Cognitive Styles, Stereotypes and Collateral Damage

(Cross-posted from my Tumblr)

I saw a really interesting post on Tumblr about, among other things, different disability stereotypes and some of the less-than-perfect ways different subsets of cognitively or developmentally disabled people cope with them.

The part of the post I'm responding to:

You know how there is a subset of badbrains people who are like “ACTUALLY, our BADBRAINS MAKE US SMARTER. We are not disabled, we are the NEXT EVOLUTIONARY STAGE, we are BETTER. There is us on the top, then normals in the middle, then unsmart r-word badbrains people on the bottom. Given time they will see.” And I was attracted to that subset of badbrains people for a while before I realise they were assholes (And also stopped being academically smart.) And there was a subset of the subset who said “the unsmart r-word badbrains were just expensive useless people who should die, I NEVER thought that (not that I deserve some kind of “not a murderer” cookie) but those people existed and exist. 

But I feel like there is also a subset of badbrains people who are like “ACTUALLY, our BADBRAINS MAKE US KINDER, we are a PURER  type of human, more whole and loving and sane, more Hufflepuff, than the normals. There is us on top, normals in the middle, and the evil heartless non-sensory, abstraction-based, heartless badbrains people on the bottom, they probably all worship Richard Dawkins and watch my little pony and are racist and rape everyone they meet. They are all just like Elliot Rodger, we should probably kill them before they kill us.”

The bolded parts ring true for me too.

I know that both types of “badbrains people” — the ones whose minds handle abstract concepts well, but don’t really get emotions or people*, and the ones whose minds don’t handle abstract concepts or words well but are good at empathy and perceptual, sensory stuff** — exist and have to deal with ableism from NTs, and have various ways of coping with that and saying, no, actually we have value and are good at things.

And I know that those coping mechanisms can turn into ways of hurting other DD/MI people — the ones whose cognitive styles are as different from our own as they are from the norm. We might think we’re trashing a stereotype but actually be trashing real people who share traits with the stereotype. 

I actually overlap a bit with both of the subsets of people you’re describing — most of the mockery I got in grade school was of the “look at the stupid R-word, she believes whatever you tell her” variety; I do live primarily in a world of sensory information and sometimes I’m not exactly within reach of words; I sort of straddle a line between very concrete, literal thought and more abstract, logical, analogy- and metaphor-based thought; I think very slowly and sometimes speak haltingly; but at the same time I’m very good at academics, including STEM subjects, I can be pretty far removed from my emotions (like, it took me until my 20s to even realize I was capable of certain emotions, or to express them), and I am ridiculously insensitive to nonverbal cues and emotional subtext in conversation.

The latter set of traits make me very much a stereotypical “Aspie” that autistics who don’t have those traits have been bashing as non-representative of what actual autism is like. I’m not really bothered by it because I know they’re right. My observations do tell me I’m in the minority in having those traits, especially the lack of affective empathy. 

The stuff I’ve seen from other autistic people has been more along the lines of “this type of autistic person doesn’t really exist” than “this type of autistic person is evil,” though.

(From NTs, of course, I've seen a whole lot of "this type of autistic person is evil" stereotyping. It's almost coming to replace the autism stereotypes I remember more from childhood, the ones that imagine us as having no inner life.)

*Continuing with the Harry Potter Sorting Hat theme in the quoted passage, it would probably make the most sense to associate this cognitive style with Ravenclaw, and maybe Slytherin.

**Probably more likely to be in Hufflepuff or Gryffindor

As Long As I'm Posting Old Drawings I Finally Got Around to Finishing ....

... take a look at this bird!

Kansas City, Don't Get on This Bandwagon

Just this past weekend I read something that upset me very much: the City Council of Kansas City, Missouri is considering making it illegal to give food to homeless people without having a permit from the city to do so.

You can read the proposed ordinance here (PDF).

Because it's a couple pages long and legal writing is dense, I'll also excerpt the relevant bits of it here:

Section 8-301.11 of the 2005 Food Code is amended to read as follows: A PERSON may not operate a FOOD ESTABLISHMENT without a valid PERMIT to operate issued by the REGULATORY AUTHORITY. A PERMIT is required to apply for and obtain and pay for a separate FOOD ESTABLISHMENT PERMIT for each of the types of FOOD ESTABLISHMENT operations listed in subsections (1) through (13): 

... 

(13) Food Sharing Permit: issued to a not-for-profit granted tax-exempt status under any provision of Section 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code ... that is distributing food free of charge for the sole purpose of impacting food insecurity in Kansas City, Missouri. Food sharing permits are not intended to cover food sharing taking place within permitted food establishments. Any already-permitted food establishments shall not need a food sharing permit to offer food free of charge to the public within the confines of the already-permitted establishment. All potentially hazardous food shall be prepared in a permitted kitchen and any processed foods must be pre-packaged. All food shall be labeled with the name or identifier of the permittee and disposed of four (4) hours after being removed from active temperature control. On site food preparation is prohibited with a Food Sharing Permit. Permit holders shall provide waste receptacles if none are readily available or if on-site receptacles are not adequate to collect the waste generated, while distributing food pursuant to the permit and when necessary, shall collect and remove any food or container waste. Food sharing permittees shall not distribute food within one block of a school on a day in which school is in session during the 30 minute period preceding school or the 30 minute period after adjournment. All other Food Code requirements shall be followed, including the obtaining of food handler cards. Re-inspection fees shall be those as set for catering permits. There shall be no cost for the initial food sharing permit or for any routine annual renewals.

It's not clear from this text whether any of this applies to a single person handing out food on their own. (At least, it's not clear to me.)

I'm also not clear on what the implications are for a group that's not a formally recognized nonprofit, like a social club, that might want to distribute food.

The ordinance itself, and City Council member Melba Curls in comments to the public at a protest rally held June 4 at City Hall, cite public health as one of the reasons why the ordinance was drafted.

Intuitively, that makes sense. By making a city-issued permit a requirement to distribute food, the city can keep track of who is distributing food and periodically inspect the kitchens where they prepare it. They can make sure that those kitchens are clean, and that the food that passes through them is not carrying any disease-causing microorganisms.

I'm not sure it would really play out like that, though.

First of all, I'm not aware of any recent outbreaks of food-borne illness here originating in soup kitchens; all the ones I remember reading about originated in restaurants, or on farms or food processing plants.

Example.

Other example.

Other example.

Other example.

(It's true, if the contaminated food items end up in grocery stores, they could find their way to a soup kitchen or food pantry's shelves. But it seems like the most efficient way to catch contaminated produce before it makes someone sick would be to do your screening as each shipment reaches the stores, not at whatever secondary or tertiary destination the food is actually eaten.)

So I'm not sure how helpful this measure will be in reducing the number or extent of outbreaks of food-borne illness, and at the same time I'm sure this will have a chilling effect on efforts to feed the city's hungry people. 

(How could it not? It's adding red tape where before there was none. Also, some of the people who are doing that work showed up at the protest rally and said that the ordinance would make it harder for them to operate. So this isn't just me coming up with hypotheticals; this is a thing that people who work at feeding the homeless say will probably happen.)

I'm also aware of a larger pattern around the nation of criminalizing either homelessness itself or ordinary citizens giving food to homeless people.

And I also know that Kansas City is currently hustling to market itself as a cool, happening city to attract the wealthier members of my generation. 

I am made very cynical about what it means to do that, largely by the spectacle of San Francisco all but waging open war on its poor people to curry favor with the Silicon Valley professional classes. 

Return of the Arty Aspie

Chessmen

I started drawing this a ridiculously long time ago --- like fourteen or fifteen years ago. I drew all the black chessmen, and the closest two of the white chessmen, and shaded less than half of the squares when I abandoned it.

I don't remember why I didn't finish it then; either I got bored of it or I didn't think I could draw the smaller chessmen in the background. 

I've gotten better at working on a small scale since then, so they were fairly easy when I finally came back to it.

Being on Tumblr has inspired me to do a lot more art, so I also made a Deviant Art account.

Gardenblogging Part VI

Leaves starting to unfurl on a shrub we planted maybe three years ago? I think it was either the same time as we planted the viburnums or a few months to a year after. Either way, this shrub has not grown anywhere near as much as the viburnums have; the viburnums are taller than me now, and this guy still doesn't come up to my knee.

Wildflower Blogging

I've been posting a bunch of pictures of flowers from my garden --- lilacs, viburnums, bleeding hearts, vincas, and whatever this red thing is --- so now I want to change it up by posting pictures of a flower my mom and I did not plant.

We get a lot of violets growing in the shady parts of the yard --- under the deck, in the grassy zone adjoining the flowerbed, and under the maple tree with the red flowering bush next to it --- and I'm always very happy to see them, so this year I thought I'd take some pictures.

This is also the first time I've noticed that they are in fact blue, not purple!

(So the old verse is true, it's not just that nothing rhymes with purple ...) 

Look at the way the color seems to be coming from veins in the petals. (Also, the flower is a little battered --- I probably should've taken its picture when I first noticed it, instead of waiting until later).

Finally, since I mentioned verse, I want to quote a poem I like that mentions violets.

It's from Wordsworth, "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways"

    She dwelt among the untrodden ways

    Beside the springs of Dove,

    A Maid whom there were none to praise

    And very few to love:

    A violet by a mossy stone

    Half hidden from the eye!

    Fair as a star, when only one

    Is shining in the sky.

    She lived unknown, and few could know

    When Lucy ceased to be;

    But she is in her grave, and, oh,

    The difference to me! 

Gardenblogging, Part V

Like the first couple pictures in my vinca post, these were actually taken last year. This plant flowers early, and I didn't get a picture of it in time this year.

I don't know what this thing is --- it's a woody shrub that's growing practically right on top of one of the maple trees in our yard. It's very sparse --- only a few branches --- compared to all the free-standing shrubs we have.

Here are some pictures that show more of it, and how it leans against the trunk of the tree:

We also didn't plant this --- either the people who lived here before us did, or it volunteered, grown from a seed misplaced by a bird or squirrel or something.

It's my favorite of all our plants. I'd like to paint it sometime.

Gardenblogging, Part IV

Bleeding hearts!

Gardenblogging, Part III

Vincas! The above photos were taken on different days --- different years, actually --- the top two on a sunny day and the bottom one on a cloudy day.

The individual blooms are so tiny you can't really take a picture where they show up clearly that also shows the whole area they cover. So here are a couple pictures where I've tried to show that --- they carpet a fairly large stretch of ground at the base of a black walnut tree growing right next to the huge drainage ditch running through our backyard. 

My mom wanted them there so that we'd have something covering the ground/keeping the soil in place, but not grass that we'd have to mow, because the dropoff is very abrupt and you could go right into the ditch if you're not careful. We have an ongoing project to do that all along the creekbed, replace the grass with low-growing, creeping ground-cover plants, preferably flowering ones. Alas, most of the stretch of ground we want to cover isn't as shady as it is under the walnut, so we can't just cover our side of the ditch with vincas.

Gardenblogging, Part II

(Cross-posted from my Tumblr)

Here are some pictures of one of the viburnums --- we have three, but I only took pictures of one. We planted them some years ago (Three? Four? Probably not five, but I can't rule that out either), and out of all our relatively new shrubs they are probably the ones that are flourishing the best in our yard, aside from the Roses of Sharon and maybe the butterfly bushes.

It's a tough environment for plants, with its combination of heavy clay soil and extreme heat and dryness.

The informational materials that came with the little saplings that we bought said that this type of viburnum grows into sort of a roundish bush with a diameter of six to twelve feet, and to a height of something like five to eight feet or six to ten feet. (I don't remember which of those it was.)

So they're smaller than they would be under ideal growing conditions.

Here's me standing next to one, so that you can see how tall it is:

I'm 5'8", and you can see that the tallest branch on the bush extends a little bit above my head, maybe enough to make it past the six-foot mark.

Look at how big those flowers are!

(Here are some more pictures of them)

Gardenblogging, Part I

(Cross-posted from my Tumblr)


Here are a bunch of pictures of the lilac bush next to my house:

Those pictures give a good idea of the size and shape of the whole plant, but they don't really do justice to individual flowers.

So here are some closer-up shots:

Snapshots of Disillusionment

There's a book I have, From Poor Law to Welfare State, that's a history of welfare programs in the US, from the colonial period to the mid-'90s or thereabouts. It's a hugely informative book, and maybe one day I'll write a more substantial post about it.

But today I just want to point out something interesting --- if also very depressing --- about the particular edition I own.

It's the Sixth Edition, and after the author's preface it has all the prefaces from every earlier edition. So you can almost travel back in time, reading how the author's thinking and outlook evolved as he had to keep updating the book. (There's a span of, like, more than twenty years between the publication dates of the first and sixth editions, and they happen to be twenty very momentous years in the history of welfare policy.)

What's depressing, though, is that in every successive preface he has to point out that he had been overly optimistic in his concluding remarks to the previous book. 

Here's a snippet from the preface to the Second Edition (1978):

The initial version [of this book], completed early in 1973, brought the account of social welfare in America up to the start of this decade.To leave it at that critical juncture would be to shirk an obligation to readers who have witnessed the important, often complex occurrences since then and who seek to know how they are related to prior events. One of the most significant elements in the new edition, then, is the addition of a chapter on the 1970s, “Where Do We Go From Here?” 

I was especially pleased to have the opportunity to bring the text up to date because, writing some five or six years ago, I ended the manuscript on a rather optimistic note. For reasons discussed in the work, I suggested that “as 1970 approached, all was not bleak”; despite the lack of progress, “there were rays of hope.” Events over the past half-decade have proved me unduly sanguine, as the new concluding chapter indicates. Perhaps a future edition of this work will see the restoration of my confidence in the future; I hope so.

 And here's one from the Third Edition (1983):

Less than two decades ago, during the “booming” 1960s, a consensus existed in America regarding the welfare state. Few people on either side of the political aisle opposed strengthening the Social Security system or even declaring “war on poverty.” It was widely believed that the federal government was responsible for the well-being of all citizens, including their basic economic security and their physical and mental health. 

Now, in the midst of a long period of low productivity, deep recession, near-record levels of unemployment, high inflation, and widespread and growing suffering, the welfare state is under severe attack. In the forefront of that attack is the Reagan administration, with its neo-conservative philosophy. After his landslide victory in 1980, Ronald Reagan and his business-oriented advisors came into office intent on altering the direction of public affairs, particularly with regard to the scope and costs of federal activities and the relationship between the public and the private sector, especially in the area of social welfare. Since that time, they have consistently sought, with great success, to eliminate some federal and federally subsidized welfare programs and to cut back on others in a concerted attempt to reverse the steady drift toward Washington’s greater involvement in the nation’s social welfare system. 

The assault against the welfare state has come from the left as well as from the right, from radical scholars and activists as well as from conservative politicians, businessmen, and working class Americans. During the past fifteen years or so, the literature on social welfare, in fact, has been dominated by critics from the left, those who advocate the so-called social control thesis — the argument that the middle and upper classes have devised and used the nation’s welfare institutions and agencies not to help but to control the needy in order to safeguard the existing class system, perpetuate capitalism, and serve their own interests. In fact, so pervasive had such a view become that David Rothman, one of the authors of a widely cited statement on the “limits of benevolence,” rightly indicated that there even existed a widespread and acute suspicion of the very idea of doing good: “Whereas once historians and policy analysts were prone to label some movements reform, thereby assuming their humanitarian aspects,” Rothman wrote in 1978, “they are presently far more comfortable with a designation of social control, thereby assuming their coercive quality …” 

Activists of all kinds also see the needy as less beneficiaries of a benevolent society and more as victims of an all-controlling state; such activists include radicals who preach “participatory democracy” and “community control,” liberals fed up with big government and the federal bureaucracy, and even some social workers and members of the other helping professions who are convinced that the “experts” or “helpers” do not really help, that their professional knowledge, techniques, and institutions have been used to promote a sort of societal imperialism designed to keep the needy in a dependent position in order to perpetuate and enhance professionals’ own role in society. 

This, then, is an exciting and challenging (if not very encouraging) time to be thinking and writing about American social welfare history and the social work profession — and one of the justifications for a new edition of this work.This revised text is a product, at least in part, of the many things that have happened in the field, intellectually and practically, since the appearance of the last edition in 1979.

... the Fourth Edition (1988):

At the conclusion of the Preface to the third edition of this book, written in July, 1983, I stated, “Perhaps … a later edition of … [this] work, should one appear, will have a happier ending.” Unfortunately, that is not so. Despite the efforts of the outgoing administration to deny and conceal the fact, millions of American citizens remain mired in poverty. Indeed, the situation has worsened over the last eight years. In point of fact, there are now more Americans — especially women and children — who are poverty-stricken and in many cases homeless and hungry than there were when President Reagan took office. In addition, in cities all across the nation, there has developed a demoralized “underclass,” comprising school dropouts, gang members, hustlers, criminals, drug addicts, drifters, and other marginal and functionless people who often prey upon and terrorize innocent citizens and threaten the very fabric of American life.  

This new edition gave me the opportunity to take account of, and analyze, these developments and to put them into historical perspective. In so doing, I came to realize that “Reaganism” was not merely the continuation of policies initiated during the Nixon, Ford, and even Carter administrations, as I had believed (and written) earlier. In retrospect, it becomes clear that the period from 1969 to 1981 was a transitional era between the Kennedy-Johnson administrations, with their idealistic and grandiose social policies, and the Reagan administration, with its far more punitive and restrictive measures — measures that, for the first time, were designed to undermine and undo the welfare state that had emerged in America during the prior half-century. 

... Fifth Edition (1993):

Ordinarily, authors are quite pleased to have the opportunity to revise and update books they had written previously. Certainly that was the case with me, as for example my comments in the Preface to the Second Edition indicate. Unfortunately, however, that was not so this time. For the most part, revising and updating this work proved to be a difficult and depressing task.  

The last edition of this book, published in 1989, concluded with George Bush’s election to the presidency after eight years, under Ronald Reagan, of unremitting horror for the nation’s poor. Since that time, however, as I feared, conditions only have gotten worse. Under Bush, the war on the welfare state continued, poverty intensified, and homelessness and a variety of other related social problems reached new heights. All the while, the occupant of the White House and his supporters, who viewed the needy with indifference, if not scorn, did nothing — or worse: they cut even more holes in the social welfare safety net, such as it was. And while the violence that erupted in Los Angeles in the spring of 1992 thrust the state of America’s inner cities and urban poverty into the public consciousness once again, and even rekindled some public debate on these matters, certainly it did not propel them onto the public agenda, at least not yet.  

If there is any light at the end of the tunnel, it is the fact that the twelve dark and dismal years of the Reagan-Bush era have come to an end, and — as I indicate in the conclusion to this work — there is hope (although not quite as much now as there was immediately after the 1992 presidential election) for the onset of a new domestic order, one that will allow Americans to regain their “dignity as a just and compassionate people,” as the authors of The Greatest of Evils: Urban Poverty and the American Underclass (1993) put it. 

... and Sixth Edition (1999):

The first question most readers undoubtedly will ask is, why publish a new edition of From Poor Law to Welfare State this time? While there are a number of reasons for doing so, there are two compelling, although related, answers to that question. First, the previous edition of this work ended on a rather upbeat, or optimistic, note. President Bill Clinton had just introduced his sweeping proposal to overhaul the nation’s health care system, and while many questions about that undertaking remain unanswered, I wrote that “most Americans reacted favorably to the plan and looked forward to the upcoming debate over its specifics.” Furthermore, to again quote from the last edition, “there seemed to be bi-partisan support, in and out of Congress, for the notion that the time had come for some sort of universal national health insurance scheme.” Obviously, I was wrong, and I am glad to have the opportunity to correct myself — and to explain why I was mistaken.  

Second, and closely related, I also misunderstood, or placed too much faith in, President Clinton and his commitment to helping the needy by getting to the heart of their problems — and using the federal government to help resolve them. I really believed, I am somewhat embarrassed to admit, that Clinton, “unlike his immediate predecessors, who either did not recognize the nation’s social problems or refused to face up to them … certainly admits that the nation has many such problems, … that it cannot afford to ignore them, … and that the public sector can and should help to resolve them. Just as our colonial ancestors viewed their villages and towns as communities [I wrote] he cries out for the government again to become an instrument for the improvement of its citizens’ lives, especially by providing at least a minimal level of social welfare for all of its inhabitants.” 

Again, I proved to be in error. Indeed, as readers may already know, or will discover from reading the “new” last chapter of this book — the title of which I changed from “Toward a New Domestic Order?” to “Looking Forward — or Backward?” — just the opposite occurred. Thanks to what is referred to as the welfare reform act of 1996, signed into law by Clinton (just prior to the upcoming presidential election) over the protests of a number of concerned citizens, the entitlement to welfare, put into place in America some sixty years ago in the midst of the Great Depression (if not earlier, during the colonial period), has been removed and replaced by the “work or starve” mentality of an earlier time. 

Book Review: The Dark Side of the Enlightenment

(This review is also posted on GoodReads.com)

Cover of The Dark Side of the Enlightenment: Wizards, Alchemists and Spiritual Seekers in the Age of Reason, by John V. Fleming

I got this book because I have an abiding interest in science, in the history of science, and in the history of various wider cultural backlashes against science. (I am a STEM/humanities dual degree holder, and came of age in Kansas during the most recent "Evolution Wars," so that's why that sort of thing interests me. How could it not?)

That's kind of what I thought The Dark Side of the Enlightenment would be --- an exploration of counter-trends to the Enlightenment ideals of rationality and empiricism. And, to an extent, it is; the author is a medievalist, not an Enlightenment historian or a historian of science, and he makes the very interesting claim that the "occult" pursuits mentioned in the title were of a piece with the more widely known, and celebrated, empirical investigations of that era.

(This is not the first time I've encountered that idea, but John Fleming does a very good job of making the case for it. His training as a medievalist works to his advantage here, because he can trace the medieval roots of both Enlightenment science and Enlightenment "magic.")

But the thing that was most counter to my expectations was that this book wasn't really the kind of history I was expecting -- one that dealt with places, events, ideas, trends, and in which individual people appeared briefly, like rocks in a streambed, subtly changing the water's flow and then quickly passed by -- no, this was more like a series of long, detailed biographical sketches.

The people and groups he chooses to profile are: Valentine Greatrakes, an Irish country gentleman who became famous for miraculously curing people of scrofula by touching them; a small French Jansenist sect that venerated a churchyard where a Jansenist deacon who was thought to have been able to heal people during his lifetime was buried, and who were struck with shaking fits when they visited his grave; Alchemists; Kabbalists; Freemasons; Rosicrucians (who these people were wasn't entirely clear to me! They don't seem to have been an order or a club so much as any people, anywhere, who were interested in discovering things? So I'm not sure who wasn't a Rosicrucian?); Count Cagliostro, who was actually a Sicilian named Giuseppe Balsamo, who went all over Europe founding Masonic lodges of his own "Egyptian" rite, and who was imprisoned in the Bastille because Marie-Antoinette believed (unfairly) that he had participated in a scheme to defraud her that is remembered today as "The Affair of the Diamond Necklace"; and the very interesting Julie de Krüdener, a Latvian noblewoman who first became famous in pre-revolutionary Paris's literary scene, where she befriended lots of people who are still famous today, like Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël, and who later in life converted to Pietism and achieved further fame (or notoriety) as a sort of itinerant preacher. Most amazingly, she became convinced that Napoleon Bonaparte was the literal Antichrist, and that it was her special duty to stop him.

This is all very interesting, and also very well written; Fleming can be very funny. But what I thought was most admirable about his treatment of all these eccentric historical figures is how much he seems to respect them. No one is a fraud or a charlatan in this book, even when what they purport to be doing is physically impossible. Cagliostro in particular he seems to feel it his duty to rehabilitate, because Thomas Carlyle once called him the King of Liars. Fleming does his best to convince us that Cagliostro was not a liar, nor particularly mercenary; that he seems to have been a genuinely nice person, a loyal and honest person, and perhaps a bit too trusting. He is similarly gentle with Julie de Krüdener. Lots of people have written her off as a frivolous, selfish, self-aggrandizing adulteress and social climber. Fleming does not deny the things she did to give people this impression, but he also tries to give us the full context of her actions, and to tell us how she saw things. He sees her as a woman of intense emotion, whose marriage could not give her everything she needed, and who did really love the men she had affairs with. He also does an admirable job of connecting her earlier "worldly" behavior -- her seeking out the literary salons like a flower follows the sun, and also her affairs -- to her later religious conversion, saying that both phases of her life follow logically from her florid emotionality and her need for an outlet for all those emotions. We are sympathetic to men whose devotion to Art, or to Principle, lead them to abandon their duties to family and community; why, besides sexism, would we not extend a woman the same benefit of the doubt?

My only complaint with this book was that it ended too soon; it cuts off abruptly after explaining how Julie de Krüdener reached the conclusion that Napoleon was the Antichrist. We are not shown how it affects the rest of her life. What did she DO with this astonishing information? Did she preach against him on street corners? Did she abandon all other pursuits, to devote her life solely to denouncing him? This sounds like a life-changing revelation, but we don't get to see how, or if, it did change her life! We're just left hanging.

Atalanta

Atalanta is my favorite mythological character, and I was always disappointed that there were so few stories about her, as opposed to the zillions of stories we have about, say, Hercules or Jason or Achilles or Odysseus.

Here is what I had known about her: when she was born, her father left her out in the woods to die. A bear finds her, and raises her as one of her own cubs. Atalanta grows to womanhood in the wilderness, and becomes a great hunter. She comes out of the woods at some point, to mix with other humans, and goes on adventures with the other heroes of her time --- she joins in the hunt for the Calydonian boar, which she is the first to wound, and she sails with Jason on the Argo, to help him find the Golden Fleece.

Men keep wanting to marry her, but she is a devotee of Artemis and sworn to chastity. (Or, alternately, she just isn't interested in married life.) So she issues a challenge to her prospective suitors: they must be able to win a footrace against her to marry her, and must stake their lives on the outcome of the contest. Win the race, and win her hand; or lose the race, and lose your life. This probably helped thin the herd of contestants somewhat!

One guy (who is called Hippomenes in the version of the story I know, but apparently he is sometimes called Melanion) planned ahead, and asked Aphrodite to help him win the race. She gave him three golden apples, and told him that Atalanta will be unable to resist them (either because they're magic or because ladies just can't resist the shiny), so if he throws them, she'll have to veer off course and stop to pick them up. These detours would give him time to overcome her lead, and even get ahead of her.

He does win the race, and he does get to marry Atalanta. But he forgets to thank Aphrodite for her help by making a burnt offering to her before the wedding, so she turns him and Atalanta both into lions. (Or, alternately, she makes them so consumed with lust that they consummate their marriage vows right there in Zeus's temple, which makes Zeus angry and then he turns them into lions.)*

It annoys me that the story about her that I know in the most detail isn't really about her --- it's about Hippomenes/Melanion, and his efforts to Get the Girl. Even apart from their main stories, we have all kinds of other stories of Hercules, Theseus and Jason wandering around performing random acts of heroism; why do we have so few about Atalanta? Such a badass character must surely have slain her share of brigands and marauding beasts, and the woman was raised from infancy by bears. Why aren't there any stories about her life in the forest, with the bears? (Also, who taught her to hunt like a human? Bears don't shoot arrows or throw spears, yet Atalanta is able to do both with great skill. Was there a kindly centaur who taught her in the warrior's arts, like Chiron taught Achilles?)

Because of this lingering disappointment with the meager trove of Atalanta-stories, I was elated to find this old Journal of Sport History article on "The Atalanta Legend in Art and Literature" (PDF). I was even more overjoyed to see it list a couple of incidents in Atalanta's mythic biography that I hadn't ever seen before: apparently she also wrestled against Peleus, the father of Achilles, who once beat a goddess at wrestling (that goddess being Thetis, Achilles's mother, the sea-goddess), and she was also once ambushed by two centaurs, whom she very quickly overpowered and killed.

(The article also explains who taught her to use weapons --- I guess some hunters found her while she was living in the woods, and took her in with them, and taught her to be a hunter, too.)

Going back to her contest with Peleus, here's a bit of trivia I thought was awesome:

That wrestling skills were possessed by Atalanta is obvious from the various artistic representations depicting the contest. Indeed [E. Norman**] Gardiner [in his 1910 book Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals] claimed that perhaps "the best illustration of a neck-hold occurred on a black-figured amphora in Munich, representing the wrestling match between Peleus and Atalanta."  For the match, Atalanta wore a tight fitting wrestling cap and short trunks, or shorts, while Peleus was naked as was the custom for male athletes in antiquity. There are several artistic representations of this match and the various scenes all show Peleus's hands in the same position, both on Atalanta's left arm. Atalanta, however, is shown in different positions, which varied from no hold at all, to her right arm over Peleus's shoulder, to her right hand seizing him by the back of the neck. 

Here are some pictures of those various depictions:

This might be the thing mentioned in the quoted bit? I don't know an amphora from a hole in the ground, but she's definitely got him in a neck-hold there!

Here's another one --- looks like this one's supposed to be the start of the match, from the way they're standing together in the middle of all those people.

Anyway, I just thought it was incredibly awesome that, not only is there another story I hadn't heard before about Atalanta being badass, but that a vase painting of that story should be singled out as possibly the best depiction of a certain wrestling technique in ancient Greek art!

*It is entirely possible that the first possible outcome I listed, with Aphrodite herself vengefully turning them into lions, is a bowdlerization of the ending I put in parentheses, where she makes them horny while they're on some other god's sacred ground, and then that god turns them into lions. I did first encounter this story as a child, in children's books.

**E. Norman! What an E. Normous opportunity for a pun!

On Long-Term Unemployment: Some Disjointed Thoughts

(A very rough draft of this post is on my Tumblr. I have decided I really like "tag rambling" as a form of writing!)

One of Mike the Mad Biologist's link-farm posts led me to this affecting post on The Washington Monthly's Political Animal blog, by one Kathleen Geier*:

Finally, on a personal note, I will, at long last, out myself here: I am one of those long-term unemployed you keep hearing about, and [sociologist Ofer] Sharone's research rings painfully true to my own experience. I've attended sessions at one of those self-help centers for unemployed workers of the type Sharone refers to. Those sessions helped me in important ways -- the videotaped mock interview, with feedback, was especially useful. But the philosophy there was that finding a job is largely under your control, and that did tend to exacerbate my already robust penchant for self-blame. It also left me with a gnawing sense of perpetual guilt that I'm never doing enough in my job search.


"I'm not spending enough time on my job search" is one category of unemployment self-blame. The other kind comes when you land an interview, but not the job. There have been times I've raked myself over the coals: why did I never think to learn skill X that they are looking for? Or, God, I really blew that question! Why oh why didn't I do more practice interviews?


I've interviewed for some great jobs, and I've made it to the final stage several times. A few weeks ago, for my dream job, I was one of the final two people considered -- but then of course, they decided to go with the other person.  
I always hear, "We really liked you!" "We were so impressed!" But someone else always turns out to be a "better fit". Always! It's beyond frustrating. That's why Sharone's findings about the emphasis on "the chemistry game" in the U.S. job market hit home for me. "Someone else was a better fit" -- story of my life.

The research she's referring to is in the book Flawed System/Flawed Self: Job Searching and Unemployment Experiences, by MIT professor and sociologist Ofer Sharone. (Here is MIT's press release about the book).

Anyway, the objective elements of Kathleen Geier's experience --- long term unemployment, getting interviews but not jobs, someone else always being a "better fit" even though the interviewer/HR person gushes about your qualifications --- are very similar to mine, but I don't have the self-blaming response that she says she has, and that this Ofer Sharone guy says characterizes long-term-unemployed Americans in general.

I guess I think of interviews in a much more fatalistic way than she does. I see them less as a challenge for me to overcome than a way for them, the prospective employers, to look at me in person. If they like what they see, I get the job; if they don't, I don't.

Not sure if this is a healthier way to look at it or not --- yeah, I don't beat myself up over "failing" an interview, because I don't think passing or failing one is up to me, but at the same time I feel hugely disempowered in every aspect of the job search. 

Obsessive self-loathing and total apathy are both aspects of depression, you know?

And, of course, my being autistic informs my ideas about why I might be rejected. For her, it sounds like she tends to blame herself for rejection because she thinks she said something wrong, or underprepared for the interview, and that if she had said a different thing or done more prep work she would have gotten the job.

It's not that simple for me, because I know there are an endless array of reasons a non-autistic person might be put off by me, an autistic person. I know that they see a whole bunch of things in my body language, and hear things in my tone of voice, that I don't know are there** and can't consciously control or correct for.

I guess an analogy might be, you're applying for work in a very New Age sort of environment, where the hiring manager says she can read auras***, and that in lieu of a conventional interview she would just evaluate you on the basis of your aura. You sit in front of her for a VERY awkward five minutes or so while she closes her eyes, goes hmm and ahhh and oh! and oh dear and you have no idea what she's reacting to, and then she opens her eyes, shakes your hand, tells you she'll get back to you with her decision, and then leaves. And you are left completely mystified as to what just happened or what she thought of you.

You would probably not think there was much you could have done to change the outcome of that interview if you failed to get the job, correct?

Well, they're all pretty much like that for me.

*I'm assuming no relation to the notorious Mark and David Geier!

**A less charitable way of putting this is that they project qualities onto me from their imaginations. And they have such active ones!

***Assume for the purpose of this analogy that you cannot perceive your own aura because auras don't exist.