On Autism

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Nature Photography For Kids

A month or so ago I taught a class on nature photography for kids. It was a lot of fun. We had a short discussion on how to get a good nature shot complete with “framing” the shot with an actual mat, to get an idea what we wanted to shoot. Then we took a long walk through the woods. It was beautiful and the class got lots of great photos. When we came back we looked at a slide show of everyone’s photos with an LCD projector. One child got better photos than I did, she was an expert at 11. Most everyone had fun and a couple of kids got some close ups of an adorable toad. Here are the shots I took before the class to run on the screen while parents were dropping off kids. They are colorful but not fantastic.

The Downside of Homeschooling

I decided just now to write this post because I have noticed that a I get a number of hits on my blog due to people who plug in “the downside of homeschooling” in a Google search. It got me thinking and I decided just to go right ahead and as usual not be shy. Ok, here goes, there are downsides to everything, including homeschooling but they may not be what you think. While I was reading others thought on the downside to homeschooling I happened to notice the old socialization thing,

“One of the downsides of homeschooling program is the fact that it lacks the social component, which teaches the child to interact with other people. ..”

First of all, this was a direct quote from an internet article and it isn’t even written correctly, I cut and pasted, so it isn’t my grammar error. Further more, give me a break, what in the world does this person think we do all day, I mean really! I’m sorry but this makes me laugh.  Maybe they think that we sit with giant stacks of books alone in our homes in the woods never getting out to see any one all day. The truth is that a couple of years ago I had to limit the number of things each of my children did because we got out too much and I was worn thin. Homeschool families get out any time of the day they feel like getting out, not only on the off school hours.  We have more opportunity for all kinds of social interaction and on a regular basis.

Since when did sitting in a room with twenty five or more same age mates all day become “socialization”? I was a public school teacher and let me tell you we weren’t always all that “social”, I would call it crowd control. We had to come up with all number of techniques to keep kids doing what we wanted them to do when we wanted them to. Social interaction happens anytime a person interacts with another person. This can happen anywhere and anytime. If it was limited to school only, we’d all be in trouble.

Back to the downsides as in truth there are some which were in a previous more gentle post on homeschooling. It isn’t free. We have to pay for things that most people can get included in their public school institution. This isn’t always a bad thing but it can be more difficult on the budget. There are ways to do it cheap but cheap isn’t free.

Someone needs to be there to do the homeschooling and this often means the loss of a second income, though in truth there is a large movement of people who work part to full time who also have decided to homeschool and make it work. In general at least some sacrifice of time and energy will be made on the part of the family. You as the parent will now be responsible for your child’s education but aren’t you anyway??

While scratching my head here trying to come up with another point to my downsides list I asked my kids and they shouted out, “fighting” so I’ll add that one in. Your homeschool kids generally being siblings will have more opportunity to not get along with each other. My kids do fight and they even fight with me. I’m not proud  of this just honest. The girls also said that when you say you are homeschooled people make assumptions about you which  are generally not true.  So that about covers my real list of downsides. Following are some photos of my “unsocialized” homeschool children.

Mimi

Family Photos

At the moment and all this past weekend I have been spending hours scanning hundreds of photos. I had a camera since I was 13 years old as I mentioned in my previous blog with the lovely photo of me at the prom with Napoleon Dynamite, and so I have billions of photos or so it seems. Such fun! I did not mention in that blog about all the photos of my dad’s funeral or the ones where had lost lots of weight and did not have his normal vigor and energy to be blunt when he was dying. I tend to go for the happy memories but the sad ones are certainly valuable too.

It really is not an easy job scanning photos and why it is I am SO glad I finally bought a great digital camera a couple of years ago. The difficulty does not lie just in the physical labor involved in scanning photos which in itself can be tiresome and time consuming but in the emotions that one can run into while doing the scanning.

I happened to have a number of photos stashed away with old diaries. Needless to say while trying to organize the photos I dug into the diaries brining up a ton of interesting reflections on my life. I am a thinker and often live in the realm of my mind. It isn’t always a productive habit but one that can be hard to break. At times it has helped me, my mind that is, acting as a free therapist of sorts, helping me to work things out and keep healthy. At times it runs around in circles and I get a little lost. Usually with some time and my other free therapists (my husband or my sister)I move right along. The most amazing thing about the diaries is how much I have changed. I am just not the same person I was at any other point in my life. I guess that is a good thing as I still consider myself a work at progress even at the ripe old age of 47.

Back to the photos, what is so amazing about them is that when I look at them I feel simply overwhelmed with what a great life I have had. Each photo, including and especially the not so perfect ones, remind me of what a lucky person I am. I have had so many amazing experiences and most of all, corny as it sounds, I have experienced so much love. From the outside looking in some people might have even felt sorry for me. At one point in our lives I fully admit that we were so poor we were eligible for government benefits but that was because I was desperate to stay home with my babies and raise them myself.  When I was working,I did not get used to leaving them with a care provider as my friends suggested I would. I cried myself to sleep for the first week and was miserable the entire time I worked away from them.

When I came home from work permanently, I would take my kiddies off to the library story time where we’d sit and listen to the story with all the kids dressed in their fancy Gymboree outfits with their nannies. I was one of the only moms there with my kids. Mine had the Gymboree outfits because I bought them at the thrift store but I doubt anyone knew that. Moms would come up to me and tell me how lucky I was to stay home. I wasn’t lucky I just made the decision to do it under any circumstances. I never felt happier than the first day I didn’t have to go to work. I remember well being absolutely ecstatic that I could go out and push my daughter on the swing in our apartment complex.

I do not feel any urge to compare my life with any one else’s and I am so happy that my daughters will truly get to choose which path they will follow in their lives and I will try my best to support them but I don’t regret the fact that I will have little to no retirement. My retirement is my family and I’m sure we’ll be fine. Now that they are old enough to be left alone for short periods I have been fortunate to find an amazing job that is not just a way for me to make some extra money but something that totally suits my interests.

Here’s to family photos!

More Fun Photos

Today I went to a wonderful birthday party for a friend who is just turning 40. Our other friend told her she needed to get out and take her obituary photo so she can still look good because after 40 it’s all downhill, I guess there’s no hope for me at 48. On to the photos I want to post some more oldies but goodies. I’m reminded of one of my favorite blog sites called Memories are Made of This which is all based on old and some new photos with stories to go with it. What a great idea and truly a great blog. I suggest a visit there.

This first photo is rather unremarkable except I am putting it in to show that back in the early 60′s everyone had to dress up for almost any occasion. This happened to be my family at Thanksgiving at our cousin’s house in Northwest Washington DC. I’m the baby being held by my father with his hand missing the thumb, a WWII injury. The house we spent our holidays in is a small brick colonial which was sold out of the family some years ago and is now worth close to a million dollars. I still can’t believe that.

The second photo was my birthday party at age 3. I’m the one on the middle step with the curly hair. Can you believe the little boys wearing bow ties? Isn’t that hysterical. If you look you can also see the box on the porch where the milk man delivered the milk. I don’t really remember it but noticed it in the photo.

This photo is of me and my brother Christopher. What I like about this one is the car. What memories that old car brings. It was *the* car of my childhood. It was the only car my parent’s bought new their entire lives. That car survived almost 15 years if I remember correctly when it was wrecked by my brother. It had red plastic seats and NO air conditioning. Who cared back then. We piled in with no seat belts and had a grand old time fighting and screaming down the road with the windows all open.

 

This photo was taken shortly after we moved from New Jersey to Chattanooga, Tennessee which is the place I consider my hometown. That same picnic table I am sitting on was the very one which I thought it would be a good idea to make a slide out of only to end up getting 100′s of splinters in my butt. My mother finally gave up on trying to pick them out and took me to the hospital where they numbed me up and took them all out. At this age I was already starting to look my “tomboyish” self. We were wild children in the 60′s running free with little parental control and lots of free time to organize our own play. It was a nice time to grow up. Thankfully we all survived the time with no seat belts, helmets and God knows what else.

I love this photo which is another seemingly “unremarkable” one. This was our back patio, my mom is looking out the back door and my dad having just come home from work is taking a rare break to just sit with me. I adored my dad and despite his alcoholism he was a great father. I feel bittersweet memories with these simple black and white photos as both my parents are dead now. I think we always feel the loss of our parents no matter how old we are, we are still children inside.

This is our kitchen which remained almost exactly like this until I cleaned out and sold the house after my mom died in 2005. My dad always cooked Sunday brunch which is a tradition I started after he died. Those knotty pine cabinets really date the kitchen but I like them and wow, did they last well!

This last photo is especially memorable. I am the one on the right with my two friends from left Regina and Dixie. We were dressed in our coolest outfits waiting to be taken by Regina’s 19 year old sister to see Donny Osmond and the Osmond Brothers in concert. I’m pretty sure it was 1972. It was truly one of the most exciting moments of my young life, up until that point of course. Regina and I used to have long arguments on who would be the one to marry Donny. I was sure he would choose me but she knew she’d be the one. Funny thing as neither of us was Mormon  so we probably didn’t stand a chance but that didn’t stop us from dreaming for one minute. It was a fantastic concert too and we  all arrived home in one piece still somewhat hysterical and exhausted. More later.

Mimi

Not Enough Hours in the Day

First of all let me say, I’m cranky right now. I just snapped at three out of four members of my family. I am not proud of this but I’m at least admitting it. Why can’t I be like Ghandi or The Dalai Lama or some other perpetually smiling and benevolent type who never gets cranky.
One thing I have noticed is that the perpetually smiling types almost never have any children, never, no not ever, not that children are a bad thing, not at all. Secondly, why don’t they wear normal clothes? Maybe if I wore a saffron robe around I’d get more respect. At least I’m not a rodent and when things get hairy (no pun intended) they just eat a few of their offspring. Geez, how did I get going in this direction?

I just have so many things I would like to be doing lately and well, 24 hours is just not enough for all of them. I have a new job which I’m loving. Can you imagine a job where you get to take a hike and get paid for it. That’s not all to it there’s much more but the much more is wonderful too. More on that later.

A couple of months ago I started my scanning project which all my faithful readers will be delighted to know they will now get to see photos of me at every stage of life,… just kidding.

Here I am at the prom with Michael Winn, aka Napolean Dynamite. Aren’t the glasses and bow tie just great! My kids have laughed themselves silly at this one and I have to admit that it is rather ridiculous. Michael was a nice guy  but I had to ask him to take me because I didn’t feel like sitting at home feeling sorry for myself. We had a great time too, in fact we nerds danced way more than the cool peeps.

I promise more fun photos as I have the time to post them.

Apart from that I have joined a paper back book swap, not that I need even one more book in my life but I got hooked in and well, it’s just fun. I go to my favorite thrift store and pick up books for 25 and 10 cents a piece. What ever book gets picked I mail it out and then I am due one exchange. I pay for the postage on my end. I’ve mailed a couple of books that seem a bit larger than average and they only cost $2.13. I’m getting my first book too an EXCELLENT read by the way. In the Company of Cheerful Ladies.

This book is an absolute delight. It is the kind of book that gives you hope for humanity. It is the fifth in a series of six books by Alexander McCall Smith about Precious Ramotswe of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. I have never had any interest in detective stories and frankly I don’t really think these are. They are more about life in Botswana and the simple ups and downs of human interactions. What a keen insight the author has and how refreshing to see someone so downright positive.

I’m also working on cookie selling for my scout troop and trying to hold together our members as we all struggle with our busy schedules. I have such vision for our troop but I can only do what time, money and schedules allow. I think sometimes people forget that scout leaders are volunteers.

I have also been asked to head a committee at church. I didn’t really want the job but this is one of those instances where I felt it would be fine to take it and I’d do my best. It isn’t a job that will require loads of time and if I wanted I could really do nothing but I am not that kind of person so I’ll see what I can get done and hopefully do something worthwhile, not for myself but for others. There now I am sounding like the Dalai Lama, I think I’ll just go and pull out my saffron robe and puff myself up.

Then there is this blog and because my home page at home is set to it every time I go online it stares me in the face so if I haven’t typed anything in a while I get bored looking at it. I guess it’s a good strategy to force me to renew it. I do enjoy writing and think maybe one day I’ll write a book. That will come with the knitting and quilt making I want to do before I die but definitely now right now. For now I’m mainly trying to get enough sleep and that seems to be more than it used to be. So this is the end of this rambling post as I bid you adieu and say good night.

Mimi

Rock On Carlos!

In the last years I have begun scanning some old photos and came across photos of a concert I went to in 1976 when I was sixteen years old.  It brought back lot of memories of when I was a teen. My kids marvel at how close I was to the stage. Actually, I was right at the stage and could have jumped up but I didn’t  want to be kicked out and  miss the show. It was the Capital Center in Washington DC and I was with high school friends.

In truth I was staying with one of the girls and was desperate to go see Santana but wasn’t really allowed to go to rock concerts because every one was smoking marijuana which in truth they were back then. Not to be a goody two shoes but I was not smoking at the concert and in fact, never smoked either cigarettes or joints. I was in a permanently high state called youth. I was always up except when I would have those annoying jags of emotion that would pop up unexpectedly and I would cry for no apparent reason. I try to tell my daughters that I understand what they are going through but I guess they can’t imagine that I was ever a teen and if I was it was so long ago I could n’ t possibly remember what it was like.

Back to the concert, it was the best concert I have ever gone to. One thing about Santana is he can play the guitar. He usually finds people to play for who can sing too and the band worked hard that night and our tickets were definitely worth the eight or so dollars we paid for them. In 1976 Santana had a Nicaraguan drummer called Chepito Areas who was quite the drummer. He used the timbales and could really belt out a tune in true Latino style.

During the concert when in a moment of youthful inspiration I climbed up and my friend’s shoulders to get a better view and to really rock out, I happened to be the fortunate winner of the signed sweaty towel of Chepito Areas. A number of people tried to grab it from me but I wasn’t letting go. It was bliss. I carried it to school but he wasn’t well known among most of my classmates so I just kept it at home. Eventually it got packed away in a box and in my years of gypsy living traveling all over the world it was lost. My kids are bummed about it, they would love to see it. I do wonder what happened to it. Here is the funny thing. During this concert I brought a cheapie 110 camera with me, the kind that were called pocket cameras.

I managed to get a few up close shots. They are blurry and not great quality but you can clearly see Carlos, Chepito and THE TOWEL before it was used to mop up sweat and then thrown at me. If you look at the second photo I posted at the foot of the drummer with the BIG hair you’ll see the pea green towel he threw to me, oh the memories are painful,not. The photos at the end of this post were all taken by me during the concert . Please don’t complain about the quality, remember the camera and the smoky conditions I was shooting under.

In conclusion, I would like to say, I still love Santana. He is one of the most talented rock musicians I have yet to hear. He plays so well and is so versatile and he is still selling songs. Part of his longevity in music in my opinion is his plain old talent but also that he is willing to work with just about anybody and it comes out well. I would love to meet him one day but alas I suppose I will not bump into him in my small suburban community far from California but who knows maybe one day our paths will cross.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Camera Story

Ok, here’s the camera story I promised. My kids like to play around the corner in the creek. They went a couple of weeks ago and brought along our Kodak Easy Share C300 to take a few photos but in their excitement to get down the embankment the camera went flying and dropped into the water.

Notice they are still having trouble smiling about it. When they brought it home drip, drip dripping I figured it was a gonner.  When I asked them how long it was submerged they looked bleak and said, actually it fell under the leaves and they couldn’t even find it. I knew it was a gonner at that point.

They took out the memory card on the way home hoping to at least save whatever pictures were on it at that point. Anyway I left it alone sitting on my husband’s dresser for several days then put some fresh batteries in it and low and behold the dang thing worked like a charm. What a relief and surprise. So they’re back in the photo business. They are rather happy about this because it is the camera they are allowed to use.

In fact,  it is the camera used to take the majority of the photos on this site. I would recommend this one as a good all around family camera.

Orbs in photos?

Recently I have been thinking about some spots that have been popping up in some of our photos. I had heard about something called orbs which some people believe are spiritual phenomena showing up in photos. I wasn’t sure what I believed but thought it would be fun to get some info. So the girls and I sat round the computer and did some googling. At first we were SURE we did infact have the real thing but as I really thought about it and read a site called The Trouble with Orbs I decided what we probably had was actually some sort of light refraction. In the end what made me decide on this is that I have never seen in hundreds of photos any in daylight. The Trouble with Orbs. Here are a couple of our samle orb photos.
Perhaps it is the shoes in this one that is causing such a reaction??

Then there is this one which was taken in my mom’s house a couple months after she passed away as we were cleaning it out to sell it.
Now about the camera, it seems that the orbs tend to appear more from cheaper cameras and mostly only in dark or inside conditons. Next time  I write I’m going to tell an amazing story about our little $90 digital camera, it’s even more interesting and unbelievable than orbs.