We have certainly tried, with at least every few posts, to have this site be about more than rare-steak, bloody-juicy stories of family dysfunction from our haunted pasts. We’ve hoped to make use creatively of the challenging pieces of magnetic poetry pieces we’ve been given (autism, dementia, PTSD, estrangement, death) and get them linked up seamlessly with the ones we love (parades, puppets, props, Tarot, “bedroom culture”, masks, and things that light up and glow).

We have spent two years groping, slothlike, towards data-gathering on the topic of processional arts and its participants on the autism spectrum. Sounds academic, put that way, but really, it was just that Tucker had had big shutdown/small meltdown at both of his first Krampuslauf Philadelphia/Parade of Spirits nights, in 2013 and 2014, and when we had figured out why, we started to think more about the people we didn’t know yet, and what their experiences were. Parade of Spirits is secular and “inclusive” — but it can only be inclusive of the people who show up for it. Right?

We thought maybe we could try to do even better.

We made a SurveyMonkey survey, trying to get data from other people on the spectrum, to find out more about how they felt about processions and parades, and whether making things that were used to make the parade beautiful, or being at the parade physically, were of similar value to them. Or at all equitable in attainability.

In 2015, we had a very polite and meaningless meeting with folks from the Autism Task Force at City Hall (Philadelphia is the first city in America to have an autism task force at the municipal level), who had seemed “receptive” to our admittedly loose plans to try to get in touch with people in the local autism community about interests and challenges in processional arts, but, when asked, the folks at City Hall in Philly would not share our survey on social media, since it did not have anything to do with any projects they themselves were working on.

Not even a little cut and paste? Okay then, Task Force. We continued to find ways to direct people to the survey when we could, and although the sample was not large, the responses had marked similarities. We continued to have Krampuslauf Philadelphia, which, by 2016, had officially been re-named Parade of Spirits, Liberty Lands, and we continued to talk about sensory issues and processional arts where and when we could.

And then, in the tiled-sliding-puzzle world of Facebook Groups, where you can suddenly find yourself next to anybody, I found myself in conversing with an autistic woman in Scotland. I told her about Parade of Spirits. She told me about herself. “My ‘special interest’ is what is popularly known as the Green Man – foliate head,” she told me on Facebook Messenger. “I hold both a Scottish Gazeteer and a bibliography on the subject, acting as volunteer curator for a private research collection on the subject.” But, when it came to attending events where the Green Man might be portrayed “live” — such as Edinburgh’s amazing Beltane Fire Festival — there were logistical bottlenecks. “If it was just the people +sensory , then because it’s my special interest I’d manage and take the hit of being in bed for a fortnight afterwards! But there is an AUDIENCE! and a large group of non-involved persons would be….. urgh!”

I was having a conversation I had wanted to have for years. I had liked the idea of it being with someone in Philadelphia, because we could have worked together on something in Philadelphia, but it hadn’t happened that way, and this was just as interesting.

Within a few months, I had found another woman to talk to about the same subject. She was also in Scotland.

We have had some skill-sharing ties to the Beltane Fire Festival folks in Edinburgh for years, and in fact at Liberty Lands have our own willow “garden” (one of twenty plants made it, but it’s prolific), named after our buddy Zander who set us up from across the globe, to learn about the use of willow withies in creating lanterns and puppets. I joked to Ben and Tucker that if we were going to hit dead ends in Philly, looking to be part of a conversation about providing greater participation to people on the spectrum who liked and wanted to have more of a hand in processional arts, that I’d be happy to just go to Scotland to have the conversation.

So close to right.

Shortly after Parade of Spirits this year, I saw that a conference called “Winter Festivals and Traditions” was asking for short abstracts from prospective presenters. It was easier for me to write the abstract than to not write it, and so I submitted it within hours of seeing it.

I did not think about getting chosen to present at the conference, mostly because I had other things to think about. So I was pretty surprised when I was chosen. The conference was at Oxford University. It was a little more than a month away, I explained to Ben, as contractors knocked on the door, setting off yelping dogs, and under-dressed children hurling themselves down the stairs as they do when anyone enters the house.

“Want to go to England?” we asked them, while showing the friendly pair of Ukranian contractors where we wanted to knock out walls to extend Béla’s bedroom. Béla has the smallest bedroom in the house, and is the only person with a full drum kit in their room, and  you literally cannot step into Béla’s room at night to check on his sleeping without hitting a crash cymbal.

In my abstract, I did not just write about my passion for making processional arts more accessible for people on the autism spectrum. But it’s in there. I enjoy public speaking, so I’m not worrying about my fifteen minutes, but very excited to find out about what else is going to be presented and who we are going to meet. The whole family is going. We are only going for a few days and not going to travel far from Oxford — it seems there is plenty to do there (I understand that it’s a destination for Harry Potter fans, which none of us is). We are thinking of going to Stonehenge (and if I know Tucker, he will want to be there at sunrise. But I think it is equally important that the kids see This Is Spinal Tap in preparation.)

I’m excited. I believe my big ol’ Leon Russell tattoo should be well-healed by then and I think I will get a skirt to show it off. I don’t buy clothes much, so if I buy an outfit for this conference it’s going to do double duty as The Thing I Wear To Tucker’s Graduation. (The stockings I wore at his high school commencement are still lying in my top drawer, waiting for “one more wear” before I wash them.) And speaking of Tucker’s graduation, he paid for his final term today. His degree is paid for. No loan to take out this year.  It is now all just right around the corner.

As we occasionally get to say here, sometimes things are just fine.