EditorMom

Voted Off Font Island

2008-07-22T16:57:00.000-04:00

Admit it—you have your favorite fonts. You love your fonts so much that you can see their individual personalities just oozing from their ascenders and descenders. If I've just described you, this video's for you.

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Webmastering Makes My Brain Hurt

2008-07-22T01:57:00.001-04:00

Ahhhh. That's a sigh of relief that I will no longer go to sleep dreaming web-site-building dreams each night.

Why? Because—yay!—I've finished my cabinetmaker spouse's web site:

I can't take credit for the site's lovely design and architecture; that was done by a professional, the same one who revamped my business site a few years ago and who writes her own code and enjoys "every exasperating step of the way." But I wrote the code for the six newest project subpages (by copying and pasting other subpages' code and editing it), and I wrote all of the text for every page and subpage on the site. I even created a "404 page not found" page for when errors happen. And I've registered the site with Google, Yahoo, and DMOZ so that search engines can index the site's pages.

Ye can teach an editor new tricks, such as XHTML and CSS. But och, me brain aches. Maybe those are just growing pains.

cabinetmaker webmastering EditorMom

Who Is That Woman Posting on This Blog?

2008-07-18T00:54:00.001-04:00

Why yes, I am still alive, and no, I have not given up blogging. Thanks for asking.

I've just been working a lot. And here's a sneak-peak at what I've been working on getting ready for prime time—the spouse's business web site:

That's my favorite page of the site, the Projects page. Here's the temporary home page. The full site isn't ready to go live yet, so it's all hiding behind this page. But I'm hoping to be ready to take it live within about a week. All (!) that's left to do is sit down with the spouster and write descriptions for the first 6 projects on the Projects page, each of which entails 5 to 11 separate pages. That's not as much writing as it sounds like, because each page gets only 1 to 3 sentences apiece; the photos are the real stars of the pages, not the words.

I don't want you all to think that I created the lovely look of the site. No, a web site designer did that. But she and I disagreeably parted ways in a mutual decision after she got the basic structure set up, so I'm finishing up. (Lesson learned: Some friends should never become people you do business with.) I'm comfortable working around HTML, but I've been learning how to work around XHTML and CSS with this site. It's mentally exhausting but exhilarating too, because I'm gaining new skills.

Editing work has gone back to a normal level, instead of the insane level it was at for a while. Ed and the boys and our daughter and son-in-law and Ed's parents are all fine. And we get to babysit our 1-year-old granddaughter both days this weekend while her mom works and her dad works security at a wrestling match.

And I'm prepping to take the BELS exam in early October, to become board certified as an editor in the life sciences. I'm one of those dinosaur medical editors who learned her trade on the job rather than through having an advanced science degree (my degree is a bachelor of arts degree in journalism), so now that I'm just about a year away from 50, it's about darn time I get some fancy initials after my name to show that I do indeed know what I'm doing. (Forty-nine next month—how the heck did that sneak up on me?)

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Cabinetmaker News

2008-07-10T15:40:00.000-04:00

It's summertime, the boys are home from school, work keeps on coming in, and I've been lazy about posting here lately. But here's some fun news:

Ed and I ordered magnetic signs for the sides of our personal minivan, which he uses for work when he heads out to install cabinetry that he's created for clients. The signs arrived from the manufacturer yesterday afternoon, so today was his first chance to drive around in the first ever Master Cabinetworks van. (Yes, that's the prow of our boat that you see on the right side of the photo.) Because he just started up his company last fall, we don't have the funds yet to buy a company-dedicated work van with a custom paint job that includes his company's logo, so the magnetic signs will have to do for now. But it's a happy start.

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I Will Always Love You

2008-07-03T11:23:00.000-04:00

Fifteen years ago today, I married my best friend and lover.

Ed, you still make me feel weak in the knees, you still exasperate me, you still make me laugh. I am honored that you share yourself with me. That puppy-dog look you give me when I'm angry with you never ceases to get to me, and I will always happily roll my eyes at your corny puns.

Thank you for loving me as I am.

Ed husband anniversary marriage love EditorMom

Sweet Dreams, Snuggles (1992–2008)

2008-07-01T21:32:00.005-04:00

Snuggles O'Moore-Klopf, aka Snugs and Puma, had just barely turned 16, and then she went off by herself and died.

Snugs, a patchwork American Shorthair kitty, was Ed's and my first furry child together. She had been our cat as long as Ed and I have been together thus far; April 2008 marked 16 years that we've been together, and July 3 will mark our fifteenth wedding anniversary.

We had her out of wedlock, bringing her to live with us when we were engaged and happily living in sin. She had an excellent academic pedigree, having been born in the dormitories of the Brooklyn campus of Pratt Institute, which has produced many wonderful photographers, graphic designers, and clothing designers, including, years and years ago, Ed's mother, D., who was a designer of children's clothing in Manhattan back when the majority of American women did not have careers.

Our favorite early memory of her was as a kitten. She loved to attack the fishing-pole-type cat toy that was suction-cupped to our refrigerator door. She'd play so hard with the toy that she'd fall asleep on her back in front of the frig, toy and string in her mouth and cute little kitty belly rising and falling adorably with each breath. In those early years, she had a tendency to nibble on my hair when she was very happy because she was being petted a great deal. When she was still new to us, our bed was a low-to-the-floor futon. My hair, a little shorter than shoulder length, sometimes hung off the end of the futon, and Snugs would wake me up by chewing on my hair.

She moved with us into our first home and learned to deal with there being a dog in the house, because we bought Ed's parents' home from them, and then made an apartment within the home for them to live in, with their dog, while we lived in the main part of the house upstairs. We're still there. Over the years, she dealt with a change of in-laws' dogs (the first one, and then a second, died), the death of two of their cats, the addition of their Maine Coon cat, the moving in and out of my daughter from my first marriage, the birth of Ed's and my two sons, our loss of one pregnancy, the birth of our first grandchild, and the addition of Emily, another American Shorthair, to our household.

First, she was nanny cat to Becky, my daughter, always snuggling up to Becky, who named her, sight unseen, before we brought Snugs home to live with us. Snugs would get so happy that Becky was petting her that she'd drool and get a goofy, sweet look on her face. Then, when Becky was almost 12, our son Neil was born. As Becky grew up and spent less and less time with us, Snugs appointed herself Neil's nanny cat. When my in-laws would follow toddler Neil on the street in front of our home as he learned to ride his tricycle, Snugs would follow them, not sure that these grownups knew which home to take him back to at the end of the journey. Later, when Neil was a preschooler, I'd take him to our neighbors' home a few days a week so that he could play with the children whom the wife baby-sat while I worked. (I started freelancing full time at home when Neil was 2 weeks old.) Often, Snugs would follow me to the neighbors' home and even try to follow me inside as I was dropping Neil off; she seemed to think that maybe she'd better go along and try to rescue him and bring him back home, where she thought he should stay. As Neil headed toward adolescence, she'd sleep in his bed with him at night, and he'd confide in her when he thought that the rest of us weren't listening to him as well as he wanted us to. When Neil was 6, Jared was born, and Snugs had another child to be a nanny to. She'd follow Jared around and make sure that he was being taken care of. Once, when he was lying down asleep as a baby, neither Ed nor I picked him up quickly enough, in Snugs's estimation, so she came and nipped at our ankles. She must have thought we weren't the swiftest of human parents. Anytime any of our children cried, as small children or large, she'd run in to let us know and stare at us to make us do something to fix our human kittens.

She was nicknamed Puma by my mother-in-law because she was a fierce warrior-nanny, very outspoken in caring for our children, and because—and this part, I don't want brickbats for—she was a good hunter. Yes, she was an indoor-outdoor cat.

Snugs was healthy pretty much to the end. Just in the last couple of months, she seemed to start wearing out, bit by bit, wanting less food and less water. She'd become frail-looking, which was sad because she'd always been almost plump. We were keeping her in the house all of the time by then. But by Friday night she couldn't keep any food or water down, and she meowed pitifully, begging and begging to be taken outside. I knew why she wanted to be out there: she knew that it was time for her to go, and she didn't want us to fall apart as she died in the house. So I picked up her very light self gently and she settled easily into my arms. I carried her out the back door, kissed her on the head and called her "Mommy's girl," and set her down on the back landing. It must have been about a half hour later when I checked back, and she wasn't there anymore.

We've spent the last few days looking everywhere to find her body so that we could bury her. But Snugs outsmarted us and found a last hiding place that we can't find. So tonight, Ed, Neil, Jared, and I buried her food bowl and a few small cat toys in the backyard. We just ordered a small stone engraved with her name and birth and death years to mark the spot.

Sweet dreams, Snuggles. We miss you.

Snuggles cat pet death EditorMom

A Woman I'm Proud to Know

2008-06-26T12:29:00.000-04:00

I recently finished doing a pro bono edit of a book proposal for gay rights activist Erin Davies, 30, owner and driver of Fagbug, raising awareness about homophobia, the Volkswagen Beetle that became a project about raising awareness of homophobia. I've not met Erin in person, but we've corresponded by e-mail. From the photos I've seen of her, she's just a little slip of a woman. Such a young, small person she is to have such huge courage. We should all be so courageous.

It was ironic that in 2007, on the eleventh annual National Day of Silence, Erin, who is a lesbian, would find that someone had vandalized her Beetle by spray-painting fag and u r gay on it because the car carried a rainbow sticker. The National Day of Silence brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying, and harassment in schools. As Erin has written in her book manuscript, which is still in preparation, she's been openly gay for 12 years.

Writing u r gay on my car was the equivalent of writing "You have brown eyes" or "Your name is Erin." It was like writing "You are heterosexual" on a car owned by someone who’s straight and fine with it. My intellectual response to what was written on my hood was "Yes, I am gay. What’s your point?"

But her personal space had been invaded by someone who'd wanted to embarrass her and hurt her emotionally. Did she remove the graffiti and pretend that her privacy and sense of security had not been invaded?

Not Erin. She decided to leave the graffiti right where it was and drive her car, with its messages of intended hate, across the United States and Canada for 58 days, stopping along the way to talk with people, individually and in groups, about their reactions to the defacing of her car, to (as she explains on Fagbug.com) "raise awareness about hate crimes and homophobia in our society, to give a voice for those who are silent, to inspire others to take a stand against bullies, and to be an example of how to overcome obstacles in bringing a creative project to life." She gave talks at high schools and universities, did podcasts and radio shows. And now that she's back home, she's still giving talks. She's even had her Fagbug wrapped to look like the rainbow Bug graphic on her web site.

She learned a great deal about herself and about people during her travels. She's writing a book (that would be why I was editing her book proposal) and making a film about her trip. Here is a short movie trailer that she's done. Erin has impressed a lot of people with her antihomophobia work, including GO Magazine, which included her in its June-issue feature "100 Women We Love 2008."

If Erin's story impresses you as much as it has me, please consider giving her a donation. She still needs help with funding the editing of her film and with publicity costs. To do so, go to the home page of her web site and click on the flashing image of the Fagbug that has the word Donate under it. You can keep up with her adventures by reading her MySpace blog. And if you're an acquisition editor affiliated with a major publishing house, e-mail me (click the "View my complete profile" link in the sidebar at the right to be taken to a page with a link to my e-mail address) and I'll put you in contact with Erin.

Fagbug homophobia activism gay rights EditorMom

If They're Different, We Must Kill Them

2008-06-08T22:50:00.006-04:00

(Photo of Iraqi soccer team at World Cup games from Gorilla's Guides)

Click on the photo above and look closely at those faces—joyful, eager, and focused. They could be the faces of any group of people playing in any soccer game anywhere. They're the faces of people having fun and working together.

Why, then, are we Americans shooting at them and their brothers, cousins, mothers, sisters, wives, lovers, children, and friends? Why are we occupying their country? Simply because they're Iraqis.

Would we be at war with them if they were light-skinned and had European features? Or if they were Anglicans rather than Muslims? (Did you even know that there are Iraqi Christians?) Probably not. Europeans aren't sitting on lots of oil that feeds our cars and trucks and machines. Europeans have cultures and religions that we're more familiar with and more comfortable with. We can speak many European languages or find someone who can interpret those languages for us. Yet how often do we read about the scarcity of Arabic interpreters?

It's the ancient human story: Destroy those who are unlike us, those who look different from us, those who believe a little differently from we believe.

Iraq war oil racism EditorMom

Suing the School District Whose Teacher Banished a Boy

2008-06-06T20:04:00.000-04:00

Remember 5-year-old Alex Barton, the boy whose kindergarten teacher led the class in a vote on whether to allow him to remain in class because she was apparently fed up with his Asperger syndrome behaviors?

His mother's attorney has put the boy's school district on notice that he'll be filing a civil lawsuit charging that Alex was discriminated against and that his civil rights were violated.

It's a very sad situation when a parent has to sue to get school personnel to treat a child with patience and compassion.

Alex Barton autism Asperger advocacy IEP education special needs Wendy Portillo St. Lucie County School District EditorMom

Making History and Heading Toward Normal

2008-06-04T12:49:00.000-04:00

I think that to a large extent, how each of us perceives the larger context of Barack Obama becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee for president has to do with the generation that each of us is part of.

I was talking with my 25-year-old daughter on the phone last night during Obama's speech after the Montana and South Dakota Democratic primaries and said, "Well, are you exited, watching history being made?"

"Oh, I'm watching some comedy. ... 'History being made?' "

"Yes! The first time that a major political party has ever had a black person as its candidate! It's so cool!"

"Well, I guess ..."

After talking with her a bit more, I got the strong impression that it's not all that big a deal to her generation to think of someone other than a white man as a presidential candidate. She grew up seeing people as just people, not people who have specific skin colors. And she, an American of mostly Polish and Irish ancestry and with skin whiter than white, grew up to marry a dark-skinned man with Puerto Rican and black ancestors and to be the mother of a pale-mocha baby. But when I was growing up in an insular, racist, middle-class white community in southeast Texas in the late 1960s and the entirety of the 1970s, her life choices would've been seen as very unusual, probably intentionally rebellious, and even socially suicidal. So though I think Obama's win is amazing and wonderful, to my daughter and her friends, it's not amazing. It just is what it is.

Now, that is cool.

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Obama and His Church Life

2008-06-02T17:17:00.002-04:00

If religion and involvement with a religious institution are not a part of your life, you might not understand what it is that people get out of religion, what they get out of searching for God.

And given the well-publicized extremes of some far-right folks who call themselves Christians, you might also have seen the much-hyped tussles among other presidential candidates and their minions, Barack Obama, and the media over Obama's now former church as too much of a muchness; you might have thought Obama should just walk away from his religion completely.

I am a writer and editor and a decent speaker, but I cannot always explain my spirituality well to others. I certainly have had difficulty explaining life in U.S. churches to atheist, agnostic, and antireligion friends and colleagues, so I don't often try. Part of that has to do with my having left the local Presbyterian church within the last 2 years; I'm still working out how I feel about my own spiritual life. That's made it difficult for me to help put the brouhaha over Obama's church life into perspective for those folks.

But a blogging friend of mine, a minister from Obama's own Christian denomination, the United Church of Christ, who uses the pseudonym Songbird has explained it all quite well in an open letter to Obama:

... Let me respond first as a pastor. It would be my hope that NO member of any church I serve would EVER be held responsible for my words from the pulpit. In the Congregational tradition, whatever the colorway might be, freedom of the pulpit is an essential. Pastors are sometimes called to be prophets, and they may say, and I hope WILL say, things that people in the pews or outside the church walls might find perturbing, if not shocking, particularly when the people being shocked are essentially comfortable themselves. Pastors step up into their pulpits, televised or not, to break open the word of God. Anyone who thinks that ought to be restrained to sweet stories about what we learned in kindergarten or advice for how to keep your husband happy or instructions on gaining financial success is not in touch with the history of preaching and in particular with the history of prophetic preaching. ...

People who don't belong to churches may not understand this. They may have an expectation that everything is clear cut, that no relationships are compromised, that your pastor is a service-provider, and you will up and go if you are no longer satisfied. ...

You're in a campaign that is only beginning. When the 2008 version of the Swift Boaters come along, we are all going to have to watch those video clips again, and I'm afraid you will have to state your case again, too. You always seem to find a way to do it that sounds reasonable, even when I know you must be irritated, and I admire that in you. Keep taking the high road. We need to walk the high road. ...

I hope that you'll take the time to read Songbird's post in full.

Obama politics religion EditorMom

Monday Heart-Tug Blogging

2008-06-02T07:40:00.000-04:00

I don't know which is cuter, Neil's heart showing in his eyes or the two baby cottontails who were nesting in our front flower bed before Neil caught them so that they wouldn't run in front of our lawn mower:

Neil son cottontails EditorMom

Fantabulous Lacquer-Spraying Job by My Teen

2008-05-31T22:28:00.002-04:00

Late tonight, after his attention-deficit/hyperactivity meds had worn off, my 13-year-old son Neil did a stupendously great job of spraying "lacquer" (technically, conversion varnish) on a cabinet door built by my husband, Ed:

And then Neil sprayed this dovetailed drawer, which he also built completely by himself!

His hands are already as steady as a brain surgeon's. I guess the nut didn't fall very far from the talent tree.

Updated at 11:00 p.m.: Here's Neil the frogman, wearing a respirator to keep out nasty lacquer fumes:

cabinetmaker apprentice son Neil EditorMom

Jumpin' on the Same-Sex Bandwagon

2008-05-28T22:17:00.005-04:00

Well, well, well. California's ~~Ahnuld, the Governator,~~supreme court has pushed the equal-rights revolution forward, and New York State is jumping on the bandwagon. I don't know why this story is just now breaking, given that David Paterson, governor of my state, apparently issued the directive in question on May 14, but here it is, from the New York Times:

Gov. David A. Paterson has directed all state agencies to begin to revise their policies and regulations to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions, like Massachusetts, California and Canada.

In a directive issued on May 14, the governor's legal counsel, David Nocenti, instructed the agencies that gay couples married elsewhere "should be afforded the same recognition as any other legally performed union."

The revisions are most likely to involve as many as 1,300 statutes and regulations in New York governing everything from joint filing of income tax returns to transferring fishing licenses between spouses.

In a videotaped message given to gay community leaders at a dinner on May 17, Mr. Paterson described the move as "a strong step toward marriage equality." And people on both sides of the issue said it moves the state closer to fully legalizing same-sex unions in this state. ...

Legal experts said Mr. Paterson's decision would make New York the only state that did not itself allow gay marriage but fully recognized same-sex unions entered into elsewhere.

The directive is the strongest signal yet that Mr. Paterson, who developed strong ties to the gay community as a legislator, plans to push aggressively to legalize same-sex unions as governor. His predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, introduced a bill last year that would have legalized gay marriage, but even as he submitted it, doubted that it would pass. The Democratic-dominated Assembly passed the measure, and the Republican-led Senate rejected it.

Short of an act by the Legislature, the directive ordered by Mr. Paterson is the one of the strongest statements a state can make in favor of gay unions. ...

While gay rights advocates widely praised the spirit of the Mr. Paterson’s policy, some saw more than a little irony in the fact that New York has yet to allow gays to marry.

"If you're going to treat us as equals, why don't you just give us the marriage license?" said Alan Van Capelle, executive director of Empire State Pride Agenda. "So this is a temporary but necessary fix for a longer-term problem, which is marriage equality in New York State."

Yes, Alan, equal treatment should be the rule, but this is a good start.

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New York EditorMom

The Humiliation of Alex Barton

2008-05-27T22:28:00.009-04:00

Sometimes the way society treats those who are different in some way makes me think we're still in the Dark Ages. The blog I Speak of Dreams reported today:

Wendy Portillo is the [Florida] kindergarten teacher who directed her students to reject and humiliate Alex Barton, a fellow student. Her actions are inexcusable under any circumstances. L'affaire Barton has exploded in the autism blogosphere, because young Alex has just been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome.

Portillo is reported to have asked her students, including little Alex's best friend, to vote on whether they wanted to allow him to stay in class. This has traumatized the boy, who screams in terror whenever he is taken near the school.

As of this morning, Portillo has been "reassigned." According to the TCPalm, Portillo has been a St. Lucie County teacher for 12 years, and at Morningside Elementary for nine. Alex Barton's mother isn't pleased with the district's response: Barton said she thinks Portillo should be fired. "She has no business being near children at all," she said. As to the news of Portillo being reassigned, Barton responded, "That's just a slap in the face." The school is Morningside Elementary in Port Saint Lucie, Florida.

I have e-mailed the school officials there, as suggested by the Alex Barton page of the web site of the Autistic Self Advocay Network, urging that they take appropriate action:

Dear Principal Cully, Superintendent Lannon, School Board Chair Hilson, and School Board Vice Chair Miller:

I am writing you about the news reports that state that 5-year-old Alex Barton, who has apparently just been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, was humiliated by his classmates at the behest of teacher Wendy Portillo.

I am the wife of a dear 46-year-old man with mild attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), the daughter-in-law of a 72-year-old man with severe AD/HD and anxiety, and the mother of two sons, a 13-year-old with severe AD/HD, depression, and generalized anxiety disorder and 6-year-old with mild AD/HD. I live in the House of AD/HD.

Of all of those males, only my father-in-law was ever treated as poorly by the education system as it appears that Alex Barton has been treated. (That is not to say that schoolchildren, on their own, never tried to treat my husband or either of my sons poorly.) Humiliation, being told one is disgusting, being made to feel that one doesn't belong—these are events that help shatter self-esteem. My father-in-law grew up when educators and psychologists and psychiatrists alike knew nothing about neurobehavioral disorders. One psychologist told his mother that the boy had "a screw loose." Teachers berated him, saying he was lazy and stupid. As he grew into an adult, still without a diagnosis, people misunderstood his odd social interactions; they did not know that social skills did not come naturally to him the way they do to people without AD/HD and without other neurobehavioral deficits. Put down all his life, by family members and coworkers and strangers and alleged friends, he became someone who is suspicious of everyone's motives; he became someone who to this day is not pleasant to be around. And yet he is a brilliant jazz and blues keyboardist and vocalist. Sadly, at age 72, he has only 1 friend and is valued by people outside his family pretty much only for his skills as a musician.

I am saddened to think of the wasted relationships that that man has been in. How much joy could he have gotten from life if some teachers, some health care providers, had taken the time to get to know the little boy behind the outsize tantrums, the talents behind the inability to ever sit still, the tender heart behind the bravado and apparent disobedience. My father-in-law himself was stunned when, back when my now 13-year-old was determined eligible, in third grade, for an IEP [individualized education program]. "My God," he said, after the meeting of my school district's committee on special education, "all of these people are here to care for my grandson, to help him." He teared up. "Back when I was his age, they said I was crazy, that I had a screw loose." I saw the hurt little boy that still hides behind my father-in-law's gruff, hard-to-like personality, made that way by years of humiliation from all sides.

My 13-year-old is a very smart guy whom I believe will grow up to make some great scientific contribution to society. But my son wouldn't be on his way to getting there had he been treated by his teachers the way that Wendy Portillo allegedly treated little Alex Barton. My son has had years of outstanding, caring teachers, school social workers, school psychologists, and teaching paraprofessionals helping him learn to break big education tasks down into manageable bites and helping him learn the social skills that are so foreign to many children with neurobehavioral disorders. I thank the universe at least once daily for the wonderful educators and school officials who make it possible for my son's intelligence and sweet personality to shine through.

After my 13-year-old's disability was diagnosed and he began taking medication and my husband and I began using behavioral modification with him, we turned to look at my husband's life. And he saw the AD/HD in himself, just as my father-in-law then saw his own AD/HD. Both men began taking prescribed medication, and both have learned new social and life-balancing skills.

And now my 6-year-old has recently been diagnosed as having mild AD/HD. He will get the same wonderful assistance from our school district. He has a grandfather, father, and big brother to lean on when it comes to learning coping skills for AD/HD.

But what will happen to little Alex Barton?

Already, he has been taught that adults who are supposed to care for him—teachers—can't be trusted, that they will help others hurt him, that they will make him cry. He has learned that other children may be his enemies, and that they can be turned against him by grown-ups. He is at a critical point in the development of his self-image and self-esteem. Will you let Ms. Portillo and other teachers continue to drop-kick his feelings? Will you let Ms. Portillo continue to teach other children that it is right or even fun to hurt fellow students?

Please, stop this tragedy now before it worsens. Find a way to make this up to little Alex. Send Ms. Portillo off to be educated on how to work with special-needs children, for Alex is not the last one she will encounter; if she cannot or will not learn such skills, she should not ever again be allowed to work with children. Educate all teachers in your district about working with special-needs children and about the fragility of children's self-esteem. Work with Alex's family to build the best IEP possible, one that will help him shine.

Please do not destroy a child's soul, for if you do, society will pay a high, tragic cost.

Readers, please consider writing the St. Lucie County school officials about this case. Please do so respectfully and eloquently, please cc the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, and please do it now. Help save a boy's life.

Updated 5/28/08 at 12:40 a.m.: I have also e-mailed Florida's governor, Charlie Crist, about education standards for teachers in his state, which should include teaching them how to work with special-needs children.

Updated at 1:14 p.m.: Go here to find a video of a TV interview with Alex's mother.

Updated at 6:05 p.m.: Here is the latest news story about Alex from the local Florida newspaper. Click here to send a message of support to Alex.

Update

Alex Barton autism Asperger advocacy IEP education special needs Wendy Portillo St. Lucie County School District EditorMom

Clinton's Character Flaws

2008-05-24T21:48:00.001-04:00

There are some female diehard Hillary Clinton fans on an e-mail list that I frequent, and they cry sexism whenever anyone calls Clinton on mistakes, lies, or poor behavior:

There are folks just waiting to jump on anything about Clinton, no matter how small or innocuous. I don't see the same behavior toward [Barack Obama], and I don't think it's because he's any more touched or special or a genius or whatever.

Nope, Obama's not a genius or more special than anyone. Hell, he pissed me off recently because he called a woman whose question he was answering "sweetie." Sweetie?! What is this, the 1950s?! Get rid of that bit of sexism immediately, man.

But I see lots of faults in Clinton because I've endured having her as my senator. For years, I've seen her lie and change her stories and change her positions to suit the particular group she's speaking to. I've seen her be petty and get down in the mud. I've never seen her rise above crap; she just gets in there and slings it with everybody else. I've seen her be fake as all get-out. I've seen her backstab. I would love to have a female president. But when we do have one, I hope to heaven that she's someone with integrity and class. Clinton ain't got 'em. Never has, never will.

I don't even see her as really having had a right to be my senator. She wasn't from New York originally. She hadn't lived here for years, hadn't aspired to be of service to a state she loved. After her husband left the White House, she scouted out soon-to-be available Senate seats, and she wanted a big-name seat, not just any seat anywhere. One of New York's was soon to be open, so she moved here to gain the necessary residential status. And then she ran for the office that she saw as her due after her husband's stint on Pennsylvania Avenue. She used us New Yorkers to build up her résumé for a presidential run.

Sure, some folks are anti-Clinton just because she's a woman. And that's stupid and wrong. But plenty more have seen what I've seen, and that has nothing to do with sexism.

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She'll Fill in After the Assassination

2008-05-23T17:54:00.002-04:00

Hillary Clinton has gone insane.

She's implying now that one of the reasons she's staying in the race for Democratic candidate for the U.S. presidency is the possibility that Barack Obama will be assassinated in June, just as Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968. She's planning that if that scenario actually takes place, she'll become the replacement Democratic nominee, just as Hubert Humphrey did after Kennedy was assassinated.

She's so damn desperate to win that she's putting the idea in people's heads that she's more electable than Obama because he could be assassinated. Hey, let's just encourage all of the crazies out there, huh?

Get Clinton the lunatic off the national stage now!

Updated 5/24/08 at 1:37 p.m.: MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann nails it. Go here for both the video clip and the transcript of it.

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U.S. Holds Children as Prisoners of War

2008-05-23T15:41:00.000-04:00

This is not a lighthearted happy-Friday or happy-long-weekend post. It's a good-God-in-heaven, my-country's-gone-insane post.

United Nations officials, members of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, are questioning why the United States has "detained 2,500 children under 18 in U.S.-run detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, including 513 children currently imprisoned in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq alone." The U.S. itself provided documentation [link is to downloadable Word document].

We are imprisoning children—children! The excuse given by U.S. officials? It's hard to determine prisoners' ages.

What the hell have we become?! I am beyond disgusted and appalled. In the eyes of the American government, children have no rights at all.

You can read about plenty of other shocking human rights abuses by the United States on the new blog of the ACLU, things that the mainstream media sure won't tell us.

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Obamarific: Blog-Post Headline of the Year

2008-05-22T19:47:00.002-04:00

Warning: The page at the link I'm about to send you to contains language that is not safe for work. It's from a blog by university students.

That said, I think the headline at this particular post deserves some kind of award for wit and school pride.

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Young Cabinetmaker in Training

2008-05-22T14:21:00.005-04:00

Our 13-year-old, Neil, is very good with his hands, just like my husband, Ed. He's been helping Ed out in the wood shop a lot lately. Cabinetmaking skills just might provide a good part-time job for him once he's old enough to legally be an employee.

Neil sweeps up after using an electric planer	Neil cleans rail tongues for cabinet doors that Ed then glues up

And yes, that old household tool, the iron, is used in wood shops, on the steam setting, to press glue-on edge banding (precut strips of veneer) onto the cut ends of plywood that is being used to make cabinetry or furniture.

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Yet Another Way to Harass Undocumented Immigrants

2008-05-21T13:22:00.004-04:00

Who gives a damn about the value of human life, especially that of Latinos? Apparently not the U.S. Customs and Border Protection down in Texas.

The Rio Grande Guardian has reported that the next time a hurricane aimed at Texas comes roaring in, the border patrol is going to screen evacuees leaving by bus to see if they are U.S. citizens. No papers, no bus. Hurricane season starts June 1 in Texas. If you were an undocumented immigrant and you had to choose between the certainty of imprisonment—and separation from family members—and the possibility of surviving a hurricane, which would you pick?

I guess the border patrol employees won't find it hard to sleep nights despite knowing that they're responsible for a lot of deaths.

Updated 5/22/08, at 12:49 p.m.: Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff now says that documentation checks won't occur in the face of a hurricane-mandated evacuation: "In the event of an emergency, and the need for an evacuation, priority number one by a country mile is the safe evacuation of people who are leaving the danger zone. Instructions to the Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection are clear. They are to do nothing to impede a safe and speedy evacuation of a danger zone."

Well, that sounds good, but given the Bush administration's propensity for lying, I'm not inclined to take Chertoff at his word.

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Proper Use of Bush's Economic-Stimulus Checks

2008-05-20T15:52:00.002-04:00

My daughter, Becky, has found the perfect way to do her small part to stimulate the U.S. economy in the long run: She's going to use her newly arrived economic-stimulus check to pay for a refresher course and the fee for taking the state LMSW (licensed master social worker) examination.

This will qualify her for a lot more professional jobs than just having a master's degree in social work currently does. Her lack of extra funds to cover the course and exam fees, having to help support herself and her small family by continuing to work full time for the low-paying drugstore chain she's worked for since she was in high school, and having a baby have all gotten in the way of her hunt for her first profession-related job. With money to take care of those fees now available, she faces one less obstacle.

I'm glad she's not doing what Bush intended everyone to do with those checks: go shopping.

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I Still Heart Miss Snark

2008-05-20T12:55:00.001-04:00

Today is the one-year anniversary of the disappearance of Miss Snark. If you still miss her, go here to say so.

If you missed the grand era of snark about the ins and outs of publishing, go read the Snarkives (aka the archives of Miss Snark, the literary agent, accessed through the links in the sidebar on the right side of this page).

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I Have a Dream

2008-05-16T15:06:00.000-04:00

I'm no Martin Luther King Jr., but I have a dream.

My dream came the night of the news that the California Supreme Court overturned a ban on same-sex marriage.

In the dream, I was a minister officiating at the wedding ceremony of two 60-something men. Both were balding and had gray hair. The event took place in the rural Midwest, and their friends who attended the ceremony were decked out in full hunting gear.

I don't know the dream's reason for the guests' choice of attire, and I sure can't picture a real-life same-sex wedding taking place in the rural part of any U.S. state at this point in the development of civil rights, but dreams aren't always logical. It sure did feel holy and joyful, though, when I pronounced the loving couple married.

May my dream come true soon for same-sex couples in all 50 states.

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An Author's Humanity

2008-05-14T21:03:00.002-04:00

Earlier today, I looked at the properties of a Word document—a book chapter—that I'm editing. In the Author line on the Summary tab, I expected to see the physician author's name, followed by his string of advanced degrees, as is usually the case with these kinds of files.

Instead, it read simply: Dad.

I love that. He must've written his chapter on his home computer while logged in under his identity rather than one of his children's identities. He's somebody's dad, someone whom I picture having experience taking tender care of a child who's special to him. It reminds me that he's not only an emergency-medicine expert who often holds patients' lives in his hands and whose writing has often been published, not only someone of high social stature. He's also someone whose work I need to treat with respect just because he's a regular person too, a person with feelings.

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