Sledding, Shifting Sands: White Sands National Monument

White Sands National Monument, view from top of a dune

If you stand stock-still at the top of a gypsum sand dune in the two hundred and seventy-five miles that make up the White Sands National Monument, and stay there for a year, your bleached bones could move, depending on the location and type of the dune within the park, up to thirty-five feet from where you succumbed to the heat.

The gypsum sand will stay cool to the touch, however, so if you choose, as many do, to instead buy a round plastic sled at the gift store and spend a day sledding in sand, you'll likely have more fun.

A few days ago, I spent the day wandering in the mid-afternoon blaze and then returned, post-hydrating, for the cooler sunset ranger walk to hear more about the gorgeous, alien landscape.  

Toppled yucca plant

Thanks to Ranger Carmen, on our barefoot stroll through the dunes I learned that yucca plants adjusted to the dune movement by getting taller and taller faster; a soaptree yucca that looks tiny above ground can have 30 feet of plant underneath it, evidence of a growth spurt of up to 12 feet a year that keeps it from being swallowed up by dune. As the dune moves on and exposes it, the yucca will topple over, but even then, undaunted, it will adjust, rearrange itself, and keep living.  

The beginning of sunset.  Part of a sumac pedestal
to the right. 

Desert survival is like that: slow down, speed up, adjust, move on, adapt. 

The sumac adapted by holding onto the dune as it moves through, creating rock-like pedestals of roots and sand that serve as condo homes for the many creatures that burrow into it.  During monsoon season, the sumac pedestals become islands, with prey and predator seeking higher ground during the floods.

Don't let the sand fool you. Dig anywhere in the park, and you will find water, lots of it, underneath. The cottonwood trees grow by the largest caches, something the coyotes figured out when they moved into the area. They dig for their water by those trees, creating nice attractive pools to lure prey.

The kangaroo rat will not be lounging by those pools; they are so adapted to the desert that they do not drink water. They get all the moisture they need from the food they eat.

Pale lizard

Long shadows in waves of sand.

Desert creatures in White Sands are slowly getting paler, natural selection at work; blending in with the sand leaves them less obvious to predators, giving them more time to procreate. Lizards that are dark brown only a few miles away are white, some with blue markings that further allow them to disappear into the sand and brush.

It is the sand itself, the quantity and quality of it, that leaves you stunned though.  High winds periodically remove all the footprints, sweep the house clean. Some sandstorms are so massive they can be seen from space. Delicate gypsum, softer than a human fingernail, breaks down into the softest sand, providing a canvas for creatures to decorate as they amble or scurry, from the crazy circling prints of the darkling beetles (aka stink bugs), the waggling feet of lizards, to the barefoot tromping of groups following a ranger.

Just watch out for missiles. Periodically, White Sands National Monument is closed to the public when the missile range next door runs drills. No matter how fast your sled ride careens down a dune, you're unlikely to outpace an errant missile.

Sand and footprints in hot midday sun. 

La Mesa Living

My new home

I'm a week into my new life in La Mesa, New Mexico, and loving it.

As with any relationship, building a true understanding of the 106 acres of the property will take time.

I've run the perimeter in the cooler morning air, wandered the lane of pecan trees, explored the shrinking lake, and followed the path poetically named Lovers Lane from my adobe house to the older white house on the property, but I still sometimes get turned around.

The Organ and Franklin mountains provide some guidance, but with the fire burning in the Gila National Forest, sometime the smoke shrouds them from view.  On the day I was up on the roof helping the owner fix the swamp cooler and repair some stucco cracks, we could smell the acrid odor of the fire despite its distance-- the largest fire in New Mexico history is busy rearranging the terrain according to her new rules.

Hummingbirds

Although I've heard tale of the rattlesnakes and javelinas on the property, and seen the water bowl the javelinas opted to toss over one evening, I've yet to those local residents. But the hummingbirds, swallows, doves, quail, starlings, bats, lizards, crickets, mellow bees, less mellow wasps, and spiders galore have all made appearances.

One of the black widows.
 Sure, she doesn't look
like much in a specimen
container.

On Tuesday, the curator of the NMSU Arthropod Collection stopped by and removed two black widow spiders from the garage (one a big, strapping girl), along with a few other spiders. The black widows will now begin their life of fame as they tour through in classrooms -- and I will be less jumpy in the garage eyeing every black dot I see.

Rita!

Rita and Lucky, the ranch dogs, serve as wagging guides across the terrain and happily, have yet to find the bird (a sandpiper, perhaps?) nesting on the front lawn. Turtles have wandered up to the back door, and so I give them a bit of a bath with the hose -- it's a tough drought in New Mexico, and even sturdy desert animals are beginning to feel it.

Lucky

I am just beginning to ease into my role as caretaker of the land, flora and fauna. Watering the pecan, mulberry and plum trees, playing with the sprinklers and tending to the lilies and pots of roses and sedum, refilling the hummingbird feeders and the water tub for the bees, keeping an eye peeled for thirsty turtles and, of course, giving dinner to the pups and my aged, well-traveled, purring felines -- all of this provides a level of peace and purpose sorely lacking in my cubicle dwelling days in Takoma Park, no matter how green the running path by Sligo Creek.

The homesteader farmer in me thrills with my new knowledge on how to drive the Kubota tractor to mow the tall weeds by the hacienda. And the remaining urbanite in me rejoices in the speedy Internet that will continue to allow me to work as a writer and connect out in the world.

Yucca

I packed up my home and life in the Washington, DC area with the idea of changing my life. And while I fully understand that the external doesn't change the internal (the world, however different looking, is still filtered through my skewed subjective view), I do feel as if all the newness and change has woken up my senses, given my eyes and ears and nose and hands something new to feast upon.

My photography already reflects new light and obviously new subjects. My, as yet, brief attempts at painting here have suggested that I best learn to paint faster; 2% humidity dries acrylics up mightily fast, no matter how much medium I stir in. I expect deeper changes in my art and writing to seep in more gradually as I settle into my new home and explore the surrounding areas.

I'm not clear how my New Mexico love affair will develop; as with all love affairs, there are no guarantees. I do know that on this sunny Thursday, I'm enjoying the rush and blush of infatuation and drinking in the joy.

Shifting Views

Artful Mistakes is on the move! I leave on Tuesday to begin the long drive to my new home in La Mesa, NM. 222 pounds of my books are already wending their way west courtesy of the magic of media mail.

Meanwhile, my living room is awash with more boxes. Unless I find a way to bend the laws of physics, shrinking some of that empty space between electrons perhaps, I will still have a stack of stuff significantly larger than the space available in my car. The next few days pre-departure should involve a lot of heavy lifting and UPS fees.

The cats are giving me increasingly dirty looks as more and more furniture disappears.  Clearly, I am up to no good. There will be yowling, they say, yellow eyes ablaze.  

Art thoughts have continued amid the chaos and goodbye lunches. I have managed to squeeze in a few last painting classes with my teacher Dana Ellyn, and so, in brief, here are a few painting updates.

Another portrait, Boxed In, which (once again) does not look like the original subject, went from here:

Boxed In, old version

to here,

Boxed In, more recent version. 

after reworking it in class. He seems to be rockin' an Edward Norton look a bit now.  

Bringing down his hairline widened his face. His hair looks somewhat more hair-like because of using a dry brush technique (although I need to fix that further); this will come up again as I rework other pieces and remove helmet hair issues.  I also widened his neck.

The largest changes, however, involved adding in shadows and light.  The first strokes of heavy shadow felt not at all right -- too much! too dark! too bold! -- but they brought the face further to life. True, he still doesn't look like the photo. But he does look more like a person and less like a cartoon.  

A note for painting men: no ruby red lips, lest they look like they are wearing lipstick. Lips are actually flesh colored, with the upper lip being slightly darker than the lower.  

Emboldened by the drastic difference in those changes, I dragged an old painting into another class. On Moonsoaked, Dana pointed out that, umm, the right arm was completely off, and possibly not physically possible, and it might be more attractive if her boob wasn't sliding around the front of her body (as in, add a crease line).

Old Moonsoaked

Once I started playing around with those issues, I started seeing where everything else was off.  So I moved her neck, which helped matters with her excessively large head.

Another class and consultation with Dana led to reshaping her butt and changing her elbows, and finally, addressing the lobster claw that was her hand.

Currently, she looks like this:

Moonsoaked Redux

The good news is that the detail on the hand really helps; the bad news is that now I'll have to go back again and add that level of detail elsewhere. Still, progress.

For right now, however, Boxed In and Moonsoaked are getting taped up in a box to prepare for a long car ride.

The Land of Enchantment, with its sunshine and light, and the 106 acres of my new locale, will bring all kinds of fresh perspectives, art and otherwise.

No Van Gogh

The faux Van Gogh (as discussed in this post), is now significantly further along

The faux Van Gogh, now further along. 

Progress now merits a photo, if, umm, no awards.  More details (on the flowers, particularly) and corrections necessary (what is up with the shadow?  And the vase is still weird), but closer.

Jeanne Miles: Reflections on Jeanne, Genes and Art

Sound of Children's Laughter, 1954
Gold leaf, oil on canvas
28" x 29 1/4"
http://www.anitashapolskygallery.com/miles.html 

I only met Jeanne Miles (1908-1999), a painter and my grandmother's older sister, twice that I remember.

The second time was 1987 when I was in my teens. Jeanne was almost 80 by then and a bit frail, or so it seemed to me in my robust youth. She was in town to receive an Alumni Achievement Award from George Washington University.  Jeanne had been the first woman to admitted to the art school there. She spent her career as a working artist and sometimes teacher. 

I remember standing in the crowd milling around after the GWU ceremony and watching her speak with some enthusiastic young man, and the way she turned her hand to gesture, making a point. We have the same fine-boned stance, so if I had been paying attention, I might have noted the similarities in our bony wrists. But as a teenager, I doubt I was paying that much attention to genes or Jeanne. I have no memory of the rest of the day, if we spent time with her or if we were just passing members of the audience, showing our support for family. 

What I remember more vividly is meeting Aunt Jeanne the first time, when my family went to visit her at her Greenwich Village loft in NYC, when I was around nine years old.

Her apartment had deliciously high ceilings, tons of sunlight, warm wood floors, not much furniture, a galley kitchen, and a window that we all stepped through to a enter her rooftop city garden. We sat in the sun at a wooden table with a cloth over it, listening to the taxi cabs honk below us. I have the idea that there were delicate china cups, but that might be an embellishment to real memory, adding a festive tea party element.

#105, 1991
Oil, gold leave/bronze on board
40 " diameter
http://www.anitashapolskygallery.com/miles.html

Her place also had an attic/loft area full of all kinds of interesting junk. I know, as I was sent up the ladder there to fish out a dehumidifier a relative was borrowing from her, and would have stayed up there in the dusty wonderland with large wooden trunks and a dressmaker mannequin much longer had I not been summoned back down.

Jeanne had all kinds of stuff, not just in the attic loft, but elsewhere, paints, paintings, tools, brushes. Her rooms were alive and focused on the process she engaged in. Her whole apartment reminded me of my father's workbench in the basement, or the corner of my mother's bedroom dedicated to her sewing, places where ideas fermented. Jeanne's apartment was no staid parlor. It was a studio -- a living-and-breathing environment.

The best part of her apartment: an easel with a half-done painting sitting front and center in the middle of her living room. Geometric with gold leaf, circles and shades of red, it added its presence to the conversation as clearly as another person.

Jeanne's NYC Bohemia sang a far and deliciously different note from my suburban upbringing where everything matched and creating was done in secret behind closed doors.

I didn't know that people could live their lives and make their livings creating things in their living rooms, not normal every-day people that I was related to. 

And by the time I was a teenager, I'd forgotten that possibility.

By then, I assumed that I would follow the life that most of my peer group would, and that would include dressing up in uncomfortable clothes to shuffle into an office and chatting by the coffeemaker about budgets.

I spent ten years in cubicles, meeting lovely and kind, and a few not-so-kind people, and being less than engaged by billing spreadsheets and mortgages. I wished that I could find the intellectual satisfaction that seemed to come so easily for coworkers, missions they could embrace, career paths and expertise growing over the years. The passion for traditional business worlds eluded me. Instead, I fled those offices for graduate school in creative writing. From there, after trying and failing again to find the perfect cubicle, I edged my way into freelance work.

A relative once described me, when I was bemoaning my tendency to balk at the mainstream, as "being just like Aunt Jeanne -- you just do whatever you want."

Poor quality photograph of one
of Jeanne's prints.
Family collection. 

While I certainly didn't feel like that was true at the time -- what I was conscious of wanting then was to fit in the mainstream, to be easily stamped acceptable without comment, and more to the point, to be happy -- I now hope that it will be increasingly true in the future.

I don't know all that much about Aunt Jeanne's life. I've read a few articles on her and gleaned info from probably faulty family gossip, but the few facts I do know intrigue me. 

In 1937 she spent a year in living in Tahiti (blue-green waters!) on an art grant. I know she lived in Paris for a time (a city I'm slightly in love with even though I've only spent a total of five days there) and that she had some trouble getting out of France because of the war. She was, by any estimation, an adventurous soul.

I know some of her art, from the pieces scattered through family homes and from what I've gleaned online. With familial pride, I'll say I think it's pretty darn cool that she exhibited at the Betty Parsons Gallery and has work in the permanent collection at the Guggenheim. Her work became increasingly geometric over her career and included reflections on the spiritual significance of those shapes, with an emphasis on mandalas.

From a brief marriage to another painter, she has a daughter, Joanna Miles, an Emmy-award winning actress living in Los Angeles whom I've never met in person, but sends me a Christmas card every year (no, I can't get you a meeting with a producer; don't ask).

I have dim memories of Jeanne from those two meetings, but largely, I was just tagging along after the grown-ups. I didn't know that we would turn out to have commonalities in tastes, nontraditional lives, a tendency to find painting absorbing and an affection for shiny things (metal mobiles for me; gold-leaf for Jeanne).

It may just be I'm searching hard for that connection now, to feed hope in my own artistic explorations. I've been slow in committing to an art life, lacking her nerve and crystalline talent, but still I find, I circle back. Jeanne was a bolder person, and I look to her for inspiration.

To a friend, when my art leanings became increasingly apparent, I noted "What I want is inconvenient." And in some ways, it is.

But for the people we really love and the passions that are really ours, we do the work, make the connections, travel the distances literal or psychological to get there. We give up the dinners out or a measure of social approval and slosh through awkwardness and missteps, because the trade-off is worth it.  For me, that means days spent immersed in creating images and worlds, tweaking sentences and refining ideas, studying craft and wading through frustration, solitary time and time with people who amaze and challenge me, these some of many elements that bring artists to the next new, gorgeous vista.

I want a life of paint-splattered, ink-stained exploration, not an exercise in polite endurance.

From family collection

I have a very large easel standing in the middle of my living room, inviting me to create every day.  And while the easel won't be moving with me, too long to fit in my car, the idea it represents will travel with me.

I'm listening now, Aunt Jeanne. Thanks.






More information on Jeanne Miles:

• http://www.anitashapolskygallery.com/miles_text.htm
• http://articles.latimes.com/1999/sep/01/news/mn-5653
• http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/03/arts/jeanne-miles-90-abstract-artist-inspired-by-asian-art-and-ideas.html

Books & Flowers

In an effort to loosen the hold of my "Depression-era" painting style, where I use the skimpiest amount of paint possible (and have thin colors and coverage as a result), my next effort is playing around with mimicking a Van Gogh painting of flowers in a vase. His paintings, of course, have gobs of paint and fantastic texture.

When I started this painting out, I could easily recreate the background color -- but there it was, thin again, flat. It took me another try to really go for it and use lots of paint. Teacher Dana Ellyn kindly helped me out with my inherent cheapness/conservation suggesting using gel medium to thicken things up a bit without using more paint, and getting busy with a palette knife.

Here's what I can tell you about painting with a palette knife: it's way harder than it looks. Brushes provide a much larger measure of control than I had ever realized. I do now understand why art stores sell twelves different sizes of palette knives though; angle and flexibility make a difference.

Once you have those big lumps of paint on there, unlike my usual thin, thin coats of paint, the paint stays wet much longer, hence the term wet-on-wet painting. This is a lot more like painting with oils, which is good in that it gives you time to blend colors together...and bad because it gives you time to turn everything into a brown lump if you're not paying careful. Ask me how I know.

No photos of my painting yet, because it's still in too too ugly in beginning mode. When I crabbily grumbled to a classmate that it was no Van Gogh (rainy day blues), she pointed out that, eh, big deal, and besides, I was less likely to cut off an ear. Good point.

Oleanders by Vincent Van Gogh

Have a gander at the Van Gogh. It remains one of my favorites. Books and flowers: crucial elements of any good day.

Beckmann-ish, in Process

Not Beckmann

The not-Beckmann painting in process.  A lot of work to be done yet, but basic form is in place now at least.

However bizarre my painted cat might be, Beckmann's is more of a mutant. If you see a cat with that kind of eye, run.

Beckmann

Beckmann

Dragonfly

Dragonfly

I did finally finish my first painting from class with Dana Ellyn.  I'm not entirely pleased with some aspects -- it's one funky looking dragonfly -- but I like something about the worried man.

New project is a combination of some Max Beckmann paintings, with lots of deep colors and sharp lines.  So far, mine is hideous.  But useful learning, to dig into the process more, and a relief to get back into Oz where all the color lives.      

Safe Place

"Safe Place"

Recycling is a heavy influence in my approach to art, be it recycling stories and characters or reusing canvases.

Alas, sometimes that re-envisioning can include repeating mistakes as well. I'm working on remembering what I learned in many areas of my life recently, in art and work, in my connections with people, in what I know to be true about myself and how I approach change.  

In this case, the recycled canvas, flipped and re-gessoed on the backside, began lumpy and bumpy, dented.

My first take on its uneven surface came out angry and red, a venomous self-portrait.

In art therapy (of which I know a whole lot more now as a researcher for my job), many trauma approaches start with the creation of a Safe Place. The imaginary place -- quiet, peaceful, without people -- provides a concrete image to return to should the real and recycled stories of our lives become overwhelming.

My safe place looks something like this painting. The road is actually silver (which doesn't photograph well), and the mountains are much lovelier in my head, but you get the idea.

Freedom. Movement.  Exploration. Nature. Vibrant night. The sound of rushing wind. The smell of sagebrush and lavender.  Peace with further possibilities for joy just around the bend.

Doug Aitken's Song 1 at/on the Hirshhorn

The great thing about having visitors in town is they tell you about wonderous events happening in your town that, as a jaded and lazy local, you have completely missed in the hustle-bustle of laundry, commuting, and grocery shopping. 

I only saw a few minutes of Doug Aitken's Song 1, but I came away with the increased level of wow and awe that art purveys. Thanks for visiting!

Details on the project here: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/03/when-a-museums-exterior-becomes-a-canvas-for-video-art/255125/.

Rainy Day at the Park

Sandy Point State Park

Nothing Says Fine Art Like Lime Green Spandex

I had a few minutes to spare before painting class yesterday evening, so after photographing some delicious full-flowering trees, I swung by the National Portrait Gallery.

I was greeted by a synchronized alien invasion.

Space-age thongs look uncomfortable

The green spandecized invaders were, it turns out, part of a life-sized, living video game. Kids lined up to run through a parade of orange foam wielding troopers.

Run!

Meanwhile, in another part of the galaxy, another complicated ritual was taking place.

Warrior, King, Hipster & Crew

The crowning of a new hipster? Falling stars beaning flowers? Questioning ideas on astronomy?

I couldn't decipher the scene, but an official photographer zipped about documenting it with his impressively long lens.

Spring burst into bloom this week in DC, and the pollen is rushing to our heads, making us goofy with the fever of warmth, waking the slumbering spirit of play.

After a week emcompassing events such as attending my first cocktail party with secret service patrolling the crowd (why yes, they did give me probing looks; I must look shifty when I wear mascara) and a multitude of more mundane conference room meetings, I found I was most in my festive spring element with the alien invaders.

Still: I'm not wearing lime green spandex no matter how many flowers bloom.

Blooming

In Process



As yet, untitled

I haven't decided if the lobster will make the final cut of the painting or not. 

But I'm having tons of fun pondering other objects he could be holding and accompanying cheeky titles.

We'll see what I decide to do when I next pick up the brush.

Painting Wheels & Maps

Children of (Montsanto) Corn
by Dana Ellyn
acrylic on canvas

Today I attended my first-ever painting class. I loved it - and not just because the studio has cats in residence (although that is a bonus). 

Dana Ellyn (http://www.danaellyn.com/) teaches classes out of her home in Mather Studios downtown. She is a full-time artist whose work I first encountered through Artomatic and last saw when attending the "Dystopia" opening (a joint exhibit with Matt Sesow's work) at The Dunes. Aside from her distinctive style, the sharp-edged humor and emotional content of her work has long drawn me in. Her website bio notes that "from childhood until about the age of 30, Ellyn was quiet and reserved. She has now found her voice and she is making up for lost time."  Hell, yeah.   

All of which is to say, I've been on the painting class waiting list for a while now. 

So when a cancellation came in that gave me a spot, I zipped myself down to the Gallery Place Metro and (because I was overly zippy and early) spent some time at the National Portrait Gallery basking in an arty groove. (Side note: the Portrait Gallery has a copy of the Adams Memorial there, which I found startling, given that I didn't realize others existed outside of the original at the Rock Creek Church Yard; having it indoors feels...not quite right).

Classes are informal with Dana, as she meets the artist wherever he or she is on the learning curve. Some of the other students in the class were immersed in projects now well under way, each exhibiting a particular style and point of view. Since I've been largely painting in a vacuum (an interesting image if taken literally), the hum of communal right-brain activity sounded a happy tone for me.

Given that my painting knowledge is, umm, spotty at best, Dana started me out with the basics. While creating a color wheel, we touched on a variety of topics, including: brushes (flat for lines, rounds for more brushstroke emphasis); paint types (opaque, translucent); mediums (fluid medium, used to thin paints without making them all watery and streaky, is my new best friend; I'm still not huge on gel medium); color mixing and blending; scrumbling (dry brush); and palette knife painting. We covered a lot of ground in just six colored wedges.  

From there, I dug through her many books and chose a photograph as a model for my painting.  To get a handle on tonalities, I'll be creating a version in black & white (original photo is also, conveniently, black & white). After getting a base background of a gray going, I spent some time sketching things out with a soft pencil (now also on the shopping list).   

Of course, being me, I ended up changed the cropping so that I could focus more on the face in the photograph, and may end up changing other details, as the balance is now a little screwy.  I started getting just the roughest bits of light and dark paint shading in before running out of time. Two hours goes quickly.

Typing away here, with paint flecks still stuck to my fingernails, I'm thrilled to have landed in a flexible place where I can ask all the questions that come up while I'm twiddling around with paints. I feel like I've spent the last two years driving around town, and now suddenly someone has handed me a map. I'd hit some good spots and some weird neighborhoods in my travels, but missed whole areas and major attractions, failed to see the shortcuts and connections and commonalities that, once known, make getting where I want to go much, much easier. 

So yes, I'm very much looking forward to my next class and working on how to make make people look like people not mannequins, and giving Peanut the cat another scritch behind the ear .

Photo Therapy



Day 1, Job 2, downtown

From one job (researching art therapy for use with trauma sufferers), I now know there are art therapy techniques geared for use with photography. I was obviously already on to the idea that pursuing just about any kind of art can be relaxing and therapeutic, but I hadn't really thought about photography per se. 

So today, as I had 5 minutes to spare before my first day at job #2, I dug my camera out of my bag and snapped a few photographs to help gather my thoughts.  And lo and behold if it didn't settle a jitter or two and set me off on a good course for a good day at what I hope will continue to be an absorbing new project.

Sketch Fest

My father, based on a photo circa 1975.

For my father's birthday, rather than give him one more shirt that he doesn't need or particularly want, I decided to spend a few days trying to create a portrait. 

If nothing else, it was an absorbing exercise for me. Only in retrospect did I realize that perhaps the shirt might have been more fun for Dad.  By way of metaphor, giving Dad art is about the same as giving me football tickets. 

But in any case, he knows I spent time thinking about him and his birthday -- a good long time, given all that erasing. So at least that requirement was met. 

I've been working on sketching, off and on, for the last few months, and minor progress continues. Some other attempts are below.

 

Rule of Thirds

Rule of Thirds, DC Style

Indoor Nature

Butterflies, atrium Neimum Marcus

Metal flower, TJ Maxx

Photography Bender

Berries, Gallaudet University

A photography bender has started, thanks to a fabulous friend who has loaned me a camera with a real lens and the ability to change things like aperture and ISO and set the focus and such.

I still don't know what aperture is, despite her best efforts to explain it to me. 

But I do know that if I have aperture set to 2.8 and zoom all the way in, I get the effect of some things blurry and some things not. 

I'm unreasonably excited by this.  I'm almost as excited by this as by the fact that this super cool camera also still fits in my purse so I can still carry a camera around with me everywhere. 

I expect I'll be annoying about the new toy for quite a while.

Birdhouse & Giant Metal Chicken, Capitol Hill

Tommy's Birthday

My brother Tommy

A friend of mine who lost his sister to cancer warned me that there were certain times of year, around her birthday and the date of her death, where he would just feel off, sunk in a glumness that he couldn't pinpoint, and then he would realize: Oh. Somewhere in his subconscious calendar, he was tracking the movement of time away from her. 

And so January creeps forward here. It's been busy with new projects and a sick cat and social outings and one thing or another, life the way it is, but today I realized: Oh. My brother Tommy's birthday is on Tuesday. That's the dark noise flittering around in the background. 

It's the third of his birthdays to pass since he died at age 45 in August 2009, and time has, as advertised, smoothed some of the sharp edges. 

The initial rawness was, in some ways, shocking in and of itself.  Because of my brother's severe autism, he lived in residential schools and group homes from when he was 7 and I was 2 years old.  I have no memory of him at home beyond vacations -- Christmas, Easter, summer break.  Sometimes, Mom and Dad would drive out to his school in Delaware, my sister and I packing the backseat full of Barbies to entertain us through the drive there and back. Susie is older and remembers him at home, but I don't. 

Tommy lived the last 24 years of his life in a small group home in Maine with some of the kindest people I've ever met working with him there. He made friends and went bowling and to baseball games, rode regularly with the therapeutic riding program he loved and kept the yard free of dandelions with a ruthless vigilance.

Tommy wasn't part of day-to-day life in my memory, so as much as I didn't expect his sudden death at only 45, I also didn't expect how much the finality of his absence would unravel me for a time.

For most of my childhood, Tommy injected a level of chaos into most family holidays. To be honest, the spitting and the bedwetting and the less-than-ideal table manners weren't all that much fun. But he was family and I felt that bond. We both took the same destructive glee in ripping into Christmas presents.  And he more glee in tidying up (I'm more of a slob; Tommy liked things in their place, although that order could remain mysterious to the rest of us).  

He didn't make much eye contact, but I do remember moments, hiding out with him, where I'd just sit next to him and talk when no one else was in the room. Mostly, he would rock back and forth and I couldn't tell if he was listening.  But every once in a while, usually when I made some crack about a relative, he'd shoot me a look as if to say, "Yeah, I know. They're all a little nuts."

This is what siblings do, exchange sidelong, knowing glances about the quirkiness of family.

We looked alike, and in some pictures, I see family expressions, the mix of Mom and Dad that came down to both of us.

And then we were not alike. I spoke; he didn't.  He hummed and rocked and flapped, the classic self-soothing mannerisms of autism.  

Autism diagnosis has exploded in the last 30 years.  But when I was a kid, half of my childhood cohort thought my brother was artistic, painting portraits in some garret.  No, I'd explain.  He was different. Really different.

When we were growing up, the now dismissed Refrigerator Mother theory put forward by Bruno Bettelheim and Leo Kanner was just falling out of fashion. They suggested that emotionally frigid mothers who turned away from their children inspired the emotional distance of autism.

Autism is now largely considered to be a genetic issue.  But in the 50s and 60s, all those mothers who had kids like Tommy were, on top of having to deal with the difficulties of having kids like Tommy, told his autism was their fault. I don't have kind feelings toward Bruno Bettelheim.

There weren't any autism walks or ribbons of awareness when Tommy and I were growing up. The resources available for him and my parents were frequently lumped together with children with related, but different issues needing different care. My parents spent innumerable hours investigating every new treatment that showed promise, from the B vitamin megadosing to hours working with Tommy on picture and word recognition. He went to day schools and, when he was older, bigger, and more energetic, to residential schools.  My parents navigated labyrinths of legal and funding options and did everything they could to make sure Tommy had every opportunity to be healthy and happy.  


I am thrilled that autistic people and their families today don't have explain nearly as much, that there are more and better options, that there are approaches that can help autistic people and their families connect more with each other. And I also wish more of those options, instead of Bruno Bettelheim, had been around for my family.   

One huge impact on my brother's life was the introduction of facilitated communication (FC).

Transcript, FC conversation, 7/25/1996 - p. 1

Until that point, we were all told Tommy likely didn't understand much of what was going on around him. 

Facilitated communication is assisted letterboard typing, a treatment that grew out of work with people with cerebral palsy. It was not without controversy.  There were claims of it being a Ouija board, with the facilitator (deliberately or not) influencing the letters plucked out one by one by the client.

But then there were also autistic people that eventually no longer needed facilitators, who began to type out words on their own. No Ouija boards there. 

So in our 20s, Tommy and I finally got to have a conversation.

I believe FC worked for Tommy, that it was his voice speaking, not a facilitator's. Although he always had a facilitator with a hand on his arm back near his elbow, I think Tommy directed the chosen destination of his pointing finger on that letterboard.

Transcript, FC conversation, 7/25/1996 - p. 2

What I can absolutely guarantee is that Tommy was happier when people treated him as if he could understand, when he was given choices, when he was asked questions and given opportunity to respond. 

He mellowed in his 30s and 40s (as we all do) and settled into a peaceful rural life in Maine, seeing my mother regularly after she moved nearby, seeing my father on his many trips north, participating in the therapeutic riding program in the summers, clearing those pesky dandelions out of the yard, working with the staff on treatment goals, including FC, to make his life more comfortable, and enjoying outings with his housemates. 

Tommy brought difficult issues with him; there is no way around that. 

But Tommy could also be refreshingly fun in his own particular way, in part because social conventions didn't apply for him. 

Transcript, FC conversation, 7/25/1996 - p. 3

An example: at a family bbq at my aunt and uncle's house in the late 70s or so, Tommy arrived back at the table from a trip to the restroom quite happily naked. He was a nudist at heart, I think, and destroyed, bit by bit, thread by thread, countless shirts over his lifetime. I have a fond memory of watching one of his shoes go by my window when we were in the car. But on this occasion at my relatives' Pennsylvania home, he'd just ditched his whole wardrobe. It was hot; he was a clothing optional kind of guy. 

My mother (not endorsing the clothing optional approach) went to find his clothes, assuming he'd left them upstairs. 

And she could find no sign of them -- not in the bathroom, not in the closets, not in any of the bedrooms, not on the stairs, not anywhere. None of us could find them anywhere. We considered and rejected the flushability of his clothes (with mild plumber alarm) but it just didn't seem possible.  His clothes had just vanished, Tommy's personal magic trick.

Transcript, FC conversation, 7/25/1996 - p. 4

His dip into nudism was foiled that day, as Mom of course had other clothes in supply, but he definitely had his moment of making an entrance and creating a mystery. 

Some days later, my aunt dropped something on the bathroom floor and when she leaned down to retrieve it, happened to see a bit of cloth hanging down behind the radiator.  And pulling on that, she then discovered, wedged with great precision, Tommy's abandoned clothes.  

Tommy, like any kid, had crafty moments, and he really, really didn't want to wear those clothes on a hot July day. Even before FC, Tommy managed to get many of his points across. 

Most of all, Tommy had some fun amid family and friends that loved him.  I will hope to remember that above all on his birthday. 

"Cinthia makes me laugh. I am laughing with you. A good thing to laugh."
          -- Tommy, during an FC conversation when I visited Maine in 1996.  

Thomas Daniel Daffron
January 17, 1964 - August 30, 2009
Photo taken mid-August 2009