Ripley has a very good grasp of the word “touch” and we often use it as a command word to get him to try to be less afraid of new things or to ask his permission to pet him. He knows if we ask him to “touch” a person or object, he’ll be praised for gently tapping his beak against it. He also knows exactly what we mean when we ask him not to touch something,
Today I yelled at him for biting the wall and he did probably the pettiest thing I’ve ever seen him do: he went around touching stuff in the room and saying “no” and staring at me to make sure I was watching him do it.
It has just now occurred to me that what’s “visibly on the spectrum” is wildly different for autistic and allistic people. Most allistics don’t recognize autistic behavior (at all or anything more that weird/quirky) unless it impacts their ability to interface with an autistic person. That’s when allistics see someone as visibly on the spectrum. Other autistics can spot each other from a mile a way though over minor stuff.
For example every allistic I’ve ever worked with has told me “oh but you’re sooo good at socializing with people?!? I could neverrrr tell?!?!” If they learned I’m autistic.
However other autistic people meet me and are like: YOU. AUTISM.
i learned about Marion Stokes, a Philadelphia woman who began taping whatever was on television in 1979 and didn’t stop until her death in 2012.. The 71,000 VHS and Betamax tapes she made are the most complete collection preserving this era of TV. They are being digitized by the Internet Archive. (x)
i feel like this is selling her a bit short tbh. It’s not like she was a random woman who decided to tape ‘whatever’ was on television. She was a civil rights activist and archivist, who was extremely concerned about preserving history. She believed that, by taping television, she would be preserving history EXACTLY as it was perceived at the time; she didn’t want the detail in the news to disappear with time. And she was RIGHT.
Like I said, she didn’t just tape ‘whatever’ was on television. It was extremely targeted towards news stations. There were 8 VCRs running at all times in her home. Her life—-and her family’s lives—-were centered around 6 hour blocks, since that was the amount of time that a tape would record for. Her collections were also extremely organized.
