Trigger Warning: Brief mention of murder and some abusive autism treatments in SECOND PARAGRAPH, mention of transplant discrimination in LAST TWO PARAGRAPHS. The rest should be trigger free.
Splash continued well. The second day, fewer people got lost on the way to learn to make chainmail, and I even had time to learn byzantine using a sample a friend of mine made. (I originally taught him to make chainmail, and then I learn Byzantine from him and get a sample piece to learn European 3-in-1 from him too! Teaching pays off!)
The Autism 101 class went well too. People did have a good bit of getting-lost-induced difficulty, which is totally understandable considering that this was way out in the middle of nowhere compared to the Infinite Corridor where most things were, but once people were there, it was good. This second section came in much better at the point of the guessing who is and isn't autistic thing- they got pretty well that you can't tell from a paragraph if a person is autistic or not. They also didn't do anything hilariously wrong like conclude that Amy wasn't autistic because her introduction didn't mention that she communicates by typing and does not speak. (Yes, I am fairly sure that Amy left that out of the introduction on purpose, and yes, it led to a great teaching moment in the first section of Autism 101 where I basically said, "And if I told you Amy didn't speak, would that change anything?" and everyone said that it did.) And they were interested in letting me ramble about Autism Rights, which is win. Plus they thought that bleach enemas made no sense and that there was no logical reasons for vaccines to cause autism and that killing an autistic kid was not covered by the "don't judge until you've walked in a person's shoes" thing. (Some things, like a messy house, are covered by that, and others, like, you know, murder, are not.)
Classes were tiring, since this was an eight hour day of teaching, and then, at the end, I helped on the search team when a kid got lost. I wasn't on the team that found the kid, and I'm not going to say anything about the kid except that this kid was found about ten minutes into the search and everything was fine.
After the search and more clean-up, we had the usual post-event teacher/volunteer dinner, which was great. It really was. I hung out with a friend of mine who I taught chainmail and who was one of the other chainmail teachers, and I hung out with someone who taught one of the psychology classes that a lot of my Autism 101 students were also signed up for, which was cool. Basically, the second day of Splash was made of just as much win as the first, though I was up past midnight for it and have still not caught up on sleep.
Oh, and I need to write more about the petition about stopping transplant discrimination. I think that's going to be the post after next or the next one, depending on what happens with the person who misrepresented Autistic Hoya and the writer of it on a piece about misrepresentation...
In any case, there is a shortlink to the petition, and it is this: http://wh.gov/X4yM . Go share it. Get more people to sign it, seriously.
Splash continued well. The second day, fewer people got lost on the way to learn to make chainmail, and I even had time to learn byzantine using a sample a friend of mine made. (I originally taught him to make chainmail, and then I learn Byzantine from him and get a sample piece to learn European 3-in-1 from him too! Teaching pays off!)
The Autism 101 class went well too. People did have a good bit of getting-lost-induced difficulty, which is totally understandable considering that this was way out in the middle of nowhere compared to the Infinite Corridor where most things were, but once people were there, it was good. This second section came in much better at the point of the guessing who is and isn't autistic thing- they got pretty well that you can't tell from a paragraph if a person is autistic or not. They also didn't do anything hilariously wrong like conclude that Amy wasn't autistic because her introduction didn't mention that she communicates by typing and does not speak. (Yes, I am fairly sure that Amy left that out of the introduction on purpose, and yes, it led to a great teaching moment in the first section of Autism 101 where I basically said, "And if I told you Amy didn't speak, would that change anything?" and everyone said that it did.) And they were interested in letting me ramble about Autism Rights, which is win. Plus they thought that bleach enemas made no sense and that there was no logical reasons for vaccines to cause autism and that killing an autistic kid was not covered by the "don't judge until you've walked in a person's shoes" thing. (Some things, like a messy house, are covered by that, and others, like, you know, murder, are not.)
Classes were tiring, since this was an eight hour day of teaching, and then, at the end, I helped on the search team when a kid got lost. I wasn't on the team that found the kid, and I'm not going to say anything about the kid except that this kid was found about ten minutes into the search and everything was fine.
After the search and more clean-up, we had the usual post-event teacher/volunteer dinner, which was great. It really was. I hung out with a friend of mine who I taught chainmail and who was one of the other chainmail teachers, and I hung out with someone who taught one of the psychology classes that a lot of my Autism 101 students were also signed up for, which was cool. Basically, the second day of Splash was made of just as much win as the first, though I was up past midnight for it and have still not caught up on sleep.
Oh, and I need to write more about the petition about stopping transplant discrimination. I think that's going to be the post after next or the next one, depending on what happens with the person who misrepresented Autistic Hoya and the writer of it on a piece about misrepresentation...
In any case, there is a shortlink to the petition, and it is this: http://wh.gov/X4yM . Go share it. Get more people to sign it, seriously.
