PBIS

For those of you that don't know, I have 3 children, a girl and 2 boys (born chronologically in that order). Both boys are autistic. (I'm gonna let that sink in for a second.) Both of them. Now, I'm not going to write about autism, or the autism spectrum, or any of the events surrounding our discovery of their "gifts", or my speculation on the wild increase in autism spectrum disorder diagnoses over the last 15 years (something like 80% higher than in the previous decade).

Nope. I'm going to write about serving on committees. Community service in its most primal form. You see, my wife is both by nature and by education (and soon vocation) a teacher. She's very social in that setting and recognized within her field as smart and the kind of person who should either: a)be in charge or b)serve on that committee. Those in the education profession are frequently asked to serve on committees.

Several years back she was asked to serve on a committee in the role of a parent - specifically the parent of a "Special Ed" child. As she became "committeed out", she decided to quit the committee. At the same time, I was lamenting my existence, something I try to do periodically to keep my life in balance. The thought of that day was - am I being a good role model for my children? From their perspective, I get up in the morning, make their lunches (which they probably didn't know), go to work, come home, and put them to bed while Mom was at some meeting or other. Then repeat. Pretty much the role of secondary caregiver.

While most fathers (because expectations for fatherhood are significantly lower than those for motherhood - for many fathers it is perfectly acceptable to send child support and be able to pick out their children in a police lineup) would consider this perfectly acceptable, I did not. Any idiot can do that (side note: for those idiots out there doing just that - no offense intended.) But I always wanted to be more than that.

"Honey," I said, "what if I join the committee in your place? We could tag team this committee." Then the kids would see their Dad giving something back to the community. That's just what I was looking for.

So what I'm going to write about today is my experience on said committee. The purpose of the committee is to act a parent advisors to the [School District] Director of Special Services. We meet for 2 hours once per month. You have to have a child in Special Services to be invited to participate. All schools and all ages are represented.

So I am just completing my second year on this committee, which I believe will be my last year on this committee. I may go into that later - if I remember and the posting doesn't get extremely long (too late for that). Let me summarize some of the more interesting ... things I've learned:

1. Our educational system is more rife with acronyms and buzzwords than corporate America. I didn't think it was possible, but it is. For example, who can guess what PBIS stands for? Anyone? Positive Behavioral Intervention Systems. It turns out (in Minnesota, anyway) that PBIS is a "best practice" for behavior issues. In layman's terms, rewarding good behavior is more effective than punishing bad behavior. Only in our meeting it took about 20 minutes of discussion to make sure everyone understood that.

I won't bother you with some of the others - NCLB, IDEAIA, IEP, EBD, ASD, LAC, ESAC, PACER, etc. It's just too much.

2. Studying the dynamics of a meeting is fascinating. Our fearless chairman is from corporate America and runs the meeting like I would run it. (For those of you who don't know - I run a lot of meetings, and, if I must say so, am pretty darn good at it.)

The dynamics of a meeting and the amount that the team can accomplish depend quite a bit on how well the team is acquainted. Unlike a work environment where people spend 40+ hours a week with each other and develop familial relationships, this group only meets monthly. I've bumped into some of these people at the grocery store and didn't remember them, for example. The result is that the "talkers talk and the quite folk listen to them talk", and it is the job of the chairman to solicit input from the listeners and to limit the talkers so someone else has a turn. At least that's what I think. Perhaps that's a style thing, but it seems to me that if the purpose of the committee is for parents to give feedback to the Director, than the Director would want to hear as many voices as possible.

Last night, outside of the chairman, 2 people dominated the conversation. Absolutely dominated. Like they've been doing for the 2 years I've been participating. (side note: my wife tends to be one of these talkers, so I bet when she served on the committee 3 people dominated the conversation). Anyway, I went the entire duration of the meeting without speaking. So did at least 4 other people by my count. So, there were 15 people in the room - a chairman, the Director, and 13 parents. Five of us did not speak. Two people said 90% of the rest. The other 6 contributed 10%. So essentially the Director heard 2 opinions last night. I don't believe that is the point of the committee.

3. I just have to share this one sentence for you to understand the difficulty of working with, and providing "advice" or opinions to, the Director. A direct quote:

"We need to look at some best practices methodologies systemically."

What does that mean? Is the Director paid syllablocally? I just made that word up. Hehehe. Though it does seem fitting for the occasion.

Perhaps in my next post I'll write about what I think can be done better - to "get on the solution side", as we say in corporate America. But for now, I'm done.

The Smartest Guys in the Room

I have been eating up coverage of the trial of former Enron executives Jeff Skilling and Kenneth "Kenny-Boy" Lay. I happen to think it will be a travesty of justice if these guys aren't found guilty.

Enron is fascinating to me (and maybe just me) because of the sheer complexity of its business. I highly recommend reading Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron. It is a long and detailed account of the company. From it I glean the following:

1. Enron promoted an environment of hostile internal competition, which created some of the biggest assholes on the planet.
2. Enron was the epitome of the arrogant corporation.
3. Jeff Skilling is/was the embodiment of the arrogant corporation. (Read any of the excerpts of his testimony - he's argumentative and combative with the prosecuting attorney, for crying out loud. Show some damn respect for the court, Jeff!) He always thought he was smarter that anyone else in the room.
4. Enron's business model was, perhaps purposely so, extremely complex, so much so that many of the so-called neutral analysts could not comprehend what was really going on. Of course none of the analysts would admit this, so instead they touted Enron's business model as a model of the future corporation.
5. Enron had extremely cozy relationships with investment banks, who both funded Enron investments and provided "independent" analysis to the market. Legislation has since remedied these arrangements, but...
6. Enron acted unethically whenever it wasn't completely obvious that said act was not illegal. In other words, where other companies would avoid something because that act was a "gray area" legally, Enron would do it just because it was a gray area.

I guess it's too late to make this a short posting, so I'll just stop here with this conclusion of mine: Skilling and Lay are either incompetent or lying. They contend that CFO Andrew Fastow pulled all the financial shenanigans right under their nose without their consent. If that's true, they are guilty of incompetence (gross negligence, really) and guilty as charged. If they were complicit in the shenanigans, they are guilty as charged. I don't know why they're even fighting it. Those two guys should be forced to hunt down each investor and do a My Name is Earl good deed to make up for this mess. Whoa! What a great idea for a reality TV show. Watch Skilling and Lay make it up to each former Enron investor. And if the ratings suck, we can still throw them in jail.

Laughter Pills

Things occur to me when I write (or when I clear brush). Or sometimes while I'm talking I come up with stuff. Gems, really.

Tonight's Gem: People don't laugh out loud enough. My son Jackson has been tense recently - what with the pneumonia, the persistent cough, the bleepin' plantar's wart that WILL NOT GO AWAY, and this god-forsaken No-Child-Tested-Enough testing that's going on in his school right now. Anyway, to cheer him up tonight I put in one of our favorite episodes of The Simpsons - Cape Feare - also known as the 3rd Sideshow Bob episode. It is the one surefire way to make Jackson laugh out loud, no matter what the mood or state of health.

It's like a laughter pill for him. I think we adults need our own laughter pills. What's your laughter pill?

Naming the Bowling Team

Katie and I joined a summer bowling league with a friend of ours. Our first match? game? competition? was last night. It was good fun (except that, unknown to us when we signed up, the bowling alley allows smoking after 9pm) and I didn't manage to injure myself. I'm not really sure how we compete, exactly. I think the first night you just bowl to set an average or something. I'll pass on more as I learn the details.

Being the creative one in the group, I was charged (weeks ago when we initially signed up) with naming the team. My first instinct was Master Bowlers (in college my intramural baseball team was called the Master Batters), which my 2 female teammates nixed immediately. I didn't really give it much thought. Then, while clearing brush (a clear reference to the Profound Idea Night posting) it just came to me.

We are the Pit of De-spare.

Pretty good, eh? What can I say? It's a gift.

Profound Idea Night

I own 3/4 of an acre. My house sits on much of it. Trees cover virtually the rest. The previous owner pretty much let the non-house part of the property go wild. Oh sure, they blew the leaves off the most of the grass, but they never cut down a single "volunteer" elm tree, for example.

So I spend lots of time clearing brush - the one thing that I have in common with George "Dubya" Bush. (The similarities end there, trust me.) And I do so listening to the soundtrack of my life in my iPod. The music I chose today was familiar but forgettable, so much so that my thoughts began to wander. I had these profound thoughts during these episodes of mind-wandering:

(Note: Similar to ideas you have while tripping on psychodelic mushrooms, I'm sure these thoughts won't seem nearly as profound once the music is off. Not that I am admitting or endorsing or condoning for that matter the ingestion of psychodelic mushrooms. I've never done that. I only know about it from ... a friend.)

Profound idea #1: Hope is just prayer without a deity. I do lots of hoping, but no praying, being an atheist/agnostic. (Perhaps someone can clear this up for me - if I am pretty darn sure there is no god does that make me an atheist or agnostic? What I'm positive about is that no one can prove to me that there is a god -which I believe is virtually the definition of agnostic - and I'm also positive that I cannot prove ther isn't a god.

Profound idea #2: George Bush isn't evil - just incompetent. Dick Cheney is evil. I accept that I will never know the facts, so I must form my opinions based on data I gather from various news sources and my own intuition. And I believe that Dubya approved the "outing" of a covert CIA operative via leak to the press because "Uncle Dick" convinced him to. I have no proof - it's just a hunch.

Profound idea #3: It would be really cool to have a bunch of family over for a bonfire in the firepit in my back yard. I even have a fire permit!

Profound idea #4: Water flows downhill unless pumped. And this damn tree root is going to create a puddle when it rains because of that fact. Damn! I hate puddles.

Of all that, I guess I need to do something about #3. Later...

Jackson's Fever

My son Jackson has been running a fever since my brother Jim died 2 weeks ago - which is an awful long time for a kid to be running a fever. Let's see if I can accurately account for my own (and my wife's) level of stress during that time (using the Department of Homeland Security threat level values):

3/28 - my brother passes away (stress level - elevated)
3/29 - we notice at dinner Jackson's cheeks flushed, running 102.4 fever (stress level - guarded)
3/30 - fever continues, but generally low grade (stress level - guarded)
3/31 - fever breaks briefly midday, but returns to 100.4 by bedtime (stress level - elevated)
4/1-4/4 - fever breaks only with aid on Tylenol, also Jackson has developed a dry cough - (stress level - guarded because at this point it's probably not a virus anymore, it's probably a sinus infection or strep)
4/4 - 1st trip to family doctor. Jackson hates visiting the doctor (to put it mildly) - he really hates having his throat swabbed and having blood taken. The doctor orders a throat swab and a chest x-ray. Both, according to our family doctor, who we've been seeing since 1990, are negative. Must just be a virus. Come back, he says, if the fever hasn't broken in 3 days. (stress level - elevated/guarded - an experienced healthcare professional, one we trust, has told us it's a virus. However, Jackson's dislike of office visits had made the day a stressful one.)
4/4-4/7 - fever persists, as does what sounds to me like a 'productive' cough (productive cough in that it is no longer a dry, wheezy cough, but instead what sounds like mucus inducing cough). (stress level - elevated - it must be something other than a virus now, right? A kid can't have a fever for 10 days without some type of infection...right?)
4/7 - Jackson returns to the doctor, this time with both parents in tow. My presence alone raises the stress level. Both the doctor and Jackson realize this is much more serious than before if only because I took time off from work to attend. The doctor orders a sinus x-ray, a urine test, and the drawing of blood. Jackson really hates the drawing of blood, even if it's only from his thumb one drop at a time. The doctor has a physicians assistant student along. Together they analyze the tests, and conclude that even though the x-ray doesn't show anything conclusive, the presence of an elevated white blood cell count must show a hidden sinus infection. Treatment: amoxicyllin. (stress level - low. Yay! We've finally found something that sounds like a treatable malady - and a valid explanation for the fever.
4/8-4/10 - Fever persists even though the antibiotic is well into his system. (stess level - elevated)
4/11 AM - Fever has broken in the morning, but for how long no one knows. Even Jackson expects it to return. My wife and I worry that this is something much more serious than a sinus infection. After all, the x-ray was inconclusive at best. The only fact we have is an elevated white blood cell count. Which scares us, because the only thing we can think of is ... leukemia. (It's in my nature to jump to the worst conclusion possible.) (stress level - severe)
4/11 PM - Family doctor of 16+ years calls our home. Is that ever good news? Apparently it is standard practice to send all x-rays to a radiologist for further interrogation. The radiologist (meaning: the one who actually knows how to read x-rays) has detected a small occlusion in one of Jackson's lungs. Diagnosis: pneumonia. Time to start him on a new antibiotic. (stress level - guarded)
4/12 - Jackson has been fever-free since yesterday morning. Cough hasn't diminished much, but Jackson's demeanor is much improved. So far so good. I will keep watch until his cough is gone, which could take who knows how long? (stress level - guarded)

Book Lists - a Mandatory Blog Posting

This seems to be an obligatory topic in any blog, so here goes - these are the last 5 books I've read, blah, blah blah.

1. In Cold Blood - by Truman Capote. Frankly, I saw the movie and had to read the book. I'm a student of the creative process, and the movie is about how Capote insinuated himself into a small Kansas town and into the story. The book is the product of the movie and taken together with the movie is a fascinating study of Holcombe, Kansas and Capote himself.
2. The Commitment - by Dan Savage. Savage is the author of Savage Love, as graphic and honest a sex column as there is. It is published nationally in "alternative" newspapers like The Onion. He is gay but that is not the limit of his sexual expertise. Anyway, this book is about the process he and his partner (and their son) went through in deciding whether they should "marry". I have to put "marry" in quotes because same sex partners aren't allowed to "marry" in their state of residence. Long story short (too late for that now, eh?) this book will make you think not only about same-sex partnerships/marriage, but also opposite sex partnerships/marriage. A great book. I highly recommend it.
3. Freakonomics - by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. And I thought a degree in Economics would be worthless. Boy was I wrong. It does help that Levitt (the economist) is one of the 10 smartest people in the U.S. (my opinion), and that Dubner (the New Yorker writer) is a brilliant storyteller. In this book you'll learn how a group of Chicago teachers cheated on No Child Left Behind tests, why swimming pools are more dangerous than guns, the history of the KKK, and how come, if drug dealers make all that money, why they still live in their mothers' basements. I guarantee you won't want to put it down. It is the only book I've ever read that I didn't want to end.
4. Lamb (the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal) - by Christopher Moore. How can you not love a fictional account, told from the point of view of Christ's childhood buddy, of Christ's "missing" years from age 13 to 32? I laughed out loud, which is saying a lot because I'm not a big laugh-out-loud person. This is fun fiction that won't fill you up.
5. The Tipping Point - by Malcolm Gladwell. I heard a podcast of Gladwell speaking at a geek's convention and thought he had some interesting points. There is much in this book that is interesting, but I didn't find it nearly as compelling a read as Freakonomics. Good, but not great.

What might be more interesting, I suppose, is the books I'm about to read, or am currently reading. My list includes:

1. Wish List - by Eoin Colfer. Too early to judge - I'm about 12 pages into it (and yet I'm still not hooked). Technically it's children's literature. Katie recommended it - she reads voraciously but rarely recommends books for me, and when she does it's always worth my time.
2. The World is Flat - by Thomas Friedman. Received it as a present, not sure what it's about, but it's #2 on the NY Times Nonfiction best seller list, so there must be something good in there.
3. A Dirty Job - by Christopher Moore. What can I say? I like the author.

The last list is my all time favorite book list. These are books that are my all time favorites and reading them, I believe, provides a little insight into me. They are not necessarily in any particular order - the first one isn't better than the next one, it's just the one I thought of first.

* The Catcher in the Rye - by J.D. Salinger. I am Holden Caulfield (or at least I was when I was 17), and that's all I have to say on that subject.
* A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - by Dave Eggers. I laughed out loud and cried, and that was before I finished the first chapter. Stylistically challenging, difficult to read at times (he warns you in the preface) not because of how it's written but because of what's written. I read everything Dave Eggers writes. If he scribbled a sentence on a sheet of toilet paper then wiped and flushed, I'd try to catch it before it spiraled into oblivion. That's how much I recommend this author and in particular this book.
* The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - by Mark Haddon. The story of a 15 year old autistic boy's investigation of the murder of the neighbor's dog. Written in first person from the boy's perspective. Having 2 boys "on the spectrum" it helped me better understand them. I wanted to cry a lot when I read this. Our lives are so easy, we have nothing to complain about. If you know someone who's "on the spectrum" (and you probably do) you should read this book.
* The Princess Bride - by William Goldman. Yes, the book the movie is based on. As wonderful as that movie is, the book is better.
* Road Swing - by Steve Rushin. Columnist for Sports Illustrated drives around the country in search of interesting sports stories. Another laugh out loud book. He is almost exactly the same age as me, and I live vicariously through him. I still religiously read his column weekly in SI.
* Isaac's Storm and The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. There is nothing more interesting that American history, and these two stories are fascinating because they are true.

There you have it. Me, and the books I love.

My Youngest Memory

At my job, among my many duties, I am the webmaster of our Intranet site, niftily branded by my predecessor as "HIP". So one of the goals of HIP is to connect people, since our firm is spread across 6 locations in 3 states. On a lark I created "Question of the Week". QOTW is a web bulletin board where anyone in the firm can post an answer to such queries as "Describe a brush with celebrity" or "Tell us about your first car". It's been a pretty big success, at least as measured by participation and the amount of chatter I hear in the hallway ("Did you see that so-and-so used to arrange funerals for famous people in Hollywood?")

This week's question is "Share your youngest memory". I wrote:

"Pain. One of my siblings dropping some sharp-edged metal object on my bare foot. Lots of blood and tears. I think I was 3."

Not Pulitzer material, but hey, I'm limited to 255 characters. Anyway, I've been thinking about this memory (I'm not sure why) and, well, I think I may have it wrong. Here goes.

I remember a bunch of us kids in the basement - the basement on the farm. At least that's what I think. I also remember a bunch of gray metal shelves (which I have no recollection of in the basement except for this particular memory). And, for some odd reason, I remember an anvil - like cartoon characters drop on the heads of other cartoon characters. "Did we ever own an anvil?" I think. That thing must have weighed 20 or 30 pounds.

For some reason my brain is telling me that someone dropped the anvil on my foot. In my brain I have this image of my foot similar to this (though not exactly this picture - I downloaded this picture from the Internet.) This picture most closely represents the image of my foot that I hold as a memory. Except in my memory my foot is covered with blood.

So here's where I think my memory - this memory - is wrong. First, this image of my bleeding foot cannot be an image of my foot. If it was my foot, it would be a top view - like this. This is the view of your own feet. My memory is a view of other people's feet.

Second, if I was about 3, I would be, according to family legend, about 20 pounds. After all, like my Mom used to love to tell me, I was only 27 pounds when I started kindergarten. If that's true, I was probably under 20 pounds at the age of 3. So if that anvil had been dropped on my foot, it would likely have broken several bones - on top of the whole bleeding thing. And it's highly likely that I would remember several weeks in a cast at the age of 3. And I don't remember ever being in a cast.

So far I must conclude that a)someone else's foot was injured and b)it definitely wasn't an anvil that landed on my foot.

What really happened? I now think that I there are a bunch of disjointed memories that my mind has forged into a single coherent memory. Except it's just not possible. What probably happened is that I dropped the anvil on someone else's foot. And the pain that I associate with the memory is the pain of guilt, remorse, and punishment that I don't understand (because I'm 3).

Why did I write this post? To be honest, I didn't really piece together the part about me dropping the anvil on someone else's foot until I typed it. But now I feel better.

If anyone remembers this event, please help me out. And if it was your foot that absorbed that anvil - I'm really sorry. I'm pretty sure I didn't do it on purpose, if that makes you feel any better.

Something Fun When You're Bored at Work

Every once in a while, perhaps as some kind of subversive challenge to myself, I will pick some obscure word and set a goal to use that word at work that day.

"Gosh," I think to myself, "I haven't heard the word 'excrement' used in a work environment in I don't remember how long. As God or some other higher being is my witness, I WILL use the word 'excrement' today. At work."

Later I'll find myself in a meeting saying something like, "If we don't do this in increments, it'll end up excrement", and everyone laughs.

So, would someone please suggest a word...

Reunions and Cashducks

The 10 surviving Gonzalez kids assembled last Friday to pay our respects to our oldest brother Jim. Here are the 9 that made it to the reception after. Ted left early to take care of Terri, otherwise we'd all have been in this photo.

It was a sad day. And a happy one, for my memories of Jim are of his laughter. His roaring laughter. His contagious, roaring laughter.

His son Chris told a great story, which I won't attempt to capture here. I will, however, remind you of the punchline - "Don't bite a cashduck in the butt."

Sadly, my family only gets together for funerals and weddings; funerals moreso. Perhaps this blog can get us talking again.

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