and provide a link to your award post.
An account of the first Musical Keys session of the new year and some autism related links.
INTRODUCTION
This post comprises two elements – one an account of the first Musical Keys session of 2018 and the other sharing some excellent recent stuff about autism. Because it is an autism themed post I am using #RedInstead text (scarlet for headings and links, maroon for body text).
MUSICAL KEYS
Musical Keys is an activity run for autistic people who enjoy music. Generally speaking it is run fortnightly, with a session for youngsters between 3PM and 3:45PM and a session for older participants from 4PM to 5PM. I had initially been expecting to renew my acquaintance with Reaper (a computer program for composing music – see here for more details) but circumstances dictated otherwise, and I actually ended up on a…
KEYBOARD
This machine can function as a wide range of instruments/voices and in a wide range of styles, and I explored a lot of the instruments in the course of the time I spent on it.
John, one of the two people who run these sessions, showed me how to play chords as opposed to single notes, and I experimented with playing varying numbers of notes simultaneously, and using the whole range of the keyboard.
I created a few chords where the notes played could also form words, such as face/cafe, cabbage etc. I enjoyed making the acquaintance of this keyboard and learning something of its capacities.
These notes could form the word ‘cabbage’ (there being 2 as, 2 bs, 1c, 1e and 1g. Kirsten Murray, who helps John to run the sessions, took this picture with my camera.Here you can see the notes – I played this with my left hand, while photographing with my right.A close up the central screen.The screen with more of its surrounds, including detail about the ‘voice’ settings.
AUTISM RELATED LINKS
This section starts with a post from Rhi that I regard as being the last word on “mild autism”, published under the title “Autscriptic: Mild Autism“.
I have linked to a number of reviews of Judith Newman’s book “To Siri With Love”, although since I have not read the book I can offer no direct comment about it, and here are a few more pieces about that book:
AN ANTI-AUTISTIC HATE GROUP
MASQUERADING AS AN AUTISM CHARITY
The organisation who are the subject of this little section go by the name of Autism Speaks, who you will also see referred to as Autism $peaks, Auti$m $peak$ and A$ in various places.
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.
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…
Happy new year everyone. This post will give you a few hints as to what you can look forward to in 2018 on aspi.blog.
ASPI.BLOG STYLE GUIDE
Headings will generally be in a cycle that runs red/green’purple, although this is subject to variation in certain circumstances.
Body text will always be in black unless I am writing about autism, in which case I will use #RedInstead.
When sharing content from another site I will always link to the host site and the specific post and where possible will mention the author by name – such links will be a different colour from regular body text and will be both bold and underlined.
It will be a very rare post that does not congtain photographs.
LIKELY SUBJECTS FOR 2018
Autism
Public Transport
Nature
Science
Religion
Cricket
Books
Photography
I will also probably find other things to blog about in 2018.
PHOTOGRAPHS
A COUPLE OF CLOSING QUESTIONS
Please feel free to use the comments to answer the questions below?
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 afacebooksurveyintended 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.seabout floods in his area, there has been some small scale flooding in The Walks, and some of the pictures show that.
A shop front turned display board and a planning application (two pics)
My first clue about the flooding in The Walks.
The willows here are normally close to the edge of the river – not in it.
This gull is swimming over what is normally part of a field.
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!Heading towards Seven Sisters.The Nar (the last pic I was able to take as I ran out of battery power)Our friend of the species Cairina moschata was not unduly troubled by the flooding (17 pics of it today)
An account of the autism friendly panto night at the Corn Exchange and a petition on behalf of small cetaceans.
INTRODUCTION
Originally I was only going to post about the Panto, but I felt that the petition that forms the second half of this post deserved extra publicity, so this is very much a two part post.
NAS WEST NORFOLK
Those of you who have been following this blog a for a while will recall that last year NAS West Norfolk had block booked seats for the autism friendly showing of Cinderella. We repeated the trick this year for Jack and the Beanstalk. We booked 120 seats for our group, and only a handful went unused. As with last year’s Panto the venue was the magnificent King’s Lynn Corn Exchange:
This was taken after the performance on Wednesday night, as I headed home.
The performance was excellent – hugely entertaining. One of the youngsters attending as part of our block booking got so into the performance that he did some impromptu dancing of his own!
The villain of Jack and the Beanstalk is of course the giant, but as any fule kno it is the little weed who tags along with the bully urging them to throw another punch who is most hated of all, so the pantomime villain of Jack and the Beanstalk is the giant’s henchman. The actor playing that role was a most satisfactory villain, his every appearance attracting a veritable storm of boos.
I am delighted to report that all of the feedback about that evening has been positive. Here are some pictures from inside the auditorium (not from the performance of course – there are limits!).
This stand played a major role in the performance – Simple Simon placed a pot of flowers on top of it at the start, and every time anyone else went near it a warning shout of “Simon” went up from the audience.A look up at the roof
A view over the crowd.Decoration around the balcony area -these two shots were taken during the interval.
THE PETITION
This has been put together by the Dolphin Project and calls for Broome to end its sister relatuionship with Taiji over the hunting of dolphins. I urge you to follow the links I have provided, and sign and share the petition. Below is the picture and opening few paragraphs of accompanying text:
In 2009, Ric O’Barry visited Broome in Australia to lobby the council to suspend its sister relationship with Taiji, Japan over the dolphin drives hunts. Following a special screening of the film, ‘The Cove’, the Broome Shire Council agreed. Just two months later, the council reversed its decision. Choosing to capitulate to its large, local, Japanese community, Broome retracted its pledge and issued a full apology to Taiji town.
Once again, the Dolphin Project is urging Broome to stop condoning the slaughter and to take a stance against this cruel and unnecessary assault on wildlife.
In 13 years (2000-2013), a total of 19,092 small cetaceans were victims of the dolphin drives in Taiji, Japan. This included 17,686 slaughtered dolphins and 1,406 live-captures. Last season alone, 902 dolphins were driven into the cove. More than two-thirds were slaughtered and 117 were earmarked for the captive display industry — [Source: Ceta-Base.org].
This brought back memories for me of my first visit to Australia, a long time ago, and before I developed an interest in photography. Broome was one of the places we visited and stayed a few days. I did not actually see any dolphins there, but had done a few days earlier at Monkey Mia (this is near Hamelin Pool, where on can – and I did – see living stromatolites).
I end this post with: C’mon Broome – you can do better than this!
A brief account of the SCOPE Christmas meal to which I was invited as NAS West Norfolk branch secretary and some autism related links.
INTRODUCTION
I am including autism related links because it was in my capacity as NAS West Norfolk branch secretary that I was invited to attend the SCOPE christmas meal (our organisations are looking to work more closely on various things).
THE MEAL
The meal was arranged for The Gatehouse, a Hungry Horse pub located near the South Gate, at the edge of King’s Lynn (hence the name) with food booked for 3PM. The plan was for a few things to be discussed as well. I arrived at the pub not long after 2PM, purchased a pint to drink slowly while I waited for others to arrive (SCOPE were paying for the food, so I reckoned I could allow myself a couple of drinks) and settled down to wait.
Others began arriving at around 2:45, and Chloe Yianni from SCOPE, who was running the event, arrived just before 3PM.
Most of the ‘meeting’ element of the day took place between the main course and dessert, accompanied by a very impressive sunset (yes folks it gets dark early in these parts in December).
I enjoyed the occasion and look forward to working closely with the people from SCOPE in 2018 and beyond.
The first 14 pictures you will see were taken while walking to the pub
My last three calendars set out in the pub.The first of five decor shots
The sunsetChloe YianniThe party.
SOME AUTISM RELATED LINKS
A majority of the links in this section are to posts on USian (acknowledgement to New Zealander Heather Hastie for this term) blogs/ sites, and most of the rest are British, although a few other countries also feature. As an internationalist I am proud that people from many countries visit this blog (108 in the last year, 123 all time).
ON TERMINOLOGY
This section relates to a wonderful post put up by Autism Mom a couple of days ago under the title “I WANT TO BE CALLED AUTISTIC” I offer you my own comment in immediate response to that post, which I stand by:
Well done to both you and your son. Although my own strong preference is to describe myself as an autistic person I am quite happy for those who choose to do so to describe themselves as people with autism – what I will not accept is a well meaning neurotypical person seeking to make the decision on our behalf – it is our decision and we should make it ourselves.
Also, here is a quote from the end of the post:
Person first versus identify first: He cocked his head and asked me to explain more.
“I want to be called autistic,” he announced after I had finished. “Saying “person with autism” sounds like I have a disease. I don’t have a disease, this is just how I am.”
And then he added: “Actually, I want to be called by my name, but if you need to describe my autism I want to be called autistic.”
Make it so.
If you are reading this and have an autistic spectrum condition please feel free to add a comment about how you would prefer to be described.
An account of my recent doings at Musical Keys with a photographic interlude.
INTRODUCTION
A few sessions back at MusicalKeys, 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.
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