More articles!
Aug. 10th, 2010 10:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
My brother-in-law painted this mural. You have GOT to read why it's gone. (Apparently that's also what happened to the awesome mural that used to be across the street, too. Ugh.)
On bedbugs. I have to say, bedbugs fascinate me. I mean, I loathe them (it seems we're not a rid of them as I'd thought this winter... damn it), but I have a deep admiration for anything you can't kill off. They'll even outlast humans, if only for 18 months! As a species, they're like this tree I saw with my nieces. It'd been chopped down, and then dragged up by the roots, and still there were new green shoots coming out of it, reaching for the light. Except that trees don't bite you, of course. And they make air, so on the whole I like that tree more. But the POINT is that bedbugs are survivors. You can hate them for it, but it's better to hate them because they're parasites and respect the fact that they're better at living than you are at killing them. Less madness in that.
This Bedbug’s Life
By MAY BERENBAUM
Urbana, Ill.
I had been a professor of entomology for 15 years before I saw my first live bedbug. It crawled out of a plastic film canister that had been mailed to me by a distraught student in the Boston area who had no idea what it was. I was so thrilled to see a live bedbug, I showed it off to every graduate student I ran into that day: Cimex lectularius — a small, flat, wingless, brown ectoparasite that hides in cracks and crevices in human dwellings and emerges under cover of darkness to feast on human blood.
That was in 1995, and none of my students had laid eyes on Cimex lectularius either. A century ago, bedbugs were ubiquitous in New York — so much so that their presence in an apartment wasn’t considered sufficient legal cause for withholding rent. Bedbugs, one judge remarked in an early 20th century lawsuit against a landlord, “can be dealt with by the tenant by processes known to all housewives.” But with the midcentury advent of synthetic organic insecticides, these insects all but vanished from urban landscapes (and pretty much every other kind of landscape) in North America.
My Bostonian bug turned out to be one of many on the forefront of an unprecedented resurgence. Global travelers now bring in a steady supply from around the world, inconspicuously undeclared in checked bags and carry-on luggage. Today, bedbugs have been found in all 50 states, as well as Guam, Puerto Rico and American Samoa, and bedbug-related calls to pest control operators are escalating at a fantastic rate. From June 2009 to June 2010, there were more than 31,000 calls in New York City alone.
Now, bedbug-related lawsuits can lead to thousands of dollars in punitive damages for mental anguish, embarrassment or humiliation.
Everywhere New Yorkers go — theaters, stores, offices, schools, trains, ships, hospitals — bedbugs go, too, hidden in folds of clothing, bags, backpacks and purses. Getting rid of them has become more than any housewife could ever be expected to handle. Even professional pest control operators are struggling to keep up, because bedbugs have become, for the most part, resistant to the old pesticides that once were so effective, and relatively few viable chemical alternatives exist.
We reserve a special kind of enmity for bedbugs because, though humans generally do not like being anywhere other than at the pinnacle of a food chain, there is a particular horror associated with being consumed while relatively helpless, asleep in what should be the security of one’s own bed (or chair or couch). With bedbugs, it’s personal — unlike cockroaches, ants, silverfish and other vermin that are attracted to our possessions, bedbugs are after us. And they’re remarkably adept at circumventing our defenses: They not only attack while we sleep, but they also inject anesthetics, so as not to awaken us, and anticoagulants, so that in every 10-minute feeding they can suck in two to three times their weight in clot-free blood.
Bedbugs win neither praise for their sophisticated technique, nor very much respect for the fact that they don’t carry diseases, as most bloodsucking human ectoparasites do. Although their bites can cause unrelieved itchiness, bedbugs take only blood and leave no pathogens behind. In contrast, lice spread typhus; mosquitoes carry the viruses that cause yellow fever, dengue, encephalitis and West Nile disease; ticks transmit the Lyme disease bacterium; and fleas can bring the bacterium that causes plague.
But lack of involvement in spreading disease is hardly an endearing attribute. In fact, precious few aspects of bedbug biology are endearing. They don’t build their own houses or care for their young, and their sexual practices are bizarre even by insect standards: Because the female bedbug has no genital opening, the male inseminates her by using his hardened, sharpened genitalia to punch a hole through her abdomen. With no elaborate courtship ritual, males in a frenzied pursuit of sexual congress often blunder into and puncture the bodies of other males, occasionally inflicting fatal wounds.
To top it off, almost every aspect of bedbug behavior is mediated by airborne odorants, almost all of which are, when detected, repulsive to humans.
What, if anything, is there to like about a bedbug? They certainly like us; we probably have no greater admirers in the insect world. They like the way we live, unlike most vertebrates, in permanent homes. (Bats and birds, which also build homes, are hosts to several of the bedbug’s close relatives.) Bedbugs do not discriminate among humans on the basis of race, creed or socioeconomic status, and they’re happy with almost any interior decorating style; they are as happy in a French provincial nook as they are in a contemporary cranny. The bugs’ climate preferences are essentially an exact match to our own, and a small wingless creature couldn’t ask for a better traveling companion — airlines have opened a world of possibilities for a species that can’t get very far on its own six legs.
Perhaps the one good thing about bedbugs is that they provide a rare point of agreement that transcends race, religion, culture, nationality, tax bracket and party. It may be one of the few remaining universal truths — urban or rural, red state or blue, everyone agrees it would be great if bedbugs would disappear once more.
On the difficulty of summing up a generation with a few pithy catchphrases
A Snapshot of a Generation May Come Out Blurry
By BENEDICT CAREY
Trying to pin down the character of a generation is a controversial and, some say, presumptuous exercise. Who’s to say whether 50 million Americans should be called the Me Generation, or the Greatest? Who’s to decide exactly when Gen X ends and Gen Y begins?
Never let it be said that psychological researchers duck a challenge. In recent years some have sketched a portrait of the current crop of twenty- and thirty-somethings that is low on greatness and high on traits like entitlement and narcissism. The Millennials, also known as Generation Y, may be a little callous, too: At a psychology conference in May, researchers presented data suggesting that college students today had significantly less “empathetic concern” than students of the 1980s.
Social scientists have been surveying young people for decades, looking for trends in thinking and behavior that might be attributable to shifts in the broader culture. Tracking behaviors and attitudes is relatively straightforward. Compared with previous generations, for instance, the Millennials are more tolerant of people of other races and different sexual orientations, research suggests. They appear to be more likely than previous generations to do volunteer work. Hundreds of thousands of them have signed on to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But assessing their motives, their traits — their collective personality — is a far more slippery territory. Thus the debate over the Generation Y character, and whether generations even have distinct characters.
It revolves around a recent finding that, on personality questionnaires, people born after 1970 are more likely than previous generations to see themselves as “an important person,” to say they’re confident and rate their self-esteem higher. “The research converges on this: that individualism is increasing, that it’s more acceptable in the culture to focus on oneself, and not to worry so much about social rules,” said Jean M. Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University, who in a 2006 book, “Generation Me,” described the trend and its possible upside (more opportunities for those who have lacked confidence) and downside (increased levels of anxiety, depression).
But a recent issue of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science aired a backlash against this argument, in which psychologists bickered over methodology and offered alternative interpretations of survey data.
In one report, two psychologists analyzed a large survey of high school seniors that spanned decades and concluded that there was “little evidence of meaningful change” in questions related to self-esteem, individualism, or life satisfaction. “I think as a profession we need to be careful that we don’t stereotype or label a vast number of people unless the evidence is very strong,” said M. Brent Donnellan, of Michigan State University, who co-authored the paperwith Kali H. Trzesniewski, of the University of Western Ontario.
In another critique, researchers at the University of Illinois reported data suggesting that narcissism peaks in young adulthood, “not because of cultural changes but because of age-related developmental trends.”
Dr. Twenge and others have shot back, point by point, and the standoff is not likely to be resolved soon. For one thing, personality tests are themselves suspect. “We should keep in mind that personality tests are themselves cultural documents, idiosyncratic products of particular individuals that say more about their creators than about the people who take them,” said Annie Murphy Paul, author of “The Cult of Personality Testing” (Free Press, 2004).
For another, researchers tend to work with samples, like college students, that are not representative of the generation at large. Nor is it even clear that outside events can alter a person’s fundamental traits by much. “We find very little change on scores cross-culturally, or even after big historical changes” like war or revolution, said Antonio Terracciano, a psychologist at the National Institute on Aging.
In short: Generation Y’s collective personality, if such a thing exists, is not likely to be much different from other generations’. Still, small differences may matter, and there is some agreement in findings from psychologists on both sides of this debate. In his own research, Dr. Terracciano has found a slight decrease in trust over the generations and a slight increase in a something called “ascendancy,” or “competence” — a self-professed confidence in getting things done.
This trait is similar to one measured by a widely used questionnaire called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, which asks people whether they agree with statements like “I will be a success” and “I always know what I’m doing.” This test is not a diagnostic tool for narcissistic personality disorder, a serious psychiatric condition; it is simply a rough gauge of self-confidence, vanity, and self-importance, traits everyone has to some degree. And scores have gone up significantly, at least in some college samples.
“This is particularly true in women,” Dr. Twenge. “That is where we see the most dramatic increases.”
But no trait is good or bad in an absolute sense. Each jostles with other personality traits, expressing itself differently depending on context. A sense of self-importance might make one person come across as pompous and annoying. But it could make another purposeful enough to volunteer for the military, become a leader of a social cause or take a stab at college against all advice from friends and parents.
A School District That Takes the Isolation Out of Autism
Garner Moss has autism and when he was finishing fifth grade, his classmates made a video about him, so the new students he would meet in the bigger middle school would know what to expect. His friend Sef Vankan summed up Garner this way: “He puts a little twist in our lives we don’t usually have without him.”
People with autism are often socially isolated, but the Madison public schools are nationally known for including children with disabilities in regular classes. Now, as a high school junior, Garner, 17, has added his little twist to many lives.
He likes to memorize plane, train and bus routes, and in middle school during a citywide scavenger hunt, he was so good that classmates nicknamed him “GPS-man.” He is not one of the fastest on the high school cross-country team, but he runs like no other. “Garner enjoys running with other kids, as opposed to past them,” said Casey Hopp, his coach.
Garner’s on the swim team, too, and gets rides to practice with a teammate, Michael Salerno. On cold mornings, no one wants to be first in the water, so Garner thinks it’s a riot to splash everyone with a colossal cannonball. “They get angry,” the coach, Paul Eckerle, said. “Then they see it’s Garner, and he gets away with it. And that’s how practice begins.”
On his smartphone, Garner loves watching YouTube videos of elevators (“That’s an Otis; it has an annoying fan.”) When John Stec, a swim teammate, met him two years ago, he assumed Garner wouldn’t talk much. “But as soon as you say stuff, he says stuff back to you,” John said. “He knew everyone’s name on the team even before he talked to us.”
This is why Garner’s parents, Beth and Duncan Moss, moved to Madison from Tennessee several years ago. In Tennessee, his parents said, they were constantly battling to have Garner included in regular programs, going through four mediation disputes.
“After third grade there, I told my husband, Garner would go nowhere in life and the family would fall apart,” Ms. Moss said. “We had to leave.” At the time, Ms. Moss, who stopped working as a teacher when Garner was born, was attending autism conferences. “I kept hearing about Madison,” she said.
Families with children with autism and developmental disabilities move from all over the country for the Madison schools. Kristi Jacobsen, whose son Jonathan has autism, moved from Omaha several years ago. She and her three children live here full time, while her husband, who has a financial business in Omaha, commutes back and forth.
“It’s a sacrifice,” Ms. Jacobsen said. “But Jonathan’s made such progress. They give him every opportunity to be part of the community.”
Lisa Pugh’s family moved from Wichita, Kan., for their daughter Erika, 11. A year and half ago Ms. Pugh took a job in Washington, but last month the family returned because, Ms. Pugh said, they missed Madison’s schools.
Build it and they will come. Nationally, about 12 percent of students are identified as disabled, but in Madison 17.5 percent are, according to John Harper, who oversees special education. Mr. Harper said that 88 percent of elementary students with disabilities were fully included in classes, along with 81 percent of middle school students and 63 percent of high school students. Most of the rest have a mix of general and special education classes; fewer than 5 percent are separate.
David Riley of the Urban Special Education Leadership Collaborative said Madison was one of the “big three” leaders in successfully implementing inclusion, along with the schools in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., and Clark County, Nev.
While it costs Madison $23,000 to educate a child with autism (to pay for extra support staff members) versus $12,000 for a typical child, Colleen Capper, a University of Wisconsin professor, said inclusion was cheaper than segregating students.
For years this liberal university city’s seven-member school board — which includes Ms. Moss, Garner’s mother — has been unanimous in supporting inclusion. “This is not a board that separates our children; it’s a board that believes every child should be educated,” said Marjorie Passman, a member.
Madison is changing, however: an influx of poor children, a migration of wealthier families to the suburbs. Parents of the gifted recently petitioned for more honors classes, and Ms. Passman thinks they’re needed.
One parent, Laurie Frost, said: “I am not convinced that even the most masterful teacher — and we have many of them here in Madison — can teach effectively to the full range of ability and need we currently have in our public schools. Not at the same time in the same classroom.”
Budget cuts this year, with more expected next, could undermine the fine balance. “The danger,” Ms. Passman said, “is it becomes us versus them. And that’s not good for anybody.”
Ms. Moss hopes not. Garner used to run away and collapse on the floor in despair if he had to change rooms. The schools, she said, have patience with him. In elementary grades his teachers learned to tell when he was about to explode from pent-up energy, and let him leave to ride an exercise bike. In sixth grade, he had his first class without an aide, band.
In ninth, when he went out for cross country, he’d get lost during practice, so the district hired a college student to run with him until he learned his way.
He has always been in general education classes, but usually with an extra teacher or aide. This year, he will be on his own in most classes, including English, chemistry and personal finance. He’s a familiar figure, striding home from school with his swim bag, backpack and alto sax.
His development has always been uneven. He rides the bus downtown to his father’s law office, but can’t tie his track shoes; at meets his teammates tie them. Summer days start with cross-country practice at 8. (In summer, running and swimming are with club teams made up of his high school classmates.)
One day when his mother went to pick him up after practice, he’d run the 1.7 miles home. He rested up and watched a tape from the previous night’s Milwaukee Brewers game.
“When they get a hit, they sprint,” Garner said.
“Yes, they do,” his mother said.
“Do you have to jog when you hit a home run?” he asked.
“Fireworks go off and everyone’s clapping,” she said.
He wants to be a train engineer.
He and his mother drove downtown to meet Mr. Moss for lunch. Garner wanted “something and fries.” He knew the building where they ate was built in 1936 and the route of every bus that passed.
When his mother stopped at a University of Wisconsin building, Garner was excited to see an elevator. “A Schindler,” he said. “That’s the original call button. Hydraulic. From the 1970s. I’m going to ride it up to 5, Mom.” As the doors closed, he could be heard narrating his own elevator video that he was recording on his phone.
His mother had forgotten which garage she parked in, but Garner knew and remembered the car was in Section N.
Swim practice was at 3. “Any new video, Garner?” a friend asked. And of course, there was fresh footage of the Schindler.
Later, when asked what Garner might become, Ms. Moss said: “He’d be most happy working around mass transit, airports, trains, bus stations. He’ll need to be on his feet, not sitting. He likes to be around people, not isolated.”
A must-read on poverty and nutrition
On prison food in Alcatraz.
On the famed "death of a phone call"
On lobbying to - this is great - prevent the government from making it easier to file taxes!
On how some activist claims dubiously that outlawing gay marriage will improve the economy. Or some such nonsense.
On... on... oh, I can't sum this up. Read it.
VERY IMPORTANT! Drowning doesn't look "like drowning
Whew! All done now!
On bedbugs. I have to say, bedbugs fascinate me. I mean, I loathe them (it seems we're not a rid of them as I'd thought this winter... damn it), but I have a deep admiration for anything you can't kill off. They'll even outlast humans, if only for 18 months! As a species, they're like this tree I saw with my nieces. It'd been chopped down, and then dragged up by the roots, and still there were new green shoots coming out of it, reaching for the light. Except that trees don't bite you, of course. And they make air, so on the whole I like that tree more. But the POINT is that bedbugs are survivors. You can hate them for it, but it's better to hate them because they're parasites and respect the fact that they're better at living than you are at killing them. Less madness in that.
This Bedbug’s Life
By MAY BERENBAUM
Urbana, Ill.
I had been a professor of entomology for 15 years before I saw my first live bedbug. It crawled out of a plastic film canister that had been mailed to me by a distraught student in the Boston area who had no idea what it was. I was so thrilled to see a live bedbug, I showed it off to every graduate student I ran into that day: Cimex lectularius — a small, flat, wingless, brown ectoparasite that hides in cracks and crevices in human dwellings and emerges under cover of darkness to feast on human blood.
That was in 1995, and none of my students had laid eyes on Cimex lectularius either. A century ago, bedbugs were ubiquitous in New York — so much so that their presence in an apartment wasn’t considered sufficient legal cause for withholding rent. Bedbugs, one judge remarked in an early 20th century lawsuit against a landlord, “can be dealt with by the tenant by processes known to all housewives.” But with the midcentury advent of synthetic organic insecticides, these insects all but vanished from urban landscapes (and pretty much every other kind of landscape) in North America.
My Bostonian bug turned out to be one of many on the forefront of an unprecedented resurgence. Global travelers now bring in a steady supply from around the world, inconspicuously undeclared in checked bags and carry-on luggage. Today, bedbugs have been found in all 50 states, as well as Guam, Puerto Rico and American Samoa, and bedbug-related calls to pest control operators are escalating at a fantastic rate. From June 2009 to June 2010, there were more than 31,000 calls in New York City alone.
Now, bedbug-related lawsuits can lead to thousands of dollars in punitive damages for mental anguish, embarrassment or humiliation.
Everywhere New Yorkers go — theaters, stores, offices, schools, trains, ships, hospitals — bedbugs go, too, hidden in folds of clothing, bags, backpacks and purses. Getting rid of them has become more than any housewife could ever be expected to handle. Even professional pest control operators are struggling to keep up, because bedbugs have become, for the most part, resistant to the old pesticides that once were so effective, and relatively few viable chemical alternatives exist.
We reserve a special kind of enmity for bedbugs because, though humans generally do not like being anywhere other than at the pinnacle of a food chain, there is a particular horror associated with being consumed while relatively helpless, asleep in what should be the security of one’s own bed (or chair or couch). With bedbugs, it’s personal — unlike cockroaches, ants, silverfish and other vermin that are attracted to our possessions, bedbugs are after us. And they’re remarkably adept at circumventing our defenses: They not only attack while we sleep, but they also inject anesthetics, so as not to awaken us, and anticoagulants, so that in every 10-minute feeding they can suck in two to three times their weight in clot-free blood.
Bedbugs win neither praise for their sophisticated technique, nor very much respect for the fact that they don’t carry diseases, as most bloodsucking human ectoparasites do. Although their bites can cause unrelieved itchiness, bedbugs take only blood and leave no pathogens behind. In contrast, lice spread typhus; mosquitoes carry the viruses that cause yellow fever, dengue, encephalitis and West Nile disease; ticks transmit the Lyme disease bacterium; and fleas can bring the bacterium that causes plague.
But lack of involvement in spreading disease is hardly an endearing attribute. In fact, precious few aspects of bedbug biology are endearing. They don’t build their own houses or care for their young, and their sexual practices are bizarre even by insect standards: Because the female bedbug has no genital opening, the male inseminates her by using his hardened, sharpened genitalia to punch a hole through her abdomen. With no elaborate courtship ritual, males in a frenzied pursuit of sexual congress often blunder into and puncture the bodies of other males, occasionally inflicting fatal wounds.
To top it off, almost every aspect of bedbug behavior is mediated by airborne odorants, almost all of which are, when detected, repulsive to humans.
What, if anything, is there to like about a bedbug? They certainly like us; we probably have no greater admirers in the insect world. They like the way we live, unlike most vertebrates, in permanent homes. (Bats and birds, which also build homes, are hosts to several of the bedbug’s close relatives.) Bedbugs do not discriminate among humans on the basis of race, creed or socioeconomic status, and they’re happy with almost any interior decorating style; they are as happy in a French provincial nook as they are in a contemporary cranny. The bugs’ climate preferences are essentially an exact match to our own, and a small wingless creature couldn’t ask for a better traveling companion — airlines have opened a world of possibilities for a species that can’t get very far on its own six legs.
Perhaps the one good thing about bedbugs is that they provide a rare point of agreement that transcends race, religion, culture, nationality, tax bracket and party. It may be one of the few remaining universal truths — urban or rural, red state or blue, everyone agrees it would be great if bedbugs would disappear once more.
On the difficulty of summing up a generation with a few pithy catchphrases
A Snapshot of a Generation May Come Out Blurry
By BENEDICT CAREY
Trying to pin down the character of a generation is a controversial and, some say, presumptuous exercise. Who’s to say whether 50 million Americans should be called the Me Generation, or the Greatest? Who’s to decide exactly when Gen X ends and Gen Y begins?
Never let it be said that psychological researchers duck a challenge. In recent years some have sketched a portrait of the current crop of twenty- and thirty-somethings that is low on greatness and high on traits like entitlement and narcissism. The Millennials, also known as Generation Y, may be a little callous, too: At a psychology conference in May, researchers presented data suggesting that college students today had significantly less “empathetic concern” than students of the 1980s.
Social scientists have been surveying young people for decades, looking for trends in thinking and behavior that might be attributable to shifts in the broader culture. Tracking behaviors and attitudes is relatively straightforward. Compared with previous generations, for instance, the Millennials are more tolerant of people of other races and different sexual orientations, research suggests. They appear to be more likely than previous generations to do volunteer work. Hundreds of thousands of them have signed on to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But assessing their motives, their traits — their collective personality — is a far more slippery territory. Thus the debate over the Generation Y character, and whether generations even have distinct characters.
It revolves around a recent finding that, on personality questionnaires, people born after 1970 are more likely than previous generations to see themselves as “an important person,” to say they’re confident and rate their self-esteem higher. “The research converges on this: that individualism is increasing, that it’s more acceptable in the culture to focus on oneself, and not to worry so much about social rules,” said Jean M. Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University, who in a 2006 book, “Generation Me,” described the trend and its possible upside (more opportunities for those who have lacked confidence) and downside (increased levels of anxiety, depression).
But a recent issue of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science aired a backlash against this argument, in which psychologists bickered over methodology and offered alternative interpretations of survey data.
In one report, two psychologists analyzed a large survey of high school seniors that spanned decades and concluded that there was “little evidence of meaningful change” in questions related to self-esteem, individualism, or life satisfaction. “I think as a profession we need to be careful that we don’t stereotype or label a vast number of people unless the evidence is very strong,” said M. Brent Donnellan, of Michigan State University, who co-authored the paperwith Kali H. Trzesniewski, of the University of Western Ontario.
In another critique, researchers at the University of Illinois reported data suggesting that narcissism peaks in young adulthood, “not because of cultural changes but because of age-related developmental trends.”
Dr. Twenge and others have shot back, point by point, and the standoff is not likely to be resolved soon. For one thing, personality tests are themselves suspect. “We should keep in mind that personality tests are themselves cultural documents, idiosyncratic products of particular individuals that say more about their creators than about the people who take them,” said Annie Murphy Paul, author of “The Cult of Personality Testing” (Free Press, 2004).
For another, researchers tend to work with samples, like college students, that are not representative of the generation at large. Nor is it even clear that outside events can alter a person’s fundamental traits by much. “We find very little change on scores cross-culturally, or even after big historical changes” like war or revolution, said Antonio Terracciano, a psychologist at the National Institute on Aging.
In short: Generation Y’s collective personality, if such a thing exists, is not likely to be much different from other generations’. Still, small differences may matter, and there is some agreement in findings from psychologists on both sides of this debate. In his own research, Dr. Terracciano has found a slight decrease in trust over the generations and a slight increase in a something called “ascendancy,” or “competence” — a self-professed confidence in getting things done.
This trait is similar to one measured by a widely used questionnaire called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, which asks people whether they agree with statements like “I will be a success” and “I always know what I’m doing.” This test is not a diagnostic tool for narcissistic personality disorder, a serious psychiatric condition; it is simply a rough gauge of self-confidence, vanity, and self-importance, traits everyone has to some degree. And scores have gone up significantly, at least in some college samples.
“This is particularly true in women,” Dr. Twenge. “That is where we see the most dramatic increases.”
But no trait is good or bad in an absolute sense. Each jostles with other personality traits, expressing itself differently depending on context. A sense of self-importance might make one person come across as pompous and annoying. But it could make another purposeful enough to volunteer for the military, become a leader of a social cause or take a stab at college against all advice from friends and parents.
A School District That Takes the Isolation Out of Autism
Garner Moss has autism and when he was finishing fifth grade, his classmates made a video about him, so the new students he would meet in the bigger middle school would know what to expect. His friend Sef Vankan summed up Garner this way: “He puts a little twist in our lives we don’t usually have without him.”
People with autism are often socially isolated, but the Madison public schools are nationally known for including children with disabilities in regular classes. Now, as a high school junior, Garner, 17, has added his little twist to many lives.
He likes to memorize plane, train and bus routes, and in middle school during a citywide scavenger hunt, he was so good that classmates nicknamed him “GPS-man.” He is not one of the fastest on the high school cross-country team, but he runs like no other. “Garner enjoys running with other kids, as opposed to past them,” said Casey Hopp, his coach.
Garner’s on the swim team, too, and gets rides to practice with a teammate, Michael Salerno. On cold mornings, no one wants to be first in the water, so Garner thinks it’s a riot to splash everyone with a colossal cannonball. “They get angry,” the coach, Paul Eckerle, said. “Then they see it’s Garner, and he gets away with it. And that’s how practice begins.”
On his smartphone, Garner loves watching YouTube videos of elevators (“That’s an Otis; it has an annoying fan.”) When John Stec, a swim teammate, met him two years ago, he assumed Garner wouldn’t talk much. “But as soon as you say stuff, he says stuff back to you,” John said. “He knew everyone’s name on the team even before he talked to us.”
This is why Garner’s parents, Beth and Duncan Moss, moved to Madison from Tennessee several years ago. In Tennessee, his parents said, they were constantly battling to have Garner included in regular programs, going through four mediation disputes.
“After third grade there, I told my husband, Garner would go nowhere in life and the family would fall apart,” Ms. Moss said. “We had to leave.” At the time, Ms. Moss, who stopped working as a teacher when Garner was born, was attending autism conferences. “I kept hearing about Madison,” she said.
Families with children with autism and developmental disabilities move from all over the country for the Madison schools. Kristi Jacobsen, whose son Jonathan has autism, moved from Omaha several years ago. She and her three children live here full time, while her husband, who has a financial business in Omaha, commutes back and forth.
“It’s a sacrifice,” Ms. Jacobsen said. “But Jonathan’s made such progress. They give him every opportunity to be part of the community.”
Lisa Pugh’s family moved from Wichita, Kan., for their daughter Erika, 11. A year and half ago Ms. Pugh took a job in Washington, but last month the family returned because, Ms. Pugh said, they missed Madison’s schools.
Build it and they will come. Nationally, about 12 percent of students are identified as disabled, but in Madison 17.5 percent are, according to John Harper, who oversees special education. Mr. Harper said that 88 percent of elementary students with disabilities were fully included in classes, along with 81 percent of middle school students and 63 percent of high school students. Most of the rest have a mix of general and special education classes; fewer than 5 percent are separate.
David Riley of the Urban Special Education Leadership Collaborative said Madison was one of the “big three” leaders in successfully implementing inclusion, along with the schools in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., and Clark County, Nev.
While it costs Madison $23,000 to educate a child with autism (to pay for extra support staff members) versus $12,000 for a typical child, Colleen Capper, a University of Wisconsin professor, said inclusion was cheaper than segregating students.
For years this liberal university city’s seven-member school board — which includes Ms. Moss, Garner’s mother — has been unanimous in supporting inclusion. “This is not a board that separates our children; it’s a board that believes every child should be educated,” said Marjorie Passman, a member.
Madison is changing, however: an influx of poor children, a migration of wealthier families to the suburbs. Parents of the gifted recently petitioned for more honors classes, and Ms. Passman thinks they’re needed.
One parent, Laurie Frost, said: “I am not convinced that even the most masterful teacher — and we have many of them here in Madison — can teach effectively to the full range of ability and need we currently have in our public schools. Not at the same time in the same classroom.”
Budget cuts this year, with more expected next, could undermine the fine balance. “The danger,” Ms. Passman said, “is it becomes us versus them. And that’s not good for anybody.”
Ms. Moss hopes not. Garner used to run away and collapse on the floor in despair if he had to change rooms. The schools, she said, have patience with him. In elementary grades his teachers learned to tell when he was about to explode from pent-up energy, and let him leave to ride an exercise bike. In sixth grade, he had his first class without an aide, band.
In ninth, when he went out for cross country, he’d get lost during practice, so the district hired a college student to run with him until he learned his way.
He has always been in general education classes, but usually with an extra teacher or aide. This year, he will be on his own in most classes, including English, chemistry and personal finance. He’s a familiar figure, striding home from school with his swim bag, backpack and alto sax.
His development has always been uneven. He rides the bus downtown to his father’s law office, but can’t tie his track shoes; at meets his teammates tie them. Summer days start with cross-country practice at 8. (In summer, running and swimming are with club teams made up of his high school classmates.)
One day when his mother went to pick him up after practice, he’d run the 1.7 miles home. He rested up and watched a tape from the previous night’s Milwaukee Brewers game.
“When they get a hit, they sprint,” Garner said.
“Yes, they do,” his mother said.
“Do you have to jog when you hit a home run?” he asked.
“Fireworks go off and everyone’s clapping,” she said.
He wants to be a train engineer.
He and his mother drove downtown to meet Mr. Moss for lunch. Garner wanted “something and fries.” He knew the building where they ate was built in 1936 and the route of every bus that passed.
When his mother stopped at a University of Wisconsin building, Garner was excited to see an elevator. “A Schindler,” he said. “That’s the original call button. Hydraulic. From the 1970s. I’m going to ride it up to 5, Mom.” As the doors closed, he could be heard narrating his own elevator video that he was recording on his phone.
His mother had forgotten which garage she parked in, but Garner knew and remembered the car was in Section N.
Swim practice was at 3. “Any new video, Garner?” a friend asked. And of course, there was fresh footage of the Schindler.
Later, when asked what Garner might become, Ms. Moss said: “He’d be most happy working around mass transit, airports, trains, bus stations. He’ll need to be on his feet, not sitting. He likes to be around people, not isolated.”
A must-read on poverty and nutrition
On prison food in Alcatraz.
On the famed "death of a phone call"
On lobbying to - this is great - prevent the government from making it easier to file taxes!
On how some activist claims dubiously that outlawing gay marriage will improve the economy. Or some such nonsense.
On... on... oh, I can't sum this up. Read it.
VERY IMPORTANT! Drowning doesn't look "like drowning
Whew! All done now!
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-11 03:47 am (UTC)I have no intention of stopping anyone from trusting in God. Nor do I have any intention of trying to stop any God from helping those in need. But I just don't see how humans helping each other in the meantime is harmful. It's not as if we're going to fix everything anyway. There will still be plenty of opportunities for any helpful omnipotent beings who want to to make life better for many in need. I assure you, we are not actually so organized and decent that we will be helping everyone to the extent that they need help, much as I wish that we were.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-11 12:04 pm (UTC)And... don't even get me started on the gay marriage article, or Sharron Angle. I've had to deal with some utterly ridiculous gubernatorial runoff ads here in Georgia that seriously make me wonder why I'm still in this state when everyone else here seems to be living in a different universe.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-11 12:09 pm (UTC)And yes. The ad embedded in that post actually runs on TV here. Really. -_-;;