Tag Archives: community

Everyone’s Special Space

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Our bookstore could not do without its cleaning lady, Heather. Heather has three important functions: keep long-term grime from accumulating; remove and regroup immediate clutter; and intimidate us into general tidiness that won’t slip below a certain level.

She performs each of these with dignity, grace, and humor. And the cats love her.

Heather and her husband David have two boys. Reese, their older son, is autistic. The family lives about four doors down the street, and once when David brought him in for a minute, Reese started one of those fits that all parents of special needs children dread. The one that looks like a tantrum but is a natural part of how this child is hardwired. The one that looks like bad parenting to people who can’t hear the music the family is dancing to.

Having spent a lot of my storytelling career working with special needs kids, I told David then, “Look, if you’re worried he’ll hurt himself or unlearn behavior you’ve been working on, that’s one thing. But if you’re afraid he’ll upset us, don’t worry.” That was years ago, but it’s created a space for Reese ever since.

reeseSo when the family got ready to lobby in DC for the March of Dimes campaign this year, Reese came to the bookstore to “practice” public etiquette. He was asked to ask before he touched knick-knacks, to stay away from the fridge and microwave–his two favorite bookstore items–and to sit down for a minute at a time. All of which he did well.

It’s hard for the Reeses of this world to get space for practicing, let alone just being. If you want to read a great article about “public space” and the autistic angle on “separate but equal,” Heather reposted one from the March 16 http://www.slate.com: “Where Should Special Needs Kids be Special? Tricky Questions about how to share Public Spaces.”

Meanwhile, Reese and the family are welcome anytime at our bookstore–and at Malaprop’s in Asheville, where the family surprised us by coming to a book talk I gave there. Reese did his signature bird tweets for most of the talk, and nobody in the audience minded a bit, because they’d been told ahead of time who Heather was and what Reese was likely to do.

It’s just one more reason to be proud of–and support–small independent bookstores, because we (as in community bookshops) get what the article author Amy Lutz said, “But what I keep coming back to is that community, by definition, is inclusive. Ideally, our public spaces should accommodate everyone.”

Amen, sister.

Events, Dear Boy, Events (Harold MacMillan)

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Jack is guest blogging today and tomorrow because Wendy is holed up in our cabin under strict instructions from her agent Pamela to produce another best-seller by Monday.

 

As regular readers will be aware we run lots of events here in the bookstore – writers’ group, yarn spinners, movie night, gourmet night among others. Last night was our monthly discussion group, known as ‘Let’s Talk’ – the brain-child of our good friend and Pastor Tony. He wanted to hold regular non-confrontational discussions of whatever topics folk wanted to suggest and on ‘neutral territory’.

This has become a highlight event and a runaway success and the topics have ranged from the nature of evil to nose-picking in public (this was suggested, with a completely straight face, by our erstwhile shop-sitter Andrew).

Last night our subject was ‘Education’, suggested by Wendy and, in her absence, led off by me. We addressed a range of issues, including ‘what do we mean by education?’, ‘who are the clients that educators are responsible to?’, and ‘what is the role of the state in education?’

So – what were the most significant conclusions we came to?

1)      Learning doesn’t just happen during formal classes and continues your whole life.

2)      Teachers should be of the highest caliber and paid accordingly (interestingly, the highest rated education system in the world is in Finland where all teachers must be educated to Masters level, are well paid and teach small classes. Despite this the cost per student is a third less than the US system.)

3)      The state does have an interest, since it uses tax money to pay for the system, however this often results in simplistic and frequent testing that usually disrupts learning. (Again – in Finland students are only tested once between ages 7 and 16).

Along the way, as usual, we wandered off down fascinating byways and our Moderator Tony had to use his lasso to get us back on the main road.

So – what does ‘Let’s Talk’ signify for me? Actually many things: the place of our bookstore in the community, the proof that learning is a lifelong activity, the ability of a disparate group of folk to discuss often contentious subjects without coming to blows and how, even in a small rural community, weighty subjects can be discussed knowledgeably.

Much thanks to Wes for pulling up the Finnish information on his tablet as the discussion progressed.