Inside and Beyond Autism

Autism can be mysterious to anyone who hasn't experienced it.  In a recent 60 Minutes report about how children with autism were learning to communicate using iPad apps, several parents commented with wonder about how these tools were letting them understand some of what was going on inside the minds and perceptions of their autistic children.  Without such tools for communication, we simply don't know what it's like to experience autism from the inside.

That's part of what makes Sean Barron's unusual work so important.  After experiencing autism as a child and working hard in his early adulthood to train himself to move beyond the disorder's limits, Barron co-authored two books that give us a glimpse inside.  Together with his mother, he wrote There's a Boy in Here: Emerging from the Bonds of Autism, a book that gives readers insight into what autism meant for both Sean and his family.  More recently, he collaborated with Temple Grandin on Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships, a guide to 10 key elements of interpersonal communication.   As Barron explains, the rules reflect things he had to learn in order to move beyond his autism to function well in interactions with others.  He puts those lessons to use every day in his work as a journalist, and in the process, he's walking proof that at least some of those with autism can recover. 

While it's subtitled Understanding and Managing Social Challenges for Those with Asperger's or Autism,and while most people probably abide by these unwritten rules without thinking about it, the book would probably be useful to anyone who wants to be mindful and intentional about how they interact with others.  Who wouldn't benefit from being reminded that "everyone makes mistakes" and their errors "don't have to ruin your day"?  And I bet we can all think of people who need to be reminded of the value of being polite or that we are responsible for our own behavior? 

Tosca in Youngstown

I wish listeners could see David Vosburgh as he talks about Opera Western Reserve.  He describes the incredible amount of work involved in putting on each fall's opera, but instead of looking like he's stressed or anxious, he looks at once determined and like he's having an incredibly good time.  As our interview makes clear, David is responsible for so many aspects of each production, from working with Music Director Susan Davenny Wyner and the Board to select which operas to stage to recruiting singers to designing sets and costumes.  He's all too conscious that he can't keep doing it all forever, but for now, he does an impressive job.  The performances seem to get better each year, and the audiences keep growing. That reflects many things, but at the heart of it all is David Vosburgh's creativity and passion.

This fall's production, Tosca, is coming up in just a couple of weeks.  You can read a synopsis of the opera online, but that doesn't do justice to what it's like to be there.  Opera is excessive --intentionally so.  That's part of the pleasure of it.  Get your tickets now and support one of the most ambitious creative enterprises in Youngstown.

Caring for Those Who Can't Pay

We all know that access to health care is far from guaranteed in this country.  While emergency rooms won't usually turn away an uninsured person with an immediate need, our health care systems could save a lot of money AND people would be healthier if they didn't have to wait for an emergency to get medical care.  At the same time, the number of Americans who have health insurance continues to fall, in part because so many employers are choosing not to offer health insurance as part of employee benefits.  Even those who have insurance often struggle to meet deductibles and put off getting medical attention for fear of racking up significant out-of-pocket costs.

Meanwhile, the economics of providing medical care become increasingly complex, and doctors are having to make tough choices about what kind of care to provide to which patients. Programs that fund care for the poor and elderly are placing tighter limits and controls on what they reimburse, and requirements for malpractice insurance and new technologies create new expenses for medical practices.  It sometimes seems like the only ones benefiting from the system are the insurance companies.

Despite all that, a number of local doctors are doing something remarkable here in Youngstown: they're providing free care to people who need it.  Through the Midlothian Free Health Clinic, Dr. Thomas Albani and his colleagues are providing both basic and specialized care, much of it made possible entirely because medical professionals donate their time.  You can hear all about in this week's interview, and you can help ensure that the clinic continues to operate.  Call the clinic at 330.788.3330 to find out about how to donate and how to participate in their next fundraiser.

Making Sense of Food Policy

"Food policy" was a new phrase to me when I joined the Grow Youngstown board a couple of years ago, and I have to admit that I'm still not entirely clear on the full range of what it might cover.  As MVOC organizer Tammy Thomas and Grow Youngstown director Elsa Higby explain on this week's show, the idea behind the new Mahoning Valley Food Policy Council is to identify existing regulations that get in the way of the production and distribution of locally-grown and healthy food and advocate for new policies that will make it easier for growers, distributors, and consumers to improve the quality of food available in our area.  That might involve everything from zoning to allow urban farms or backyard chicken coops to regulations governing the sales of small-scale locally-produced packaged foods.

You can find out more about this model by visiting the website of the North American Food Policy Council. Along with explaining how such councils work, it has a list of the more than 100 that exist around the US.  You can also read the charter of the Ohio Food Policy Advisory Council, created by Governor Ted Strickland in 2007.

Want to get involved?  Check out the MVOC's Health Equity campaign information or visit the Grow Youngstown website.

Art Beyond the Museum, the Museum Beyond Art

One of the things I appreciate about this week's guest, Leslie Brothers, director of YSU's McDonough Museum of Art, is that her vision of art itself -- not just the role of a campus art museum, but of the very idea/act/artifact of art -- is so deeply connected with social change and community engagement.  This fall's Dreaming Awake: The Town Hall Project is a good example.  It involves some elements that seem to fit neatly into what most people think of as art -- most notably the project animations from the Vito Acconci Studio.  But it also redefines the museum itself, the place we think of as the location for art, as a place for community gatherings of all kinds, and that, in turn, invites us to think about how such gatherings might be not merely enhanced by art but could be, in themselves, forms of art.  To my mind, thinking in these terms transforms both how I think about art and how I think about community. 

Links within the McDonough's website will take you to a description of the Town Hall project and to a schedule of events.  One of the highlights of this fall's schedule is the Skeggs Lecture by Vito Acconci.  

In our conversation, Leslie mentioned the inspiration of a statement on art and social change by Laurie Anderson.  Here's a link to that piece, definitely worth a look.

More than a Free Meal

I had two expectations when I sat down to talk with Jim Echement about the Rescue Mission of the Mahoning Valley, and both turned out to be wrong.  First, I thought I’d hear that the economic crisis of the last three years has caused a significant increase in poverty and homelessness.  While that may be true in terms of national statistics, and while the Rescue Mission has seen some increase in traffic, Echement doesn’t see economics as the primary problem.  Rather, he suggests that for most people, homelessness and persistent economic struggle are not matters of economic conditions so much as of personal trauma.   That may reflect his organization’s mission to help people overcome significant personal obstacles, to in effect change themselves, in order to move toward a more economically stable life. 

But that leads to my second misconception.  I had assumed that the Rescue Mission would have a goal of providing life-changing assistance to anyone who is homeless and in need.  In some ways, that’s true.  They provide meals to anyone who walks in the door, every day.  But when it comes to helping people get off the streets permanently, Echement suggests, they focus on those who are ready to make a change.   To qualify for their “Second Chance” program, which provides long-term housing, training, and support, participants must agree to abide by some clear and rather strict rules.  That helps to instill discipline, and that, in turn, helps people discover that they have more control over their own circumstances than they might have thought. 

From my perspective, both parts of the Rescue Mission’s work matter – providing food and shelter for those in immediate need, regardless of their circumstances, and helping people transform their lives.  Those are challenging goals at any time, and all the more so these days.

Challenging the Myth of a Divided City

There’s an old, too-often told myth about Youngstown’s history: that we haven’t been able to solve the community’s problems because we’ve been too divided.  When I call this a myth, I mean that it’s necessarily false.  Rather, I’m thinking of this as a myth in the sense that this story at once influences and explains the way things are.  We do squabble among municipalities, between the cities and the suburbs, between whites and blacks, and between multiple organizations all trying to make a difference, and some of those divisions do hamper our efforts.  But the myth itself also encourages us to believe that we can’t achieve anything as long as we’re divided, and that, in turn, leads us to blame each other for local problems.  If only that other group would stop trying to do what my group is doing, we say, everything would be fine. 

It’s useful to keep this myth in mind when we talk about the work of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation.  On the one hand, the YNDC is an example of creating a new organization to take on work that some others were already doing, albeit in different and sometimes smaller ways.  When YNDC began, the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative and ACTION had both been working to address the needs of urban neighborhoods.  Commonwealth, Catholic Charities, Habitat for Humanity, and some others had long been involved in renovating old housing and developing new properties to help lower-income families become homeowners or stable renters.  Jubilee Gardens, Goodness Grows, Villa Maria, and Grow Youngstown were all involved in various ways in creating urban gardens and promoting local agriculture.  

Despite that, YNDC is a welcome addition to the community development landscape, for two key reasons.  One is a matter of scale, which is made possible in part by significant funding – more than most of those other projects.  That has allowed YNDC to hire strong staff members and invest in meaningful ways in a few targeted areas.  Funding also allows YNDC to do something that the myth about Youngstown tells us never happens: to foster collaboration with other organizations.  As YNDC Executive Director Presley Gillespie explained when we talked, YNDC doesn’t want to compete with or eliminate those other groups, nor is it in anyone’s interest for every project or person to be part of a single organization.  Rather, YNDC can fulfill one of the visions of the Wean Foundation (one of its sponsors): to increase the community’s capacity for development by increasing our ability to work together – not by making everyone part of one big operation but by fostering productive partnerships.