Amanda Baggs = "Vegetative State"??

Now, when you have a Google Alert set up for "Amanda Baggs", admittedly you're taking your life in your own hands, but this one cracked me up:

There's a presumably very small "mainstream media" outlet by the name of The Tullahoma News (TN) that has a staff writer by the name of Gina Gallutia who was apparently assigned a story about Education majors at the Motlow State Community being introduced to a 10-year-old with autism as part of their training to be teachers.

Of course as autism is increasingly prevalent DESPITE the removal of mercury preservatives from most vaccines, having some formal autism training for future teachers is not a bad idea at all.

However, I'm thinking Ms. Gallutia needs some autism training herself.

She writes of Temple Grandin, "For instance Temple Grandin has learned to deal with the devastation of living with autism and has progressed through the education system and is now a professor. She describes autism as constantly flipping through a visual file."

"Devastation."

Well, sounds like John Best must have gotten to Ms. Gallutia too. And I'm pretty sure she's trying to describe how Temple Grandin speaks of "thinking in pictures" rather than words.

The beaut of this article is this one though - "Or Amanda Baggs, who is seemingly in a vegetative state, uses a typing device and has gone through college."

Now, it's a foregone conclusion that there's a great many descriptions, many of which are not necessarily complimentary, that have been applied to Amanda Baggs, but I'm thinking "vegetative state" is not one of them.

Maybe she's thinking of some of the staring episodes Amanda has described having from time to time?

Other than that, however, I can't recall one video, blog entry, or Usenet posting that would imply anything other than the fact that she is largely in constant motion 24/7/365.

Oh, yes ... unfortunately there's no email address or other obvious way to contact Gina Gallutia, but I'm thinking we need to take HER on a little adventure of "Autism 101 Featuring Amanda Baggs" ... :)