Set your DVRs! Abbey Curran, Miss Iowa 2008, started the MISS YOU CAN DO IT pageant in 2004 to offer girls with special needs the opportunity to have a moment in the spotlight, similar to Curran’s own struggle to become the the first woman with disabilities to compete in the Miss USA Pageant in 2008. MISS YOU CAN DO IT tells Curran’s story and follows eight young girls with physical and mental disabilities as they participate in the pageant when it debuts MONDAY, JUNE 24 (9:00-10:15 p.m. ET/PT), exclusively on HBO. Click the video or go here to watch the trailer.
It’s summer time and the livin’ is easy! Okay, not really. But one of the great things about moving to a coastal climate that draws a lot of tourists is that lots of folks we know come here to vacation and call us when they’re in town. They usually want to go out to eat – seafood, of course! – so it’s always a good reminder for me how fortunate we are to live somewhere with beaches and seafood.
Have you ever eaten red snapper? It’s snapper season here on the gulf coast and folks are fishing like mad. I’ve heard transplanted Yankees 🙂 say that they missed the changing of the seasons when they moved south, but that’s because they haven’t embraced what our seasons are down here. Instead of spring and summer, we have crawfish season and snapper season.
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Day Four of potty training is now behind us, and it went…pretty well. It was preschool day and he had a sub in his class, so not too sure he got the reinforcement he needed. But he’s still standing up when he’s done and he’s starting to try to pull his undies (okay…pull-ups) up and down, so I’m calling that progress. Have you guys started a pool yet on when I’ll try to put real undies on him?
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I need some suggestions for summer television series. Please no Bachelorette or The Voice or anything in those genres. For a few months I was behind on my DVR. Now that I’m finally caught up my playlist is looking pretty sad. I have Mad Men, whose season finale is this Sunday, Burn Notice, and…that’s it. After a spring full of Call the Midwife, Orphan Black, Blue Bloods, Mr. Selfridge, Dallas, and I don’t remember what else, I’m getting a little desperate.
Matej Peljhan photographed a 12-year-old boy with muscular dystrophy to create a series of photos showing the boy doing things he is unable to do because of his condition – and none of them are digitally manipulated. Click to see them. Amazingly creative.
I can’t believe that I’ve been blogging in this space for two years now. It was in May of 2011 that I decided it was time to ditch Blogger for WordPress and commit to a regular posting schedule. At the time, that schedule was Tuesdays and Thursdays with a link post (“Sun-Beams“) on the weekend. I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s time to shake things up a little…and that shakeup may include dropping Sun-Beams altogether, changing it to a longer once-monthly post, and/or incorporating it into Snippets in some way. If I do drop the weekly Sun-Beams, then I’ll add a third non-themed post on a weekday instead.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Let me know what you’d like to see.
Have a great weekend!
This post was inspired by and is linked to Conversion Diary‘s 7 Quick Takes.
Our current family TV watching is Once Upon a Time. We are Netflix’ing seasons 1 and 2, and apparently season 3 is in the works for the fall.
Too bad I dont get HBO. For TV suggestions try The Fosters on Mondoys nights at 9 on ABC Family. It’s also on Hulu for free. So addicting.
I’ve never heard of The Fosters. I’ll have to check into that one.
Oh I do like the sunbeams though.
That pageant sounds MUCH better than those I see on Toddlers and Tiaras (it’s car-crash telly – I can’t not watch it!)
Congrats on the two years.
I used to be a T&T addict, too! I also watched (gasp!) Dance Moms, but eventually it got to the point where it was just depressing me, so I quit both of them.
For brainless humor (which is all want in the summer!) Drop Dead Diva, Parenthood (not as brainless), Melissa and Joey are what I have queued on my Netflix recently. Someone recommended Flashpoint, but I have yet to watch so I can’t personally endorse it. I am going to scam some ideas from your replies for myself! Good luck!
I used to watch Parenthood, but they broke my heart with their “PP infomercial” and I stopped. It made me very sad to give it up, because I loved the show so much (especially the first season).
breaking bad. hart of dixie (guilty pleasure). giuliana and bill (another guilty pleasure)
I love Hart of Dixie! I’ve mentioned it in the Snippets before because I’m convinced that someone associated with the show (writer? producer?) has spent time here in our Mayberry – there are too many similarities to our little town for it to be a coincidence (our big football rival is Daphne as referenced in the show, our mascot is the Pirates – remember Planksgiving? – our colors are blue and yellow, there really is a group of women who wear those Easter-egg colored antebellum dresses like the Memory Matrons wore in the first season, and so on). In fact, from time to time one of the little transition scenes of a downtown area, the water, etc., actually IS our town.
Rizzoli and Isles is starting up again next week, good, girl centered, crime drama!
I’ve never watched it but that sounds like my kind of show!
What do you think of this perspective on “Miss You Can Do It”?
http://jewishspecialneeds.blogspot.com/2013/06/miss-you-can-do-it-rant-on-traditional.html
Well…I haven’t seen the documentary yet so I don’t truly know if she’s got a valid point or not. Based on what she wrote, it doesn’t sound like she’s seen it, either, though. If that’s the case then I would suggest that she’s jumping the gun and should wait to see it for herself before passing judgment. I’m inclined to give the pageant the benefit of the doubt since it was begun by a woman who has a disability herself and “gets it” from the contestant’s perspective.
Having said that, I will admit to not having a lot of patience for people who insist on full inclusion with no separation at any time for any reason. Mr. Andi encountered people like that during his time on the Alabama Council for Developmental Disabilities – they argued that Special Olympics should be abolished using similar arguments to the ones in the linked post. Ideally, yes, it would be great for everyone to be able to compete – in sports, pageants, whatever – in a fully included manner, but that’s a mighty tall order.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time…
Thanks for bringing my thoughts into this conversation. I had not seen the documentary when I wrote: http://jewishspecialneeds.blogspot.com/2013/06/miss-you-can-do-it-rant-on-traditional.html
I was reacting to some pre-documentary press that was published. My frustration was, and continues to be, with the traditional pageant system (not this pageant or the documentary, specifically). If, in fact, the traditional system could allow all girls to shine based on the content of their character, there would be far less of a need to create a pageant such as this that judges on “what is in their heart and not by how their outfits look.” The fact that this needed to be overtly stated about “Miss You Can Do It” points to a flaw in the traditional system.
I agree that 100% inclusion in all situations at all times is not only unrealistic, but can even be detrimental for some. I hope that I illustrate this in the other pieces that I have written. Thanks again.
Thanks for your response, Lisa. I watched the documentary and I feel a little differently than I did before. I’ll talk more about it in tomorrow’s post, but like you, I’ve always thought pageants were a big superficial load of hooey. My perspective is a bit different now, because while the girls were judged based on their inner selves, I think their “outer” selves enjoyed the experience, as well. We all like to feel pretty. 🙂