life@speed

I’m dealing with waves of anxiety right now.  the last 24 hours have been an intense whirlwind… very intense.  Now that the dust has somewhat settled, and our issue… our cause… is in the last 3 minutes of its 15, my protective cognitive devices are kicking in as I start to intellectualize the experience and turn it into something productive.

This story, the story of this little boy with autism, who is absolutely adorable and photogenic (by consensus)… generated so much interest that it was picked up from station to station to station across the country.  Newspapers, radio, TV, Cyberspace… the media dug in.  We figured a page 6 story on the Chronicle-Herald… maybe.

Our friends and family are amazing and supportive.  As are the autism parents I have connected with online over the years, from all over the planet who have a variety of perspectives about autism.  One thing is unanimous about all Autism Moms and Dads… they protect their cubs.

And god bless ‘em for it.  Lord knows the institutions of our society aren’t going to fight for them… because people with Autism immediately present a problem for the status quo… in that they have different needs than the status quo, so the status quo has to start making exceptions for them.  This is true, not just for people with Autism, but for all people who have disabilities that lie in the realm of brain function and cognitive processing.

The status quo easily adapts to people with physical disabilities.  We have braille on our money, closed-captioning TV, all of our buildings have to be accessible for people on wheels.  But when it comes to people with mental disabilities, disabilities that we can’t see, and that we can’t understand… the status quo doesn’t do so well in it’s adaptation.

But I digress…

The only certain conclusion that I can draw at this point in time, the only nugget I have taken from this experience so far, is that I will not be taking Izaak on the public transit system again, any time real soon.

Other than that, I have to keep digesting…

Carless no more

For the past 3 years, our family has been carless.  For the most part, it has worked for us.  Keeping the household expenses down while commuting on public transit throughout the city.  Sure, there were some inconveniences, like grocery shopping and going on outings outside the city… but even at that, we would either take taxis or bum rides from our friends and family and it was still cheaper than owning and maintaining a car.

But recently, we had been finding ourselves wishing for a car more often than not.  Especially for doing things with the boys.  Carting two autistic children around on public transit is sketchy.  Not eligible for Metro Transit’s Access-a-Bus, it meant at least an hour of preparation, especially if it was happening during rush hour.

Gabe (almost 12) loves taking the bus.  Scratch that, he simply loves buses.  He probably knows more about the fleet than most of the bus drivers… especially what ads are going to on them.  He refuses to get on particular buses because of the ads, or lack of ads on them.  He particularly dislikes single advertiser buses, like the Bell and Pepsi ones.  One day I had to wait an extra 20 minutes because he wanted to wait for the 958 – 60 Eastern Passage bus.  The alternative… him very loudly screaming “you can’t make me come with you” and having a complete and utter meltdown while judgemental eyes would inevitably scorn my inability to “control my child”.  So we waited, and sure enough, the 958 – 60 Eastern Passage came along and he happily trotted onto it where he proceeded to recite every ad on the bus until we arrived at our final stop.

Izaak (almost 9) is unpredictable on the bus.  Sometimes wonderful and easy… sometimes taking off his shoes and biffing them across the bus to hit some poor public transit rider in the back of the head with.  Izaak has very few traditional communication skills.  He talks in one or two word requests and answers, and is incapable of expressing complex descriptions about what he likes and doesn’t like and why.  He also has no idea how to appropriately interact with people.  So if we are on the bus and someone sits next to him that he doesn’t like the smell of (one of his hyper-sensitivities), he is likely to smell them then push them away by saying “no – bye bye” very loudly.  While I think it is kind of cute, the people whose smell he is offended by don’t so much.  And that’s a tame one… Izaak is getting to the age and size where if he doesn’t want to be on a bus, there’s not much we can do about it unless we are willing to subject a whole busload of strangers to one of Izaak’s meltdowns, which we are usually not.

So we’ve been really feeling like a car might make life just slightly easier for us.

We had heard about Car Share Halifax a few months ago.  I can’t recall where I heard about it, but I do remember that I had gone to the website and checked it out.  We flip flopped regularly about whether it would be useful to us and we could justify the expense.  Then about a month ago a friend of ours told us he was Retiring his Ride and he could either get $300 cash or have a $500 coupon to Car Share Halifax.  He had heard us talking about Car Share, and offered us the coupon.

Signing up was extremely painless.  The folks at Car Share Halifax are nice and easy-going.  Within one hour, I had signed up, got my membership number, had an orientation session, and was given the FOB to the Car Share Fleet.  I went from having one car, to having 8 cars, strategically placed across the city.  Even a Prius! For $9 an hour (M-F 6am-6pm), gas and insurance included.

Our neighbourhood lot is convieniently located one block away.  3 minute walk, tops.

We used Car Share a lot this week.  Mostly for transporting Izaak home from summer camp, and running errands.  I found hours last week that I did not know that I had in a day.

Another cool thing about Car Share Halifax is that it makes me feel good about being a part of it.  I am not only a customer, using a service… I am a member participating in a fabulous organization.

But perhaps the best thing of all is driving in a car which has facebook and twitter on the bumper.

So I’m sold, and I’m encouraging everyone who’s been thinking about it for the past few months to dive in and try it.  I can totally see how a service like this would be useful to non-profit and government agencies as well.  Pay-per-use is the smart way to have a car.  I’d also like to add that if it so happens that my blog has been that final convincing point for you to try it, give them my name as the referrer and we will both get a $25 driving credit for doing so!

Johnny Law may need a new slingshot… redux

I had the great pleasure of working with Donald Clairmont on the Mayor’s Roundtable of Violence and Public Safety back in 2007-2008. The Mayor’s Roundtable was a response to a crime wave involving mostly youth.  A response to Teresa McEvoy and the kiddie swarmings and the late night downtown brawls that were breaking out (though the Christmas Eve brawl came after the meetings).  A response to an American Sailor being stabbed and a few drive-by shootings.  A response to a McLean’s Magazine article ranking Halifax as having the highest rates of crime in the country.

One of my tasks was to observe the Roundtable meeting at City Hall and take notes for Don, who was helping moderate the presentations.  It was a long day, but I learned a lot about law and order in this city.  I wrote a blog after the meeting, which you can read here if you want to… but given the recent crime wave bonanza in the city I thought I’d look back and see how many of the policy proposals and suggestions we’ve implemented since those meetings in 2007:

One theme that did not go unnoticed was the call for change… some sort of change… any sort of change… Recognition that the current system is not working and the culture is moving faster than any policy can catch. Just acknowledging that there is a need to start “thinking outside the box” is a big step for some of these officials. One of the best sentiments came from the Executive Director of the newly formed Provincial Child and Youth Strategy, Robert Wright… Any policy designed to address these issues of youth culture and societal change should be inclusive and acknowledge the multiplicity of contexts that are represented in day-to-day social life. And it should acknowledge that when it comes to policy surrounding youth, they are moving targets. A good youth policy/strategy has to be malleable and move as fast to meet the needs of the moment. Now whether the government can actually speed up the processes of bureaucracy will be another matter all together.

So a few of the specific suggestions that came from that day of presentations and where we are on them:

From the urban planner, Frank Palermo – HRM should start thinking of itself as a 24-hour city with 24 hour public transit. - yeah, okay… NEXT!

From a number of presenters – The opening of schools to act as community centres in after-school hours – well parents are fighting to keep community schools open just for school so… no.

Also from a number of presenters – Possibility of “community courts” for low level crimes, mental health related crime and drug treatment – we almost got a community court a few months ago, then something happened and it’s stalled

From Strategic Planner Jack Novack – The municipal government should get all the junk off their agenda and start thinking about policy that really matters for the growth and development of the city. – feeding the ducks… need I say more?

From Don Clairmont – The employment of a public safety coordinator attached to the Mayor’s Office well we got a public safety coordinator attached to the Police Force.  I think the idea was to get an administrator in there, not another police officer… but, at least it is half there.

From Don Clairmont – Race Relations The race issue is never in the forefront of crime in Halifax, ever… despite the fact that black men are waaaaay overrepresented in the criminal justice system.  Race relations are this city’s biggest shame… the ghosts of Africville haunt.

From Don Clairmont – Community Policing (not more police, but more visible police) – It seems as though they are doing both.  They’ve hired more police, so that’s why I see them all the time and everywhere in the Capital Districts…  There is a difference between visibility and feeling as though you are under siege in a police state.

Don gave about 60 recommendations to the City in total, some of them have started rolling and I think we’re seeing improvements where they have been.  It would be interesting to know, from the City, how many of the recommendations from the Roundtable have been enacted since it came out last year.

My take on the current rash of shootings is that they are mostly gang-related.  Which means they are almost certainly mostly drug-related. But there are concerning crimes happening that aren’t because of gangs .

Beazley said the public was not being targeted in the crimes that were happening.  This was the day after 2 girls were taken hostage in a bowling alley heist, and a few days before a 19-year old was shot in the head (and then died).

The murder that was down the street from me turned out to be accidental2nd degree.  In a run-down old rooming house involving folks know to the police.  That was the 2nd 2nd degree murder on my block within the year.

And in the midst of it all Jimmy Melvin Jr. becomes a citizen journalist.