Dawn’s Thoughts

I finished Joseph P. Shapiro’s book No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement last night. I liked this book. It covers quite a bit of disabled history and does so with a wide range of disabilities, including blindness, ALS, autism, mental retardation and physical disabilities. I wanted to read this book after seeing it in the legal section in a bookstore, flipping to a page about the Behavior Research Institute, and thinking that it sounded just like the Mother Jones magazine expose I had just read. (And as it turned out, when I researched it, it was; the center changed its name to the Judge Rotenberg Center).

I’m torn between debating this particular problem on ethical reasons, or siding with parents, who do need a last-resort option for children and adults who yank their own hair, bang their heads, or engage in any other violent behavior. The parents do need respite and an option of somewhere to put their children where they will be safe. Shapiro addresses this issue first by showing a job center where people with temper tantrums can work. He reports that due to positive intervention on the job, the temper tantrums eventually subside.

During the time the author examined this center in the 1980’s, it used a device to electrically shock students who misbehaved — reportedly about the voltage of a rubber band slapped across you. Students could also be pinched, spanked with a spatula, slapped, have portions of food withheld or — and here’s a chilling part — restrained with their heads between their knees, masked, and with white noise helmets on their heads.

Now addressing this issue is tricky. Food rewards for proper behavior are a part of public school special education for some students. So that makes sense. Restraints are allowed in at least one center I know of, as well as time-outs. So here’s the thing. A shock device like that would probably be not very painful, but a reminder, equivilant to (and I hate to say it) training your dog. And students particularly sensitive to noise and touch would hate these punishments. All right. But let’s review. Let’s assume the students engage in behavior that is threatening to themselves (throwing chairs, banging their heads, biting their fingers severely etc.) So. In a prison, inmates engage in behaviors that can be harmful to others (rape, murder,etc.) and they are in prison to rehabilitate them.

In the Mother Jones expose (August 2007, http://motherjones.com/politics/2007/08/school-shock), the voltage of the device had increased to about the strength of a bee sting — according to the reporter, like a whole swarm at once. Shapiro predicted this in his book, saying that the school was like a giant Skinner box, principles that the school extended to not only the students but also to supervisors as well.

Well, Shapiro points to the students doing tedious work on computers. (Now some tedious work on computers might not be tedious for them, and I’m hoping this is not one of those false-education things). So a man protests by verbalizing and taking his hands off the computer. When he is pinched, he complies. When he tries to get up from his seat, he is instantly thrown to the floor and held there until he complies and goes back to work. Now this makes me wonder. How long and how often are the breaks? Does this person need a different schedule or is everyone on the same one? Is this person known to immediately engage in violent behavior to himself or others upon getting up? Also, the student attempted communication which was appropriate to express that he wanted to stop.

And lastly, if you worked in an office and decided to take your coffee break early, would your boss body slam you?

So the students engage in difficult, hard-to-control behaviors. Shapiro notes that if the students are subject to a system of rewards and punishments for their behavior, then the supervisors get rewards for how they respond. What this could potentially mean (and scientifically, according to Skinner’s priniciples, it does) is that the more a supervisor rewards (or punishes) a student, they get a vacation. They are rewarded for something good they did, and they will do more of it because of this reinforcement. So, for example, shocking or restraining a student will bring you good things. Think of the Stanford experiment: students became jailers or prisoners; those with the power quickly engaged in excessive force. In Milgram’s study, people were asked by a doctor in a white coat to shock a person, and to up the voltage when asked. It was proven that when asked by a person in authority, the subjects would up the voltage to the point of death, despite protesting, if they were asked to by someone in authority. What they didn’t know is that the person being shocked was an actor.

Interestingly, Shapiro notes that the supervisors in this case had newly-acquired college degrees. They were entry-level. Hmm…

Intrigued by this, I decided to look further into the school. Who is right? The parents, who could be admittedly desperate if local schools have not been able to help, or the school with its system of rewards and punishments? Hard to tell. For instance, if you swat your two-year-old, but also reward them most of the time, their bad behavior will eventually stop. This is according to Skinner’s principles, like a rat pushing a lever when rewarded and going away from it if they’re shocked

But if you hogtied your two-year-old, put a mask over their head, white noise over their ears — well, all right, maybe you remove the mask and earphones, but maybe not – and you can leave them restrained lying down by the legs and arms for minutes, hours or intermittedly days, until they do what you say — how fast do you think Social Services will be called? I can bet if your child reported that you did this for even two minutes, they would be taken away.

Even if parents are right that the reward and punishment system works for their children — and I believe for some it likely does — there is an interesting parallel here. http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2007/12/18/prank_led_school_to_treat_two_with_shock/ has an extremely interesting story. A prank call, believed to be from a former student, pretending to be a supervisor, resulted in shocks. The two boys involved were woken in the middle of the night, shocked 77 and 29 times respectively — this article says this did not result in medical treatment and caused no injuries. That’s interesting. Just as a principal would never ask for the identity of a teacher who wanted a student seen, neither did these people — which makes sense. In a parallel, if you slapped a student 77 times, lightly, which did not result in injury, wouldn’t that be considered highly excessive? In historical terms of institutions, weren’t restraints, cold water showers and beatings used to subdue inmates or force them to work in the fields or at menial tasks (admittedly with more violence)? (Shapiro refers to the cold water showers in his book as punishment at the center, though I’ve found it nowhere else).

A video on Youtube, which appears to be an NBC news report http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aUIhWmDPeI states that the 77 shocks were given over a three hour period. Hmm. The news report also refers to the punishment as “shock treatment” which I believe is actually electroshock therapy, and not what is being done here. But still…three hours. Isn’t that a very long time for punishment of any kind to continue? What if this was beating a student with a stick or something else for three hours, ever so often, or dripping water on them for three hours? Even if the punishment occurred intermittently for three hours, it means that for that time period (I assume) the student expected punishment, even during those times when it did not actually occur. They anticipated and received punishment for an extended time. Longer than most schools or homes, even if they are allowed to use physical punishment, would be permitted to use it. If nothing else, it seems physically and emotionally abusive just for the length of time involved.
But…hmm…what does this sound like? Someone in authority told you to do something that involves shocks to another person, and you did so because you believed them to be in authority.

Milgram’s study, anyone?

And also, assume that you might be restrained to a chair in a upright position, where you might be able to see your watch. That’s good. But what if you are restrained in a prone position and unable to see your watch, or if you have no inherent sense of time, no idea of how long things last? How long would the punishment seem then? If the shock device must be approved by the courts and parents, as a last-resort punishment, why is it being used for minor things like having an untidy appearance or asking for a tissue? And swearing. Sometimes I wish the report would include context. If swearing is a sign of escalating anger problems, then there might be a problem. Otherwise swearing is not harmful to anyone. Should it have the same punishment as another action that is? And if you assume that at least a percentage of students might have sleep problems to begin with, since they are special ed. During the three hours in the middle of the night you are being punished, then, you are not sleeping. What will that do your behavior the next day? Seems that could get into a cycle.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22730838/ continues the story, saying that the punishment did result in first degree burns for one of the students. The center’s videotape of the above incident, which the center was ordered to keep for the court, was destroyed at the center, due to worries about the privacy of students. Huh. Makes sense you’d want to protect student privacy, but shouldn’t the tape be taken and enter into the chain of custody like any other evidence? Doesn’t the chain of custody exist so that evidence doesn’t disappear? The article says when an investigator asked for a copy of the tape, the center declined, and were merely told to preserve a copy for criminal investigations of abuse.

…And they didn’t.

And in this case, what constitutes a legal definition of “injury?” Obviously, you can be physically hit or otherwise punished without causing bruising or cuts. But are these considered injuries? They are not lasting injuries in the sense of broken bones. The legal definition of injuries changes over time — for instance, in the 1800’s, it was legal to beat your wife, and your children. If bruising or blood occurred, that was all right, within your rights as a member of the household. A first degree burn involves redness, minor pain — like a sunburn, without blistering. It heals within 5 to 7 days. So if we assume that small burns occurred where electrodes were located, which could have been in multiple areas, each of which took 7 days to heal, during which time, there was pain, is that an injury? It’s not an injury in the sense of broken bones, but still…it’s not something that’s going to go away shortly after the punishment ends either.

Let’s assume that, by mistake, you received burns on the back, arms, and stomach. Let’s also assume that electrodes were moved around to prevent burns. If you were given 5 shocks, maybe only 2 of those places result in very small burns at the site of electrodes. Since first degree burns can hurt mildly when exposed to air and movement, let’s also assume ointment was applied by the school’s nurse. So you are treated — and because you have only 2 burns, doing relatively well. (Or in most cases, it seems, you may never get burned at all, anyway). But suppose you have the 77 shocks. How many of those result in burns? Can you for example lie on your stomach, back or side, without having burns touch blankets or your clothes?
On page 152, Shapiro notes rewards which include hugs, merry-go-round rides and other fun activities. On page 153, however, he reports that one student received “over one thousand physical punishments” over three days. Granted the punishments Shapiro lists sound relatively minor, but still I tried to calculate that. 1000 punishments over 3 days, if my calculations are correct, would be something like 333 punishments per day, however minor. I wanted to break that down per hour but couldn’t figure out how. So, does that mean, someone stands beside you, and waits to punish you? Wouldn’t that be emotionally stressful?

What I think is interesting about this is that even inspectors did not care for what they saw or what children reported to them. http://boston.com/news/daily/15/school_report.pdf has an extremely interesting report about this. Inspectors found that despite the school’s claim of rewards, few were observed, punishments were put to use more often, that students were discouraged from interacting with each other or with staff; that special education and training was not adequate; that at least one student placed there for vocational services was not getting any such services. The study also found that students could be forced to engage in behavior that resulted in their being shocked (called a Behavior Rehearsal Lesson), and that delayed punishment was used (being woken up for punishment due to something the cameras saw earlier that day).

The problem with that (aside from ethical concerns) is that punishment is supposed to be immediate. Say you have a two-year-old and you swat him and tell him it’s for something he did three days ago that you just remembered now. Will the message get through? No. Because it’s removed from the behavior. In addition, I’m assuming that many students are low-functioning, which is likely not the case, since some were apparently interviewed. If you take someone with a mental age of three with head banging under stress, and you subject him to these conditions, and punish him for head banging, what’s going to happen? Well, likely more stress and head banging, especially if they are unable to verbalize that they want to stop a task or go home.

A positive reward system was in place with the awarding of tokens for the absence of the bad behavior, which could be exchanged for toys. In the public school system, smiley faces, food, praise are similar token rewards. The only problem with this is that the report notes on page 18 that positive behaviors were not rewarded at all. Visits to psychologists must be earned by writing a letter and paid for with tokens. This makes me wonder. First of all, obviously students shouldn’t be able to pester doctors constantly, but shouldn’t communication be a goal instead of a privilege? If you don’t earn any tokens because you have exhibited poor behavior, that means you may never earn the right to talk to the psychologist, and you may have the most need. And also, if whining, nagging etc. are behaviors which can result in punishment, what happens if you have a legitimate complaint? What happens if you are unable to write? Is an alternative provided?

Also, restraints as punishments seems a bit outdated. Restraints are now being phased out of nursing homes because of this use — even if they were used appropriately to hold constricted muscles in place, keep someone from falling out of bed, or enable them to ride in a wheelchair. Without seat belts, some people would be unable to ride in a wheelchair. This, I believe, is an appropriate of restraints. Also, restraints could be used if you show an immediate threat of harm to yourself or to others, but not as a punishment. Restraints-as-punishment are destroying actual medical need for restraints.
The report said that “Students in classrooms were docile and compliant and did not attempt to socially engage, either verbally or with eye contact, anyone in the rooms. This was also apparent in the residences visited by the team. Staff indicated, on at least three occasions, that it was unsafe to allow students to socialize because in the past students had plotted against staff.” (page 25; italics mine). “…in fact requires that the students not attempt social interactions with staff or classmates as part of their behavior programs.” (page 24). Now assuming this people have inherent social skills difficulties, isn’t that a bit odd?

The report stated that community and social skills were not taught. Some students were not allowed to attend school. Work was apparently so repetitive that students would continue to tap keys for computers, even if the computer was frozen. The report stated that shocks could be administered for non-destructive behaviors like nagging, swearing, untidy appearance, and in one instance, requesting a tissue after sneezing. Students could be restrained and repeatedly shocked.

The Behavioral Rehearsal Lesson makes sense in theory: like a social skills lesson, reinforce what should not be done, instead of what is proper. In practice, however, it sounds like shock is used for both demonstrating the bad behavior, and for refusing to demonstrate it (not following instructions, but an actually good rewardable response. Page 9: “GED skin shock and restraint are also used together when the Behavior Rehearsal Lesson (BRL) is practiced on a student. The BRL is used when a student exhibits a high risk, low frequency behavior. As described by a JRC staff person, during a BRL, the student is restrained and GED administered as the student is forcibly challenged to do what the procedure seeks to eliminate. If the student attempts to pull away he receives a GED skin shock; if the student attempts to follow through with the high-risk behavior he receives multiple GED skin shocks at closer intervals.” Shock was also applied for demonstrating an alternative good behavior (page 19).
Hmm…they punish you more for doing a bad behavior, which you were forced to do. Other examples of the BRL were also frightening: “It was reported by a JRC staff member that one of the BRL episodes involved holding a student’s face still while staff person went for his mouth with a pen or pencil threatening to stab him in the mouth while repeatedly yelling “YOU WANT TO EAT THIS?” The goal was to aversively treat the student’s target behavior of putting sharp objects in the mouth.” (page 19).
Besides a obvious problem of this as an educational tool, look at this as a social model. Is the student alone or with peers at the time? Aside from scaring the crap out of any student, what is the person in charge demonstrating? That’s right: how to stab someone. Since a social model would be used to teach skills in classes, this demonstrates to someone with mild-severe retardation or emotional problems the type of behavior you would never want to encourage.

And also is this dignified for the student? Obviously students have held on to some troublesome behaviors when most none-special ed students have discarded them at their age, but what if you applied the same technique to a preschool classroom? And how is the no-head-banging rule reinforced? Does someone bang your head?
Page 18 also has a frightening concept:  “JRC has a policy on modifying contingencies due to the special “pleading” of students. Part of the treatment program for students involves deliberately setting up unfair or mistaken directions or decelerative (application of a skin shock with a GED device) consequences for the students. The student is expected to handle these unfair situations successfully and not ‘plead’ or appeal to a psychologist or clinician regarding his/her treatment. In instances where the student “pleads” to the psychologist or clinician, there are consequences imposed on the student.”

Gotta love that. The student is set up resulting in punishment and if they attempt a grievance to anyone in charge, they are punished more. Although this would diminish unwarranted complaints to staff, what this means is the student’s right to seek help should they need it, is automatically forfeit. Any legitimate complaints should there ever be an actual abusive problem, is assured punishment, and discredited. How many complaints make up a “plea”? One or two? How about perservating on the subject?
Let me play around with this a bit. Let’s assume that the staff set up this policy for a good reason — constant complaints (let’s face it “Daddy, Mommy spanked me,” doesn’t work as an excuse in family either) — and that it is, as it would be in a family, a method to maintain proper authority over children or those in custody. (Obviously, you don’t want the child to play one adult against another). So, for the first time in 20 years, let’s say, an actual isolated single incident of abuse happens to three students. I’m pulling diagnoses out of thin air, here. Let’s assume one student, Andrew, 22, is a compulsive liar, unable to understand reality as it actually happens, has an above-average IQ, and gets violent towards others (hitting, shoving, threatening to stab them, etc.) The second, David, 15, is learning disabled, constantly utters harmless complaints (this student hit me, that student took my toy car, etc. when these events occur) but has anger management problems and difficult to control tantrums. The third, Michael, is low-functioning, has a limited vocabulary, and bites through his tongue and arms due to frustration. But he is diagnostically incapable of lying, and is truthful. So, the incident occurs. Andrew’s behavior gets worse and he spouts angry accusations against everyone, becomes violent and must be restrained for the safety of himself and staff. David utters his usual constant complaints, but no one listens to him, because he constantly does this for minor incidents. Michael cries a lot and says three words to a doctor: “She hit me.” So, by school policy, are all three students punished the same, even though the second was telling the truth, although it was ignored due to overexposure, and the third had never lied before? Now obviously overexposure can result in a lack of investigation — such the recent refusal of a security guard to call 911 for a schizophrenic patient because of patients’ frequent waste of 911 resources — but look at the complaints of Alzheimer’s patients, say. If an Alzheimer’s patient complains and becomes upset and reports an incident of rape, hitting, restriction of food by family members, etc.,police or social services investigate. Assuming the person does not engage in so many numerous reports that resources are clogged and investigation must be refused — is the person routinely denied investigation on the sole basis of the fact that they may actually believe the event happened when it did not? Because they have the potential to become violent? Because by virtue of their disability the incident could be exergarated? No — unless they have called so many times, they are refused help, I would say elder abuse is investigated — even though the person’s disability raises issues about its validity. In fact, if investigation is refused on disability alone than I would say that was illegal. If the investigation is found to be false, well and good, and obviously resources needed for other things shouldn’t be spent on this, but still….If the investigation proves false, do the people in charge automatically pinch or slap the individual for lying or take away privileges such as TV? Are the Alzheimer’s people believed by police only because they were once young and competent individuals, and only disease and age have made them this way? I’m just playing around with this idea, but still…

Thinking of this another way, look at dog training. For treats to reinforce good behavior, some food can be withheld from the dog so that she is not overfed. The treats can then be given as a reward. For punishment, the dog can be smacked lightly, scolded, sprayed with cold water, sprayed in the face with ammonia, or have a electric collar attached to keep them away from the fence. The collar emits small, non-harmful shocks. Sound familiar? Works for the dog. The dog’s behavior improves over time, combined with rewards such as praise.

But what if you do the same thing to your dog? Granted, some people alpha-roll their dogs, a controversial and dangerous thing to do, since the dog believes in this stomach-up position can result in death. But let’s say as punishment you drag your dog to the fence repeatedly, over the course of several hours. Each time the dog gets a shock. So what? It doesn’t harm the dog. Maybe you restrain your dog, grabbing it by the collar in order to do this, or maybe you don’t. Maybe you pen your dog in the “dead zone” of the fence so that they are shocked remotely, but are unable to leave the area. The shocks cause the dog’s behavior to improve, right? But if the dog is overexposed to these shocks by extended punishment, the dog will either improve, hate you, or become apathetic — docile, depressed, and easier to handle. Is this truly then a non-harmful technique? Not the collar itself, but the manner in which it was used? The offense the dog committed could have been a single offense.

Does the punishment fit the crime — even if the inspectors at the school saw only one example that happened while they were there?
“One student’s behavior plan indicated that the student is to be rewarded when he does not react to a staff member preparing to or administering the GED to another student, implying that this student may be having collateral effects when peers receive skin shock consequences.” (page 26). This statement is one of the last statements to end the report. Earlier the report defined collateral effects as anxiety, depression, etc. It’s interesting that they use this term, military in origin, to describe this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_damage defines collatral damage two different ways, but essentially it is the unintended friendly fire of one’s own troops, or the unintention harm or death of civilians while targeting the enemy.

Should the collateral damage observed by the inspectors (whether it is actual or assumed) be regarded as a kind of damage — an injury? Granted, all children and adult there would have a Human Committee and IEP to offer protection to them. But are extreme apathy, depression, anxiety and fear as a result of educational techniques a form of damage?

Now the thing that’s interesting here is this is a population who very likely has a higher incidence of seizures and people are applying electricity to them, albeit low voltage. Electroshock therapy, as this is compared with, is higher voltage and induces seizures, where this does not. But, is applying electricity to the head and limbs of special ed students a safe thing to do, even if it must be parent- court- and medically approved?
If you put a mask over a prisoner’s head so that they couldn’t see, restrained them in handcuffs, provided them with a source of the same music over and over, and did something physically to them which was aversive, what would that be called?

The inspector’s report had very little positive to say about the center. Whatever the parents responses, and the need for an appropriate school, it’s intriguing that the investigators were so negative. Shapiro, in his book, foresaw the rising use of the shock device — that more and more students were placed on it — and that the voltage would eventualy increase.

I glanced through the school’s website, which has several photographs. The place looks nice, has a large rewards store, midway and playground, and field trips but does show lots of students at computers. Although the rooms are brightly colored and cheerful, some of them would make me not want to stay in them due to conflicting paint colors, floor patterns etc. Before and after pictures of students, showing that head-banging and other severe self-inflicting injuries were healing, is a good sign. They have several parent and ex-student testimonials. I will not argue if the minor punishments or shock are effective or humane. I do wonder however if some of the practices are. For instance, the report on the school stated that students were set up. Is tricking a student inclined to inspire them to trust you? How are students discouraged from interacting with other people — (the report does say that students asked questions of staff, and the responses were caring) — so perhaps it’s only that talking or other interaction is discouraged during school while being taught, as is normal practice. Maybe it means that students are not allowed to interact socially with staff, as in treatingthem as friends? But maybe not. The report needs context, but some of the things it outlines are frightening anyway, and it seems to me, reduce the dignity of the student, whatever the intention was. If you have to effectively tie someone up for the sole purpose of punishing them for an activity that took place earlier — even if that activity was life-threatening — it happened earlier, and if punishment must take place, it does not necessarily mean that the student is acting in a harmful way now and has a direct need to be restrained. That right there is worrisome.

Well, given that I have now sidetracked this book review, I will have to continue it at a later time. As a fiction writer, this provides me with wonderful material. As something that is occurring to disabled individuals, it does however have the potential to be very troubling.

I’ve been reading several books lately and thought I would discuss some of them here.

Tonight I found The Names of Things: A Passage in the Egyptian Desert by Susan Brind Morrow tucked away in a box with old school things. I’d forgotten about it, but when I read it over again, I remembered why I’ve kept it, why I read it periodically. I do so becase something about the way the book is written, the way it plays with languages — Egyptian, hierogliphics, the Bible, the Koran, songs — inspires my writing. This is one of those books that I used to bring out at night to read. It’s a travel book about Egypt, a story about the author’s family, the author’s studies of “dead languages,” and has a bit of Egyptology and archeology excavations thrown in as well. (The author describes keeping a child’s arm on her desk, a bone found at a dig, and the coloring of it, how carefully it was preserved.

No wonder it appeals to me. I love playing with words in writing and this book is full of explanations of hieroglyphics as various animals, of storytelling as a memory aid. The author uses animals and colors quite a bit as descriptions, but the sentences are short. I don’t read poetry often, unless the words create images that I can understand, and while this is not a poetry book, it is a book that use poetic language. It’s a short book but one I return to. This is a book I remember searching for as an audio book, because it would sound good as a CD.

I also read Illywhacker by Peter Carey yesterday. I confess that I am glad I bought it second-hand and that it only cost a dollar. I will be getting rid of it shortly. I bought it because it was Australian, because it was long, and billed as a humorous adventure story about a con man. Since I’ve found that British, Australian, and Canadian novels seem to do this kind of story quite well, with longer blocks of description than are normally in American books, I plowed in with excitement. (Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts is an example of a recent Australian book I did enjoy. It is enormously long, and yes, it does have spots that drag, but it is an exciting, well-done story set in India, and the parts that are good are well-worth reading).

This book was not it. Yes, it had descriptions of animals, the Australian bush, life histories of people the central character (the con man Herbert Badgery) runs into, his son Charles, the animal charmer, etc. Normally I don’t mind background histories of charactors, even extensive ones, but in this book, we learn life histories of people met briefly and skip over significant points. For example, as a child Herbert Badgery runs away from his father (after pulling the first of a series of mean-spirited pranks on the man, possibly the only justified one in the book). When the story catches up with Badgery some chapters later, he has been adopted by a Chinese man, who attempts to instruct him in magic tricks (such as how to disappear). Along with the idea of charming animals and other magical references, this is one of the ideas in the book I like best (along with the fact that Badgery steals a magical book much later in the story). How these two things occur, however, I enjoyed less, because they did not make sense to me.

Badgery steals the book in a violent way that does somewhat have a motive, but he does other things in the book which do not, such as repeatedly waving or throwing poisonous snakes at various people for no good reason. I read the first 96 pages straight through, then skipped about the book thereafter. I would have been most interested, I think, in the parts where Badgery has children, and the fact that his son Charles attempts to copy his lying and trickery and tries to learn the magical disappearing trick. I loved the descriptions of Badgery’s various homemade houses, and I enjoyed this idea too, but the tragedy that happens as a result of the disappearing act did not phase me at all.

The reason is because until very late in the book (by which time I had lost interest, and skipped) Badgery’s children appear to factor very little in the story, despite the fact that their mother left them all. After the tragedy, we never know what happens to Badgery’s son — if Badgery is unhappy and traveling, who is taking care of his son right then? Who is taking care of his son later, when he steals the magical book? Does he think of these things?

Not at all, apparently. Instead, there are long stretches in the book with Badgery and various customers, other charactors, and a mother-in-law (who only returns once her daughter leaves Badgery, in order to take care of the children and for another reason, which is also incomprehensible to me). Since Badgery is a trickster, the fact that he does what he wants, when he wants does make logical sense — but it doesn’t work for me. I don’t find the book funny, I think the parts that might have been an excellent adventure story are not put to good use. It was a shame. I wanted to like this book, but by the end I wanted to know the ending, but didn’t really care what happened to any of the people in it.

I also read Craig Ferguson’s Between the Bridge and the River, and I wanted to like this book too. I like Craig Ferguson’s show and think he’s very funny. And while I admired the way the book was put together (various people introduced briefly, then thrown into various odd situations, including WWI,visitations from Carl Jung and other famous dead people, cross-dressing etc.) the only joke that made me laugh out loud involved a bed-wetting deterrent and electric blankets. The rest didn’t make me laugh. I’m not sure why.

Did basic paperwork straightening yesterday — updating job search files, searching for records needed for a job interview, looked for jobs. Courtney arrived in the evening for library returns — when we arrived, we found the library closed. Dropped off books, went out to dinner at Marie Callender’s — I had soup, sandwich and garlic fries — and with Courtney lamented the inability to drink, we went out afterward and had a drink close to home.

Courtney left, and I settled down to watch my most recent Netflix, a movie I’ve seen in the stores and been wanting to watch called My Brother. If you want to watch it, as I did, for the performances of actual disabled people in disabled roles, then you will be rewarded, as the two Down Syndrome actors do an excellent job. However, the story itself has several routes and doesn’t go successfully down any of them. And I reveal SPOILERS below.
The DVD box advertises that this is the story of two brothers — Isaiah and James, who has Down Syndrome, living in a poor neighborhood with gang related violence. I assumed, since the two actors are black, that the gang voilence would be because Isaiah got invited to join a gang. Wrong. In place of gang, read “the mob.” Isaiah, upset that James has a steady job (which Isaiah himself does not actually appear to have) and needing money, is convinced by a friend to enlist the help of the mob and become a delivery man for packages.

Now there are two options here: explore the idea that James, who has some living skills difficulties (such as putting cereal and newspaper in the fridge) appears more capable than his brother. Or, instead, does Isaiah debate and choose the mob over his brother and then regret the decision? Does he debate it?

Actually, no. Isaiah agrees at once that he needs the money for the rent, despite the fact that every time we see his friend and himself they are out drinking, and there seems to be no pressing need at home for money. In one scene, Isaiah is found drunk on the floor by James, who attempts to help him up and then gives up in disgust and says he’s a baby.

Well, even though the film shows that Isaiah is in general patient and caring with his brother, in this case, I’m inclined to agree with James. Isaiah rages that he’s tired of taking care of James. Which makes sense, but appears misplaced in the story.

Alll right, so James goes to the mob, is given instructions about package delivery — which he ignores through the rest of the movie. And not just a I’m too busy for this, but as if he’s forgotten about the job altogether. He goes to a party, retrieves the package and is spotted doing so by a woman — aha, I thought, a plant by the mob — but sadly, no. Even though James and friend speculate her motives, in the next scene with her, she has turned into Isaiah’s new girlfriend. In the scene that makes the most sense here, James is jealous and wants his brother to himself, and Isaiah, patient and distracted, shows the woman out.

She becomes angry and walks out, never to be seen again.

Now this makes a little sense. James is an embarrassment as a brother — but Isaiah doesn’t seem to mind at all. Well, all right.

Isaiah doesn’t wonder about the package — we don’t see the contents, or where he put it — and except for one scene with James, he doesn’t even search for it or wonder where it went. Notes come from the mob, and he ignores these too.

A long series of flashbacks occur — the best involve the young Isaiah and James, expecially when Isaiah feels compelled to get beaten up in place of his brother, or when James calls all the men on the street Daddy — but his mother has pulmonary tuberculosis….

Yes — the 19th-century favorite for dying mothers. Possible even today, in America, so all right. I let that one slide. Naturally, the mother decides that she should share her wisdom with Isaiah as the new man of the family — and she does so, for a very long scene, which she whacks him for swearing (oddly enough, the swearing was appropriate), then instructs him, among other things, never to hit a woman and always to have respect for women.

I’m sorry — didn’t she just hit him? And his swearing wasn’t even directed at her. It might have been better if he copied what some thug said out on the street, but all right, no swearing in the house. Fair enough.

Then the movie goes overboard, with enough “remember this” remarks to gag a horse. But Isaiah, played very well by the actor — is a quiet, thoughtful, reasoning boy — makes you wonder where his patient, misguided older self lost his way — and he accepts all this and never protests taking care of James. There is a good line where Isaiah tells James Mama is going on a trip, and the boys go to the hospital to see her before she expires, still spouting wisdom like a good 19th-century dying woman should.

It’s clear that the time period in this is modern, by the way, though here again, what’s happening gets confused. I’m assuming the characters are late teens-30 years old. Yet when the heart of the movie begins — when the boys are separated by the court — Isaiah is sent to a strict prison-like school while James is sent to the “Willowgreen” institution on Stanton Island.

Here I started laughing.

The Willowbrook instution on Stanton Island existed until 1987 — its most publicly-known case is probably Geraldo Riveria’s expose in the 1970’s about living conditions there (which this film recreates almost frame-by-frame fasion in a sense (children half-clothed, nothing to do, rocking, humming, sitting under tables, etc.)). Its other well-known case is a series of “informed consent” medical experiments, where children were purposely infected with hepetitis. Institions do actually still exist — and there was a modern expose on one in Mother Jones that would have made an interested illustration here — but much less common.

So after a short scene in which we are introduced to Isaiah in his new school, politely asking to go to the bathroom to a rather bored teacher, until he pees all over the floor…But wait, isn’t this supposed to be a school for delinquints, or at least, children no one cares for? Why are they sitting silently? Why isn’t someone whispering or throwing something? Are they too frightened? The film doesn’t say. They behave better than most classrooms.

So Isaiah decides that he must go fetch his brother, because he promised Mama. All right. Next scene shows him over the barbed wire fence at night…

Well, yes, night would be better for visibility and yes, the children’s playtime outside could have very well been non-existant, so all right, at night.

Isaiah promptly finds himself inside and by not saying anything, is taken for disabled and thus shown into the dormitory, where the children are sleeping.

I’m sorry? Didn’t the institution lock the doors at night? I can buy that overworked staff wouldn’t look at the children long enough to know there’s one extra, because written accounts say that if you were quiet, you generally got better treatment, but there should have been numerous buildings with several floors and wards. How did Isaiah find the right one?

Isaiah finds his brother and the narration concludes that they stayed togerher.

Now wait just a moment. There’s an opportunity, and the film doesn’t take it. How did they stay together? In the charactor of Isaiah, the patient observer, more time should have been spent revealing daily life. Did they escape? How did Isaiah escape with his brother ? (And yes, The Wizard and Rain Man aside, that might have been overdone). Did they age out of the system? Since Isaiah adapts so well to environments — he’s so used to his brother that he doesn’t even flinch at the other disabled children or their horrible conditions — it would have been entertaining to see his adaptation to the institution. That would have been something to see. In fact, since the boys are poor, it actually would not have been unusal for Isaiah to have been placed there with James, a ready source of intelligent labor to help run the place.

But there the flashbacks end, and there, I believe is where the most interesting thing in the story lies. How did Isaiah get to the institution? What people did he meet along the way? Was he afraid of being caught? And so on. More questions than answers.

While Isaiah flees from the mob, leaving James with the instructions that the friend will come look after him (something that seems highly unlikely), the mob of course arrives to find James as collatral. They don’t rough him up too badly — there’s actually a lot more shoving around. Isaiah, on a ridiculous search for a man who might be his father — returns at the end to find his brother, and to tell him that wherever he is, that’s where home will be.

Aww…

The problem with this is, a) Isaiah really didn’t need to go looking for a potential father, here, especially since it doesn’t work out, and b) he LEFT James to the mob. If they escaped from Willowgreen, wouldn’t he already have adapted to taking James on the road with him? If they didn’t escape, wouldn’t he have learned strategies from that? And another thing, they leave the neighborhood in the end, but James is the only one with a job. I guess they’re going out in the world to starve, but hey, they’ll be together while doing it.

It does make you wonder. If the film started somewhere close to where the boys were seperated, I think it would have been better. They didn’t need to be adults. Even though Isaiah’s frustration makes sense, his journey is when he willingly goes into the institution…not when he’s an adult, playing around with the mob. He decided at that point to be with his brother and continue protecting him — and he actually fails at this when he runs from the mob. All other parts, including the girlfriend, the mob, the possible-father, are unneccessary, and should not be there. Though the film should be commended for their use of actual disabled actors — something which I hope to see more of in films — I sincerely wish they had chosen a different route for their story. I would have enjoyed much more.

Well, I now have so much soup in my fridge that it is remarkable. I have soup in the fridge and freezer. Courtney came over last night with a sack of vegetable soup vegetables and the explanation that since she is spending so much time over here eating my food and studying, she’s letting all her vegetables rot at home. So we studied all day, Courtney Japanese, and me job hunting, watched Gran Torino and then made a large pot of cabbage soup on the stove. I put in dried sage and tarragon, both from the garden, and Courtney put in pepper, basil and parsley. We chopped a large cabbage, garlic, 2 zucchini, 2 yellow squash, an onion, 2 carrots, and threw pinto beans. It made a very good soup, although we had to devise a bowl to put one zucchini in, as it was apparently rotten and tasted awful.

This means I now have the ginger, chickpea, garlic, okra and sweet pototo soup still left (yes, there was actually a recipe for it that contained the remains of my very strange pantry stock leftovers). That made a fantastic spicy soup and I have been eating it often, but still quite a bit left.

So, on to Gran Torino, which was Courtney’s Netflix. Excellent movie. I remember seeing the trailers and thought it was a bang-bang-shoot-’em-up kind of movie, and so avoided it a bit even though Clint Eastwood directed, but what I didn’t know is that it is also a very funny movie. I laughed a lot. The plot concerns a old man, very set in his ways and prejediced, and his neighborhood, which has been inhabited by rival gangs. His neighbors are Asian — and in the beginning, they have a ceremony for a baby and are killing chickens, and I thought of the Hmong — and as it turns out, they were Hmong characters. Since the main character has a shotgun he takes everywhere, and there are Hmong, Mexican and various other characters, it made me think the film might be set in the Central Valley, because that mix of cultures exists there. But it’s set in Michigan instead. This is a very old fashioned movie in the way it’s made — not so much in the language used in it — but in the pacing, the amount of talking, and the amount of characters which are the focus. It has few characters but takes the time to build them and the thier world. It also has a very Western feel to it, like what would happen if Dirty Harry retired and somebody pissed him off a bit and then a bit more. Clint Eastwood also directed Mystic River and the Outlaw Josey Wales, and they all take their time to develop the story. Even though I loved Mystic River the book, I thought something was missing from the movie - the neighborhood. Well, here is the neighborhood in this movie instead.

Of course, right after I finished the movie I had to look up quotes to it to find what I had misunderstood. The DVD has a surprising lack of extras, only a featurette on what kind of car the actors would like to buy given the chance, and another only about the car which I didn’t bother to watch. I was more interested in the story, and did find one article on the web about how the writer decided to develop the culture clash. It’s a very anthropology-like movie. (Courtney said that if you were from another country and wanted a lesson in all the racial slurs which could be thrown at someone, watch this movie. She constantly called the main character a bastard, but laughed at him as much as I did).
I also finished watching the commentary on Adam this morning. It’s a movie I finished up the other day. It’s very funny to watch the commentary, if only because they point out the things I missed while watching the movie. In one scene, a bunch of women and others are gathered around a newly adopted baby. The point of the scene was apparently that the women were offended because Adam walked off, and this was because they were lesbians and had adopted. Oops, missed that. I understood the baby was adopted, there were a lot of people around it, and I only saw the one closest as being a possible parent. I’d thought they were offended for an entirely different reason — because Adam hadn’t wanted to see videos and everyone else did. It also took me a little while to understand the significance of a scene where Adam’s girlfriend’s calendar reads “meet Adam at the theater with Mom and Dad.” What they mean is, they set up meeting at the theater, but I saw it as well, of course, they met him, because they explained in the scene that there were extra tickets. Anyway, before the scene was over, I did understand it. In another scene, the mother of the girlfriend tells Adam where she is and he walks there to meet her. In the commentary, the filmmakers said they did this because the mother wanted Adam and her daughter to get back together. Really? Didn’t realize that. Made sense to me that he would go where the mother told him — because that’s where the girlfriend was.

So obviously I missed some things. But it was an entertaining romance movie that played against its genre. The issue of whether Adam gets the girl or not is not so much an issue –at least not in the way you’d think. This is a “disabled” movie like Mask, My Left Foot, and Mozart and the Whale, and like them, there is a pivotal moment in it where the disabled person acts against another character in something that pertains to their disability. In Mask, it’s when Rocky Dennis slams a kid up against a locker. In My Left Foot, it’s when Christy Brown bangs his head on the table because everyone is taking his drink away from him (and when I saw that, I thought what a jerk, but there is a point there). And in Mozart and the Whale, which like Adam deals with Asperger’s Syndrome, one character who has Aspergers commands the other who also has it to act like normal people. In this case, there is a scene that actually causes a rift between the characters with more force, but the scene that I mean is a scene where Adam defines something practically that would be emotional. That’s very interesting. The problem I have with this issue is the subplot with the girlfriend’s father, who is going to court. The pivotal moment where the girlfriend decides she can’t be with Adam is too soon in my mind after the father telling her that she can’t be with Adam because he’s disabled. It doesn’t make it seem as if she arrived a logical decision based on whether adaptation was possible — but simply because her father told her it wouldn’t work. This may not be what the filmmakers intended, but it was confusing for me. Is it something I can understand and hope was different in the movie? Yes, it is. Is it realistic that the story might happen this way in real life? Yes, it’s very much that too. This was a good movie, but it also struck me as a very sad movie in some ways. Worth watching again.

The other movie I watched awhile back with Courtney from the library is also excellent, and like Adam, is an independent film — which is probably one of the reasons it’s excellent. It’s called The Dream Catcher, and it’s two (and almost only) main characters are Freddy, who is around 18, and Albert, who is around 14, very hyperactive, a compulsive thief and liar, and also one of the film’s funniest characters. Both of them are running away for different reasons, and this is a road movie that involves cars, boxcars, Indian reservations, carnies, swearing, more swearing, guns and the power they are seen to provide, and also how these people become family. Like Gran Torino, there’s a lot of talking, but it’s in it’s place. They follow up on all the loose ends by the conclusion. I watched commentary on this one too because I was interested how independent filmmakers could make a film that involved cross-country, trains, multiple cars, dogs, and children, multiple sets, and still make it work. There’s scene in this movie that doesn’t make any sense to me, though. It’s like the Lord of the Rings…If you owned something that made bad things happen, would you really carry it around, going “I’ve got to get rid of this, it makes bad things happen.”? Definitely a movie I would rent or own though. Different pace than really popular films.

Also, I’ve discover that Warner Brothers Archive has opened their vault and are selling DVDs of some of their older movies. Sounds like no special features at all, but still, I’ve been browsing.

I had leftover pancakes for breakfast today. Yesterday, in the middle of studying and watching movies, I did all the wash, which meant we were constantly stepping over piles of clothers, and also made the Italian Day of the Dead cookies from my new library sale cookbook In Nonna’s Kitchen. I’ve been wanting to try to make them, as they sound like a combination of all good things: jam, chocolate, coffee, nuts — and they turned out excellent. That being said, I have never seen cookies with such a texture. They turned out dark brown-purple from the rasberry jam and coffee, and they bake into this strange muddy brown color. In dough form, they remind me a lot of working in clay, the look and feel of it. But in spite of this, they tried out quite good, and I have been munching. Today I need to study braille before looking for jobs. More blogging later.

I have not written in quite awhile — since last April, apparently. Much has happened since then. Ernie came to visit in June, got a new house. Mom and Dad went away for a short trip to Pismo this December and were only gone 4 days before I called them back with the news that our neighbor Eric had died on December 6. I knew this because the police or fire dept. came to fetch me at 9 AM, looking for Mom. Then I went and sat with Eric’s wife until Mom got home. I didn’t know what to say or do. Eric was giving me tips on banjo making — though he thought I was a bit nuts in the way I make my banjos and I’m sure wondered why I didn’t do it properly. He could tune the banjo I managed to get in Reno too. He was recently teaching me how to make sourdough bread the old-fashioned way, which means I learned about the windowpane test and how to knead the bread until silky and that you can add water to the dough and not have it dry on the surface like I have it. Eric and his wife came over for Thanksgiving 2009, and I made the bread for that. The sourdough in it died, but it was still good with yeast. For some strange reason, my starter appears to be cursed with the stove being turned on, cooking nearby, pouring cold water on the yeast, etc. Something always happens to it. Around September 2009 or so, Eric lent me some of his books on historical cooking because we got into a discussion about it, as far as my project for History Club. I just returned those before Thanksgiving. It is very interesting to look at the ways of cooking that were done entirely differently historically. You wouldn’t think that baking had changed as much as it has.

I have been looking for jobs and continue to intern at the City. I recently learned how to name documents inside the scanner, which will save me a lot of time. I got an excellent letter of recommendation from my supervisor, which was kind of her.

Courtney came back from Masschusetts in September and has been great fun, especially since I now have company while working on the computer and also someone to cook with. She has showed me how to make cake, with ice cream and Kahlua for toppings, which I haven’t had before. Mmmm…

The yard has turned into a puddle the likes of which has not been seen here since the flood in 1998 (though at least these rain storms stop occasionally). Wolfie was apparently forced to swim the other day when he tried to play king of the mountain on his dirt pile and discovered he couldn’t find a way back to dry land. Wolfie has decided he wants to live in the yard — except not in the rain, so he runs out and then back in again. Walter, naturally, is the opposite and has made up his mind that he will never leave the couch or TV ever again. If found outside, he flings himself down beside the back door and complains to be let in again. Mom found out you can play with him if you roll the ball slowly where he can see it. We’ve determined that he has some visual impaired. Goes along with the arthritic and blind animals from before, I suppose.

My marvelous carniverous Shovel-Head Worm has died, as have the slugs I put in to feed him. This thing was as long as a good sized snake when Ernie found him in the front yard. He had a great stripe down his back like a garter snake (the worm, not Ernie). The internet said the worm ate other worms and animals, and since I saw no good purpose to flinging in the worm bin as I did with the developing salamander (who promptly developed more fingers and toes, better wrist and head definition in 2 days and grew remarkably — but then I removed him to the yard) — because the Shovel Head Worm would be unable to navigate with the other worms and would eat them all and be much harder to recapture. So I put him in a terraium in the back room, fed him with the slugs that had apparently found their way into the worm bin, and he appeared quite happy and wet enough. But apparently he didn’t many or any of the slugs after all, and they had nothing to eat because I don’t know what slugs eat, so they all died just the same. I’m not quite sure why, because the Shovel Head Worm should be able to live off himself for several months and as I didn’t have him for that long, I wonder what he couldn’t eat.

Kim reported tornado warnings for this area the other day, but I heard on the news that it was only the type of storm that might turn into a tornado. The weather’s funny. We had deluges for an hour, then the sky will be utterly clear and sunny, and when you look again, it has clouded over and the deluges are about to start. I have now been re-trained in lighting pilot lights, turning off gas and water, etc. in case the need arises.

i’ve been tinkering with writing ebooks and with typography and formatting. I bought a program on sale which has some interesting features and learned how to make an index on it, but beyond that it appears it may be more trouble than it’s worth. So back to the drawing board as far as that goes. I’ve also been tinkering with several stories lately — a genetically engineered children story is the newest one, followed by a historical thing which is either set in 1930’s or 1800’s, I’m not sure yet. They are going reasonably well but have no charactors so far.

I joined LinkedIn and Facebook, so am now probably more connected to the web than I ever hoped to be. My 10th high school reunion was November — good to see people again and learn what they were doing, as well as the fact that the reunion was good, easy to get to, didn’t cost much to get in, and was lit and handled in such a way that I enjoyed myself. I could actually see people enough to figure out who they were — at least, given that I hadn’t seen many high school people in a long time.

Someday I should figure out how to upload pictures to this blog. That’s all for now as I have to eat breakfast — cereal.

Last weekend (4/18-4/19), I went to the Tulare Tractor Show with Mom and Dad. Pushed Mom around the dust in the wheelchair, which was difficult to get rolled but not bad at all after that, except for the metal-wheeled tractors, who drove about in the dirt making crop circles and causing the wheelchair no end of trouble. Of course, I explored the swap meet, and went to the tractor parade first off, when we got there. This was as usual a wonderful event, minus the balky donkeys and blaring national anthem of our first visit. This was entertaining because it drove the police horse absolutely nuts, and the donkeys went crazy entirely. So they didn’t do that this year. They did, however, have the same announcer, who, because of the size of the parade route is forever describing something just around or behind of what you are currently seeing. Makes things interesting.

At the swap meet, Mom missed a Singer Featherweight Firearm, and I missed out ofn a book of shop notes, including blacksmithing drawings, but as I inquired about the price, and then laid the item down waiting for the price, as the person I asked didn’t know it, despite best efforts, I can’t complain too much. The price was probably out of my range anyway. Mom found a small, excellent, aluminum fruit press for me for an wonderful price, though I had to poke about it until its owner explained that the plate was put on upside down. Right side up, it works very well, although different from the press I currently have, in that the handle detaches from the plate and is driven down by having a full press of fruit instead. Mom says maybe we can press cheese in it, which would be great, as our last actual cheese press, although reputable, was a Rube Goldberg contraption of wood and bricks for the weight, which was sooner of later going to land on someone’s foot. This press might work better. When I read about modern alumninum presses, one web page says that the small holes in the press means you don’t need to line the press with a pillow case in cheese cloth

In the tractor parade, the finish this time was long lines of older semi trucks, most painted robin blue and most from the Hays Truck Musuem (truckmuseum.org) which we have visited in the past. It was fascinating to see how stylish some of the older truck hoods were and how comparitively short their trailers were to modern semis.
On Sunday, the fair was much less — many vendors had left. We finished the last of the swap meet and saw the engines and as much of the tractors as possible. The man from Quartzite was there with his hit and miss pipe cutter, and I got into a few conversations with some folks about where their engines

Now keeping in mind that I still need to play catch up with this blog and should right now be searching for jobs (which I will do when I finish this blog), a hodgepodge of medical theories has been wandering about in my head for the past few days, so I thought I would write about them here.

I watched the movie Mockingbird Don’t Sing the other day, based on the story of Genie, a 13 year old girl isolated from most human contact in a back bedroom, and who did not have exposure to language. I knew of the case before, but have obviously missed some details, as I wasn’t aware there was another child, then nearly an adult in the house, or that there were twists and turns in the story such as scheming scientists. Some years ago I looked up the Wild Boy of Averyon (probably spelled wrong, I’ll have to look it up), and that book stated that the boy was insensitive to heat or cold, did not relate to people, and was in most respects comparable to an autistic person today.

That still interests me. But, in this case, this was a child found in the woods, who behaved like an animal as far as crouching places, eating raw meat with his hands, but significantly, I believe he was found in the 1700-early 1800’s, if I remember correctly. Science wasn’t as advanced. The crouching is interesting because a number of special ed children also perch on things, such as chairs.

But the child was also found in the woods…so was the insensitivity to temperature a result of more fat cells in the blood, or whatever happens to people who are exposed more often to extreme weather, or was this is an internal sensory processing difficulty, like a brain which scrambles pain messages?

I watched a program on modern feral children recently…would have loved to tape it, but anyway a boy in it as old as 4 was abandoned by his parents in the city and began to run about with the town’s dog population. Even at that age, he still reverted to dog habits on occasion with a foster family (growling etc). Now I’m assuming, because the program didn’t go into details, but this was a child with an apartment-dwelling life, and early exposure to social skills, language, affection, who did not begin to display these characteristics until later, hanging around dogs. Now the neighbors knew he was doing this.

This is not to advocate the “refrigator mother” theory about autistics, or to state that they were deprived as Genie was. The theory about rhesus monkeys and touch is interesting here as well…it was supposed that monkeys were attached to their mothers because of feeding and milk, but it was discovered that baby monkeys gravited toward soft towel-covered fake mothers more than the ones who only fed them. They wanted touch. This is why children in orphanages had high mortality rates early in the century, because they were fed but not touched, and they wasted away. (Which was, at least according to Popenoe, a “scientist” writing about eugenics, a good thing…less people with bad genes).

Of course, remember that eugenics was considered a science during a very particular time period, at least until after Nazi concentration camps, where it became a source of embarrassment and its name was quickly changed. Popenoe also does not consider in his book Applied Eugenics that factors such as high tubercolis rates and lack of seperation of sick people…oh, let’s see, might actually have contributed to the high mortality rates.

When I watched The Boy in the Bubble documentary, I wondered whether touching him through thick gloves would qualify as touching a la rhesus monkeys. Of course, he grew but the bubble provided another kind of isolation, despite doctors, parents and nurses giving interaction and affection. I suppose because he couldn’t interact directly or leave the bubble except in a space suit.

In the movie about Genie, if she actually did some of the things portrayed, it’s very interesting. For example, a foster sister complains in the film that Genie has taken her brush. Now what does Genie do with it? She strokes her face. That’s tactile stimulation. If an MRI had existed at the time, a particular part of her brain probably would have lit up. I wonder if particular brain waves can tell your brain to wake up or go to sleep (neurofeedback) and particular sounds such as shaman drumming, digeridoos, humming, rocking, etc. can take away pain, do they all stimulate the same portion of the brain? In Anthropology I found it fascinating that the drumming, digeridoo etc made the same noise as the humming Mom does when her hand hurts.

People stimulate by fidgeting, tapping pens, during meetings. Which part of the brain does this stimulate? Also, figure that Genie in this case, was tied to a chair without proper motion of her hands and feet and without much verbal interaction. So, if you look at the cases of isolated prisoners or people that have been suspended in water, with gloves over their hands and feet, it takes a few days and then their brain starts finding things to stimulate itself. It goes haywire with hallunications etc. And in the case of people who have…a highly medical term will follow… scrambled wiring in their brain, or poor processing of stimulation such as touch, sounds, etc., they can over- or under- reaction to stimulation. Screaming at car backfires, or knocking people aside when tapped on the shoulder. Think about autistic people here, but also folks who might have it to a lesser degree such as from a head injury. (I read the book Too Tight, Too Fast, Too Bright by …INSERT CITATION)
In this sense, scientists said Genie walked and moved as though blind, as though her brain didn’t trust her eyes. Now that’s fascinating for me. Were her senses damaged from isolation? If people couldn’t take complete sensory deprivation for a few days, similar deprivation for years must do awful things. The kid must have been bright to be able to maintain a ability to learn. Did the Wild Boy have insentivity to temperature like Genie because of exposure to these extremes, or because lack of stimulation scrambled the ability to feel them? Did Genie’s stimming with the brush “correct” her body’s need for some brain waves? In the book Too Loud, Too Bright…by …… a sensory diet is recommended that claims to stimulate particular regions of the brain and help with sensitivities to sounds, etc.

In the Extras of Mockingbird Don’t Sing, Susan Curiss says that Genie would take Curtiss’ hand and point to what she wanted to know. That she lacked confidence in her own hand. That seems like a form of faciltacted communication that would become popular a few years later. In faciltated communication, a teacher holds the arm while the student points to objects. This is not to start a disruption about whether or not faciltated communication works or doesn’t, I’m only stating what I’m thinking. At the time, word boards would have been in existance, but word boards would have been much slower than signing, which is what the Genie Team introduced her to. But in today’s technological world, computers are used instead of word boards for communication like this, and some autistic people have shown that while their verbal speech is not at age level, their written ability is much better.

A boy from India writes every day and a girl with a small verbal vocabulary can attend college course with a computer to speak for her. (Sorry, I saw them on TV but will have to look up the names). This raises the questions would Genie’s inability to construct grammatical sentences, even though she could communicate what she wanted, have improved if the technology of computers had been as advanced as it is today? It’s an interesting idea for me. Now people can also have difficulty processing verbal language but be able to use ASL, so an appropriate technology was used for the time period, but it intrigues me that langauge can be entirely different written than it is coming out your mouth

Also interesting that Genie collected pails, plastic being one of the things she was exposed to as toys during isolation and abuse. She didn’t play with them but just had them. They would provide the same tactile stimulation. Autistic children are also known for collecting groups of objects, whatever connection that might be.
Anyway, that’s  my hodgepodge of scientic theories for the day. Might be an entertaining paper, if I could communicate it well enough in future.

[The part about rhesus monkeys, cloth mothers, and touch came from reading Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers [An Updated Guide…]  by Robert M. Sapolsky, pg. 90, 98-100.
For the sensory deprivation study, see Human Motivation, 5th edition, by Bernard Weiner.

For sensory overload, see Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight: What to Do If You Are Sensory Defensive in an Overstimulating World by Sharon Heller

The documentary about modern wild children is a TLC film called “Wild Child: The Story of Feral Children.”

Information about Genie is in Russ Rhymer’s book Genie: A Scientific Tragedy, NOVA’s documentary “Secret of the Wild Child,” and Susan Curtiss’ thesis, as well as Mockingbird Don’t Sing (2001) film.

Information about David Vetter is from the NOVA documentary The Boy in the Bubble. It’s an excellent film.