A user interface is like a joke...

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A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it's not that good.

Open letter to Ann Coulter from Joh Franklin Stephens on her use of the "R" word

After Ann Coulter referred to President Obama as a "retard" in a tweet during Monday night's presidential debate, Special Olympics athlete and global messenger John Franklin Stephens penned her this open letter:

"Dear Ann Coulter, Come on Ms. Coulter, you aren't dumb and you aren't shallow. So why are you continually using a word like the R-word as an insult? I'm a 30 year old man with Down syndrome who has struggled with the public's perception that an intellectual disability means that I am dumb and shallow. I am not either of those things, but I do process information more slowly than the rest of you. In fact it has taken me all day to figure out how to respond to your use of the R-word last night. I thought first of asking whether you meant to describe the President as someone who was bullied as a child by people like you, but rose above it to find a way to succeed in life as many of my fellow Special Olympians have. Then I wondered if you meant to describe him as someone who has to struggle to be thoughtful about everything he says, as everyone else races from one snarkey sound bite to the next. Finally, I wondered if you meant to degrade him as someone who is likely to receive bad health care, live in low grade housing with very little income and still manages to see life as a wonderful gift. Because, Ms. Coulter, that is who we are – and much, much more. After I saw your tweet, I realized you just wanted to belittle the President by linking him to people like me. You assumed that people would understand and accept that being linked to someone like me is an insult and you assumed you could get away with it and still appear on TV. I have to wonder if you considered other hateful words but recoiled from the backlash. Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor. No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much. Come join us someday at Special Olympics. See if you can walk away with your heart unchanged."

A friend you haven't made yet,
John Franklin Stephens
Global Messenger Special Olympics Virginia

I will not be another flower, by Erin Van Vuren

I will not be

another flower,

picked for my

beauty and left

to die. I will

be wild, difficult

to find, and

impossible to 

forget.

Erin Van Vuren

"Why you run might be different than why I run, but that's OK." Kyle Cassidy

"First, and most importantly: Everybody is Fighting Their Own War. The reasons we do things are all different and there's not a right one, or a wrong one....

...You can lose weight by doing many, many, many different things. You can ride a stationary bike, you can skip rope, you can use an elliptical, you can swim, but for me, the thing that I didn't have was the thing that the jocks kept me from getting in high school -- the ability to think of myself as an athlete. I wanted to do something that I could accomplish on my own.... And ... very secretly, I wanted into that club of athletes that closed the door on me. Not the towel snapping, not stuffing people in lockers, not the hazing, but the respect. I wanted people with trophies to say "Well, Kyle can get up at five a.m. and run ten miles in twelve degree weather, why don't you ask him?" (This is one reason that I admire Rollergirls so much. It's a sport that's rejected the towel-snapping jockocracy and said "we don't pick athletes out of a lineup, we make athletes out of people....")"

Kyle Cassidy

http://kylecassidy.livejournal.com/764039.html

Self-Portrait, by David Whyte ("It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods. I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned..."

It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods.

I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned,
if you can know despair or see it in others.

I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need to change you.

If you can look back with firm eye,
saying this is where I stand.

I want to know if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living,
falling toward the center of your longing.

I want to know if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.

~ David Whyte, 'Self-Portrait'