I’ve written before about the importance of time. And how many people in my life are looking for time. Either time to get things done, or time with people they love, or time to travel. As we enter the season of being thankful, I thought I would focus on people who have shared their time with me. I am one lucky and thankful person. 1. Years ago, my friend Cathy sent me a note during the month …
How Do You Know?
I was having a conversation with a friend who saw what looked like a movie poster on Facebook for the movie Elf 2. Now this person was a huge fan of the first Elf movie, so of course, was excited that there may be a second. But then they awkwardly admitted that they have no idea if it’s true or not because it’s so easy to generate fake news and fake images these days. As they said that, they let …
Why Never Giving Up Matters
We just finished our third-quarter board meeting. If you’re unfamiliar with our process, we accept applications and meet on a quarterly basis. Prior to each meeting, our review team spends countless hours determining how to fund the requests we’ve received. They then present their recommendations to the full board for approval. This quarter, for example, we received 61 applications totaling …
The Power Of A Book
I love books. You’ll rarely see me without one. Books can do so many things. They can educate you, or take you to far away places, both real and imagined. They can help you open your heart, and they can rip your heart open. They can help you bond with other people who read the same book. They can help create great discussions for those same people who read books and maybe saw things differently …
What Should We Do For Our 20th Year?
I’ve always loved running events. From kids’ birthday parties to friends’ surprise parties. I enveloped it even more when we started our own company and had work-related events. I often describe to people that planning those big events was sort of like Christmas. It was so exciting when the day finally arrived. I always enjoyed seeing all the hard work come together and all the people finally …
What Has Changed In The Last 19 Years?
With our 19th Golf for Autism coming up, one of my jobs is to create the signs that we place in the tee boxes around the course so golfers know who is sponsoring the event. Over the years we have tried to make the signs informative with statistics about Autism and communication disorders. Around then, about 2005, one of the first signs we made said that approximately 1 in every 160 …
Autism Becomes Magical
I truly believe that there is too much content out there. I myself can easily get caught up in what I learned is called ‘doomscrolling’ where you just keep swiping as all kinds of information goes on the screen and you don’t even realize how much time has passed. Years ago this bothered me so much that our family instituted electronic free Saturdays. But I digress…. Every once in …
When Multiple Siblings Need Services
If you’re not familiar with our process here at The Orange Effect Foundation, we review applications four times a year. A deadline falls on the first of the month. For example, this quarter it’s August 1, and during the next 30 days, our Program Manager and Application Review Committee work vigorously to allocate the $25,000 that’s available for grants for that quarter. Since we began doing …
Letting Go Is Tough
Recently, in my world, there have been a lot of conversations around tracking people using technology. It’s true that things like Find My iPhone have made it easy to see where someone is located. Some of these conversations involve friends who travel a lot and some involve elderly parents. But primarily the conversations revolve around kids. In my case, adult kids. For example, I have …
12 Hours
Can you imagine doing the same thing over and over for 12 hours? That’s what our golfers did on May 12. They completed 100 holes of golf to raise money for kids who want to communicate. Three of the golfers joined our 500 club. Meaning that this is their fifth year participating in the event. Others have participated every single year so that means 600. Wow. I was there for 12 hours, but not …
A Movie Review and an Autism Review
I went to see The Accountant 2, a sequel to the first Accountant movie that came out in 2016. In both movies the lead actor, Ben Affleck, portrays an autistic person. Some people call his autism his superpower because he can crunch numbers at an amazingly rapid rate. One of my favorite parts of this movie takes place at a bar with country music. A line dance starts and because everything is in …
Nolan’s Story
Nolan is a 4-year-old from Oklahoma who has Autism, Developmental Delay, and Apraxia of Speech. He has been receiving speech therapy since 2 years old, both privately and in school. He is mostly non-verbal but is using some speech. He has recently received an Augmentative Device to help him with verbal output. The family reached out to The Orange Effect Foundation hoping for a week of …
