NO Parking
At a recent, staff in-service day at a local developmental service agency, Larry had the opportunity to show some of his artwork. He was asked about the significance of the printed out words, “NO PARKING”, that are seen in a number of his paintings. Here was his response:
“Parking is a place to put your car in. Sometimes use of that place is not allowed. Looking at those words propels you to times in your life when you might not be allowed some place and for me, that has happened a lot. Losing parking isn’t a physical thing but an emotional isolation, more because of your perceived differences than your real commonalities with others so walk out of parking lot here and make spaces in your communities to let the people you are supporting aspire to the good life.”
The mighty pen
Larry’s blog this week is a letter to a judge in Virginia who is going to be deciding whether or not to approve an agreement to deinstitutionalize services for people with developmental disabilities and move to a system of community-based services in Virginia. The Arc of Virginia (whose annual convention the Green Mountain Men presented at this past August) is spearheading this movement to change the way services are provided. They would like to see Larry’s letter posted in his blog as a way of encouraging others to write letters of support for the agreement. Here is the link to their site where the agreement is explained in greater detail
March 26, 2012
The Honorable John A. Gibney Jr.
District Court Judge
United States District Court, Eastern District of Virginia
Spottswood W. Robinson III and Robert R. Merhige, Jr., Federal Courthouse
701 East Broad Street
Richmond, VA 23219
Dear Judge Gibney,
I am a long time resident of Vermont but spent practically a decade when I was younger living at the Brandon Training School which housed people with special labels of retardation and behavioral disorder in a large institutional setting. I know Vermont is working more on community based services and I naturally think you should consider that to be your commitment to improving the lives of people with disabilities in your state. Here are my thoughts on why you should do this.
You spend part of your life living in your own community and then people look at you and make popcorn for you at the movie theater. Politically, maybe there is not a big difference between this popcorn and that in the institution. Both are like salty snacks in any place that shows movies but it’s the enclosed space around the popcorn that keeps your mind stimulated or flattened. Having lived in an institution when I was younger, I can become angry remembering that experience, when I used upsetting behavior as my strategy of choice for getting attention there.
Participating in my community makes me feel so ordered, like a baseball glove that has been well-specialized to conform to the owner’s hand. Within all of my ideas for changes in the organization of services, I think that inclusion in the community can make the most dramatic impact. Opportunities to meet other people with similar interests are more likely and experiences like eating in gourmet restaurants can expand your culinary horizons. Most importantly, it may open ideas to greater acceptance of disability in our society. So I urge you, Judge Gibney, to look at our movie and instantly sign the DOJ settlement agreement to free all of those people living on an island of segregation and propel them to lives of community immersion.
Sincerely,
Larry Bissonnette
Milton, Vermont
Ode to winter
The thing about this winter is that most of it has been plentifully snow-free. However, just this past week, most of my hopes of only having to put down a little amount of snow-melting salt on my walk were potentially dashed by all the storms that lept out in our mild California-like, Vermont weather.
Others like Pascal and Harvey hold onto pretty snow memories because pondering possible ski trips politically lets them be seen as totally marketing their movie star looks on the slopes. I, on the other hand, am not so wild for snow and instead, am enticed by hot chocolate au lait as I land on my mostly soft mattress.
Ok, so I am now keeping my large winter coat out until helluva warm winter ends.
Bring back the Polaroid
People are printing good pictures to put in albums of instant gratification on the internet. Biographies of ivy-treated youth promise opening of understanding about travels and upending moments over greatest pictures are those you keep in your wallet because they can be old bins for long ago memories of others and yourself. Isn’t it odd that using photos as understanding nicer moments in your life eventually places you more in your past? Holding it keeps youthfulness in your present. Kodak moments live on as people print their photos so let’s bring back the Polaroid.
Issued a Polaroid camera when I was younger, I learned to shoot pictures of people looking at my lens with perplexed, poorly oriented towards the, directly in-the-person’s face flash, expression. I wanted the person’s face to open up to the camera in a pleasantly surprised way, occupying the space of the image, painting our perceptions of the person’s characteristics in a solely positioned to imprint on memory way. Now the rituals of neatly, easily pulling out a print from the camera have been replaced, not with a quicker process but only with one with more steps involving computers, little memory sticks, and lots of wasted paper. Printing my photos takes time now and learning to place them in my paintings, lopping off positions on the canvas to display them, is copping a plea to artistic originality. Yes, taking the steps of pushing the technology cart tidies the process of making art but isn’t a slew of messy materials the link to making masterpieces.
It’s a long way to November
Pal Tracy and I paper the internet with our oven-roasted, party-punched words of wisdom about people with disabilities and picking up cues in their potential to communicate through the supported use of keyboards and voice output machines like the iPad. Getting interested in our words opens the door to looking at movie stars inspiring people to see more the soul of actors rather than their ordered, slickly hair and clothes.
When people like, prattling on like an out of control parrot, Mitt Romney, appearing popstar-like, paper the news with their positions on poorer people, get rallies of tea partiers going, and insinuate that loss of prosperity is a character flaw, they leave the station of understanding and move to a platform of intolerance I thought only existed out of the slavery era. Outrage very quickly builds into a loud roar of opposition in my, proud to need government services, person with, looking like newsworthy leader in the disability world of nifty advocacy, Tracy on board with me.
Look, I am probably not your best perpetrator of political commentary but easily, I am nothing short of being Walter Conkritesque compared to Rush Limbaugh.
The Big Picture
Topping our own movie appearance standards last week was the showing of our film last week at the Big Picture Theater in Waitsfield, Vermont. Needing mouthwatering burgers to go with our movie popcorn, we ate kind of early dinner in the theater restaurant and later, after the movie, looked like movie star leading men taking questions from the, practically buying beers for us on the spot, audience. It might not be a warm place to walk around in but possibly Vermonters, in the winter, clap the loudest for wretches-in-arms, Tracy and Larry.
I am past Pascal’s paying me to pose for your staring at movie star pleasure. The bigger issue is noted Tracy’s leading man, posturing to look like another version of Michael Jackson in listed as best work, party music, all classic soul dance number, Thriller. The noteworthiness of owning picture of Tracy is that he makes opportunities to communicate ideas with him a movement towards looking at learning to advocate for oneself as a greater vocation than cleaning parquet floors and doing dishes in a restaurant.
Others would say that he owns property on island of presumption of competence in Syracuse University because of his looking at mental capacity as a function of the natives of the speech world accepting immigrants from the non-speech world into, knotty with mostly negative beliefs, normal society.
Get fit with Larry
People order idea of walking for exercising their bigger, visiting sweets tray too much before the New Year, bodies. In a warmer climate, the reality of doing this is like swimming at the beach but in cold and snowy Vermont, the weather has the drastic effect of riddance of inspiration for wearing a track suit and instead keeps you thinking about picking a toasty place to lounge in with massive mugs of hot chocolate.
Oatbranning exercise under these conditions then teaches the techniques of treadmill, legs moving on too fast on open rolling log-like platform, walking; about to break arms machine; and pin-wheeling, sagging with posters of people working out, practicing social interactions in locker rooms. Keeping cold sports is now like awaking to take a cold shower. Instead, I am optimally positioned to chop off pounds by lopping off miles on the treadmill at the gym.
Larry pumping iron
Larry in the New Year
The start of the new year places people in the position of making, willingness there but execution questionable, time sensitive resolutions. Looking on the past year, it pleased me loudly like the loosely patterned after last century’s end celebration parties, on now picking up garbage off of streets, Times Square.
Finally, I was on the pages of the New York Times and potentially, it’s the pistons of machine of rights for movie stars, Larry and Tracy that will keep firing this year again. But unless I am able to land a wishfully, ecologically sound maid or valet, I must still push on with my personally important tasks around the house.
Wishing everyone a very Happy New Year, I am very looking forward to treating my partners in crime over beer and fine pub meals as we attend totally inspirational conferences in good for sunbathing climates.
Larry’s wish for good spirits and good will
At Christmas time, people lambaste with presents persons in their lives, pampering them with the pleasurable material items of luminous luxury like massive televisions and ecologically questionable, possibly zany in masking body odors perfumes. Against spending money on presents, I am not. Sorting through my loot makes me happy in my good, ringing in the New Year with good spirits, mood. Nothing makes my poor autistic self come towards more security than lots of warm positioning of natural family coming together at the dinner table.
Writing this blog, I also want to thank all the many people who went to see our movie and presentations this past year. Owing all of you presents is not something I can do but it is more than possible for me like the people playing on poorly heard by mainstream America NPR stations, to articulate words from the movement of typers towards the universal mapping over of little lots of prejudice with potentially widening of thinking of people with minimal speech, highways of powerful ideas of inclusion and movies as game-changing, looking to move minds and not pocketbooks, performances of intelligence and not looks.
Larry, peace and good serious will for the world in the next year.
Reflections on visiting the Georgia Aquarium
Totally powerful with pretty fish aquarium was like having an outer limits experience. To look at people looking at some of newly appreciated for uniqueness, less mentioned in Walt Disney movies, fish is like looking at the experience of people with disabilities being paired with the life of a totally isolated from society, porpoise, making communication through sounds and openings in large bodies. I very much enjoyed this lighting of my awareness about the world of outsider sea creatures.
