The Challenge and Opportunity of autism

A day at the fair

Some fall flowers . . .
A famous writer once said, "You can lead a Horticulture, but you can't make her think." How true that is. And it makes you wonder who grows plants like these . . . .The closer we get to winter, the more the New England countryside reverts to black-and white. It's like the saturation dial gets turned down, day by day. But you can still find spots of color. One place I look is the greenhouses at Smith College. When I was a kid the Smith girls were superior and snooty, and they sneered at the likes of me. Now, though, they admit me to their institution and are even friendly, especially when I pay to get in. These are some of the plants from their fall mum show, which runs t

John Elder Robison - upcoming appearances
In the interest of keeping stuff together and up to date I have set up a new blog for my appearances. If you follow the Look Me in the Eye blog I'd suggest following the appearances blog too. It has one post - the calendar - which I edit whenever I add or change a date.You can go to it directly at:http://johnelderrobison.blogspot.comYou can subscribe to the feed here:http://feeds.feedburner.com/JohnElderRobisonI mirror this blog on my Facebook and elsewhere. I add events every month, and if you follow, you'll know where

What is Smart? Is intelligence like beauty, merely in the eye of the beholder?
"He's such a bright little boy!" My mother and her friends said stuff like that all the time, as they pointed to me when they thought I wasn't paying attention.Now that I'm grown, I can let them in on a secret: There was never a time when I didn't pay attention to grownups as a kid. I watched them really close, all the time. I may not have understood everything I heard, but I surely took it all in.But what did it mean? I got a new bike, and my mother said, "What a pretty red bicycle!" Everyone who saw it said the same thing. It was a nice, red bike. The attributes didn't change. It was always a bike, and always red. No one ever called it blue or green, because colors

Looking through the window at holidays
Most of the time I feel like I’ve blended in to nypical society pretty well, but the holidays always come to remind me that I’ll always be an outsider in certain ways. This Halloween was no exception.One problem with holidays is that it produces millions and millions of images, many of which by the poses and expressions serve to remind me of my own differences. I’d like to pose and smile like the people in the photos, but I can’t quite do it. Most of the time, I hardly notice how I look and carry myself relative to others, but at times like this I can’t miss it, and it kind of hurts.Now that Halloween has passed and the parties are over, I see photos of

A few book reviews . . .
Two Tankers Down: The Greatest Small-Boat Rescue in U.S. Coast Guard History by Robert FrumpMy rating: 5 of 5 stars