IMPORTANT NOTICE

This blog has been moved permanently to www.thatWentWellTheBook.com. No new postings will appear under this Blogger account.

Please update your links to www.thatWentWellTheBook.com.

Thank you.

Special Needs Social

Last week Irene took me to her Special Needs Social, Ladies Only, at a branch of the LDS Church (the Mormons).

I don’t have much use for organized religion anymore, but I always go to this one when I’m invited. It’s every Thursday night except in summertime, and whenever I go, my heart gets warmed right up to the melting point. Usually it’s co-ed, with lots of men as well. Each special needs person is assigned a friend, whom they keep through the whole year. These friends are teens and early twenty-somethings who are normal, and this is their special calling in their church. They hold dances, parties with games, and talent shows, just to name a few things Irene gets to look forward to on Thursdays. It’s like Special Olympics, only lower key, and with your own pal who keeps in touch all year. This night was dedicated to Letting Your Light Shine, and we sang songs about how every spirit shines forth, every day. We all went home with little battery-lit candles. Irene wanted me to give her mine, so that she’d have two, but I wouldn’t: I took it home and put it on my nightstand by my bed. Until that battery runs out, I turn it on when we turn our lamps out. It shines there for me, just as a night light would have, if my dad had ever allowed me to have one when I was very young. And I know if I am hit by a truck or simply keel over, there are others who will love Irene and make sure her days go as well as they can.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it over and over, in case you are wondering about Mormons. Do you know what you can do with Mormons?

You can count on them.

The Garden Party

Last Sunday Irene had her art show and Garden party. It's her annual fall gathering of friends and neighbors. We serve veggies and dip, and barbecued meatballs (the tried and true sauce recipe: one bottle grape jelly and one bottle ketchup. Delicious. No one will ever know.) Also brownies and cream puffs. With clothespins, we help Irene hang her water color paintings on her clothes line. She has worked on these paintings all year in an art class she attends once a week. She chose a tee shirt that says, "Bloom where you are planted." And she carried her flowered wallet, telling me, "This is where I'll keep my money."
Over the two hours we held it, about thirty guests came, and, along with the ever-present bees, snacked and lounged around on the swing and lawn chairs, and purchased Irene's paintings for three dollars each. She never let go of her lunch/cash box, but hugged everyone and gave tours of her house and garden. She is one happy camper, and is saving her earnings for her trip to Sun Valley with me later this week.

Baker-Miller Pink

In 1979 in Seattle, at a naval prison facility, Sargeants Baker and Miller painted a holding cell pink. Some call it bubble gum pink, but I think it's more of a peachy pink, and in fact maybe matches Benjamin Moore paints #1328. Sargeants Baker and Miller had read that color can change moods, and in fact the color pink seemed to calm people who were violent. When they put their violent prisoners in there, they quieted right down.

Baker and Miller sent their results out to psychologists, and they sent the idea to prisons for further testing. Thus Baker/Miller Pink was born, and in the news lately we see a Texas prison whose head officer swears by it.

Some results say it works for half an hour or so, and then the calming effect goes away.

What the heck. On the off-chance that it might help my sister stay calm, we have painted several rooms in her home this color.

It helps. Sometimes. We think. Or it could be the drugs.

But that is why my website has a pink background. If it calms you, this is terrific. Tune in often.

Just how many people with mental disabilities ARE there?

Thirty years ago we talked with census people and they seemed to think that the developmentally disabled population was about 3% of the general population.

Now the census people say that it looks more like 1.58%!  Are we doing something right in safer childbirth practices?  Whatever it is, this is good news to everyone.

My people at Hyperion got it a little wrong and have said in their catalog that 3 out of every 10  Americans has a mental disability.  I have tried to correct them, and hope it won't come out that way in the catalog, but on the other hand, the more I think about it, maybe 3 out of every 10 Americans BEHAVE as if they're mentally disabled, especially perhaps in the halls of political power in Washington, so you don't know what statistics to use.

Ah well.....

Wow! I'm a Blogger now.

Here I am looking like some strange old woman trying to look like angel.  The reason they have you look up is because it makes the wrinkles a bit less.

More later. This is a test run. I am hoping I can erase stuff at any time.