Jolly old Saint Nick has a busy weekend ahead of him with a number of back-to-back Tri-Town events where Santa (with some events accompanied by Mrs. Claus) will make appearances to spread the spirit of Christmas and listen well to what our Tri-Town kiddies want most this holiday season.

            We don’t want you to have to search high and low for Santa, so here is a compilation of the Santa sightings on our Tri-Town radar so that no child has to miss out on the fun!

            On Saturday, December 7, the Old Rochester Regional High School Drama Club will be putting on one of its “Santa Matinees” of its holiday production, “Elf the Musical”.

            The show begins at 12:30 pm and will conclude with a visit from Santa himself for a meet-and-greet with the kids. Parents, bring your iPhones because this will be the perfect photo opportunity for your kids’ annual holiday portrait with Santa.

            Also on Saturday, the annual “Santa Run” 5k race will feature hundreds of ‘Santas’ running through the village streets of Mattapoisett, a sight you won’t want to miss! The “Youth Elves Run” fun run (for ages 13 and under) starts at 12:30 pm, and the Santa Run 5k (14 and older) starts at 1:00 pm at the Mattapoisett Town Wharf off Water Street.

            The Santa Run has historically been held in Downtown New Bedford, but was relocated to Mattapoisett this year. Some of the proceeds of the race will be donated to the American Legion.

            On Sunday, December 8, Santa’s first stop during his busiest day in the Tri-Town will be at the Rochester Senior Center on Dexter Lane for the annual Breakfast with Santa Claus sponsored by the Rochester Lions Club. The event is from 8:00 am to 11:00 am and a full breakfast menu will be offered, along with holiday crafts, games, and cookie decorating. The Lions suggest a $5 donation for photos with Santa.

            Then it’s a mad dash over to Marion where Santa will arrive at the Benjamin D. Cushing Community Center on Mill Road for lunch at the Marion Police Brotherhood’s annual Pizza with Santa from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm. The Police Brotherhood will be accepting new unwrapped toys for its “Fill a Cruiser” toy drive to provide gifts for area children in foster care and adoption services under the Justice Resources Institute.

            At 2:00 pm is another Old Rochester Regional High School Drama Club “Santa Matinee” of its holiday production Elf the Musical! Come for the show, stay for the Santa photo op!

            Then it’s back to Marion for one of our favorite events of the year: the Marion Holiday Stroll. Santa will appear from across yonder Sippican Harbor on his “water sleigh” at just about 3:00 pm and will arrive at the Marion Town Wharf off Front Street where hundreds eagerly awaiting his arrival twill greet him.

            From there, Santa will board his horse-drawn carriage for a parade through the village and offer carriage rides throughout the afternoon. Front Street will be closed off to traffic and filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of the holiday season with local businesses offering free hot drinks and food, and the Sippican School Band will provide the holiday tunes. Be sure to watch for Grinch sightings, too! The event is from 3:00 pm to 5:30 pm and will conclude with the tree lighting at Bicentennial Park at the corner of Main Street and Spring Street.

            On Monday, December 9, the Town of Rochester hosts its annual Tree Lighting on the Rochester Green in front of Town Hall at 6:30 pm. Come and enjoy the holiday music provided by the Rochester Memorial School band and Chorus and witness the spectacle of Santa’s grandiose arrival via fire engine.

            Cookies and hot drinks will then be served inside the Town Hall meeting room after the lighting of the tree.

            After a well-deserved rest, Santa will be back with his annual appearance at the Mattapoisett Holiday in the Park on Saturday, December 14, from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm.

            Local restaurants will be inside the big tent ready to serve the crowd heaps of free fresh food and hot drinks, and The Showstoppers will be gathered beneath the gazebo singing plenty of holiday hits.

            We can’t imagine a more festive setting for the holidays than right here in the Tri-Town. The Wanderer will be out and about at all of these events, so be sure to smile for the camera when we point it in your direction!

            Over a century after three ghosts fix the cold, miserly heart of Ebenezer Scrooge, he’s been called upon to help someone who is even worse than he was. As it turns out, that someone is his great-great-great granddaughter Emmalina, the central character in the Marion Art Center’s production of Emmalina Scrooge.

            Emmalina Scrooge, played by Zoe Pateakos, hates Christmas. She’s even nastier than Ebenezer ever was. “Boy, I thought I was bad,” her great-great-great grandfather declares after he visits her with a warning on Christmas Eve.

            Emmalina’s reason for being so miserable is very different than Ebenezer’s, but he still has his hands full with her. Ebenezer manages to impress himself while summoning cracks of thunder and pealing bells, but he’s not able to impress Emmalina, who rolls her eyes at his warnings and goes back to bed. Defeated, he calls in three ghosts: Emmalina’s sister, Jaime (Christmas Past), A Christmas Carol author Charles Dickens (Christmas Present), and the mysterious Ghost of Christmas Future.

            Jaime, as it turns out, has been keeping tabs on her sister from the afterlife. “You were such a nice kid,” she tells Emmalina with a raised eyebrow. “Now look at you. When was the last time you did anything nice for anyone?”

            Happy as Emmalina is to see her sister, she doesn’t heed her sister’s warnings. Thinking back on a recent Christmas party featuring a piñata, she points out, “I could’ve hit someone with a baseball bat, but I didn’t.”

            The Ghost of Christmas Present, too, tries to solve Emmalina’s woe, but finds very little interest on her part.  Dickens takes Emmalina to an orphanage on Christmas Eve, where he points out just how much Emmalina has to be thankful for, and what she could do to help others.

            Even the plight of orphans can’t warm Emmalina’s stone heart, though. Unruffled, she rebuffs Dickens’ attempts to reason with her and goes back to bed. “Don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out,” she tells him. “And get the lights!”

            In the end, it’s up to the Ghost of Christmas Present to convince Emmalina to change. Getting through to her might be too big of a challenge, even for that particular ghost, though.

            Emmalina Scrooge was written by Cape Cod-based playwright Steph DeFerie, who joined the MAC’s young cast via a Skype call to talk about the play on the night of Monday, December 2. When asked how long it took her to write the play, she estimated that it took about six months. “Not too long,” she added with a laugh.

            She gave the cast some words of advice before performances begin: “First of all, it’s supposed to be fun, so have fun!” she told them. “If you forget your lines, just keep talking. After all, the audience doesn’t have a script. They won’t know!”

            Emmalina Scrooge will be performed at the Marion Art Center on December 6 and 7, as well as December 13-15. All Friday and Saturday shows begin at 7:30 pm, while the Sunday matinee begins at 2:00 pm. Tickets are $18 for MAC members, $20 for non-members, and $12 for children under 12. Tickets can be purchased in person at the Marion Art Center, over the phone, or online. Visit marionartcenter.org for more information.

By Andrea Ray

            Chuck McIntyre has terrible executive function skills. Keeping organized, remembering to do the tasks on his to-do list, and even getting started with chores like doing laundry or doing the dishes often seems as complicated to the 27-year-old Mattapoisett man as a 1,000-piece puzzle with no picture of the final result to go by. On the flip side, he can memorize quotes and facts from the sophisticated literary and non-fiction books he’s read, and his astute attention to detail tells him as soon as he walks into a room if even the minutest of details has been changed.

            Such is the dichotomy of autism. Stigmatized as a pervasive disability throughout history, autism in contemporary times is considered more as a type of “neuro-divergence” than a disability. Autism is a spectrum of human neuro-diversity that is best understood under the more progressive “social model” of disability – ways in which our society is organized that is the disabling factor for an individual – rather than the traditional “medical model” of disability – where the individual is disabled by their ‘impairment’ or ‘differences’.

            McIntyre was diagnosed at the age of four with Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) – “Which is kind of like saying ‘medium’ autism,” said McIntyre on November 20 before a diverse group assembled at the Mattapoisett Library to hear him make his presentation titled, “I Am Autisticus.” His presentation placed emphasis on what it’s like to be autistic, autism as a condition, socializing and communication, mental health, and overcoming disability discrimination among other things.

            Unlike some physical disabilities that are apparent to the observer, autism is less apparent, and some of the visible stereotypical emergences of autism such as repetitive body motions or the absence of verbal communication is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg of the complexity of autism that exists within the individual.

            Pointing to his head, “That hides one of the most important, most mysterious organs in the body: the brain,” said McIntyre. “You can see someone is blind… or bound to a wheelchair,” he said, and perhaps one could try to experience a sliver of what life without sight or the use of one’s legs would be like. “But there’s no way I can make you understand what it’s like to be autistic. I can only describe [it]…”

            Chuck used his existence as a cisgender male, a male whose gender identity matches the sex he was assigned at birth, as a way to explain his point.

            “I have no idea what it’s like to be a woman – I will never have the hormones or the body of a woman,” so everything he knows about being a woman is by talking to women and reading about the female experience, he said.

            For decades, there was no consideration for the autistic perspective, no voice for a population that has historically been stigmatized, institutionalized, and marginalized. All that was known about autism was shared from the perspective of non-autistics until 43 years after the first diagnosis of “autism.”

            It was Dr. Temple Grandin and her book Emergence: Labeled Autistic in 1986 that began the shift of the dominant paradigm, ultimately leading to a movement of self-advocacy and civil rights. The autistic perspective of “nothing about us, without us” demands that their voice be a part of the autism conversation, which until now, had been led by ‘ableist’ beliefs on how autism should be ‘treated’, ‘cured’, and perceived autistics as otherwise broken and needing fixing.

            McIntyre was limited to 90 minutes for his presentation on a topic that is so inherently complex and fascinating that he could only touch upon some of the aspects of autism he wants most for people to become aware of, accept, and include in society as simply a variation of the human neuro-diverse experience. In fact, as McIntyre put it, he would need the equivalent of three Victor Hugo novels to give non-autistics a comprehensive education on autism and the autistic experience. (For the non-English major, Hugo’s novels are some of the longest ever written.)

            “The [autism] spectrum is not a straight line,” said McIntyre. “Each individual is very similar – we all have things in common, just like women have things in common,” he said, returning to his original analogy. For McIntyre, he acknowledges his “slightly above-average” vocabulary usage and his skill of articulating his ideas.

            “But I may never be able to drive,” he said. (“And that’s because the people in this state drive horrible and I can’t think ahead enough to predict everything they’re going to do and my anxiety flares up”).

            Autism is not something you grow out of, said McIntyre. “I will always be autistic.” And there is nothing here to cure, he said. “A cure is paradoxical. There is no Chuck McIntyre without autism.” The most famous autistics throughout history: Einstein, Mozart, Newton, Michelangelo, to name a few; are these people who needed to be ‘cured’?

            Holding up one of his recent paintings featuring small representations of some of the brilliant autistic minds past and present, McIntyre said, “None of these people here who have done many brilliant autistic things … would have done the things they did without autism.”

Therefore, a ‘cure’ for Chuck McIntyre would be a tragedy, indeed.

            “You can have awareness without acceptance, and that happens to us…” said McIntyre. “You can be very aware of what a woman is… of what a transgender person is… but still don’t accept them.”

            McIntyre would prefer society to focus more on making the environment we all share better for autistics and more accessible to the neuro-divergent rather than focusing on how to change the neuro-divergent to fit in with the ‘neuro-typical’ world.

            “I am a person, not a ‘puzzle,’” said McIntyre. “And if I were a puzzle, I’m giving all of you a cheat code.

            “We’re not missing a ‘piece,’” he continued. “We’re just so different (from each other as autistics) it’s hard to figure out how to make this world accommodating and inclusive to us.

            “My job is just to familiarize people with autism [and to] act more compassionate and be more prepared,” said McIntyre.

            McIntyre is an advocate for autism awareness and acceptance and a social activist dedicated to combatting racism, sexism, and the injustices of the world. He is a regular on ORCTV with his “The Human Truth Junior” series during which he reads and discusses children’s books that promote tolerance and diversity. He is also a personal care attendant for a young autistic man, and is currently developing a strategy to tackle the complex nature of carefully-yet-efficiently placing groceries into bags as an employee at a local supermarket.

By Jean Perry