Midlife Meditation

Even at 2, I didn't know how to smile for a camera--unlike my 6-month-old little brother. If the concept of an "autism spectrum" had existed in 1961, I would've been tagged with it then. Wait a minute--weren't you born in 1961? Why yes, I was. And from the beginning, I was different. To be clear, there are plenty of baby pictures of me smiling, even laughing. Although first-born child photography of the 1960s was limited by the cost of buying and processing film, there are still plenty of stills, slides, and even some 8mm movies of my tender years. It's what young parents do. And there are occasional candid smiles coming from my little face. In posed pictures, though, from the moment I became aware that cameras existed, my teeth stopped showing. The corners of my mouth might turn up a bit, but that was it. More significant were the silent tears. When I was hurt, frustrated, angry, sad, I wouldn't wail. Tears would roll down my cheeks...

Yes, I do need you to use that microphone. The presenter had just been handed a wireless microphone designed to fit around one of her ears. She held it in her hand for a moment, her expression bemused, then set it down on the table. Here we go again,  I thought to myself. Sure enough, with a smile on her face, and using excellent projection technique, the presenter proclaimed, "I won' be needing thi'. You can all hear me, can' you? I've go' a good 'rong voi', don' I?" At least, that's what I heard. Her vowels came through loud and clear. Her sibilants, though--consonants pronounced with the tongue and teeth--were almost inaudible, even with my hearing aids turned up all the way. If she'd been looking right at me--if, rather than being in a large conference room, we were having a face-to-face conversation (hopefully not in a noisy coffee shop, which presents a whole other level of difficulty)--I probably would've been fi...

None of these people believes in public education. Here's a non sequitur for an essay about how bad things are about to be: there are far scarier things in the Trump agenda than appointing Betsy DeVos, a charter school advocate with no training or experience in public education, to run the Department of Education. The reason is perspective. Federal subsidies actually account for just eight per cent of public school funding overall, and much of that comes from departments other than Education, subsidizing meal programs and Head Start. Directing some of that money toward charter schools and vouchers is still problematic, but the local impact of whatever nastiness DeVos can push through is going to be minor compared to the abomination that was No Child Left Behind. Stack it up against protectionist global trade policies and climate change denial, and it seems even less of a worry. What stinks about it is what it says about these ersatz populists who are now going to pick th...