Meet Michelle Steiner: Conquering Disabilities, Inspiring Many!
Michelle Steiner lives with an invisible disability. She has a Dyscalculia a math learning disability, limited hand dexterity, and visual perception issues. Her disability has made things such as math and driving impossible. Diagnosed as a young child in kindergarten, living with one has become a way of life, and has had to learn different ways to learn and live.
She has articles published on The Mighty, Non-Verbal Learning Project, Dyscalculia Blog, The Reluctant Spoonie, Kalopina Collective, Imagine the World as One Magazine, and Word Gathering. Recently she had three stories published in Anthology titled Rediscovering Your Story that is available on Amazon. Her photographs were featured in Word Gathering and Independent and Work Ready. She works as a paraeducator in a school with students with disabilities. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two cats.
Interview Transcript Michelle Steiner
Richard Lowe 00:01
Good day. This is Richard Lowe from author talks. I’m the writing King. I’m a ghost writer, a book coach, and a LinkedIn branding expert. And I’m here with Michelle Steiner, who is a disability writer, speaker, photographer, and para educator, I’m sure she’s going to explain what that means. He strives to encourage, empower, and educate people with and without disabilities. Welcome to the show.
Michelle Steiner 00:23
Oh, thank you so much for having me, Richard. I certainly appreciate it.
Richard Lowe 00:27
Absolutely. My pleasure. So I think we’ll have a good time with this one. Talking about a lot of subjects. Why don’t we start off by you telling me a little about yourself?
Michelle Steiner 00:36
Sure. Well, my name is Michelle Steiner. I live in Pennsylvania with my husband, Ron, and our two cats, Jack and Sparrow, and I am a disability writer. I have my own blog called Michelle’s mission, where I combined my love of photography and writing where I explain what life with having a math learning disability is like. And I also work as a para educator in a school for students that have disabilities.
Richard Lowe 01:07
Very interesting, what kind of disabilities? Well, we
Michelle Steiner 01:10
see a lot of learning disabilities. So a lot of them similar to the ones that I have. I have dyscalculia, which is a math disability. But we see dyslexia and other kinds of reading disabilities, we also see autism. Emotional support, definitely is, is definitely prevalent with a lot of things with our demographics. And we also have visual impairments, which are the ones that are the those are low incidence hearing impairment. And I also get a chance to maybe just help some students that don’t necessarily have a diagnosis, but they just need a little extra time and attention.
Richard Lowe 01:54
I see and you’ve written some books on the subject.
Michelle Steiner 01:56
I have actually, I had written books on that I write a lot of VA disability related content. I did have three stories published in an anthology over the summer called rediscovering your story. And it’s available on Amazon. And it was a workshop that people gathered that they wrote different kinds of prompts on things that have happened in their lives and how they can look back on that and rediscover their story behind it.
Richard Lowe 02:30
That’s very interesting. Yes. So you said you’ve published a book at least though.
Michelle Steiner 02:35
Well, we’ve gotten the stories in the book. Yes.
Richard Lowe 02:38
Okay. Good. Good. Yeah. It’s always it’s always a special pleasure to publish a book, or be even be published in book. I’ve been publishing a few anthologies published a lot of my own. And each one is, well, it becomes a little bit bold hat after I’ve done 60 of them. So with a little hat after that. Yeah, it’s it’s always a special thing. I’m sure you’re pleased getting published in an anthology three. You said three articles in there.
Michelle Steiner 03:06
Yes. Three stories. Three stories. Okay. Three stories
Richard Lowe 03:11
for a workshop.
Michelle Steiner 03:12
Yep. Yeah, it was really interesting. That people Yeah.
Richard Lowe 03:18
Have you ever heard of NaNoWriMo? Yes, I have. Have you considered taking part in it? That might be
Michelle Steiner 03:25
something this November, that definitely would be a good idea.
Richard Lowe 03:30
Yes, it’s fast and furious, writing 50,000 words in 30 days. And it it can be exhausting. I’ve signed up now for 10 years in a row. I’ve never finished it. The last couple years I signed up, never even started. So that should tell you my motivation level. But a friend of mine, she’s disabled. Her name is Bonnie and she has she has severe diabetes. And so she has no feet and gets around in a wheelchair and partially blind. And we had a conversation about what she should do. And she she was a marketing person. And she became convinced to be a writer. Thanks partially to our conversation. So she took part in NaNoWriMo wrote her first novel, and now she’s on her seventh.
Michelle Steiner 04:16
Wow, gosh, wow. That is amazing.
Richard Lowe 04:20
Yep. And she’s just having a great old time. She’s basically her life has come alive again. On this author talks thing she she interviewed. She did some of the interviews originally, she interviewed. What’s her name? Lackey, Mercedes Lackey, it was a big name, author. I think she’s done 100 books or something. And that motivated her to get going because Mercedes says start writing. So she did. So everybody’s got their story. But she’s disabled. She’s very disabled. And I find it exciting that she used that disability to get into her passion now.
Michelle Steiner 04:57
Yeah, writing is a wonderful way to do that. I I can remember when I was really young writing was one of the things I was good at, because everything else was really hard for me even as a small child, learning those basic concepts of why anything math related has never been my friend. But just even when we would study for things, I would not dwell on them. And I thought I didn’t, I thought life was always going to be really difficult, and that I couldn’t learn. And I remember, I think I wrote a story about a dinosaur. And my dad read it. And he said, Oh, this story is pretty good. And that just sparked like, oh, I can do something, I’m good at something. So I wrote a bunch of stuff after that. And I was part of an adult writing group, whenever I was a teenager, they were just a couple years older than I was in their 20s. And I think I wrote some really bad poetry. And some other really cringe worthy things that I would definitely not want to get published or even consider that now. But I had a friend that told me you should really write about having a learning disability. And I was like, This is too personal, I don’t want to write about this, I just want to kind of pretend like it doesn’t exist and put that on the shelf. And it took years. And it took a lot of going back to school and a lot of discouragement. But finally, I took her advice. And I wrote my first piece, I have limited hand dexterity in both of my hands as well, we didn’t find that out and talk as an adult. And I was struggling to open up a walk. So I wrote a piece for the mighty about my struggle with opening up blocks with limited hand dexterity. And when I got that first piece published, it was one of the most healing things I ever did. I had people that were coming to me saying that I didn’t even know I struggled with that, too. And I thought I was the only one that had that problem. And yeah, and I just wrote other articles on my struggles with math, and just other things. And I have a lot of people that will say, that’s something I really have difficulty with. One person said, oh, yeah, um, I was on a three way phone call about your article with my family trying to explain to them that this is what I struggle with, too. So that was my most one of my most interesting ones that I had happened in the past couple of years. And that just encouraged me to write more and to reach out. And I also started my own blog a few years ago, I just started to be able to write about life with a learning disability. And I started a new one, a couple months ago, where I’ve expanded, I have a little store where I have my photography where people can buy artwork on there. Because a lot, it’s also feature my pictures as well, because a lot of times I’ll be on a walk, because I can’t drive with a learning disability. So I get to pick up on details that other people will miss by being in the passenger seat. And I’ll be in the car with my husband also, did you see that he’s like, I’m focused on the road, and I’ll get the chance to see a flower. And if it’s in the neighborhood, and I don’t have a, I’m on a walk, or I don’t have a way of getting a ride. I’ll go and I’ll be able to take a picture, then sometimes I’ll put it on my blog. Or I’ll try to combine the blog article with a nature metaphor that kind of describes my experience with having a disability. And another thing I started doing is I put a Disability Forum on there where people with disabilities can connect with each other and have different kinds of questions that they can respond to.
Richard Lowe 08:46
That’s absolutely fascinating. I like the way you’ve turned a disadvantage into an advantage. There’s a I don’t know if you watched Star Trek, but there’s a Star Trek episode, where there’s a guy who has he can’t speak or hear. So he has a chorus, his people who telepathically connected to him to do that for him, will they die, they’re killed. And now he has to figure out how to negotiate this peace agreement with without the ability to do that. And he decides that the people who they want him they want the piece but they don’t know how to negotiate it. He tells them you have to help me communicate with you, it’s your job. And that gets into communicating with each other. And he’s the famous line there’s the turning advantage or disadvantage into an advantage. And that’s what I believe everybody has disadvantages in some one way or another and turn it into an advantage. You know, turn it around my friend Bonnie with her disability she turned around you. You know, it’s a very good example of something that would probably stop the majority of people in their tracks. You’re not stopped. That’s very empowering. It’s very cool. That you’ve you’ve turned it around.
Michelle Steiner 09:59
Thank you you so much. Yeah. I mean, there’s just, it’s looking for the positive and just a way that around things. And I think that’s been the main thing. I think that was one of the biggest advantages of being diagnosed when I was really young is having a learning disabilities lifestyle. So we can’t do one way we can’t do one thing, we find a way to do it, or we find a way around it. And my parents taught me to advocate from the time I was pretty young about doing that. And I agree, you got to see how I can just turn around for something even better.
Richard Lowe 10:35
Yeah, yeah. Cuz life is what you make it that’s my attitude. You can you can, you can become a victim to life, or you can take over life, and, you know, everybody’s a victim to something, but you don’t have to act like a victim. You know, of course, there’s traumas and things that happen, you know, attacks and all kinds of stuff. I mean, I just looked at the poor people in the Ukraine who are getting bombed right now. I mean, that’s, that’s, they’re victims of that. But they’re, they’re fighting back. And we don’t have to lay down and accept whatever’s going on. If it’s not to our advantage. I am a ghostwriter. And I write a lot of books on similar subjects. Because somebody has a has escaped from a life of one one case they alcoholism or another case, this woman was actually a slave for a while, you know, you can probably guess what kind for many years, and she escaped. Now she’s Christian has five kids and doing very well. So she turned, she turned all that around and wanted to write a book. We never finished it, because it was too much for her. But I like what’s behind you. That’s the China Kevin. And that’s it, it’s good background for this.
Michelle Steiner 11:51
Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, we got that very soon after we moved in and
Richard Lowe 11:58
do a lot of these podcasts and Moses, you do good.
Michelle Steiner 12:02
I do. I love getting on and talking and sharing my story and just getting that awareness out about learning disabilities and hidden disabilities. And I just I just think I love doing it.
Richard Lowe 12:17
Yeah, I, I’m not sure if we call it a disability, but I’ve been suffered from severe introversion and shyness. They’re two different things. They’re not same thing. To most of my life. The shyness took me forever to break, I decided I was gonna break it. And you can tell I’m not really very shy anymore. The introversion I love I love being a ghostwriter. Because I’m at home and nobody’s around me. So but I decided not to break that. It decided it wasn’t a disability is actually an advantage. I can work at home. During the pandemic, I was like, okay, whatever, I’ll just work from home. That’s what I’m doing. Now. I don’t know why this is a problem I’m working from home. So I would say that being shy is a disability in many ways, because it causes you not to be involved in the world.
Michelle Steiner 13:04
Right? I could, if you can believe it, whenever I was in fifth grade, they give those superlatives that describe people. And they have like, okay, who’s the most popular, who’s this and I got shy as girl. That was what I had, because people thought that I was shy. And I was because for a number of different reasons I came in, I was an only child for 13 years. So I had a lot of adult interaction didn’t have a lot with kids. But I went to school and then having a disability with being bullied. Sometimes I just wanted to not say very much because I would get picked on and I but I wanted to be talking I wanted to be involved and accepted. And it took a long time for me to become more outgoing. And that sort of thing that that really took a long time. And a lot of it’s the friends that I had, they really worked with me to kind of bring out and be bold and to talk a lot. And we’re still friends 20 Some years later from that writers group and they made a big difference in my life. And it’s funny, my husband, he’s, he’s also very quiet and he he gets to work from home because of the pandemic and they asked him do you want to go back to the office? And he’s like, No.
Richard Lowe 14:24
I’m the same way I’d never go back. Yeah, I was bullied as a kid too. I was the science nerd, you know? And very, very introverted. Very shy. So every day I’d walk through school, we used to walk to school in those days to three miles. They don’t I don’t think kids do that much anymore. And I get beat up every day for my lunch money. Bloody beat up and my my. Nobody would do anything. My father didn’t do anything. My principles, nobody cared. It’s one that just said, Okay, I can get beat up every day. Or I can do something about it. So I attacked the bully. I got the crap beaten out I mean He never touched me again. And you know, sometimes you just gotta do what you got to do. And I, I learned a lot from that dad was furious because I got in the fight, but it’s like, I’m not getting attacked anymore dad, and you didn’t do anything so. And they didn’t suspend, there was off school property. So there was nothing they could do about that. But it was interesting that the bully wouldn’t. He knew that he knew he could beat me. But he knew I wasn’t going to take it anymore.
Michelle Steiner 15:34
Yeah, and that’s the key thing. I can’t remember I was dating an older guy. And there was a girl that would threaten me. Thankfully, it was just all smoking wasn’t anything like she wasn’t serious about it. And the boyfriend at the time said, you know, I think what you need to tell that person is next time, she goes and threatens you and says all this, they just be like, hey, whatever. So one day she was on the phone, and when they we have pay phones, and she saw me coming and was yelling and screaming at me and saying all the things that she was going to do to me and I just looked at her and I said, Oh, that’s nice, have a good day and walked away. And I remember looking at her, this shocked, incredulous face. Like, she’s not afraid of me.
Richard Lowe 16:18
That was not the impact she intended.
Michelle Steiner 16:21
Was it and thankfully, yeah, that she wasn’t serious. But I Yeah, yeah, sometimes if you can just show people, okay, I’m not going to let you know that I’m upset. And I’m just gonna go and enjoy that. My day that sometimes people do leave you alone, it just, it just depends on the situation.
Richard Lowe 16:44
Yeah, I’ve read a lot about cyber bullying and stuff, I’ve read a whole series on it. And cyber bullying, bullying is a real problem for adult kids. The problem is, is that the cyber bullies can be vicious, because they don’t view it as the human on the other side. And it’s, it can be very damaging if you take it seriously. And there’s, up until recently, now there’s laws, there wasn’t much you could do about it. Because it wasn’t illegal. They could, they didn’t have any laws for it. Now, as long as it’s in the United States, you can do something. And that, that has improved things a bit. But one of the big problems is in younger people, they’ll take it very, very seriously. And it can produce side effects that are tragic. I’m not going to get into here. And I think that parents would do their cert their children a great service, by spending the time to talk to their children about what cyber bullying is what the cyber bullies trying to do. And the thing to do is ignore it. And if they did that, lets you know, the problem is, of course, is say some teenager, their their friends, see all this stuff, and they tease them and blah, blah, blah. They all need to be counseled. When that happens, okay, and they need to have regular courses and things like this is cyber bullying, this is what it means. You guys basically, as you say, need to ignore it. Sometimes it’s hard to ignore, because they can break into computers and actually cause real damage. You know, change records and things like that it can be really bad, especially for terminals. So it’s, it’s something that’s missing from our education system.
Michelle Steiner 18:32
It is I do know, we do try to tell her, our students a lot I work with us, we’ll be working with sixth graders, but we do sixth, seventh, and eighth. And we do cover topics such as cyber bullying, and how to get along with each other. And definitely one of the things we tell them to definitely report it. But we also tried to get them away from engaging with it too, because a lot of times we’ll get kids or we’ll get families that they’ll have something somebody says something inappropriate. Rather than Hey, I’m just going to report or tell mom and dad what’s going on. So they they have an idea, and then we’ll just kind of leave it to whoever is supposed to handle that. We’ll have people that will want to repost it. And then then that starts the whole chain of just more problems. And I think it’s also really hard for kids to because one of the things usually I could leave it at, at school when I was getting picked on. Generally I could leave it at school. And our kids are just constantly on the edge and everything that happens people know about I couldn’t I also started hanging out with a lot of students that were in a neighboring school district in an art program and I could shed that reputation. Nobody could this was way before social media. So nobody knew me and even when I did come out and say hey, I have a learning disability. I found a lot of acceptance. And I think that’s really good. Are the kids now that they don’t have that chance to just leave it at school? That reputation follows?
Richard Lowe 20:07
Well, I think the key thing is something that I talked about in the writings I’ve done is don’t feed the trolls. The trolls feed off negative energy, exactly what they want. So basically, you ignore them. And they’ll keep trying, don’t keep trying. That’s the nature of the troll. But eventually, they’ll go off to find to find people who do respond,
Michelle Steiner 20:28
right? Yeah, that’s the thing too, because you’re always going to have somebody and yeah, you just want to ignore when someone says something like that I have. Even I see adults, they want to go and try to change what somebody says. And it’s like, well, you can’t change that, you just have to be kind of like, Alright, I’m gonna just move up move along here. And
Richard Lowe 20:51
I run a lot of Facebook groups and message boards and things during my life, and probably 100 of them. And one thing I learned is they have to be moderated. Unfortunately, with Facebook and social media in general, it’s not moderated at all. Other than other than some filters for some really, really bad stuff, you know, the really deep and stuff. So the lack of moderation, we can you can make freedom of speech, arguments around for and against causes problems now, a private Facebook group, if it’s mine, I’m going to moderate the heck out of it. Yeah. You know, if you’re writing bad stuff, and you’re being a troll, you get one morning, you’re gone. Sometimes not even the one depending on the severity, and that’s that there’s no appeal. I’m the boss. I own it. You know, it’s my Facebook group.
Michelle Steiner 21:40
True. I mean, yeah, I think that’s important, too. Yeah. To be able to do that. Yep. It’s also been my experience. Sometimes if I have an article that gets a lot of attention, that’s usually when I have a lot of the trolls that will come out or just strange off the wall comments. And I’m like, Okay, this one is going to get a lot of that. And just,
Richard Lowe 22:02
there’s a, there’s a, there’s a phenomenon called review bombing, where somebody will write something, it seems to happen to people who have religious stuff in their writings a lot. And then 1000 People will come in and just write a one star review, and on Goodreads or something, and then the 2003. So the person will have a one star review showing for their book. But they’re just they’re fake. Right?
Michelle Steiner 22:26
Yeah. That would make sense.
Richard Lowe 22:30
seems to happen on movies a bit, probably not as much, because movies tend to have a lot of movies and have so many people writing reviews that the lower that it falls more towards an average, it’s hard to get, it’s hard to get 100,000 people to review bomb. Getting 1000 is not that hard. But it is interesting that people go to the levels that they shouldn’t hopefully this this didn’t get reviewed on.
Michelle Steiner 22:57
Hopefully not Yes.
Richard Lowe 22:59
As it does, and I’m not gonna I’m not gonna sweat over it. Right? Life. I’ve learned in my many years of life that life is too short to sweat the small stuff, and it’s all small stuff. Yep, agreed. We all wind up in the same place, or at least our bodies do, depending on what you believe happens to spirit at the end. Yeah, it’s very interesting. I liked the way you’re empowering and educating people with and without disabilities, people often don’t believe they have any power. And the news and social media tend to magnify that belief. They make it, they sometimes give you the illusion of power, like, oh, wow, we got 1000 likes on this. But that’s not power. You know, power and being empowered means being able to, to make something happen. And you are empowered, you have the power. So like you were making things happen with your books and articles and stuff about disabilities, future books, possibly about disabilities, and that’s very empowering, that empowers you and empowers other people and that’s very, very cool. So you’ve you’ve taken on that the mantle I guess, of that and that’s that’s commendable and that’s what we should all do. Everybody has something to share that they can help somebody with or they can help themselves with the very least. Yeah, even me.
Michelle Steiner 24:29
Oh, of course. Yeah. Everybody has something that they’re good at and something to give and to share. And it’s just people working together on what they are good at. Yeah,
Richard Lowe 24:40
the thing that I’ve found is a problem is a phenomenon that I’ve is relatively recent, the word is relatively recent called gaslighting should be familiar with it, but it’s it’s not a word that’s existed for very long. But when I read the definition is like, Oh, that explains a lot about what happened to me in my life, gas lighters, and that’s polls are basically gas lighters. And gaslighting is I’m sure people with severe disabilities to get gas lit a lot. You can tell me if that’s true or not?
Michelle Steiner 25:14
Yeah, it can happen because a lot of times people will say, Well, that might have been might have been the person’s fault. Or yeah, a lot of times people will dismiss like a lot of their concerns that they might have or try to put it on them as the issue in situation. So it can happen a lot of times.
Richard Lowe 25:33
Oh, it’s in your imagination. That’s gaslight. Yeah,
Michelle Steiner 25:36
it’s an oh yeah. It’s in your imagination. Or other people have it worse. Like I get a lot of times because people can’t see my disability. I’ll tell them oh, I have a learning disability that’s in math. Well, other people have it worse or missing limbs or gaslight. Yep. Yeah. And or, Oh, you don’t look disabled. So are you alright, you have this, you got your bachelor’s degree. So you can have a disability and like, Well, yeah, I do. I mean, yep. So
Richard Lowe 26:07
why are you parking in the disabled parking place? Right? I have bad knees. I can walk but they hurt. Yeah. ability that you can’t necessarily see. I have I have a lot of pain walking from long distance. So you know, I don’t normally Park in handicapped parking spaces. But if, if it’s a long distance that’s far away, I might. Right. And also, how Why are you parking in there? Well, you know, it’s not necessarily easy to get those handicap placards. You have to get a doctor’s note. And the doctor has to agree with it. And the state has to review it. And yeah, I need it. What do you what? Why are you questioning me on that? What’s your right, I’ve got the placard.
Michelle Steiner 26:49
Yeah, you got you. You have it. And that’s what yeah, that’s what counts. Yeah. When who? Who’s to really question? You know, things like that. One of the things that I’ve also run into where, where we do get some gray areas around COVID, I was at a mall, and I can’t eat with my visual perception, I can see the stairs on an escalator. But I just don’t, I can’t tell when to get on and off at them. So it’s a real struggle. So I use an elevator. And there was a sign on the elevator. This is for people in wheelchairs and have strollers thinking, well, there’s other disabilities or other people that might want to use that. And luckily, I mean, there was nobody else around so I was able to use it. But I think sometimes people just don’t have that concept of why somebody might need help. And, but I also I had my first solo trip with a group that I’m involved with that I that I worked for, to do some marketing, I was invited to go to a Down Syndrome conference in Florida, and to exhibit a table. And I can remember, this is my first flight by myself, and traveling alone, because I never took a car and did a road trip whenever I was younger. So I looked into all the resources that were available, one of the ones that I was really lucky that the airports that I use had was called the hidden sunflower program. And it was a lanyard that you use, and it’s indicates a hidden disability. And that is really helpful. So other people would know. Okay, the staff especially, would know, okay, maybe you need to get pre boarding. Maybe I struggle with my seat belt. This might be the reason why someone might be struggling. If you’re wandering around the airport looking lost. I don’t know if I would go with another person, another traveler, but I certainly staff members could come up and they would ask if I needed help. And of course,
Richard Lowe 28:55
of course yeah. Yeah, that’s very, very good that they do that. I don’t know if that’s an all airports but it’s something that should be implemented. Yes. So at least this tower, even in theme parks and things so that at least people are aware. We need to be aware.
Michelle Steiner 29:10
Yeah, definitely. I would love to see that in every major airport or bus station. They it’s a universal one. And it’s so simple to it’s not something where you have to knock a wall out to put a an elevator in, which is definitely important. It’s a little lanyard that you can just call the airport or email them and they can mail it to you or pick it up and
Richard Lowe 29:35
cost them a couple bucks if you include the shipping and that’s yeah, that’s a really trivial cost.
Michelle Steiner 29:42
And train your staff and that’s all that we really, yeah, we want it.
Richard Lowe 29:46
Yeah. Stuff like that’s cool. It helps people. It’s extremely low cost and I wouldn’t have any I certainly would have any complaints about it at all. It’s a lot of people complain about a lot of things. I think people complain too much. And I just look at him and think that’s a first world problem. Exactly. Your cell phone isn’t charged, or you didn’t get enough likes on that picture. That’s not really a problem. Compared to people who aren’t eating, or people in Ukraine, or people in other countries, or even you, people in the Bahamas and your cell phone not charging or not getting the number of likes you wanted isn’t really that order of magnitude you’re
Michelle Steiner 30:31
eating. Right. And it’s a simple problem to fix. Okay, your cell phone does not charge. Well make sure you charge it or Yeah,
Richard Lowe 30:39
lost your cell phone. So you’re gonna have to buy a new one. I mean, it’s innovating. And you have to go to the insurance company and whatever, you know, however, that works. And it’s annoying. But it’s, you will live without your cell phone.
Michelle Steiner 30:52
Yes, you will live with Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I agree. 100%.
Richard Lowe 30:57
And I lived for many, many years. We didn’t have cell phones. It didn’t exist. Yep. And we came out just fine. In fact, I think a little better.
Michelle Steiner 31:06
Exactly. It eliminated a lot of problems. At least the teachers weren’t saying get off your phone.
Richard Lowe 31:12
Well, at least the boss didn’t think that he could catch me. 24 by seven. Yeah, that’s true to come on. And to be able to work. We’ve got an emergency. You know that that didn’t happen in before cell phones and pagers and things.
Michelle Steiner 31:24
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It was a little more of a simple
Richard Lowe 31:28
was in the Rotary. I remember the rotary phone.
Michelle Steiner 31:30
Yeah, I grew up with
Richard Lowe 31:33
I don’t remember the ones that had this to the one. The one that goes in your ear and then one of the older ones.
Michelle Steiner 31:39
Yeah, I don’t remember that one. I
Richard Lowe 31:41
mean, except an antique stores. I
Michelle Steiner 31:43
mean, yeah, exactly. i Yeah, seeing those but yeah. Oh my goodness.
Richard Lowe 31:50
My parents actually had one of the the cylinders that was recording and as wax recorded music and those were a pain in the butt.
32:03
Oh, my goodness. Because the wax is, you know not. It’s yeah, that durable. Yeah, that would make sense.
Richard Lowe 32:10
Yeah. And then records and records seem to be coming back. I’ve noticed there are more records in stores now than DVDs. And I find that interesting.
Michelle Steiner 32:17
My husband collects records so he likes to do that. And postcards. So that’s that’s his
Richard Lowe 32:23
collect paint paint. I build model kits, and paint fantasy miniatures, and collect all kinds of stuff. I’m a collector.
Michelle Steiner 32:33
Awesome is great.
Richard Lowe 32:35
You see the books behind me. Above that is butterflies. I’ve got butterflies from all over the world.
Michelle Steiner 32:41
That butterflies are my thing. That is something I love. Oh my gosh, I love that.
Richard Lowe 32:49
Yeah, they’re from Africa and South America. They’re sustainably they’re done in farms. So they’re sustainably got you know, they’re not they’re not they’re not going to the wild and kill them although butterflies don’t live very long. So it’s really not a problem.
Michelle Steiner 33:03
No, it definitely isn’t. Every year we do a butterfly kit and we get to see their butterflies that will come out we had one the first what got me started on this was my husband picked some flowers for me and I saw like I thought it was just a little speck of dirt on the flower and I’m like oh, okay, whatever. And all this then all of a sudden like a little worm and then sure then I didn’t never took it off and then it became it was a zoo we realized that was a caterpillar and had a beautiful monarch butterfly that that hatched didn’t plan it. We haven’t had that luck sense so we get painted lady butterfly kits every May or June and just get to have that enjoyment of watching them and then let them go and yeah, and I love going into butterfly gardens and taking pictures of them.
Richard Lowe 34:00
Yeah, I’ve taken over a million photos. And a lot of them are butterfly gardens, Botanical Gardens, national parks, renaissance fairs dance shows the BTB wrestling matches I mean the whole gauntlet I’ve got a great photo of the The Undertaker he’s one of the big wrestlers jumping off the ropes, right in the mid air. I was on the I was in the second row. And those are those are expensive seats. And you know they give you the seat when you’re on the second row you get to take it home with you. Oh, I didn’t know that that folding chair and you just of course that’s that’s the time I decided to take the bus. So I had to carry this folding chair on a public bus and LA was really fine.
34:40
We’ll have it it’s funny they’re not
Richard Lowe 34:42
worth anything but it’s fun to I got the undertaker sitting on my chair. You know?
Michelle Steiner 34:47
My you got some nice memory and yeah, that
Richard Lowe 34:52
was a good event. It was a good event. I don’t I don’t like WD so much anymore. It’s become kind of lame. Yeah, please don’t flame me. for that, but I really liked it in the past, you know, I don’t know if you get into that, but
Michelle Steiner 35:07
not not much. But yeah, I mean, it’s Yeah.
Richard Lowe 35:11
But when I was when I was married, it was something that the wife and I found we had in common. She actually liked it. We’d stay up and watch the pay per views and she’d be like, screaming often girl, um, you know? Like,
35:26
like, non violent wife.
Richard Lowe 35:30
Very funny. I wish I had it on video nowadays, but no. Back in the 90s. Well, okay, we’ve been talking for about 40 minutes, it’s been quite fascinating. Is there anything you’d like to say to your viewers, before you are done,
Michelle Steiner 35:47
I would just like to encourage people that have learning disabilities to just be able to know what they want. And to be able to be able to say that and find a way to do it, and just for other people that helped to support other people that have learning disabilities, to be able to listen to them and help to give them the tools and the resources that they need.
Richard Lowe 36:11
Thank you very much. This is Ben author talks. This is Richard Lowe. I am the writing King. I’m a ghostwriter. If you need a book, contact me, I’m also a writing coach. So if you need help writing or need some tips and techniques, contact me we can set something up. And also LinkedIn branding expert, which means I can do your profiles and things. And that’s about it. Oh, how do people get ahold of you? By the way,
Michelle Steiner 36:33
you can find me at Michelle’s mission.blog.net.
Richard Lowe 36:37
Yeah, that’ll be that link will be in the description of this. All right. Well, thank you for coming. We’ll have more of these coming out. They’re coming up pretty fast and have a good day. Thank you.
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Thank you so much Richard for interviewing me! I enjoyed our conversation. Thank you again!