Summer Sports Camps are running in conjunction with the Laois, Kilkenny, Carlow and Kildare Local Sports Partnerships and Special Olympics Leinster.
It’s for any child with an intellectual disability between 6 and 16 years of age. Siblings welcome. If it sounds like you then check out the details at the Autism Action site.
Oh, and a quick apology for the lack of everything round here. A Jacob update is on the way when I can get him off the stairs and in front of the keyboard.
Thank you most humbly, His Girl Friday, for posting this. It’s great to see your collection of quiet wisdom back in full flow.
A Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck. One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walks from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.
For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.
After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream. ‘I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house.’
The old woman smiled, ‘Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot’s side? ‘That’s because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.’
Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it’s the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding. You’ve just got to take each person for what they are and look for the good in them.
Do drop in to see His Girl Friday. She’s always got the kettle on for highway stragglers.
The absolutely amazing and tireless creation that is Hammie is yet again going without sleep so that Irish autism can benefit. She’s got two incredible kids with autism herself, yet despite the 27 or so hours she devotes to them every day, she also finds time to do stuff like help loads of other special needs groups like Jacob’s. Oh, and she fundraises like Billy-o for Irish Autism Action.
The latest push comes with the assistance of O2 and Samsung. For every Samsung Tocco Sold In O2 storesduring the month of June, €10 will be going to Irish Autism Action Charities in your area.
If you ARE in the market in Ireland for a smartphone, please put the Samsung Tocco on the list for consideration. And if you’re not, I’d take it as a personal favour if you could spread the message to anyone you know who might be.
If you want to find out what that support means from the perspective of someone with autism, Hammie’s blog postsays it rather nicely. Please support her essential (and usually unsung) work if you can.
I’ve come to regard Our Jacob as a place where serious things sometimes crop up, but usually there’s a happy resolution or a soufflé of laughter to balance things out. Not tonight. No fun to be had tonight. The country is quietly convulsing with the publication of the Child Abuse Commission’s report into religious abuses of our childrenover the last 70 years.
It’s big and it’s ugly. Comes to over 2,600 pages and it’s far beyond sobering. It’s nothing short of hideous. It’s even got its very own unlucky chapter 13 dedicated to the special abuse of special needs children. Fifty eight of them. A heavy thank you to the ever watchful and flinchless eye of Suzy B for this.
I want to gnaw my knuckles off, hide my head. It’s almost 3am but how can I sleep with the weight of this horror? These MONSTERS are beyond my contempt. These people who lived within a comfortable complicity and whose perversions were allowed, through church and state collusion, to flourish at the expense of thousands of defenceless children.
Image by Gerald Scarfe in The Sunday Times
The boards are lit up, around the globe. It’s on The Huffington Post. It’s on the BBC.CBS. It is everywhere. This is not another tired case of some paedophile ruining a child’s life. This is us, the country, Ireland, having to collectively face up to our duties, or our dereliction of them. I am beyond furious, beyond hurt and beyond understanding. I’ve been venting some of the anger over at my friend Bock the Robber’s site, but to be honest I think if the seas were to be emptied I could fill them again with the rage I feel against so many of the people and institutions against which I have measured myself down the years, only to have found myself wanting.
So I’ll be taking stock of that lost time.
The Catholic Church in Ireland must at this point consider how it will move forward. Meantime, while I try to regain some composure, I will just leave you with a morsel of what’s in the report. This is from that chapter 13, page 241, pertaining specifically to special needs kids.
13.31
Witnesses reported that while attending special needs services they were physically abused and assaulted by various means including being hit with leather straps, canes, spade and broom handles, various types of sticks and brushes, kitchen implements, wooden coat hangers and rulers. They also reported having their heads held under water, being put into cold baths, having their hair cut and pulled, being forcibly fed, and being locked in outhouses, sheds and isolated rooms. Witnesses with sensory impairments described the particular fear and trauma associated with being physically abused when they could not see or hear abusers approaching them.
I’ve had my behind soft-kicked by His Girl Friday because I’ve been so lazy. And fair play. We’ve been busy and never seem to be on top of things, but that’s no excuse.
I wanted to mention how delighted we are with Cathal’s progress. We’ve gotten very fond of the wee man (even though we STILL haven’t met yet) and we were all anxious when his cardio surgery was announced. Thankfully he’s past that now and well on the way to terrorising the household. His supergran Nan P has been doing a great job of keeping us up to date, and now we’re getting the full, dramatic story from his mum too, now that she has a minute. Makes for nervy reading by times, but cardio issues are a reality for two out of five kids with DS, so it’s important to know.
On a different note entirely, a grim smile was afforded by the news that Sequenom’s shares fell by a huge amount last week. You may remember quite a while back that I wrote on the release of their ‘wonder drug’ that could detect DS in utero. The fear being, of course, that early positive detection would mean early abortions. This won’t stop them, of course, but losing money is the only thing that this particular shower of monkeys will ever understand. *** them. (Insert triumphalist swear word here.)
I wrote a while back about August’s upcoming World DS Congress. I had hoped to attend, but at €375 per guardian attending, and €200 per person with DS, it’s unjustifiably steep for us. I’m sure they’ll do well, I know it’s a huge organisational task for them and the costs are no doubt enormous but nonetheless I am a little dismayed that the prices are quite so high.
Finally, on an up note, I want to link to Hammie and give her a massive round of applause for the great work she’s been doing on her own website and also at Irish Autism Action. This is one tireless lady and I have huge admiration for her. Drop in and learn a thing or two about what the autie crowd are doing to push their agenda. Plus, if you want to see what a great big softie of a Boyzone member looks like when he’s having a little cry, Hammie’s the woman to go to.
