A Day of Nature and Calm

Are you stressed out by this election season?

Allow my blog to bring you a measure of calm and peace on this most stressful of days. (If you don't live in the United States, you may well be stressed by this election, too. So why don't you take a few moments out for a Day of Nature?)

As promised, here is your Day of Nature and Calm.  An election free zone.

Breathe in.  Breathe out.

Let's begin with a picture of the resident cat at Warner Castle, Rochester, New York

First, some mood music.  Take your pick or play your own:

Strawberry Swing - Coldplay 

 Peaceful, Easy Feeling - The Eagles.

Learning to Fly:  Pink Floyd

And now, imagine yourself...

Statues on a dock, near Pittsford, New York

On the Erie Canal in upstate New York on a beautiful late summer day, fishing.

On the shores of Canandaigua Lake, Canandaigua, New York, watching a sunset.

Eating lunch at the Broome County Courthouse, Binghamton, New York, November 7.

Near Johnson City, New York, at sunset, November 6

Sitting in a backyard.  It is so peaceful.

Breathe in, breathe out. 

It's almost time to awaken.

Japanese Maple, Binghamton, New York, November 6

Start to awaken.  Feel the peace.

Now, start to awaken a little more.  Stretch.  Go forth, without stress.


Day 8 of NaBloPoMo.

Music Monday - Happy Days Will Be Here Again

I had a totally different post in mind for today, the day before Election Day in the United States.

After seeing a disturbing story on 60 Minutes last night, I couldn't do it.  We need something completely different from what I had in mind.  Hence, a Music Monday.

Let me bring you back to 1930, and a Broadway show (well, a movie about a Broadway show on the road) by the name of Chasing Rainbows.  A song from that play was selected by Franklin Roosevelt for his 1932 campaign.  Mired in the Depression, our country needed to know that Happy Days Will Be Here Again.

Here is the song, as sung in 1930.

And, in the 1960's, by Mitch Miller, from Rochester, New York.  I could almost do a battle of the bands! (I won't.)

Interested in campaign songs? Read more here.  Even George Washington had one. With different lyrics, we still sing it today.

Remember, tomorrow will be a special Taste of Nature calming post.  Here's a preview.  No elections, just nature.


And, of course, you will vote tomorrow if you haven't voted yet, right?

A Promise of Calm?

Every year, around this time, there are things decorating lawns in the area of upstate New York where I live.

Late flowers.

Piles of leaves.

 More late flowers.

Political signs.

More political signs.

Still more political signs (this is one of what we call a "third party" candidate in our two party system.

And even if you don't find them on local lawns (I haven't) there is at least one more choice.

Didn't your relaxation change to extreme stress as soon as you saw the political signs?  That's because your mind, and your body, know that this is one of the most important elections of our lifetimes.

We in the United States can vote.  People elsewhere are holding their breaths because they are stuck with the person we choose.  And actually, so are we.  But, as of Tuesday, we still have the power of the ballot.

Because I do not take political stands (normally) on my blog, I am not going to tell you who I am voting for.  (I think my steady readers can guess, though).  Why?  Is it because I'm afraid?

NO.  It's because I want to reach out to everyone, and a lot of people are going to tune out and click on by if I start ranting about my favorite.  It does not mean I don't feel strongly about this election.  I hope you do, too.

This is why you need to vote.  There are threats of violence and terrorism swirling around, yes.  Still, you must vote.  Think of the citizens of Afghanistan or countries where people risk their lives (literally) to vote.  They voted.  Can you do less?

What I am going to tell you is that you MUST vote Tuesday if you haven't already taken advantage of early voting (permitted in some states, but not in my New York State).

In some states, you can still register to vote on Election Day.

And to help you with your decision, on Election Day, like the Weather Channel, I have decided to have a Day of Nature.  The Weather Channel, starting at 3pm Eastern Time, will have nine straight hours of nature scenes and cool jazz.

If you comment with names of some good calming music pieces (I need some help here), I'll even make it into a Music Tuesday.  I have plenty of fall foliage photos to show you.  Why not some music to accompany it?

Deal? Here's my election promise for Tuesday: Go out and vote, then come back and enjoy some wonderful fall photos.  I'll be here.  Will you?

Day 6 of NaBloPoMo.

Local Saturday - The Writer Once Without Honor

Is anyone reading this a Twilight Zone fan?  If you are, you are a fan of the writer (and so much more) Rod Serling.  I wrote the following post in October of 2009, during the 50th anniversary celebration of the first airing of the first Twilight Zone episode.

I wanted to share with you several pictures of what Serling's home neighborhood in Binghamton, New York looked like this past week. 

Carousel Building

Rec Park, the inspiration of the episode Walking Distance.

Rec Park Bandshell

And now, for the post from October 2009.

The Writer Once Without Honor in His Hometown

 Rod Serling.  The Twilight Zone.  The writer and the show are so much a part of our culture that several catchphrases and its theme music immediately bring this show to mind even to my 19 year old son.  Yet it is 50 years (and one day) after its first episode aired on October 2, 1959.  It has never left television once in all of those 50 years.

Happily, the paraphrase above of a quote from Jesus in the New Testament Book of Mark  ("A prophet without honor in his hometown...") may have been true at one time, but no longer is.   Rod Serling, a very talented...and tormented... man, who wrote amazing TV scripts in the era of the Red Menace with messages so timeless they resonate today, has come home.  It is ironic, in a way, that one of his most famous scripts showed a man trying to revisit his childhood in vain.

Rod Serling has now been honored in his hometown.  The hometown of which Rod Serling once said this:

"Everybody has to have a hometown, Binghamton's mine. In the strangely brittle, terribly sensitive make-up of a human being, there is a need for a place to hang a hat or a kind of geographical womb to crawl back into, or maybe just a place that's familiar because that's where you grew up.

  "When I dig back through memory cells, I get one particularly distinctive feeling—and that's one of warmth, comfort and well-being. For whatever else I may have had, or lost, or will find—I've still got a hometown. This, nobody's gonna take away from me."

We think we know the man in black and white, smoking a cigarette, who intoned the following every week on the TV sets of the baby boomer generation and their parents:

"There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition...."

But what of the child who grew up in Binghamton?  Thanks in part to a conversation I had today with a man from California who upkeeps the Rod Serling Foundation website, I was able to walk in those footsteps.  It was humbling in a way to speak to a man who thinks so highly of a man that he has traveled four times to Binghamton to be here.  The same Binghamton that I am in five days a week, and take for granted.

During my journey, I also met people from Seneca Falls, NY and Cherry Hill, NJ who also came out to share the experience.  To so many, Binghamton is a "burnt out industrial town" but one of these people closed her eyes in delight in Rod's childhood neighborhood and exclaimed her happiness in seeing it.

So here is my tribute to Rod Serling.  I'm not even going to say "submitted for your approval". 

First, here is the home where Rod Serling grew up.  I've passed it doing my exercise walks (disclosure:  I do not live in this neighborhood but I love walking in it) and never knew its history.  As the address and a photo of this home exist on a Rod Serling website, I feel comfortable in posting a picture but will not give the address-it is privately owned.

This is the junior high (now West Middle School) where Rod Serling first met Helen Foley, the English teacher who influenced the boy who became the writer.  I took two pictures to highlight some of the Art Deco architectural details both in the windows above the entrance doors.

The next stop was Recreation Park, just a few
blocks from where Serling grew up, home to a bandstand where Serling carved his initials as a boy.
I didn't take a picture of the bandstand, but I did of the building housing the historic carousel.

Binghamton is known as the "Carousel Capital" and myself and my son took many rides on the same carousel. The carousel, which normally doesn't run after Labor Day, was running today to celebrate.  (Sorry, the picture isn't very good.)  They were showing the episode inside the carousel building on a couple of TV's and, although it has been years, I immediately recognized it because I've had such emotional responses when I've seen it.

A live recreation of this episode will air on our local PBS station tonight.

It will be an emotional experience for us who know the true story.  Which I do now.  I was told that even, after Rod Serling was famous beyond imagination, he would come back to his childhood neighborhood on Binghamton's west side and walk those streets.  Trying to find....something.

For what it is worth, the "Walking Distance" episode was not filmed in Binghamton (nor were any other Twilight Zones, although Serling came back to Binghamton many times) and the carousel in the episode was not this carousel.  It was filmed in Hollywood, according to the Serling expert I spoke to.

This is Binghamton High School (then known as Binghamton Central High School before Binghamton lost so much of its population in the 80's and 90's)

 Next, is a Rod Serling portrait inside of Binghamton High School.

I skipped the Serling star in the Binghamton Walk of Fame downtown, as I pass it so many times that it is an ordinary object to me.  Perhaps that's why prophets are without honor in their hometowns.  We know the famous celebrity as an ordinary person.  One who carved his initials into a city bandstand as a child.

Or even...the thought I had as I passed the boys room in Binghamton High...oh, never mind.

Thank you to Broome County Transit whose special hybrid shuttle bus transported us to some of these sights.

So, what was the rest of the story?

This child of Binghamton grew up.  After Rod Serling graduated Binghamton Central in 1943 he served in the Pacific Theatre during World War II as a paratrooper.   The combat service (including, it is said, seeing his best friend die in front of him) created permanent trauma that haunted Serling for the rest of his too short life.  A driven individual and a heavy smoker, Rod Serling died at age 50 with an unbelievable legacy few of us could ever aspire to.

Some episodes haunted me for years after I saw them.  "It's a Good Life".  "The Midnight Sun".  "The Hitchhiker". "Nick of Time".

Others were morality plays that still resonate today although as a child I did not know their true meanings.   "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street"  "The Eye of the Beholder". "The Obsolete Man".

And, of course, "Walking Distance".

Rod Serling said, at the end of the "Walking Distance" episode of the protagonist Martin Sloane, the man who found out he could not go home:

Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice-president in charge of media. Successful in most things but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives—trying to go home again. And also like all men perhaps there'll be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime, when he'll look up from what he's doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and the places of his past. And perhaps across his mind there'll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And he'll smile then too because he'll know it is just an errant wish, some wisp of memory not too important really, some laughing ghosts that cross a man's mind, that are a part of the Twilight Zone.

Day 5 of NaBloPloMo.

Skywatch Friday - Dance of the ????

Late October and early November in upstate New York.  In the Binghamton, New York area, I'm able to see the dawn as I travel to work.

You can see some strange things at sunrise.

I don't know what these contrail like ropy, dancing things going straight up and down were.  It isn't smoke. Contrails?  I've never seen something quite like this, almost like they are dancing.

This, taken just before sunrise on Halloween (October 31) morning, was more normal (and dramatic).

Come visit other blogs today for  Skywatch Friday, where you can see dramatic sky pictures from all over the world.

Day 4 of NaBloPoMo.

Throwback Thursday - Voting in the Post Sandy World

This blog post is from November 6, 2012.

This past week, we commemorated the fourth anniversary of what we now call Superstorm Sandy.  Fortunately, our area of upstate New York was not hard hit, but many parts of downstate New York were not so luck.

Now, four years later, we are again electing a President, the House of Representatives, 1/3 of the Senate and also various local officials.  We are all fatigued.  We are tired of all the dirty politics, both national and local.  We wish this election season would go away and leave us alone.

The post Sandy world seems like it is a million miles away.  But it is well to remember that this election is one of the most important of the last four years.  If we could vote after Sandy, we can vote now.

Day 3 of NaBloPoMo.

Voting in the Post Sandy World

Today, in the United States, it is election day.  We are electing a President, the House of Representatives, 1/3 of the Senate and also various local officials.

This is your choice today: vote or don't vote.  But for many in the Hurricane Sandy zone, voting is going to be just another burden on top of trying to get to work, trying to find a place with heat, and trying to find gas for your car or generator.

If you vote, you are joining people like my mother in law, who was away from her home for nearly a week due to Hurricane Sandy.  When I spoke to her Saturday, the thing uppermost on her mind was - not when her power would be restored (it was, shortly after I spoke to her) but if she would be able to vote.

I assured her she would, but to call her Board of Elections to find out if her polling place had changed.

People here in states that allow early voting were standing on long lines back in October to exercise their privlege.  People in Hurricane Sandy-affected areas today are going to go to a lot of trouble to vote.  A cousin who had to be out of town today voted by absentee ballot.


Haven't made up your mind yet?  Not an excuse.  My suggestion: don't vote based on one issue.  Examine your future carefully.  You are voting for both a future you can imagine and a future you can't.  A future that now includes the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, and if we will learn our lesson.

Vote for the candidates that best express the future you dream of. 

Governors Cuomo and Christie (Democrat and Republican) have joined in a common effort to make voting easier for their citizens.  Quoting from a news report:

" Gov. Andrew Cuomo has agreed to issue an executive order that will allow displaced voters to cast ballots by affidavit at any polling site they can reach Tuesday.
The order will permit voters to sign affidavits that they're legally registered to vote in the presidential and state races and cast ballots at any open polling site, even those outside their neighborhoods.
But they won't be able to vote for state legislative candidates unless the polling place is within the proper legislative district.
New Jersey is allowing voters to use provisional ballots at any polling site"

Decisions on the fly,to cope with the conditions we now face.  That is true leadership.  Look for that quality in your candidate.

So now, if you are in the United States, make your country proud. Get out and vote.  And, a special thanks if you were impacted by Sandy. You are participating in history. Be proud.

It does matter.

Fantastic Fall - Binghamton Farmers Market

On Wednesdays, I have a seasonal feature.

Binghamton, New York, indoor farmers market, October 29.

Fall veggies - radishes, beets, brussel sprouts.

Cornell Cooperative made a pumpkin pudding - not from the Hubbard squash to the left, but from canned pumpkin (which is really canned winter squash), instant vanilla pudding and a couple of other ingredients.  It was delicious.

The inside was decorated in orange with festive lights.

And outside, nature provided its own color.  Alas, the low clouds of November have settled in.

Do you enjoy going to farmers markets?

What is exciting is that, for the first time ever, we will have a year round market this year, once a week, in this brand new building.  It will be interesting to see how people respond.

Day 2 of NaBloPoMo.

They Don't Make Fall Like They Used To

I remember lots of Halloweens, because I was the one who took my son trick or treating.  One time, we had 12 inches of wet snow.  Other times, it was cold and blustery.  The leaves would be almost gone from the trees, stuffed into bags that looked like Halloween pumpkins.

Not this year.

They just don't make falls the way they used to.

This is what my part of upstate New York looked like yesterday when I got out of work.

Fall was definitely here, with trees glowing in the setting sun, like this beautiful specimen.

And this one.

But a number of (you can see one in the background of the picture above) trees hadn't started to turn yet.  And the leaves should have dropped by now.

The temperature yesterday got up to 47F (8.3C), which actually made Binghamton one of the coolest spots in the United States.  Some cities were up in the 80's, the temperatures of summer.  Normally, we would have been happy.  Now, we were just envious of (it seemed) everyone else.

Today, after a frosty start, it will be even warmer. What's going on, and what does this mean for our coming winter?

This is day #1 of NaBloPoMo, an annual blogging challenge.  Come join us!

Music Monday - Death Knocks Again

Today is Halloween in the United States.  We decorate (well, some of us do - I don't) with decorations that remind us of death.  Children dress up in costumes and go door to door asking for treats (or else they will play a trick.) We watch scary movies with monsters.

Some of us turn our front lawns into graveyards.

A cultural anthropologist would have a field day (no pun intended) with this.

But sometimes, death comes a'knockin' for real.  This past week we lost two performers from my youth.

Bobbie Vee's career started after a plane crash on February 3, 1959.  The crash, near Clear Lake, Iowa  killed three great musicians - Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper.  They were enroute to Fargo, North Dakota, near Moorhead, Minnesota, where they were supposed to play their next concert.  Bobbie Vee, a fifteen year old local musician, and his band The Shadows, were brought in to play the date.

Stardom resulted.

Vee (his real name was Robert Velline) died Monday at the age of 73, in hospice care from complications of Alzheimer's.  He had been diagnosed in 2011.

My spouse loved his song "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes" - a title appropriate for a scary holiday song (the song itself isn't too scary).

More appropriate for Halloween is "Dinner with Drac", as performed by singer and TV horror host
John Zacherle.  Zacherle, also known as the "Cool Ghoul", died Thursday at the age of 98, after a long career.  He was one of the first TV horror hosts, broadcasting in both Philadelphia and New York City.  If he could have only waited another four days, it would have been so ghoulish.  So perfect.

As it was, he hosted one of the strangest TV music shows ever for three years in the 1960's - "Disc-O-Teen", which may be what American Bandstand would have been if Dick Clark had been a ghoul.


Happy Halloween!

Day 31 - the final day - of The Ultimate Blog Challenge.

Who's Afraid of NaNoWriMo?

Every November is haunted with the ghosts of "would have, should have, could have." I hate November.

Triple Cities, New York

True, at the end of October, it is Halloween in the United States.  Everything is decorated, including our local farmers market, but those decorations remind us of our own mortality.  The more ghoulish ones, anyway.


November is also a time to face the demons of the writer.  Should I join NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writer's Month) once again?  And, if I do, will I ever face the ghosts of my three previous NaNoWriMo manuscripts and try to edit them into some kind of manuscript worthy to bring into the world of the living?  Am I good enough?  Is my writing adequate?  Do I really have something of worth to tell the world?

Am I afraid of failure?  Am I afraid of not finishing the course - 50,000 words worth of free writing in 30 days?  It isn't easy but I've done it three times.  It's the "after" that is just as scary.  Doing something with that manuscript.  Taking that 50,000 words of free writing and carving and shaping it into something worthy of showing the world.

My demons ask "Are you afraid of success?"  Maybe.  So I gather my courage up and declare to you, my readers.

There's a book I've been thinking of writing.  It isn't fiction, and it isn't getting written.

Now's my chance to start.  Any number of words is better than zero number of words.

Here are the official rules of NaNoWriMo (I hope they don't mind copying and pasting):

• Write a 50,000-word (or longer!) novel, between November 1 and November 30.
• Only count words written during November. None of your own previously written prose can be included in your NaNoWriMo draft (though outlines, character sketches, and research are all fine, as are citations from other people's works).
• Write a novel. We define a novel as a lengthy work of fiction. If you consider the book you're writing a novel, we consider it a novel too!
• Be the sole author of your novel. Apart from those citations mentioned two bullet-points up.
• Write more than one word repeated 50,000 times.

And if you break rules, which I have done already (writing non-fiction), you are called a rebel, and you are welcome.  What I do is rebel.  I do not cheat.  My words are my words, they are written only in November, and I stand by my word counts.

So, I look my demons in their blazing red eyes.  I will do NaNoWriMo this November.  Maybe a non fiction book in the wrapper of a fiction book.  That fiction book?  The coming of age story of a teenaged girl in the New York City of 2076, starting over with an idea I had two years ago, but making major changes. The non fiction content?  It's a secret.  But I've love you to join me.

My name on NaNoWriMo is "RamblinWritr".

Do you plan to try NaNoWriMo this year?

Day 30 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge.

Local Saturday - An Exotic Tale

This weekend marks the start of Diwali, the most important (or so I understand) Indian holiday of the year.  The holiday gets its name from clay lamps that Indians light outside their homes, and celebrates the victory of good over evil.  This five day festival, I read, is celebrated with bonfires, fireworks, strings of lights, and gold.  Friends and family visit, food is shared, and...well, it sounds like a lot of fun.

I first heard of Diwali last year, after I somehow (I don't even remember how) got introduced to a community of online bloggers who live, for the most part, in India.  I, on the other hand, live in upstate New York and have never been off the North American continent.

Thinking of Diwali makes me think of a friend now gone, and a town in New Jersey.

Last September (2015), my best friend from childhood passed away after a long struggle with cancer.  She was only six months older than I am.  In the religion both of us grew in, there is a ceremony called an "unveiling" within the first year of someone's passing.  It is, basically, a dedication of the headstone and a memorial service for the deceased.  Normally, only close family and friends are invited. 

I was honored to receive an invitation from my late friend's husband to attend my friend's unveiling.  Although they lived in Brooklyn, it turns out she was interred near Woodbridge, New Jersey.

While researching a motel, I saw that Woodbridge was near a community called Edison.  It sounded familiar.

I had heard about Edison from some of those Indian bloggers. The Edison-Iselin area, I recalled, has the largest community of Indians in the United States.  Even better, I remembered that one of my spouse's cousins lived in Edison.

We contacted him and his wife, and they told us we were more than welcome to stay with them overnight.  Then, I asked the Indian bloggers if they had ever heard of Edison. Some had, and one, in fact, one had even just returned from a visit to Edison.  She recommended some restaurants.

Small world.  And it was about to get smaller.

Delaware Water Gap, near Pennsylvania-New Jersey border

The drive from the Binghamton, New York area to Edison was uneventful.  The weather was beautiful.

As we got off the highway and approached the  Iselin-Menlo park area, it was obvious we were entering a different cultural area.

My spouse's cousins lived not far off a road called Oak Tree Road.  We drove down that street, in amazement, looking at storefronts with Hindi signs, seeing jewelry store after jewelry store, stores featuring Indian women's wear, restaurants, and more.

"You haven't seen anything yet", said the cousins, after dinner.  "Let us take you down Oak Tree Road after dark.  In fact, do you want to go in some of the stores? I'll take you."  But we knew this cousin had to be somewhere at 3am the next morning, so we declined.  Still, we took the nighttime drive.

This is some of what we saw.  To some of my readers, these sights will be every day.  To me - dare I use the word "exotic"?  Exotic: "From far away, unusual, exciting".

(Sorry, from the car, the pictures are not of high quality.

This egg restaurant is so intriguing.  The sign says "‘Sunday ho ya Monday, roz khao ande". (I think it means "eat an egg every day, Sunday or Monday." I'm sure I will be corrected quickly if that is the wrong translation.

The streets were full of people. Shopping center parking lots were full of cars and talking people.

 "This is a prime time for the people here to get out and visit with friends and family", the cousin explained.  As it happens, his job (he's retired now) involved a lot of contact with people in India, and he had even visited Mumbai several times.  I told him, in turn, that my father had been stationed near Delhi for a while during World War II. He had loved it there, and had always wanted to go back.  He never made it.

It's sad to say, if my friend had not chosen her plot where she had, I may never have visited this community.  It's almost, in a way, like her last gift to me.

If I had been able to come back today, I could imagine the stores filled with Diwali sweets of every description.  The lights of that September night would burn even brighter tonight.  Perhaps we wouldn't even get any sleep from all the noise.

Perhaps, one day, I'll be able to return, and experience it for myself.

Skywatch Friday - Drama of the Clouds

Today, for Skywatch Friday, I decided to show a sunset from two different angles.

I live in upstate New York, near a park which runs alongside the Susquehanna River.  Sometimes, I like to take walks at sunset to watch the sun set.

Last Sunday, this is what the sunset looked like.  At this time of year, the clouds look so dramatic.

But after I moved a few hundred feet, and took a shot from another angle,  I managed to pick up more clouds and some fall foliage.

Yesterday, we had our first snow.  By the time I was able to take a picture, the snow had melted.  Alas, it is only the first of what may well be many snowfalls here on the edge of the New York State snow belt.

Happy fall, or spring, depending on where you live, and visit the Skywatch Friday website to see clouds, sunrises, and sunsets from all over the world.

Day 28 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge.

Throwback Thursday - 1 in 100 - Autism Votes

I originally posted this on November 8, 2011, which was election day. I ask myself:  has anything changed for the better now that more of the wave of babies born with autism enter adulthood?

My brother in law, who is in his 50's, and has autism, will vote this November.  He also voted in the New York presidential primary in April.  He made his mind up from watching the TV news shows he watched.

It may be easier for people with developmental disabilities to vote.  At a recent review at a program where my brother in law attends, they asked if he was registered to vote, and he even volunteered who he was going to vote for.

It's amazing that he never voted until 2004.

I repeat this post in honor of my brother in law.  And please, if you are in the United States, vote on November 8.  I'll blog about this more later this week.

1 in 100 - Autism Votes

A Facebook post by a Facebook friend of mine, a woman who has an adult son with autism, inspired this post.

The day I first posted this was election day in the United States, where I live.

Her son is voting for the first time today.  Although she is his legal guardian, her son retains his right to vote.  She told her Facebook friends that her son has looked forward to exercising his vote for years.  This is a big day for him.

It's also a big day for our country for another reason.

Her son is on the leading edge of a wave of soon to be adults with autism.  Some say 1 in 100 live births in this country result in an individual with autism.  Not too long ago it was 1 in 166. Then it was 1 in 150.  Let's assume for the sake of argument that the 1 in 100 figure is accurate.  Let's step back a moment and see what that means.

Those babies are going to grow up.  In fact, the "leading edge" of the autism epidemic I just mentioned are now legal adults in many states, including New York (age of 18).  Just wait until all those adults with autism, who have been given the tools and supports to vote, start to exercise that right. 

And,  it is never too late.

My brother in law, who has autism, is in his 50's. He voted for the first time in the 2004 Presidential election.  Growing up, he was never encouraged to vote nor were people like him ever expected to vote.  This just didn't happen.  They weren't "normal".  So their voices, and opinions, were unheard.

In 2004, a person who worked with him in a support role decided that my brother in law should exercise his right to vote.  He watches a news station that carries a lot of political discussions and has formed very definite political opinions.  Why shouldn't he vote?  She worked with him, he did vote, and he was very proud of voting for the presidential candidate of his choice.

For the first time, his voice was heard.

It is not easy for a person with autism to vote, as described here, but it can be done with proper education and proper support.  This issue isn't restricted to the United States, either.

It's a new day, and soon, the politicians will feel the power of that new voting block.  It will be interesting to hear what these new adults with autism have to say in the voting booth.

Day 27 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge.

Fantastic Fall - The Five Letter Word

Why would grown people, normally sane, run around gathering hanging baskets and plants, taking cuttings of plants, and cutting flowers for one last bouquet?

Because of the looming F word.  It has five letters.

From earlier this fall - we didn't get this one.

Frost.

This is the word that strikes terror into the heart of many gardeners.  It's the end of the growing season (except for some hardy crop exceptions).  It's the end of cut flowers.  It's the end of mild weather, although our mild weather ended several days ago, alas.


There wasn't a frost advisory last night.  Most people around here have gotten their first frost, even their first freeze, by now.  I am positive that, yesterday morning, sleet was mixed in with rain where I work in Binghamton, New York.  And, tonight, we are predicted to get the other word.

The S word.

Snow.

I hate that word.

Why does nature have to wreck a perfectly good fall?

Please tell me that these innocent flowers (not mine, but still) died last night.

Please tell me these leaves won't fall in a few days.

Please don't tell me it will snow tonight.  Or tomorrow. 

Goodbye, fall.

Day 26 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge.