Joanne De Simone – författare

When the pediatrician places the measuring tape around her infant's head and notes, 'His head is a little small,' Joanne knows that motherhood won't be as she had dreamt. Even as a special educator, Joanne isn't prepared to raise a child with a life-limiting brain malformation. Nor is she ready for the compounded pain and alienation that comes when her second son is diagnosed with autism. But the struggle to balance her sons' medical and educational challenges drives Joanne to reconnect with the lessons she learned as a modern dancer - and there she finds enlightenment. Inspired by her experience performing Jose Limon's There Is a Time, based on Ecclesiastes 3, each chapter of Fall and Recovery details a dance lesson and the dichotomy of parenting children with disabilities. Over time, Joanne discovers that surviving motherhood isn't a matter of strength, bravery, or faith. It's a matter of linking your past experiences and creating your own purpose. It's realizing that we live simultaneously in love and grief. In the end, dance teaches Joanne not only how to move freely through pain but also how to fall and recover.

If the mind is a trap for memories and flashing recollections, or a place that snatches a thought or action from the air for just a moment, this compilation of poems from the respective minds of two artists, sitting in a studio at East Hampton's public access televison show, Haim Mizrahi's HELLO, HELLO, reveal that minds meld and the instinctive floating grey cells give way to the unexpected whether it's on Joanne's paper scraps or Hiam's laptop screen. In the end, they are notable to the extent that they reveal what's under the SLIPCOVER.