Christmas Dream

I had a dream last night. I dreamt that a local church held a contest for best Christmas display on a house. The pastor said it is how most Christians honor Jesus for Christmas. The usual winner is the house with the most lights and music playing, so one radical Christian got the idea to not add lights to his house, but to make the house itself light up and sing. He got every brick and shingle to glow, and make Christmas music as loud as a subway train. The kids cried, the wife yelled, the neighbors called the cops, but the house owner insisted he had a right to the radical house display based on his First Amendment right to show Jesus how much he loved him.

Resume

David Rubin

200 Murphy Rd

Wilmington, DE 19803

(347)782-6666

daru3@aol.com

Profile

Nearly twenty years of experience from production and maintenance of factory equipment to business solicitor and publicist, getting articles written by industry journals. Received experience and accolades as author and artist. Eager to explore various fields for personal and professional development

Work Experience
Currently working as artist in Wilmington, Delaware area,
Selling my art at local fairs & festivals and online at
 davidsartforsale.blogspot.com

Worked as intern for
Gnome Sculpture Project at the College of Staten Island, July 2017

●       Helped build large wooden gnome sculpture
 on permanent display at College of Staten Island

Fine Art Photos of Staten Island Oct 2012-Mar 2013 

●       Solicited business

●       Developed spreadsheet to record contact responses.

●       Followed up with phone calls to seeming likely prospects.

 Possibili-tees custom Screen Printing of Staten Island 2009 to 2012 

●       Solicited business.

●       Developed spreadsheet to record contact responses.

●       Sought publicity for company by contacting industry publications, which resulted in descriptive articles of our company in two publications: Impressions and Apostrophe magazines

Special Tees Custom Screen printing

●       Cleaning Officer in charge of assuring that tools & screens
 are in good condition and ready for use.

Camp Counselor NY Assoc for Metro-area Autistic Children, Summers of 1991, 1992, 2001 

●       Served as reading counselor for autistic children.
 Convinced Association to use Special Tees as supplier.

Education

College of Staten Island

●        Bachelor of arts, English Literature Major, Jan 1986

●        Associate in Applied Science, Computer Science Major, June 1980

●        Associate in Sciences, Liberal Arts & Science Major, Jan 1980

●        Associate in Arts, Liberal Arts & Science Major, June 1979

Computer Skills

Internet search skills
Basic MS Word

Basic MS Excel

Hobbies
Artist;              

• Sept 2010 Started Amateur Artist Career 
• Established Art blog at daru3-davidart.blogspot.com
• March 2017 Special merit given by Light, Space & Time Art Gallery
• Apr 2013 & Oct 2019 Special Recognition given by Light, Space & Time Art Gallery
• May 4, 2017 Recognized for artistic participation in College of Staten Island               Undergrad Conference on Research, Scholarship & Performance

Author; 

●              Myriad letters to editor published in Staten Island Advance

And NY Daily News

●              Nov 2015 Article on autism published in Polychrome Literary Magazine

Limitations
No driver's licence
Arthritis makes walking & standing difficult 

War For Physical Fitness

I think the drug laws today are ridiculous. Odds are, we're not going to die of a drug overdose. We're most likely to die of smoking, drinking, bad eating habits and lack of exercise. If we want to use the law to make us quit bad habits, we should be arrested if fat, publically drunk or smoking anything.

In jail, we should be forbidden to smoke or drink alcohol. We should be given a salad at every meal with lots of greens. Want dressing on that salad?No, too fatty! Eat it dry. Don't like spinach or cucumber? too bad! Eat it anyway. Then, after every meal, walk a mile on a track.

We should not be released till physicall fit.

This will save a lot more people than any war on marijuanna, cocain or narcotics!

We are not a Christian shop

We are not a Christian shop. We may hire you, but your religion has nothing to do with it.

You will be expected to work with coworkers who may not be Christian, including gays, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, and many others, whom your religion may not agree with.

We do not have Christian policies. Things like holy days will be ignored. You may be expected to work on Christmas, Easter, the Christian Sabath and other holy days, as your coworkers will work their holy days, if needed.

We are not a Christian shop, so, when dealing with the public, you will not show Christian signs or emblems on your person

During your free time, you may proselytize your coworkers, but be expected to be proselytized by Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists, Witches, atheists , and others, other than Jews and gays. As far as we know, Jews and gays do not proselytize.

This is not a Christian shop.

Autism on the Rise

It used to be really rare, then it became as common as one in eighty-eight. People have theorized why it's growing. I have my own theory.

First, let me explain what autism is. Autism, for those of you who don't know, is a form of developmental disability, characterized by an inability to deal with other human beings. It's usually associated with intellectual limitations, but there's a subset of autistics that often have superior intelligence. We are called Aspies, short for Asperger syndrome. We have our limitations, but many of us think it's worth it and value our condition. We object to those of you NT's (neuro-typicals) who want to cure us. I, myself, wear a shirt saying my autism make me smarter than you. We also can be rather obsessive over our particular interests. Nobody sweats the details like us, even if it's just a bus schedule.

 A decade ago Thorkil Sonne, a telecommunications executive living in Ringsted, Denmark, as terrified about what the future might hold for his 7-year-old autistic son, Lars. But rather than give in to despair, the middle-aged father started a company, Specialisterne (ASpecialists@ in Danish), which helps high-functioning adults with autistic-spectrum disorders (ASDs) find employment. Today business is booming. Sonne oversees branches in a fourteen countries, including Germany, England, and Spain, and is funneling workers to such IT giants as SAP. Now he has even moved to Delaware to establish a foothold in America.

We object to those of you NT's (neuro-typicals) who want to cure us. I, myself, wear a shirt saying my autism make me smarter than you. We also can be rather obsessive over our particular interests. My theory? I think it's nature taking its course. It's evolution in action! The latest research says we seem to be caused by two mutations. There are certain companies that have taken advantage of our superior abilities and will only hire those of us with our special mutations,

My theory? I think it's nature taking its course. It's evolution in action! The latest research says we seem to be caused by two mutations. There are certain companies, such as my own, that have taken advantage of our superior abilities and will only hire those of us with our special mutations.

Continuing in this vein, I figure it's just a matter of time before the government tries to register and weaponize us and tries to control us. Resisters will be chased by giant robots and men in black.

I think I read too many comic books. That's my autistic obsession.

Work Autobiography

Despite having autism and the mental health problems that went with that,

I had several minor jobs during college including several stints as a messenger and a couple as a phone interviewer for market research firms, so I thought I’d have no trouble after graduation, but college was a problem. I started with a computer science major, which I thought would get me a great job, but I wasn’t as good at it as I’d have hoped. I kept failing the advanced courses and rescuing my grade point average with English courses, which I loved. Finally, my mother, who was paying for college, laid down the law. “You are an English major. Make it official or forget about graduating”. I was really afraid an English degree would take me nowhere, but I thought it was better than not graduating at all, so I took it, graduating with a bachelors degree in English literature, a minor in math, and a plethora of computer courses.

After graduation, I tried teaching, but found out the hard way, I was terrible with kids. My license was lifted after three years of substitute teaching. I also went back to messengering. I worked for Zoom Messenger Service and found it boring and insulting. As a college grad, I didn't think I belonged in a job that included an ex con, a guy with intellectual limitations, and a migrant who could barely speak English.

I spent several years in several programs for the mentally disabled, getting into a terribly depressed state before finally finding a minor job at the gift shop of the hospital where I was being treated, South Beach Psychiatric Center. It was a ridiculously simple job. I showed up, signed in, and sat on the couch in the hall outside the shop, while the shop did it’s business for three or four hours. When it closed, I did my job of counting sales and profits, and entering them into a notebook, which took me five minutes of the hours I was hired for.

About then, a man came to South beach, looking for a crew for a new screen printing shop that was opening and would only hire mentally disabled people.  The director of this shop, Thomas siniscalchi, had a revolutionary idea. This shop, which we would call Special Tees, would hire the mentally disabled, but it would not be a shop for the mentally disabled. It would not be a sheltered workshop. There would be no piece work and the only training we would get would be on the job. It would be a real job, with real job responsibilities (be on time, clean, ready to work, no smoking till break time, etc) and we would get a real wage of $7.25 an hour. No pay by the piece here. We still would be accommodated for our various mental conditions. As a rule, we would be given time off for psychiatric visits and care each week.

“You mean I would get a job because I’m mentally disabled?”  I loved it and was happy to share my butterscotch candy with my new boss, which I’m sure helped me get the job.

Tom was as new to the trade as any of us, so, in that first year, we spoiled as much of our product as we made. We also got quite filthy with the plastisol ink we printed shirts with, so, for a while, Tom would occasionally declare that our shirts were too filthy to wear, take out a pair of scissors and cut the shirts off us as we wore them. Then we would get new shirts from the spoiled pile. This practice was ended when he started to cut off a girl’s shirt, when she screamed and ran into the bathroom. She had nothing on under that shirt!

Our first shop was all one room, so, when we had to develop a screen, which is a photographic process, we had to completely close down the shop and close and lock the outer gate, which was the only way to get the shop dark enough to develop the screens. Our future shop would have a separate developing room.

My position at Special Tees varied over the years. I started out as the shirt designer, but I got too anxious about it, not having the artistic or design experience to know what I was doing, so I was put in the production line. This bored me to tears, and I kept crying, "Why is a guy, who managed to get a degree despite serious mental disabilities, left to do such menial labor?". Toward the end of my time there, my arthritis got so bad that I couldn't stand anymore. I had to sit and clean tools alongside a guy with an intellectual disability who wished he was smart like me. I reminded him that despite my wonderful intellect, I was still sitting next to him, doing the same job. I hope it made him feel better because I felt miserable!

By September 2008, I went into the hospital for some elective surgery and couldn't bare to go back and started to look elsewhere. By this time, my former boss, Tom Siniscalchi, had become disgusted with Community Resources, the company that owned Special Tees, so he had started a new place with a similar mission, for developmentally disabled and autistic people, like myself, which he called PossibiliTees. I spoke with Tom and he assured me that I would never have to touch a plastisol covered squeegee ever again. Instead, he put me at the computer, where I found and listed customer leads. I also did some publicity work, getting us written up in several magazines devoted to autism and to the textile industry. As usual, Tom made the business lots of fun. He’s a pro wrestling fan, so during down times, he had informal wrestling with some of the other men there. Unfortunately, this ideality couldn’t last. The mission of the Immaculate Virgin, which owned Possibilitees, wasn’t satisfied with our production and sales numbers, so they closed it last December.

I shortly found work as an intern at Fine Art Fotos photo studio.  My boss, Flint, hired me almost immediately because I had impressed him with my computer skills, and this time, I didn’t even have to offer him any butterscotch candy. I laughed at my wages. When I was in Special Tees, I earned $286 a week. At Possibilitees, I only worked ten hours a week, so never earned more than $72.50 a week. Now I was a fifty six year old intern and my compensation was $10 a day, just enough for travel and lunch. It seemed as I got older and more skilled, the less I made.

Since I am in my fifties and most of the people there were other interns in their twenties or teens, I was the old man there. I loved listening to the guys as they discussed their young culture and I enjoyed telling about the history I had lived through. I was especially overjoyed that this was the first for profit business I had ever worked for, Flint and the guys knew little about autism or chronic depression and didn’t care that I had this. This was something I had always been told was impossible. I had even made a sales ad and been told to write sales scripts and make sales calls myself, something I thought was impossible for autistics like me.

As I said, what work I could do was quite rewarding, but I couldn’t do much. Because of the land lords stinginess, I couldn’t get a dependable internet connection at work. I could barely get an hour’s work done in my five hour day, so Flint sent me home to work on my home computer, but that, for me, defeated the purpose of having a job. I was there for the company of the guys, so, by March, I decided to leave.

After some help from my psychologist, I got back into Sky Light Center, a clubhouse for people with psychiatric problems which I joined twenty years earlier.  work biography sent to Outsider Press, 235 Arbor Dr NE, Rockford, Michigan 49341, or outsiderpress@gmail.com

Psychodelic Music

Does anybody remember that stuff? I was just listening to my ipod, on which I have Time Has Come Today, by the Chambers Brothers and trying to imagine a video for that, but couldn't, it's so strange. Speaking of strange, anybody remember People Are Strange, by the Doors? I have that too. And Incense & Peppermint, by Strawberry Alarm Clock. I also have the best of The Moody Blues.

What do you young people, born in the eighties and nineties, think of that stuff? Do you think we're all a bunch of drug addled old coots?