Trailer for Daveland

I hope you don't mind this promotion piece but it's the best way to introduce myself to the community. I assure you that my narrative is different but very compatible with the book from our hosts. Having said that:
When the author was nine, his teacher thought he was “retarded” and sentenced him to a corner of the gym with a stout woman and a pile of flash-cards. Eventually this so-called retarded kid completed a doctorate, conducted research with an MIT consortium, and was hired to consult for an iconic American corporation. Oops!
As an adult, he learned that he suffered from learning and neurological problems with so many names he just called them all “Dave.” And, he also learned that the world preferred Dave stay hidden.
Daveland is a darkly humorous memoir written like a novel about a man who leaves everything to write and travel. He thought he would chase a little Spanish and tango, only to find that something was chasing him. Welcome to Daveland.

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Tags: Argentina, Chile, Disabilities, Dyslexia, Francisco, More…

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Comment by marty castleberg on May 3, 2011 at 9:40pm: Thanks, I hope that I can contribute and I will try to honor the family friendly ethos of this forum. Someone said that David Sedaris was Garrison Keillor's evil twin. I guess a bit of that rubbed off on me as I wrote Daveland.
Feel free to call on me or use any of my material as content. BTW, just ran across this article: http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=lc-packers_draft_pick_overcom...
Wish you all the success in this work and your book.

Comment by Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide on May 3, 2011 at 10:31am: Thanks for joining our community, Marty. Hope it's all right to share this excerpt from your blog and book (http://davelandstories.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/whats-at-stake/).

Totally agree with you about videos more than the famous and celebrities, although the latter serve a purpose too. There are so many negative messages out there about dyslexia. We'd like this web community to be a place for everyone to share their stories about dyslexia, with the only limitations being that this is a family-friendly site and open to children as young as 13 years.

Excerpt from your blog:

"Will they be allowed to bloom late like Flaubert, who didn’t learn to read until he was an adult, or will they be made to feel small like Lee Harvey Oswald? Sometimes I felt like the son of both of these fathers: one moment writing Madame Bovary and the next climbing a tall building with a rifle. “I couldn’t say to the kids: ‘You’ll be misunderstood most of your life and people will dismiss you rather than try to understand you,’ but I thought it. I also resisted saying that learning disabilities make celebrities seem iconoclastic and the average person pathetic—destined for the fringe of society—or that our prisons were filled with artists, musicians, and other people who can’t spell. Even the term “learning disability” was a misnomer, implying that it was a school issue, when life outside of school was even more out of sync with our faulty wiring.

I played the cheerleader hoping, like Mean Jean (my remedial reading teacher) that they might have a chance, hoping that one would emerge like Gustav Flaubert, but knowing there may be a Lee Harvey Oswald in the making.”

The stakes are enormous. Are the future lights to civilization being recognized and nurtured, or are they at the bottom of a scrum in the school yard, bloodied and resentful? How do we ensure that these kids become society’s answer and not another problem? Education reformers have fought for changes that would address these issues, but real change will come from another source.

Stay tuned. BTW, if you’ve not seen this, i’ve included one of those feel-good videos of people reputedly having similar issues. In this case the label is dyslexia. (Personally, I would rather see a video made of people other than celebrities.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8SiuPoFWfQ&feature=related "