Cultural Appropriation

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

I've heard it asked, what is cultural appropriation? Greg Gutfeld, on The Five, on the Fox News Network, once asked if taking something from someone else's culture shouldn't be taken as a compliment?

Well it might be if one doesn't acknowledge where it comes from, or worse, makes fun of the cultural source. That's why black face is forbidden.

One form of cultural appropriation that I thought of that happily hasn't happened yet, at least so far, is the appropriation of yarmulkes. Yarmulkes are Jewish skull caps, worn on the top back of one's head to show reverence to God, usually in a temple, though Orthodox Jews wear some form of them all the time. This artifact is very holy to Jews and my cultural appropriation fear is that one day, some American stylist will desecrate it by making a fancy one by putting a cross and an American flag on it and call it an "American Yarmulke".

Another form of cultural appropriation would be the constant attempts to turn Christian culture into American Culture, insisting that America is a "Christian country". I'm sorry, but as a non-Christian American, I disagree. Still, Christmas is legally an American holiday and more than one person has insisted that I should celebrate it.

That's why we have a First Amendment that forbids Christian prayers in our public schools, the Decalogue on public buildings, and many other forms of Christian appropriation.

One form of Christian appropriation the surprised and really angers me is that Cross in a public park, part of an honor for World War One veterans, which the Supreme Court allowed!

Even before and the Nazis invaded and after they left, the very Christian Catholic country of Poland was not too happy with its Jewish population. That's why many Jews, like my grandfather, left and came to America, where he was free to be a Jew or any religion he wanted. When WW! came, he served and is "honored" by this memorial with the cross on it, which is like putting a Polish flag on his headstone!

The Right To Life Question

RIGHT TO LIFE?

Right to life is one of those modern questions of good versus good. Sure, I want to save a life, but can I go into somebody else’s body to do it?

Let’s say you can. That goes beyond forcing a woman to bare a child for nine months.

About now, and a lot of other times, the local authorities beg people to donate blood. Why beg? If this is to save lives, it should be mandatory, at least once a year. As I once said in a letter to Anne Landers, it’s easy. Just answer a few questions, give a drop to sample, roll up your sleeve as the technician sticks a needle in your arm, then play couch potato and lay on a comfy couch and watch a movie or the ball game for an hour.

I should know. At one time in my life, I didn’t know what else I could give to justify my existence, so I gave enough blood to become a member of the New York/New Jersey Red Cross Five Gallon Club.

Then there’s the freshly dead. They can offer so much to the living, just by giving body parts they obviously don’t need anymore, but under the law today, medical authorities have to beg you to sign a donor card while you’re alive or beg your newly grieving family afterward and hope they care more about the living than your dead body.

Again, why should authorities have to ask? Shouldn’t anybody needing a heart or liver to survive count for more than the wholeness of your dead body?!?!

Finally, it is possible to donate certain body parts while living like a kidney or a lobe of your liver. Shouldn’t we mandate this at least once in your life? Of course, it wouldn’t be easy, but if we can mandate that a woman bear her child for nine months, we should be able to mandate that you lie senseless on an operating table for an hour of your life.

Why Haven't I Killed Myself?

A few months ago, I wrote this to my psychiatrist, Dr. Lauer, and to my then psychotherapist, Dr. Holden. I don't remember their response, but I'll pass it on as soon as I ask them again.

Dear Dr Lauer,

This is for you too, but please pass this on to Dr Holden. When will he be listed here so I don't need you as a go between? It's amazing the things you think of at 5:30 AM. I'm up this early because of back pain caused by falling off my kitchen stool and an ongoing invasion of fruit flies. For the pain, I'm taking 400 mg of Advil PM or Ibuprofen every six to twelve hours. For the fruit flies, I just cleaned my place some more and I'll have an exterminator Friday.  Being this time of night, I had one of those thoughts like, my life has been so terrible, why haven't I drowned myself in booze, pills or some other form of self-medicating? The problem, as I see it, is that I still have hope, but is that hope really rational? As I look back at my life, I graduated high school in 1975, and then it took me TEN YEARS to get a degree in ENGLISH LITERATURE!!!!I I then spent the next thirty years trying to start a career that never really happened, despite some occasional fits and starts.

One of the best things that happened to me in this time was that, in 1994, I had a nervous collapse consisting of a massive case of chronic depression, which eventually got me into something called the Skylight Center, a club house for people with mental disabilities, which got me into Special Tees, which worked, for a while.  Also, I got a great new psychotherapist, Ms. Christine Murphy, who diagnosed me as autistic. I had a great time with her for about twenty- five years. What a shame she couldn't last. I'm now sixty- two. I'm still looking to start a career when most people my age are looking to retire. I'm still as financially dependent on my mother as any child, even now, six years after her passing. So, is my hope completely irrational? Wouldn't be more sensible to dive into a bottle of booze or pills and somehow kill myself?

National Health

        I was watching Bill Maher a couple of days ago. He was talking about what we should do about health coverage. The Dems want Medicaid for all, like Europe. Should we?

        He then went into a tirade about how the whole question could be moot if we would just watch what we put into our mouths better. He came out with a picture of people watching the launch of Apollo 11, fifty years ago. Look how slim they all looked! He showed us an old picture of the circus Fat Man. “Now he’s just fat!”

True! At 250 pounds, I could have been that circus Fat Man!

And do you remember New Jersey Governor Chris Christie before his weight loss surgery? Even I was astounded!  Although he was good natured enough to have joined into the jokes, he could have been that circus Fat Man easily! 

It’s not only eating that gets to me. Smoking drives me crazy. While we’re so concerned about drug abuse and spend so much money on drug abuse and treatment, do we ever think to count tobacco as a form of drug abuse? If a person were to go into a drug abuse treatment center, could he get treatment for smoking tobacco? Yet it’s one of the world’s most popular and most addictive forms of drug abuse, perhaps more so than alcohol!

Unfortunately, it doesn’t get the headlines because it’s not as dramatic. Nobody falls over and dies from a tobacco overdose and few people steal or commit crimes for tobacco money, but, while you may have one member of your family who died from narcotics or some other drug, I bet half your family died twenty years earlier than they had to because of complications of tobacco use. Perhaps you will.

I go into a drug store, a shop designed to make you healthier, and right next to the smoking cessation products are the cigarettes! It makes me think of a cartoon I saw.

A man buys a cup of lemonade from a kid’s lemonade stand with a sign that reads, “Lemonade, 5¢”. He then crawls a block to another child’s stand with the sign, “Lemonade antidote, $1000”.

Point being, we could greatly reduce medical costs if we just did four thinks.

Quit smoking, tobacco, pot, or anything besides plain old fresh air.

Watch what you put in your mouth and try to lose weight, if you need to.

Watch what you drink, and join AA, if you must.

Get a bit more exercise, which can be as simple as walking an extra few blocks, or even feet, and, maybe, buy a bike and use it occasionally. My bike has been sitting in the closet for a while. I think I’ll use it to get over to Five Guys for lunch. Just kidding

The End Of Mad Magazine

One thing I'm going to miss is Mad Magazine. Perhaps you've heard, While Mad will officially continue publication, they won't be publishing anything new except once or twice a year on holidays and special occasions, like Life Magazine and a few others.

        One of my favorites is Mad's Chinese Menu: chinese menu parody | I like to make copies of this menu and when I go into shops that have other merchant's pamphlets, I add one of these.

As a stamp collector, I also loved their stamp collecting parody book, Mad's Talking Stamps. Check out these out takes: Mad's Talking Stamps | Stamp Bears. I would love to make my own version of that book!

Unfortunately, I just knew it had to die when it was adopted by DC Comics, the same company that makes Batman & Superman and started to accept ads. How could it possibly continue to parody corporate America when it was accepting ads from them? It certainly wouldn't, quite literally, give us the middle finger (again), any more than Archie Bunker, in that reproduction of that All In The Family episode, would say the word, nigger, out loud, as Archie originally did.  

Pre-Feminism TV

             I remember a song from the sixties, "The Everyday Housewife, Who Gave Up the Good Life, For Me". 

            Nice sentiment, but how many women would demand that the husband, as a condition of marriage, give up his job and any kind of financial independence and become totally financially dependent on her for the rest of his life, no matter how important he thought his job was or how he enjoyed his job?

            I’ve seen too many shows starring Lucy Ball that was all about some plot of her trying to get money out of Ricky, played by Desi Arnez, or later Mr. Mooney, played by Gale Gordon.       

           There was always Ricky’s reframe, “Lucy, you’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do!”

Ricky never had to ‘splain’ anything to Lucy. Husbands of the time never did. They were the “heads” of the household. Even in their production company name, Desilu, his name comes first, though she starred and brought in the money and he soon resigned.

I recently saw one episode of I Love Lucy, where she and Ethel tried to start a business based on her great cooking. It would be cooking. Women and wives were supposed to be great cooks. She failed, of course. She was supposed to fail. She was required to fail. Wives were not supposed to be good in business. They were supposed to be housewives.

I don’t blame Lucy Ball and her producers for making shows like that. She was a woman of her time, but I am a man of mine and I don’t care to watch such things anymore.

"Irrational Hope?" or "Why Haven't I Killed Myself a Long Time Ago?"

It's amazing the things you think of at 5:30 AM. I'm up this early because of back pain and an ongoing invasion of fruit flies. For the pain, I'm taking 400 mg of Advil PM or Ibuprofen every six to twelve hours. For the fruit flies, I just cleaned my place some more and I'll have an exterminator Friday.

Being this time of night, I had one of those thoughts like, my life has been so terrible, why haven't I drowned myself in booze, pills or some other self medication? The problem, as I see it, is that I still have hope, but is that hope really rational?

As I look back at my life, I graduated high school in 1975, and then it took me TEN YEARS to get a degree in ENGLISH LITERATURE!!!!

I then spent the next thirty years trying to start a career that never really happened, despite some occasional fits and starts.

One of the best things that happened to me in this time was that, in 1994, I had a nervous break down consisting of a massive case of chronic depression, which eventually got me into something called the Skylight Center, a club house for people with mental disabilities, which got me into Special Tees, which worked, for a while.

 Also, I got a great new psychotherapist, Ms Christine Murphy, who diagnosed me as autistic. I had a great time with her for about twenty five years. What a shame she couldn't last.

I'm now sixty two. I'm still looking to start a career when most people my age are looking to retire. I'm still as financially dependent on my mother as any child, even now, six years after her passing.

So, is my hope completely irrational? Wouldn't be more sensible to dive into a bottle of booze or pills and somehow kill myself?

Living alone

You know you’re living alone when…

You can turn the thermostat as hot or cold as you want, but you have to pay for it.

You don't need a cup or glass. You can drink right out of the bottle or milk carton! Who else will be using it?

You can walk around the house naked, if you want, but you have to hope no one shows up.

You can go to the bathroom with the door wide open and only your dogs will look at you.

You don't the have to share your food, or anything else with anybody!

If you forget your keys, there’s no one to let you in.

Unless someone shows up, you’re the only one who has to look at you’re mess.

Unless you hire someone, you’re the only one to clean up your mess.

Box Removal

BOX REMOVAL

My brother, Larry, had trouble removing a chandelier in a Styrofoam box from its cardboard box. It reminded me of all the things that are so hard to get out of the box. It can be so hard to remove things from the hard-plastic boxes they come in that you really need scissors, but what if what you’re removing from the box is scissors? 

Stigmata

                                                                                             Word count: 1331

STIGMATA

It started simply. In a Delaware public school, the principal walked into the lunch room and told the students that no one would eat before prayers, and called a student to the podium. The student began, "In the name of Jesus..."

 Yusef, the Jewish child raised his hand.
"That’s not the barakah we use at home. We don’t pray to Jesus.
The principal replied, "That’s what you do at home. Your public school is in America, a Christian nation, so you do it our way or you can go to the side room there and do it your way"
         Yusef got up and went to that back room, He found a small room, probably used as a closet before now pretty much empty, with nothing in the room but a cross pasted up. He realized he couldn’t do the prayer for his lunch. He didn’t have any.

He had a bad habit. Whenever he got especially nervous or upset, he started to scratch, even though there were times that he scratched himself raw and got infections. He scratched his head now, prayed in Hebrew, then went back to his seat, next to his classmates.
         His friend, Chuck, asked him why he couldn't pray like everybody else.

        "You know I'm Jewish", he said. We don't pray to Jesus

"Then who do you pray to?"
Before he could answer, another classmate said, “Jews don’t pray to anybody. They’re atheists, like Marx and Lenin”

“We do pray God. We just don't pray to Jesus"

                                   “My priest says that the only way to the father is through the son,

So, if you don’t believe in Jesus, you don't believe in God"
             "So does my pastor!" another boy said
              "My rabbi says that only God is God and all this Trinity stuff is a way of worshiping a false god"
               "Are you saying Jesus is a false god?”                                                           

 Then it started. He hoped he imagined the words, Jew boy. As he sat, he felt the redness where he scratched and resisted the urge to scratch some more.
               At three, he came home, kissed the mezuzah and his mother.
               "How was school?" his mother asked                                                                                     
            "We prayed today, at lunch. Isn’t that illegal in a modern public school? Doesn’t that defy separation of church and state?"
             "Some atheists made it that way. We all know that the Constitution permits freedom of religion and all this talk of separation of church and state can’t stop it. You’ll be happy to know I and your father are working on that. We already got the principal to agree to it, so think of us, as you pray at lunch."
            "But it didn’t feel right, Mom. I tried to do the prayer the way the rabbi taught me to, but I only ended up scratching."
            "We warned you about scratching like that. Remember when scratched so much your skin got so red and infected we had to take you to the hospital?"
           "Yeah, Mom. But it’s hard to be the praying Jew."
          "Your classmates know you’re a pious Jew. Now as the prayers make them more pious, you’ll have an easier time"
           "Yes, Mom"

           The next day, he heard the whispers he hoped weren’t and tried not to look around as he walked.

"HEY, JEW BOY!"

             He heard it loud and clear, this time, as it was yelled into his right ear. He looked right, and someone pulled on his left peyos, the long sideburns orthodox Jews keep. "OWW!" he shouted, and felt his head pulled to the left, as someone on his right pulled off his yarmulke. He never saw it again.
           In class, he started scratching his head, but pulled his hands down and started to scratch his palms and wrists, stopping when he noticed they were getting red.

At lunch he sat for a moment when he heard the principal call for the prayer.
"But you, Yusef, may go to your room"
           He heard the other students laugh as he went to his little closet. The cross was gone. Its place was the word, "Jewish place", written with thick marker, and a bible on a table. "Christian
Bible, of course", he thought. "Well, this time, I have my kosher sandwich and soda"
           He went into his backpack to find his can of Coke was gone, with a container of milk in its place. He found his kosher salami sandwich, but a milk left the meal not kosher. He left the room and went back to the teacher in charge of the Lunch Room, Ms. Smith.

            “Ms. Smith, what happened to my soda? Somebody removed my Coke and gave me milk.”

            “I did that. You kids get enough soda. Milk is much more nourishing.”

            “But Ms. Smith, I’m eating a meat sandwich, and mixing milk with meat is against Jewish law.”

            “You’re against the law!”, a student yelled.

            “Mind your business, Jack”, Ms. Smith replied.

“But Ms. Smith, Jews like Yusef think Jesus is a false god”

            “I’m sure that’s not true. This is America. Everybody worships Jesus, including Jews. Isn’t that right, Yusef?”

            “Actually, we do think Jesus is a false god.”

            Ms. Smith gave Yusef a sour look, then said to him, “We don’t need your wise ass heresy. You go to detention until you’re ready to apologize to our Lord and Savior.”

           On his way out of the Lunch Room, he heard some students.

"How was your meal?", someone yelled. Several students laughed.
             He never left detention that day. He cried to himself and didn’t even try to stop himself from scratching.
             The next day, he came in, staying close to the wall, holding his backpack close to

his chest. Someone tried to grab his peyos, but he had taped them down. He kept his yarmulke in his backpack until he got to class.
           "Today will be different", he thought.
           Lunch came and he was surprised to see his mother there.

 "Since I helped establish the prayers, I have the privilege of watching you lead the lunch prayer", she said.                                                                                  

              Lunch time came, and he stood in front of the room, with his mother on one side of him and the principal on the other. He had a full, freshly baked loaf, a real knife and real bottle of wine in front of him. He opened to the correct page of what this time was a Jewish prayer book, when a note fell out. He picked it up and it was a computer printed page full of nothing but the

word Jew boy, repeated over and over.
            He started to cry and scratched himself all over, especially his head, his hands, his feet, and even his side. All those spots began to bleed, so the teachers picked him up and took him out.

"Wilmington or St Francis hospital?" the secretary asked the principal.

"Delaware Psychiatric, and call his psychiatrist. He's had a nervous breakdown."
            I'm calling a lawyer, and you can bet the press is going to hear about this!" his mother yelled.
            Next week, he returns with his mother, his father, his principal and a cop, to pick up his things, for the last time.
           They pass through a crowd of students.
           "Not a word", the principal says, but a few grow close, with tears in their eyes.
           "I’m so sorry we did this to you" one says

         "Where can I get a yarmulke?"
        "How do I grow peyos?"
        "Can I join your shul?"
        The principal says, "I can understand your apologies, but why do so many of you want to convert? Isn’t that a bit much?"
        A student pulls out a newspaper. The headline says, "SCHOOL HAS NEW SAINT, JEWISH BOY HAS STIGMATA"

END OF STORY

Pet Peeves

PET PEEVES

Cab drivers who have to leave their windows open just a crack, so you, in the back seat, get all the weather, despite the fact that he insists he has his heat or a/c on. Sure they're on for him, but you're getting the weather.

Your mother has her own dialect and if you don't understand her, it's your fault.

Print Festival Report Critique

Critique of my report,

 by my Print Making class professor Aragon

Great description of the pieces; your narrative of the essay has a natural flow but there are times when it felt a bit dry. Mainly because there were some sentences that need to be connected rather that have them on their own. When you create short sentences you define a style that mimics a more factual element of the piece; in your case, while you are using facts, I think it would’ve helped the tone of voice of the paper to be less formal so that the reader can “immerse” into the description of the events or the artworks. It seems to me you really enjoyed the Print Fair and had quite the time discovering new artists and their work. I hope this has translated into your own ideas for future pieces and makes you push yourself into creating more complicated imagery.

Keep up the good work

Met Art Museum Report

Met Art Museum Report

November 20, 2016

Rewritten December 2, 2016

These are Claude Monet’s pieces, Four Trees and Manneporte (Etretat). The Manneport surprises me because there are a lot more details than you expect from the father of Impressionism. Still, there’s a lot of shadow and motion, from the curve of the rock and the movement of the water, which you expect from Impressionism. It had a lot more detail than the Four Trees. Manneport has a lot of feeling, such as my Mask piece. My Mask piece gives you a feeling of horror. Manneport gives you a feeling of loneliness, like a leaving. I liked the fact thatthe inside of the arch in Manneport was very bright on the yellow/orange side, which contrasted with the dark blue water and light blue sky. Four Trees has very little contrast. Just a bit of yellow sky. There was also a lot of hard edges in the arch, unlike Four Trees, which has very few hard edges. It helped Manneport in that it was very close, allowing for a lot of the detail that made it so good. Four Trees is more distant and has less detail and, being an Impressionist piece, suggests a lot, like my Doll House.

I also saw Vincent Van Gogh’s Wheat Field With Cypresses. I was impressed with the way he used color, mostly blue skies and very green plants, contrasted with the very yellow wheat field. His contrasts and composition were effective like Manneport, though it was much more distant, like Four Trees.  He used a lot of bright color, the way I did with my Fruit On The Table piece, but he was a lot more organized with his complimentary colors and composition. Van Gogh's yellow in Wheat Field contrasted the blue and the green the way the yellow/orange contrasted against the blue in Manneport. Even the blue and green were interesting in the way they were separated, though they're not contrasting colors, they were contrasted in their shape. the green plants have a lot of short lines, while the sky has a lot of broad, blue space. Another point of contrast in Wheat Fields is that it is mostly vertical, except for the tree on the right going upward, not centered, giving us a surprise. Four Trees has four, evenly space trees that don't contrast with the rest of the picture.

Finally, there was Siesta, by Paul Gauguin. Frankly, I wasn’t impressed. It was a very peaceful piece, no where near as erotic as we’ve come to expect from him. I saw little else that impressed me. There was bright and dark colors in some of the shirts, which contrasted with the green glass, but it wasn't as impressive as Monet's and Van Gogh's color, contrast and composition. No really hard or soft edges. No emphasis on any space. It's just a painting of a family photo.

Print Festival Report

Print Festival Report
by David Rubin

Today I went to see Print Festival, at the International Print Center, at 524 W 26 St, Manhattan. It was an exhibit of print art by students.
There was so many good-looking prints, I didn’t know where to look first. I was also surprised at how simple some of the work was. Some of it was as simple as making a print of pressed dandelions and it looked great.
My favorite artist is Lizzy Itzkowitz, a cartoon art student at the School of Visual Arts. She’s been working at it for seven years, studying the Adobe Creative Suite. She’s worked on a variety of media, including gouache, acrylic, paper collage and digital. She does a lot of print pictures, as well as cartoon booklets. You can see her work at https://www.behance.net/lizzyitz
She screen printed a lot of designs and I love all the color, especially the cat. The

cat has three colors, neon pink, neon yellow and neon blue. All those blotches of neon curvy color make it seem quite happy, especially the large orange on yellow on his belly, which strikes me as much of a greeting as the raised left arm.
She also screen printed Cactus Terrarium, 11"X17", neon pink, neon yellow, neon blue and navy blue, and Coral Reef, same size and colors, done on a transparency, below. Like the cat, they are both beautiful because of all the bright, neon colors.
I like the looks of Coral Reef. There seems to be a lot of movement in that sky blue background.
As for Cactus Terrarium, as good as it looks, it looks out place without any background. I’d have printed  it as being on a table, or something. It is on a transparency. Perhaps the background is whatever she puts it on. If it were me, I’d have painted a table and put the transparency on it, a multimedia.
Another piece I liked, to the right, is Monday’s 2016, by Kathleen Johnson. It’s a 28" X 29" woodcut. Clearly this belongs on the cover of Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine. It’s nothing but black lines on a white sheet. Allthose lines give it a lot of horrific detail, especially the thin lines on his face and nose. All that horror is emphasized by the thin black rays around it.

Autistic College Experience

I’m an 59 year old autistic person and, most of my life, had little ability to gain or hold down a job, even with the English degree I got from this institution,  so what did I do when my mother died and I came into some money? I came back to this institution!
Over the past few years, I’ve gotten to be something of an amateur artist. You can see my art blog at www.daru3-davidart.blogspot.com , so an art major was a natural. Also, the first time I was at CSI, I majored in computer science, but did poorly in the advanced classes before switching to an English major, so I’m trying a computer major again now.
I started the summer of 2015, with Intro to Computer Programming and, despite some problems with the last lessons, I got a B, so I went ahead with Fall classes. I registered for Intermediate Computer Programming, but couldn’t understand the teacher. She had a rather thick Russian accent, or at least I thought so. My class mates understood, but, being autistic, I need a certain amount of precision, so, to me, this Russian woman sounded like she had big plans for moose & squirrel.  I dropped her in favor of Intro to Portraits, which immediately followed Intro to Drawing, giving me eight consecutive hours of drawing models, nude and dressed. It was too much consecutive time. I missed much and only got B’s.
I also got a B for Intro to Painting class. It was hard in that, though I am an artist, my teacher, Geoffrey Dorfman, had to tell me to slow down and concentrate on my details, even while telling me to get done in the few weeks we have.
In the spring, I took Intermediate Programming for a second time and again, had to drop it, for want of an understandable teacher.
I also took Art 100 and had Mieke Paulsen, a wonderful lecturer. I loved listening to her. Just one thing. She just talked, wrote little or nothing on the board, so I wrote little or nothing, leaving me with no notes. I was so sorry to drop her course.
This left me with one course, Intro to Sculpture, which was a truly fun class, an easy A.
This year, I’m taking Intermediate Painting and, for a third time, Intermediate Computer Programming. I tried taking Intermediate Drawing, but my teacher, Professor Pels, couldn’t even handle normal students. She had no idea how to handle an autistic student and wouldn’t learn how. With the Art Chairman’s help, I switched to printing.

what do I do that I think is "worth it"

My buddy, Richard Parsons. He comes here a couple of times a week and we order a movie on demand, or go out to a movie, or go to Barnes & Noble and buy books, DVD's, cake and coffee. It can get expensive,  but it's worth it.

Have you ever spoken when you saw something wrong? Scared?

I was outside of the ferry terminal when I came upon a woman , laying on the ground, screaming for her life, because her man was harrassing her. I got between them and asked people to call the cops. I tried to help her into the terminal, where the police were, but the guy's buddies drove us back to the corner where her man was. Finally, police did arrive and I thought that was the end of it, and went into the ferry terminal. The man found me there and started threatening me, but did nothing, then walked away.

I might also add the time I was reading in Time magazine about clinics that claimed they could cure homosexuals. I responded by asking if they could cure Judaism and left handedness. It was published and I later got a call from a gay guy thanking me.

The Strict Parent

I'm one of those adults who sometimes gets amazed at the wealth of children, with computers, smart phones, etc. I have no children, but I sometimes imagine, what if I were one of those strict, cheap parents? My kids wouldn't have computers, phones, or even TV's. I'd give them a pencil and paper to draw on, a notebook to write in, and yesterday's newspaper to read. Decades ago, most children didn't have much more and were lucky to have that.

Legal Drug Abuse

Legal Drug Abuse

I've been reading about the advance of heroin in middle class communities. Everybody is in an uproar. Everybody is so offended by drug abuse in our community. Personally, I don't give a damn!

Look around you. How many people do you know who might possibly die of illicit drugs? How many in your family? One? Two? You? Now, how many will die from diseases related to smoking, drinking, over eating, and/or lack of exercise? My bet is everybody else, including you.

If I came to school and smoked a joint, there'd be serious consequences. Not so if I simply bought and ate a doughnut. But I'm a diabetic. That doughnut is a lot more dangerous than any joint,

What if every student who registered had to be tested for obesity and diabetes. Those people with those problems simply could not be served certain foods at our food counters and had to sign up for gym classes every semester. It may be a bit draconian, but consider the punishment for a joint.

David Rubin

Autistic Students

    By David Rubin & Kenny Velez

     High functioning autistic people may be developmentally disabled, but we have normal intelligence and can even go to college, like Kenny and myself. What we lack are basic interpersonal skills. For example, neither one of us have any idea of how to get romantic. I, David, am 59 and have yet to have my first date. Kenny hopes not to go that long.
      Because we are not very social, Kenny tends to be very quiet. He doesn't get involved in conversations with more than two people. That could be a problem, or maybe your just too loud. I go to the opposite extreme and try to be the center of attention, and I am very loud. We also stop paying attention to conversations that bore us, like relationships and dating.
     There are also people like me, David, that "stim". that means, when I get very upset, I tend to make growling noises, scratch my head hard and chew on my fingers, My boss used to call me "scratchy" and my index fingers are extremely calloused. Kenny says, when he really gets angry, he'd like to punch someone or the wall, but he doesn't and I think this is normal.
      We both have problems keeping up with notes. It's an attention problem. We have problems splitting it between the teacher and our note books.
       Because of attention problems, Kenny has trouble taking tests in noisy class rooms. Fortunately, the college has set aside special class rooms for just such a reason.
        We also worry about being late. We spend too much time on something that has our attention and completely forget about time.
        I have trouble with my art classes. I tend to concentrate on one part of a body and it goes completely out of proportion with other parts of the body.
       We have organization problems. We both tend to procrastinate. Kenny didn't get his financial aid work done until the last minute and doesn't get his class work done till the last minute. Me too.
       I'm also very impatient and impulsive. My impulsiveness takes the form of an insatiable appetite. I'm morbidly obese and diabetic. Even my art teacher tells me I try to get pieces done too fast and encourages me to take my time.