Devotional blog dedicated to the Goddess Sigyn offering support to those who are "holding the bowl" within difficult relationships.
Xena: See how calm the surface of the water is. That was me once. And then
[Xena throws a stone in the water]
Xena: , the water ripples and churns. That’s what I became.
Gabrielle: But if we sit here long enough it will go back to being still again; go back to being calm.
Xena: But the stone is still under there. It’s now part of the lake. It might look as it did before, but it’s forever changed.
Taking a child with autism on a plane requires some advanced planning and preparation. Thankfully there are now programs in place at many airports that that provide children with autism a flying experience without ever lifting off the ground. Participants pack their bags, ride to the airport, pass through security, and continue through the whole flying process including boarding, “flying” and deplaning.
These “dress rehearsals” help to prepare individuals with autism for flying. When the time comes children with autism will know what to expect and the environment will not be as foreign to them. Hopefully over time the experience of flying will become as pedestrian as it currently is for most of us.
Here are 15 airports currently offering a Airport Rehearsal Program
15 Airports That Offer “Rehearsal Programs” for Individuals With Autism
Do not think that because Sigyn is gentle, She cannot get angry. Her gentleness is choice, not weakness. It is an inexorable choice.
The thing that makes Sigyn dangerous isn’t that she’s violent or cruel; it’s that she could be, and chooses to be gentle instead. In a world where everyone is always expecting harshness and punishment, receiving kindness and empathy in their place not only surprises people, but draws them to you. It wins love as well as loyalty—and there’s nothing more powerful than someone who has the love and loyalty of so many people who were likely used to nothing but cruelty and rejection before they met her.
Want to hear a great Helen Keller joke?
Helen Keller was an author, lecturer, and advocate for women’s suffrage, labor rights, socialism, and other radical left causes. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a bachelor’s degree, and she was an avid supporter of birth control.
But let’s forget all that and make some disabled person jokes. That way we don’t have to acknowledge any of her work or any of the causes she represented.
Alexander Kostov has spinal muscular atrophy, a disease that makes impossible for him to use most traditional game controllers.Very cool. I would like to know more about how they mapped muscle movements to computer inputs. Nonetheless, it shows what’s possible with creativity and abandoning the mouse-and-keyboard paradigm.
Custom controller lets disabled man dig into Minecraft using his eyebrows
Great news that Google has bought Lift Labs a tech company that makes an ‘assisted living’ product.
The Lift Labs device is a fork or spoon created to reduce tremor, by stabilising using internal mechanics to keep it steady. With Google behind it will have a big opportunities for reaching people worldwide and further development. NY Times has speculated that Google may have been interested because Sergey Brin’s mother has Parkinson’s disease and he has a genetic predisposition of developing it.
From NY Times:
Lift Labs’ founder and a handful of employees will join Google and work out of the company’s Mountain View headquarters.
Most people take eating for granted, but for the 11 million Americans with either essential tremor or Parkinson’s disease, the act of lifting a utensil can be harrowing, embarrassing and messy.
Lift Labs’ Liftware device – basically a vibrating spoon/fork that makes eating easier by counteracting the tremors with a bunch of little swivels – tries to ameliorate the condition.
“A lot of social interaction revolves around eating,” said Dr. Kelvin Chou, a neurology professor at the University of Michigan who has collaborated with Lift Labs. “It’s embarrassing for them, and they feel like people are watching them all the time. I’ve had patients say ‘Someone came up to me and said I should stop drinking.’ Things like that.”
To read more click here
People with tremor might also want to check out the handsteady cup.
Holding the Bowl 