When I was born, not only was I born with a talented gift of drawing, I was born with autism and I am a slow learner at things. I like playing video games, surf around on YouTube, and spend time with family and friends. I don’t play video games as much because I like to stick with my artwork.
About The Book

An amusing pack of comic strips, Dustin and his dog, Darling, will bring us flashes of laughter and fun as they introduce more exciting and lovable characters that would surely amuse us with their unique characteristics.

Let us meet some of them now like Speed Phreak, the speedy superhero who can run as fast as the speed of sound. He has an evil twin brother, Evil Phreak, who will later escape from cartoon world to the real world. Will he be sent back to his sketchbook world?

Whenever there is a crime, Speed Phreak magically comes out of a sketchbook and saves the day. But he is not the only superhero in this comic book, you will also come to get to know a pirate, a biker, a secret agent, and a sniper. These four other heroes will help Speed Phreak in his battles against the villains. These characters can come out of the sketchbook whenever they want.

But, how did the speedy superhero get his name Speed Phreak? It was when he saved the day for the first time. The people in the town of Marietta, Ohio were stunned by his super-fast speed and fighting moves. What will happen after the crimes are over? Where will they go?

Dustin & Darling are definitely cool, fun and witty and they are inviting us to join Speed Phreak, S.A.M., Mystery Rider, “Dinghy” the Pirate, and the Marietta Sniper as they fight crime, evil and save Marietta from Evil Phreak and his men.

http://www.dustinanddarling.com/

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1441512535/ref=cm_sw_su_dp

I’m asking for help in reaching my goal of selling 2000 books. Please help.

Mostly they provide advice and continuing education to counselors and service providers at agencies in Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas, but thanks to a new guide designed to help disability service providers do a better job and to Autism Works, an upcoming national conference on autism & employment, the rest of the country is now able to benefit from their studies.

Adult Autism & Employment: A guide for vocational rehabilitation professionals, written by MU School of Health Professions clinical associate professor Scott Standifer, suggests how to accommodate  adults on the autism spectrum during employment services and in the workplace.

“Until now, there hasn’t been a resource available to employment service providers that is specific to autism and provides recommendations to help with the features of this growing population,” Standifer says. “This guide provides specific advice on a variety of employment issues for adults with ASD and, ultimately, helps the counselors find jobs for their clients.”

Autism Works will be Thursday & Friday, March 3 & 4, 2011, at the Sheraton Westport Hotel in St. Louis, MO.  The conference will bring together the disability employment services community (vocational rehabilitation) and autism community to learn from each other and improve employment options for adults with autism. Topics will include: understanding the vocational rehabilitation (VR) process, what VR counselors need to know about autism, job development and work-place supports, funding possibilities for employment supports, and insights from working youth with autism.

Besides bridging the gap between vocational rehabilitation,  one of the goals of the conference is to bring new voices into the discussion. Speakers will include Dan Tedesco, father of a child with autism and software developer who is busy building autism-specific iPhone applications; Joan Kester who provides technical assistance for voc rehab agencies and who is busy working on her dissertation on building communities of practice at George Washington University; Paul Andrew, who works for an agency that certifies disability employment service providers internationally, to assure they are doing person-centered, professional work; and Zosia Zaks via video link, a trained vocational rehabilitation counselor who has autism. As Standifer says, “She embodies the very connection we are trying to make with this conference.”

For more information on the Autism Works conference, go here: http://dps.missouri.edu/Autism/Announcement01.html

So after graduation, his parents were surprised when a letter arrived from the Texas Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services, informing Ben that “Because of the severity of your disability, an employment outcome cannot be achieved. You are not eligible for rehabilitative services.”

Throughout high school, Sharon had supervised all of Ben’s pre-vocational experience, organized his work and kept him on task, but upon graduation, he had to leave her behind. Dan and his wife realized they were “unprepared for the magnitude of the challenges”  Ben  faced in the real world.

However, they have stepped up to the challenges, believing Ben deserves a place in this world. It also started Dan thinking about other young adults with autism and their job prospects.

To help others benefit from what they’ve learned, Dan wrote a book about their experiences, Saving Ben: A Father’s Story of Autism, published by the University of North Texas Press. It covers their journey together, starting with Ben’s regression as an infant, his diagnosis of autism at three and goes on into the challenges Ben is facing as a young adult.

In a post on the Texas A&M University Press Consortium blog, Dan offers a glimpse into some of those challenges and offers advice to others who are currently facing them (e.g. “Consider a summer job for your ASD child instead of summer school”), as well as ideas for a national agenda for living and learning with autism (e.g.”Create a service movement like Teach for America or AmeriCorps that employs young people as life coaches to work with ASD kids.”)

Click here to read more of Dan’s ideas and here for more information about Saving Ben: A Father’s Story of Autism.

Over the years she has written numerous books about animals and autism. Christopher Monger and William Merritt Johnson based a screenplay on two of them, Thinking in Pictures and Emergence, (co-written with Margeret Sciariano) and now Temple Grandin, directed by Mick Jackson, will premier on HBO on Saturday, February 6. Actress Claire Danes will play Temple.

Writer and speaker Chantal Sicile-Kira recently had an opportunity to interview Temple about the movie. In Chantal’s  article, published in the Huffington Post on Jan. 13,  she quotes good advice Temple offers that applies to everyone  seeking employment, not just those with autism:

“People are going to hire you because of your skill not your personality. You need to have a portfolio to show them what you can do. When I first went into the American Society of Agricultural Engineers, they thought I was weird, they didn’t even want to talk to me. Then I whipped out the cow dip vat drawing and that made them respect me.

Also, it’s important for people with Asperger’s to understand they need to make things that people want in order to make a living. Like the opening gate at my aunt’s farm – I would get upset at my aunt, but I ended up building the gate my aunt (Catherine O’Hara) wanted. I figured out how to open the gate without getting out of the car. This gate – it solved other’s people’s problems. That’s something you can make money from. The gate was an early project at age 16 before I made the squeeze machine.”

Read the complete article here. (Photo Credit: HBO/Van Redin)

A guide written by Scott Standifer, clinical associate professor in the School of Health Professions at the University of Missouri, will help change that. The guide mainly addresses employment issues for people who have little or no communication skills, but “…what works for them should also be relevant for people with Asperger’s,” he said.

Standifer had previously helped write a guide called “The Handbook of Disabilities,” but realized it contained a lack of information on adults with autism spectrum disorders and their struggles in the workplace and so he wrote this one, “Adult Autism and Employment: A Guide for Vocational Rehabilitation Professionals.” It mainly provides information for vocational rehabilitation agencies.

“Ultimately, the goal is to help the folks with autism get jobs and live out in the community,” Standifer said. “These folks want to work, and it’s our job to help them achieve that.”

Read the original article here.

Isaac is truly a Renaissance Man…read his bio here and I think you’ll agree with me…

I’ve been an artist all my life – I was always the token artist in any
group of my friends in high-school. I used to play role-playing games
like Dungeons and Dragons, etc. but haven’t really in many years. These
days I’ve gotten back to doing art, but have moved mostly away from
comic-books (and superheroes) and have been focusing on cartooning in a
newspaper style with a Far Side sense of humor. I post my work at
http://www.woohooligan.com and I run a print-on-demand store where I
attempt to sell t-shirts and coffee cups with those comic strips on
CafePress. And although I’d like to be making money on it (instead of
just paying to maintain the shop), it’s really a hobby rather than a
profession at this point. I’ve also dabbled in stand-up comedy and enjoy
reading books on cognitive psychology. I also used to write fiction, but
haven’t done much of that in a number of years either,  though I have
been working on a manuscript of a non-fiction book about the science of
optimism for a couple of years. There’s a preview of the first chapter
here:

http://smolderingremains.deviantart.com/art/Optimist-s-Wager-Ch-1-82212934

Isaac plans to use his Amazon gift card to buy at least one of Paul Ekman’s books about reading facial expressions specifically for its potential to help him overcome the challenges of Asperger’s Syndrome.

Congratulations, Isaac! And thanks again for sharing your experience and insight on Jobs4Autism!