GiGi Amateau

March 2008

What I'm Thinking About

My beautiful daughter, Judith, turns fifteen this month! She has grown into a graceful, tender, brilliant, fiery young woman. We've built enormous sandcastles, adopted puppies, cats, and horses, baked a million pies, learned to dig deep, sung some good old country music, whispered 'til too late at night, and always shared our dreams. Happy Birthday, Sweet Girl!

The yellow-rumped warbler popped up at the suet feeder outside of my office window recently. The yellow-rumped is highly adaptable: it can catch bugs in the air, pull them off of leaves, and it will eat fruit, too! This bird can even digest wax. Gross. All that makes this warbler an ecological generalist with a whole lot of foraging tricks to choose from when in need of the next meal. I love this warbler a) because it's good looking -- deceptively good looking. You know, you have to really look at it to appreciate how gorgeous this bird is. b) the yellow-rumped knows how to TCB. c) this warbler is downright tenacious! The one at my feeder owns the place and will fuss at cardinals and hairy woodpeckers who come near his suet! Do you think the yellow-rumped warbler population is on the decline? No way.

To learn more about my little cutie-pie visit:
www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/ BirdGuide/Yellow-rumped_Warbler_dtl.html

The other day I heard about a high school teacher who asked a student, when the student answered a question incorrectly, "What are you, a retard?" We are hurtful to each other sometimes, aren't we? I wonder what this teacher meant. Could that question really have been intended to mean, "What are you, a stupid person?" This year I've met, and worked with, many people with intellectual disabilities and not one of those young men or women is a stupid person. Consider how hard it is to stand up for yourself at school, at the doctor's, at work, with friends, or at the mall. When we do stand up for ourselves it's called self-advocacy, something people with intellectual disabilities must do every day, all day long. People with intellectual disabilities are role models for you and me. So I suggest that if we really need a label, that we replace retard with role model. Or we could just drop the labels altogether and start looking at people with intellectual disabilities as individuals. The individuals I've met this year are: funny, stubborn, passionate, determined, smart, creative, experienced, kind, insecure, angry, confident, innocent, savvy, intuitive, introverted, extroverted, demanding, awkward, articulate, generous, trusting. How we talk to each other and how we talk about each other is important.

Please check out The ARC of Northern Virginia: www.thearcofnova.org/index.php