They touched the face of God.

I didn't get to watch this on television in my Brooklyn, NY classroom as so many other children did at the time. There was an announcement over the school public address system that the shuttle had exploded. Some of us, me included, ran to the windows to see if we could see anything. The fact that the shuttle had launched from Florida hadn't registered on us. I think we were all in shock.

All these years later I'm taking the opportunity to rediscover the stories of these heroes. Starting with Ronald McNair.

Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful for/that:

1. The fence is up in the backyard! Go outside and play kids!
2. "Back porch. Back porch. Back door. Back door. Window. Back porch. Back door." Isaiah (Bubba J) asking to go out in the backyard to see the fence.
3. "Can I have? Can I have? Can I have?" Bubba J asking for a hot dog. He couldn't find the words hot dog but he got the rest of the sequence right for the first time.
4. You can make smores in the microwave!

What are you thankful for?

Words fail at this horror: UPDATED

The Philadelphia Horror: How mass murder gets a pass
He rationalized his macabre habit of cutting off dead babies’ feet and saving them in rows and rows of specimen jars as "research."

Updates: I'll be adding more links that discuss this as I find them.

Gosnell; Baby Feet Kick the Nation – UPDATES

Slicing Spinal Cords With Scissors

In the end, the hundreds of live babies murdered by Gosnell died because of the left’s attempt to create a world of cosmically perfect equality between men and women. They failed to compromise with reality and children died.

As in so many other things, it is time for the left to grow up and act like adults. Adults suffer so that children don’t have to. If hundreds or thousands of women have to suffer some emotional distress just to protect the life of one child then so be it. It’s time for capital-F feminists to admit that, as adults, women have an innate responsibility to put the good of children before their own.

I suggest reading the comments on this post as well.

Gruesome Allegations Surrounding Philly Abortion Doc Spur Washington Debate

"As these politicians take control of the House, they want to be able to interfere with our personal, private decisions, especially a woman's right to choose," said Naral Pro-Choice for America President Nancy Keenan. "They are out of touch with our country's values and priorities. What happened to the jobs agenda?"

"What happened to the jobs agenda?" For real dude is slicing and dicing women and babies in a filthy clinic and now somebody wants to talk about jobs? How about we put unemployed folk to work inspecting abortion clinics across the nation because the people who have those jobs now don't seem to be doing them very well.

Kermit Gosnell Crimes wiki

Autism and Mother-Blame

There was a time when mom was to blame if a child was autistic because she didn't love that child enough. These days that attitude seems to have evolved into mom is to blame for either allowing a child to become autistic or not doing enough to make autism go away. As the author of this piece says, there are plenty of things for mothers (and fathers) to blame themselves for. Autism shouldn't be one of them.

Autism and Mother-Blame
The idea that mother's are responsible for causing autism and curing it share important themes. First, it rests on the notion that the cause of autism is environmental and therefore easily modified. The role of genetics, which is almost certainly the primary cause of autism, is ignored:

Then it was toxic parents; today it is alleged environmental toxins (such as vaccines containing traces of mercury or MMR) to which parents have exposed their children. These theories also have the common features that they are entirely speculative and lacking in scientific support.

The concept that autism is an intrinsic feature of the child is rejected for the more acceptable fantasy that autism is something that happened to the "real" child, and can therefore be prevented or reversed by simple modifications of the environment.

This fantasy dovetails nicely with the dominant contemporary mothering ideology that positions mothers as risk managers who "educate" themselves (about pregnancy, birth, vaccination, food, etc.) for the project of creating the perfect child. The child thus produced simultaneously reflects the mother's competence, and advertises the mother's superiority among her peers.

The autistic child, in many ways viewed by our society as the ultimate imperfect child, is a visible sign of parental failure. The desperation to avoid the stigma of this failure leaves mothers of autistic children particularly vulnerable to quacks and charlatans (like Jenny McCarthy) peddling pseudo-scientific theories of autism's cause, its prevention and its treatment.

Autism almost certainly has a genetic basis and discovery of that basis should prove liberating for both autistic children and their mothers. Purveyors of the faulty idea of the "refrigerator mother" taught women to blame themselves for their children's autism. Charlatans like Jenny McCarthy continue to encourage mothers of autistic children to blame themselves, not for their purported emotional frigidity, but for their purported negligence in failing to "educate" themselves about vaccination and failing to "protect" their children from vaccinations.

This mother-blame has got to stop. There are more than enough things for mothers to feel guilty about. Autism should not be one of them.

Joys of Autism

Sometimes people forget that there is joy to be had in their lives with their autistic family members. There's so much to be said about caring for your autistic kids. Those kids grow up and there is joy to be had in helping them do so. Find the joy and let it help you through the tough times.

The Unexpected Joys of Raising an Autistic Child
Emily Colson talks about the trials and triumphs she's experienced in raising her autistic son, Max. Her father, author Chuck Colson, joins the conversation to discuss the lessons they've learned from Max which underscore the sanctity of all human life.

Part 1 and part 2.

Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful for/that:

1. Central heating.
2. Helping hands.
3. Friends.
4. The gold fish are still alive.
5. Freedom.

What are you thankful for?

Anti-Vaccine Doctor Planned to Profit from Scare

Anti-Vaccine Doctor Planned to Profit from Scare.

I always wonder how people who are invested in the claims that pharmaceutical companies are conspiring to harm kids with vaccines for the sake of increased profits feel about all of the money made by people selling high priced supplements and therapies as treatments/cures/whatever for parents to try on their kids.

America's Enduring Strength

If you've already drawn and quartered Sarah Palin for her supposed role in the tragedy that happened in Arizona last weekend this post isn't for you. Move on. For everyone else take a read. America's Enduring Strength

No one should be deterred from speaking up and speaking out in peaceful dissent, and we certainly must not be deterred by those who embrace evil and call it good. And we will not be stopped from celebrating the greatness of our country and our foundational freedoms by those who mock its greatness by being intolerant of differing opinion and seeking to muzzle dissent with shrill cries of imagined insults.

America must be stronger than the evil we saw displayed last week. We are better than the mindless finger-pointing we endured in the wake of the tragedy. We will come out of this stronger and more united in our desire to peacefully engage in the great debates of our time, to respectfully embrace our differences in a positive manner, and to unite in the knowledge that, though our ideas may be different, we must all strive for a better future for our country. May God bless America.

Read the whole thing.

Rhetoric

I was going to write some long winded rant about the despicable behaviour that has come in the wake of the recent shootings of Congresswoman Giffords and others in Arizona but this guy says it better than I would have. From The Giffords Shooting, The Instant Politicization of Everything, & Why Americans Increasingly Hate Dems & Reps,

"How do you take one of the most shocking and revolting murder sprees in memory and make it even more disturbing? By immediately pouncing on its supposed root causes for the most transparently partisan of gains."

What is wrong with people that before the bodies of the dead have even gotten a chance to get cold they start slinging political mud? Disgusting. If you think this is going to win you some political points think again. Because this is what I'm asking as well,

To be clear, if you're using this event to criticize the "rhetoric" of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you're either: (a) asserting a connection between the "rhetoric" and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you're not, in which case you're just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?

Keep talking people and see where it gets you. Oh dear, did I just engage in some of that "rhetoric" that some have all of a sudden become so concerned about?

Wakefield's fraudulent claims about autism

This is why I was so glad when this blog was launched. It had people like this behind it;

There are parents of children with autism (and a few adults with autism) who ardently and sincerely believe that vaccines somehow are implicated in autism. However, the evidence continues to mount exonerating vaccines. But my fellow editor, Shannon Rosa, said it most eloquently:

...there is one thing we all need to remember when speaking to parents who still believe their child's autism was caused by vaccines: those people are in real pain. They want answers and need support. They are likely not getting either, except through the anti-vaccination movement's mostly negativity-filled channels, which is why they become so entrenched and remain in denial. But they are also the ones responsible for the upbringing of a child with autism. We need to be mindful of those children, and help their parents gravitate towards towards positive communities and attitudes, plus parent and adult autistic role models

The article, Wakefield’s article linking MMR vaccine and autism was fraudulent, published this week in the British Medical Journal has stirred up a hornet's nest of responses. A lot of parents, like myself, are glad the word is finally getting out about Wakefield and his claims about autism and vaccines. We're hoping to move on to more fruitful avenues of research and advocacy such as identifying effective classroom supports for autistic individuals and better public education about what autism really is.

Other parents are not so pleased about the news about Wakefield. They have a lot invested in Wakefield and the beliefs they hold dear based on what he has claimed to be true. There's not much I can do about that but love my kids and share my point of view. You can follow the fallout from the article here, Andrew Wakefield, Yesterday's British Medical Journal Articles on His Fraud, and The Thinking Person's Guide to Autism.

"Too drunk to get there..."

Now in all of the fuss about altering Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn so as to not tread on certain people's sensibilities I came across a reading of this bit of text from the book;

Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was 'lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I weren't too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a state in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I'll never vote again.

You can listen to, or read the transcript of, this conversation here, Should The N-Word Be Purged From Mark Twain’s Classic?

You know what jumped out at me when I heard this? It wasn't the word nigger. It was the image of a man who was too drunk to vote getting all indignant that someone he considered inferior to himself was exercising that particular civic duty. That's a powerful image to me. Changing nigger to slave (as has been done to a recent edition of the book) in this passage makes no sense and you loose the compelling picture of the educated negro who takes the time to vote against all opposition to him doing so and the poor white man who was too drunk to bother. I guess I fall into the camp that says leave Mark Twain's work as he wrote it.

Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful for/that:

1. All of the inventive men and women who helped create and advance the washing machine and the clothes dryer.
2. Days are getting longer. Spring is coming baby!
3. A little quiet time to spend with my gardening catalogs.
4. Baby giggles.

What are you thankful for?