My son Avi needs a computer for his graphic design and video work. Check out these gorgeous images he created!

This pandemic Avi has been teaching himself:

1. Piano;
2. Saxophone;
3. Graphic Design;
4. Painiting (Murals);
5. Baking! (sugar-free vegan: Breads, Cookies, Cakes, Pies – so much! Today he made himself granola!];
6. Gardening (his pumpkin was doing great before this week’s heat!);
7. Photography;
8. Video Production (writing, filming, editing, scoring , developing promotional graphics- all the things!);
9. Reading & Writing in Chinese (Mandarin)

He’s also taking a math class independently, and learning science and history from his many favorite STEM-centric vlogs and YouTube channels [and religiously watching the topical political humor on the evening talk shows of Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver as soon as they are released on YouTube each day to stay current with politics and the news!)].

What we’ve been able to do to support his learning & creativity

This year we bought him quite a few things to help support his independent learning:

• We’ve given him unlimited access to any audiobooks he wants to listen to (he listens to all of these with his little brother Charlie – who is now 13 years old.)
• I bought him a new copy of “The Joy of Cooking” – so he has “the Bible” of cooking as a reference whenever he needs it.
• Along with his new cookbook (which is a supplement to what he finds on YouTube to help with his cooking escapades) I made a commitment to buy him any ingredient he wants for any cooking project he wants to try. This has inflated our grocery budget a bit, but pays for itself in spades in terms of his learning curve. I wanted him to have confidence enough to fail – as well as succeed – and for that he needed to not be concerned about the cost of ingredients.
• We bought him an electric keyboard when we were on the road last year (so he could keep up with his piano practice even when we were not home.) [This was a lot less expensive than I anticipated it would be!]
• His biggest brother (Colescott, age 25) used hard earned $ from his music gigs over the past year (along with a $500 scholarship that we were able to secure from a local arts organization) to finally buy Avi a professional quality saxophone (an important upgrade from the crappy student horn he had been using for more than 5 years.)

Our biggest pandemic investment in his future:
Computer Technology

Given the school district offered Avi almost no options or resources (once the pandemic started nearly all special needs kids were left to fend for themselves as there is no working paradigm for remote learning for many of these kids given their disabilities), we used a chunk of our stimulus money to get what few upgrades were possible for our old computer (a Mid-2012 MacPro tower) for him:

• a faster hard drive;
• a new video card;
• more memory;
• a new monitor;
• a new high-resolution mouse suitable for graphics work.

Unfortunately he has now (a year later) “maxed out” that upgraded old system. The newest versions of several of the software applications he uses — as well as the Mac operating system itself — are not supported/compatible on our nearly-10-year-old hardware, and he really needs a more modern computer to do his design work [& we have absolutely no available funds (as a family) right now – due to impacts of the pandemic on my business + the ongoing costs of my legal battle!]

If you want to see more examples of what Avi has been creating:

1. Here’s a link to a Facebook page I set up for him too (which has a nice selection of his photographs – which I upload periodically when he texts them to me): https://www.facebook.com/AwesomeAviRubin
2. And here’s a link to his science-based YouTube channel for kids. He is editing videos from footage he filmed on our cross-country trip last summer and each video focuses on a paleontological fact from the area where he is filming. His series is called Paleontology Across The U. S. [Please subscribe to his channel if you are so inclined! He would love that!] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCipwx_xmHoWwmoQmPSajyBQ