Then it shall to the barber's ...

For the benefit (questionable) of out of town friends who missed what started as No-Shave November and then lasted through Christmas, some pictures.

Here's how Julie saw it:

Here's what I saw in the mirror:

Here are some fun Hamlet quotes about beards:
                       
Slanders, sir; for the satirical rogue says here that old
men have grey beards; that their faces are wrinkled; their
eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum; and that they
have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams.
All which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently
believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down;
for you yourself, sir, shall grow old as I am if, if like a crab,
you could go backward.
(Hamlet pretending to read what a "satirical rogue" says of old men
for Polonius,  2.2)
     

                            *     *     *     *

You are welcome, masters; welcome, all. I am glad to see
thee well. Welcome, good friends. O, my old friend, why,
thy face is valanced since I saw thee last. Com'st thou to
beard me in Denmark? 

(Hamlet greeting the Players in 2.2)

                            *     *     *     *

Polonius:

This is too long.

Hamlet: 

It shall to the barber's, with your beard. Prithee say on. 

He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps. Say on;  

come to Hecuba.

(Polonius complaining of the length of the Player's speech, in 2.2)

                            *     *     *     *

I lasted from November 4 until December 28, when I went in to my barber for a hot shave. Good stuff. Now I'm clean, Julie says I look 16, and Megan is mad that it's gone and is hoping I grow it back. Maybe next year.

The world spins

When I started this blog last year, I was reading Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, a novel that puts Philippe Petit's August 7, 1974 tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers at the center of a network of stories. The book won the 2009 National Book Award.

I decided to teach it in my senior American Literature course this fall. I finished the book again tonight. Here's a passage from near the end that I think gets something of what I really like about the novel:

Little else to distract attention from the evening, just a clock, in a time not too distant from the present time, yet a time not too distant from the past, the unaccountable unfolding of consequence into tomorrow's time, the simple things, the grain of bedwood alive in the light, the slight argument of dark still left in the old woman's hair, the ray of moisture on the plastic lifebag, the curl of the braided flower petal, the chipped edge of a photo frame, the rim of a mug, the mark of a stray tea line along its edge, a crossword puzzle sitting unfinished, the yellow of a pencil dangling over the edge of the table, one end sharpened, the eraser in midair. Fragments of a human order. ... She puts her hands on the windowsill. She parts the curtains a little more, opens the triangle, lifts the window frame minutely, feels the curl of breeze on her skin: the ash, the dust, the light now pressing the dark out of things. We stumble on, now, we drain the light from the dark, to make it last. She lifts the window higher. Sounds outside, growing clearer in the silence, traffic at first, machine hum, cranework, playgrounds, children, the tree branches down on the avenue slapping each other around. ...

The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough.

On the spectrum

We took James to a follow-up visit at the Knights of Columbus Developemental Center at Cardinal Glennon on Friday morning. We have wondered for a few years now if James is on the autism spectrum, and our pediatrician recommended this clinic as a good place to go for an evaluation.

At the end of the meeting (lots of questions, a medical evaluation, and a monitored play session; the first round last month was a speech and an occupational therapy evaluation), the doctor and the pediatric psychologist confirmed what we suspected: that James is on the autism spectrum.

What does this mean? Our opening position is that it means we have a term for the behaviors we are already familiar with in James: slow language development, low social awareness, self-stimulating behaviors. Nothing is really new here except that we have a formal diagnosis.

Where is James on the spectrum? We forgot to ask, actually. But the group seemed encouraged by the progress James has been making with various therapies, as have we—so again, not much really new there. And they did note that, developmentally, James is still very young, and so it is somewhat difficult to say for certain what's to come, or what parts of the evaluation are affected by developmental age rather than disorder.

The good news is that autism is where the money is these days—research, therapies, insurance. Missouri just passed an autism bill that requires insurance companies to pay for therapies, though I fear that our insurance will be exempt because it's a non-profit (even though Down syndrome is a medical diagnosis, we've been turned down repeatedly for therapies because they're not "medically necessary"). So it may be helpful down that road as far as school therapies or interventions go to have that dual diagnosis if we think we need it.