Notices by JNL (jnl@hcommons.social)

Our older son is autistic in the 'kicks your ass at everything' kind of way.

If we don't find better, more complex, and more differentiated ways of talking about autism, then kids like our son will forever code only as 'doesn't seem actually autistic,' not because he's not neuro-diverse, but because the 'illness' view of autism is flattening as fuck

I've talked about this before in different ways, but not explicitly connected to autism- extended time at home (2 years in our case; thanks Covid!) in his middle school years was SO TREMENDOUSLY HELPFUL for our kid in fully getting it together on some lagging skills (organization, motivation toward meeting other people's priorities), to the point that I honestly think more people parenting autistic kids might want to consider this if they can swing it.

He came back in batting at the top of his class and understanding in a really profound way that HE was in charge of his learning 'I can teach myself anything I want! I can learn anything!' and that made him MUCH more legible to teachers and admins in a position to help him thrive. Public schools at this point are really, REALLY widgety in their functioning, but they are still deployments of PEOPLE harnessing resources and pathways. It is sometimes (and for academically gifted autistic kids, probably often) worth it to code legibly.

people think 'autistic as in nonverbal' or 'autistic as in verbal and physical stims' and not 'autistic as in totally comfortable on stage singing the male lead in the musical' and 'autistic as in sorry I just swept all the academic awards' and 'autistic as in the fun, zany friend in the group who's relied on for a listening ear'

It's cute that we thought that the end of Monopoly ever *wouldn't* be militarized

It might be useful for you to understand that only for some things is this present moment 'in advance.' Your 1A liberties, for example, have been gone and demonstrably prosecutable for the past 18 months, depending on what side of various issues you're on. (You can literally kill people as part of your political speech on other sides of the same issues that you will be jailed and charged with a felony for holding a sign or a camera at on the left.) This is why some of us, including those who really LIKE liberal democracy and wanted to see it preserved, not collapsed, have been screaming and pointing and trying to get y'all to move collectively.

It didn't happen. And this, right now, is the not-yet for some things, but it's frankly the not-anymore for a great many others.

I am saying this because you need to wise up.

In summary, no one gets to ask you to be cannon fodder, and those who were silent during the last 8 years and who have undertaken no meaningful resistance themselves should probably not be the ones to chart your course. Resistance is needed, and you will assuredly do some. But this is not the beginning of a new game. It's end stage Monopoly, but militarized.

It's interesting to note, in fact, from this vantage point, that the 1A incursions that were made under the previous administration (during the George Floyd protests in particular, where we saw physical attacks on journalists, and arrests of the press, with a martial impunity not previously documented in this country) were never walked back during the Biden administration.

In fact, we lost even more rights ground, not to the administration itself, but to an aggressive and capital-captured right-wing judiciary.

You have MANY fewer freedoms and are MUCH closer to the margin of harm for resisting than was the case in 2016 or even 2020. Covid probably obscured the very real losses of the later era- guess what, suckers: the freedom you lost had nothing to do with public health precautions. In fact, aggressively rolling back those precautions and ensuring they will never be deployed again is, counterintuitively, part of further erosion of meaningful liberties- it's an assault on bodies.

Since first visiting here, and continuing through my resident phase, I have been astonished at the casualness that greater St. John's has toward high cliffs above rough seas. At Signal Hill, at Cape Spear, at Pouch Cove ... so many places to fall and die. Here at the Outer Battery, the North Head trail is particularly horrifying in terms of narrowness and potential to fall 80-100 feet with a simple turn of an ankle. And yet people trail run it constantly, including when it's wet and as the sun is setting. I have marveled and, amid the cognitive dissonance, tried to challenge my own growing fears about what is possible at this edge, given our fragile bodies and the fickleness of luck.

These two months matter, if you are in any way US tied. What we have now is more meaningful freedom that we are likely to see again for some time. Maybe a very long time.

If there are things you need to do, do them. Make a list. Step by step by step. Get it done.

Set yourself up to survive and thrive, whatever it will mean. I believe in you.

I have such deep grief, under the shock, about what our family is now dealing with. But we don't have time to sit. We gotta go. It's a lot of things.

I feel less alone knowing that you are doing your things, too. And I'm cheering for you.

There's a lot of 'don't spring into action; sit and feel your feelings' stuff out there right now. I get where it's coming from, but verily I say unto you, you will have years to feel your feelings about this. There will be many.

And you have a short and closing window before that begins.

What I'm currently sitting with, in a deeper, harder way: how insane would it be to decide that I don't want this?

Because I don't want this, not this way.

Maybe in this way, I can relate a bit to republicans in this election: I don't think (and I do realize how patronizing this sounds/is ... which doesn't take away from my nevertheless observing it to be true) that they truly understood what it was they were choosing. They were trying to choose something not on offer. They were trying to choose against something that wasn't clearly labeled. And they ended up choosing what, under the sheep suit, was 'fuck everyone and also the planet.'

But it's hard to choose well when things are changing so fast and the future feels so unstable that we don't know what we will need, and also the choices themselves are obscured and mislabeled.

To do what we are about to is to believe with my body and to demand that my family believe with theirs that we do not have a future in the US anymore and that we will be safer somewhere else.

What I want to choose, though, is what I had. I want Vermont, yes, and I want UU ministry. I want to be in the parish again and see it through, thick and thin, with a people. I want to be an American in all the beautiful terrible possibility filled rocking it whiffing it complexity that has ever meant.

But I think mostly I also want it to be last week.

I want to choose last week. Last year. The last time the world felt normal which I can't even really remember but it might have been sometime in 2010.

I want what I wanted and I don't know if that is available anymore or ever will be again.

If you are in the US and not married to your partner but want to be before January 20th, clergy are ready to help you, and in our denomination, with a particular justice focus on the LGBTQ spectrum. Happy to help you connect; PM me.

It seems extremely likely that we will be able to continue fearing the death of US democracy on into the next decade. 😂 😅 🇺🇸

a republic, if you still want it. I think we now better understand that the maintenance of such a thing is a fucking lot of work, and the survival of it is never not in peril

@dalias @jztusk @Outpatientzero

could we maybe ... NOT have this argument on this post?

thanks! 😀

I'm also hoping that after the election we can have a conversation about how knocking on doors to stop fascism by five votes is something we arrive at only when 25 systems in a row have simultaneously failed.

Like I am glad that Jill, Mary Ida and all three Lindas agreed to do their duty but I personally want more robust and resilient systems and I want to know how we're going to build them.