Not long after our son Nico was born and diagnosed with Down Syndrome, we began sharing the news with our community of friends and family. Frequently, people found a way to express their concerns by talking about bullying. I’ve spent years thinking about why that is, how the mental space occupied in people’s minds by…
For the past year, I have been writing about a persistent pattern of police violence against people with disabilities. I have been particularly focused on the Ethan Saylor case, of course. But the stories proliferate, with a new one almost every week. On Monday, I argued that you can read both the Times Square police…
I ran across a story on the Huffington Post. The title – Will And Kate Fight Stigma Against Down Syndrome In Beautiful Way. The story unfolds by talking about the royals first: He’s only a little over a month old, but Prince George may have already learned his greatest lesson from his benevolent parents. Prince…
I know you all stayed up late last night following Miss America, watching the extended commentary on C-SPAN, and have already purchased the DVD, so this little blog entry may come as no surprise – but an Indian-American won the contest and lots of racists on Twitter said racist things. Actually, Miss America is no…
Yesterday, two New York Police shot two women in Times Square. Both are in the hospital and stable, that’s the good news. They were shooting at someone who they thought had a weapon. Police said officers saw a man on foot weaving erratically through traffic and sometimes blocking vehicles. After approaching him, police said, the…
It’s been a lively week, dashing from topic to topic as usual. I spend a lot (too much) time thinking about blogging and wondering if I’d have more readers if I just posted lots of stories on one topic. Probably. But I’d get bored and it wouldn’t reflect my real range of interests. So this…
My son uses words, jargon (sounds that are not recognizable to people who aren’t in the know), signs, gestures, expressions, symbols, and an I-pad to communicate. We’re deeply in to the assistive technology world – it’s helping Nico find a voice that anyone could understand, rather than just his family, teachers, and therapists. So it…
In another edition of how we got into this mess, Nick Danforth, a doctoral candidate in Turkish history at Georgetown writes for the Atlantic about Syria’s borders. He begins by pointing out that it’s easy to blame Syria’s troubles for arbitrarily-drawn borders, then writes: There’s plenty to criticize about the legacy of colonialism, but dwelling on…
As a father of a girl, I’m highly alert to the ways that toys are marketed to children. It’s not that boys don’t have gender-specific marketing and that I’m not concerned about issues related to boys: I am concerned and they do. But two factors come into play: One, my son has Down syndrome, and…
NOTE 10/19/2016: This essay was published in 2013, featuring a memoriam I wrote in 2012 not long after Ambassador Stevens died (before I started the blog). Things have changed, but the post is unedited from that time. ————————————————————— Exactly a year ago, I woke to discover from the news that my cousin, Ambassador Chris Stevens,…