Go Team USA! Love Cullen Jones!

Thanks to Nancy Merritt, a former member of the Lehigh Swimming Team, and the Director of Lehigh Student & Young Alumni Programs, who told me about this!

According to this May 2010 Wall Street Journal story, the USA Swimming 2010 diversity study found that 70% of African American children and 58% of Hispanic children report low to no swim ability.

Since 2007, the USA Swimming Foundation's Make a Splash program has taught basic swimming skills to 325,000 kids. The program gets a lot of support from Team USA Gold Medalist swimmer Cullen Jones, an African-American whose mother made him learn to swim after a near-drowning at age 5.

LOVE Cullen! Here's a recent interview with him:



Cullen's story was told in this 2007 film "Parting the Waters" - check out the synopsis and then the trailer:

Parting the Waters from Louise Rosen on Vimeo.

Not sure where to find the full-length film.

Here's the official website for the film. Not much info there, though - check out this Facebook page for more info.

Word Choice

The Special Olympics launched a print campaign to stop the use of the word "retard" in casual conversation by loosely using other derogatory words in relaxed formats. BBDO New York created the ads.

This ad campaign caught my attention because when I was 15, I was called out at summer camp, for saying something like "that's so retarded" in the dining hall, during lunch. A Frost Valley Counselor In Training pointed out to me how inappropriate that was, especially considering that our camp has a MAC - Mainstreaming at Camp program for developmentally disabled youth. I was mortified - that was a totally new concept, for me. I never used that phrase again, and I get uncomfortable whenever I hear someone else use it.

A few years ago, George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, taught me that a lot of commonly used english words and phrases originated from wars and the military. Once you become conscious of this, it's hard to avoid the use of military-oriented words, even in your every day life.