I Just Can't Say It ANY Better Than This!

April is Autism Awareness Month.  Since it's nearly the end of the month, (where did it go?) I wanted to find a good topic for autism . . . so I set out across the broad expanse of the internet to see what I could find.  There is certainly a wealth of informants, but what I was really after was a parent's perspective.  Parents blog.  I just knew they were out there.

And they were.  On a blog called Life on the Roller Coaster, written by an autism mom, I found what I was looking for.  It's a blog with posts alternating practical advice for the newbie autism parent, mommy rants, and policy statements.  You all know how I love a good mission statement!  Anyhoo . . . backtracking through her posts, I ran across a fantastic article from the magazine Orion.  (The blog, by the way, is at http://thirning.blogspot.com/.)  The article is actually an excerpt from a book, a book written by a cancer survivor mom of an autistic child, and it's called Raising Elijah.  I will read the book and most likely share more of its content with you.  For now, this is a wonderful essay regarding the toxicity of our environment and its profound health effects on our beloved children.

Brief pause.

In my endeavors I am constantly accused of being unrealistic, a bleeding-heart with a lack of budgeting skills.  So I am hesitant to share this favorite quote from the article, for two reasons . . . it might scare you away, and it might propagate one of those comments about my . . . practical side.  Or lack thereof. 
Still, it's a good quote, so I'm going to go for it.  It's about pesticides, but the rationale is what I'm drawn to.  Insert any industrial chemical and it still works, so I'm not just picking on the pesticides: 

"Those who argue that abolition for organophosphates is unrealistic need to explain how realistic it is to run a high-quality public school system when more than 9 percent of children can’t pay attention and one dollar of every four must be directed to special educational services." 

Quick and Easy . . .

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/planetary/earth/apollo17_earth.jpg

Before we go even one step further, click that link, and just soak it in for a sec.

Pretty awesome, isn't it?

What I want to convey to you with the commencement of today's post with that beautiful and awe-inspiring image is simple:  that's IT.  That's all of the Earth that there is.  That's all of the sky, land, water. 

That's all there is.

We celebrate two important events this weekend.  Those two events are Easter - the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the full circle of an amazing life, one life sacrificed for all mankind.  I'm not qualified to speak about that event, really; my thoughts on God are weird, probably not very mainstream, possibly somewhat controversial.  I guess having had a child struck with cancer thrust me into a whole new way of thinking about God.  I don't feel like defending my theories on meaning and personal trials and God, so I'll leave those in obscurity.

The other event is . . . Earth Day. 

Caution: Hormonal Female at the Keyboard!

Just came back from a HeadStart conference and met lots of really great, really committed parents and educators.  I am thankful today that the federal budget does not include a 22.8% retroactive cut for this important and universally beneficial program.  What's to come remains to be seen, as with all things, but for today, we can breathe a sigh of relief.

And then get back to work.

I met and observed parents and teachers who deal with kids on a daily basis that have things like ADHD and autism and their desire for answers and help was palpable.  Maybe I'm more sensitive to it now, maybe I'm projecting my own emotions - I'm never sure.  But I can't help but feel that what's there is something I can understand.  That all of you can understand.  So I ask again that all of you broaden your scope, open your weary hearts just a little wider, and recognize that whatever ails your family - because childhood illness is a familial ailment - there's a whole lot of people out there going through a very similar thing.  It just has a different name, that's all.

So the topic for today, as you might have guessed from the title, is hormones.  While I'm trying to include the call to action in every post, I feel like I'm failing to remain true to my original inspiration, and seeing those moms tear up as they talked about their autism struggles brought me back a little bit.  Hearing about little Noah's struggle to hang on as cancer takes over his little body . . . brought me back.  We have to do better for these kids.  I don't know that pressing for more research is necessarily THE answer.  It's an answer, but maybe there isn't just one question, you know?  We have to be relentless, creative, practical, open-minded, and multi-pronged in our approach.  For all kids.  For our kids' kids.  Whatever crazy shit I might come up with, please know that it's all for them, and mine.  Yours.  Ours.

Anyway,  hormones.

Health Care Reform HELPS our sick kids - all of them!

One of the most controversial legislative successes of the current administration is healthcare reform.  Some of those provisions — which would prevent insurers from denying children coverage because of preexisting conditions, allow young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26, and gradually raise the allowable annual caps on coverage — have already begun to take effect, even as Congress expects to revisit the issue before the session is out. 

McConnell Inhofe failed . . . this time.

Had the amendment gotten just ten more votes, it would have passed.

If you don't know about the McConnell Amendment, let me tell you.  McConnell seeks to eliminate the Clean Air Act's tighter restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions by taking away the EPA's authority to act altogether. 

How does it do that, you may ask?  Well . . . it just says that the EPA can't do it.  But there's more.  If you read the Definitions section carefully, you'll see that "greenhouse gases" (GHGs) includes more than the standard six known GHGs, such as methane and carbon dioxide.  Under the McConnell Amendment, it - the term "greenhouse gases" - includes any substance covered by the Clean Air Act.  This, my friends, includes a number of things, obviously, but most disturbing is that somehow under the McConnell definition GHG also includes . . . mercury.

There's not a climate scientist on Earth that considers mercury a GHG.