Thursday, February 21, 2008

Just two old men, talking to the lunar eclipse

My next-door neighbor Steve and I watched the total lunar eclipse together in downtown Raleigh last night.


Actually, I was trying to catch glimpses of it through the low-hanging clouds and Steve came tapping up the sidewalk with his red-and-white-striped cane. So we just naturally started talking about why I was out there.


A song my elder son once enjoyed was on earworm repeat-play in my right year: "Total Eclipse of the Heart:" sung by Bonnie Tyler with Rick Derringer on the guitar and Roy Bittan on the piano.


We unlimbered the binoculars to compensate for Steve's functional blindness.

I let him know when there was a hole in the clouds through which we could see the processing eclipse and, as the eclipse dimmed the moon, helped him reacquire the image.


We were standing in a downtown parking lot at the intersection of two busy, four-lane streets, pointing at the sky through the glare of streetlights and marveling together about the progressively revealed wonders of the eclipse as it danced amid the silver filigree of framing clouds.


For unspoken reasons, others paused to join us in marveling at the nighttime sky, although I was barely aware of most of them as they came and went. They were almost as silent as passing ghosts, but I did answer questions for a red-haired neighbor and her boyfriend.


"My father told me about this," she said, among other things.


"My friend Johnny Horn tells me there won't be another lunar eclipse visible here until 2010," I responded, my mind on how thoughtful her father was. (Maybe I should have said the next total eclipse will be at 3 a.m. , December 21, 2010.)


Someone in a grey Buick pulled into the parking lot, car lights off, careful of their engine noise. Steve lent them his field glasses for a moment and we chatted briefly about his food delivery business.


Just two old men, staring at the sky and talking perhaps a little too loud together, accidentally attracting passersby to join them in marveling at the astronomical event which played hide-and-seek overhead.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Our stranger's, friend's, cousin's, aunt's, uncle's, son's, daughter's, brother's, father's, mother's keeper

The parents of autistic and as a result mute thirteen-year-old Carly Fleischman rejected a recommendation that they give up.

They rejected a recommendation that they institutionalize her, and triumphed.

A CTV.ca News report on Sunday and an ABC News report on Tuesday detail how loving persistence was instrumental in a Carly's escape from the prison of mute autism.

With intensive therapy, using Applied Behavior Analysis [1, 2,3 ], and a computer, thirteen-year-old Carly Fleischman was able to break out of her autistic prison, revealing an articulate young woman with hope, joy and rich insight to share with all of us.

Her autism still does not permit her to speak aloud, but she told ABC news via her computer keyboard:


Autism is hard because you want to act one way, but you can't always do that. It's sad that sometimes people don't know that sometimes I can't stop myself and they get mad at me. If I could tell people one thing about autism it would be that I don't want to be this way. But I am, so don't be mad. Be understanding.

Carly Fleischman has a great deal more to say to you and you can ask her questions.

In a society where institutions and family members do still turn their backs on kinfolk whose behavior is distressingly difficult to understand, but not an imminent danger, there is an unignorable lesson in Carly Fleischman's story:

Don't neglect them, allowing them to suffer alone, even become homeless.

You are your brother's (stranger's, friend's, cousin's, aunt's, uncle's, son's, daughter's, father's, mother's) keeper. Do not be afraid to turn around (repent) and rejoice in whatever wholeness you can create together.