Mattie Stepanek :-(
:-\ I'm sorry to hear he's passed. But I have to say that he illustrates something that's been kind of eating at me for a couple years now, the language of war that permeates our culture. He doesn't look like a child who was wasting his time fighting a disease, but like one who was living his life with a disease. I'm sure he hoped a cure or at least supportive, life-extending therapies would be discovered in time to help him and his mom and other folks with the same condition, but he doesn't look and never came across as though he spent a lot of time or energy *fighting* it. I guess it bugs me a little to hear it put that way all the time (everything's a war or battle these days). Mattie had such a sweet, gentle, loving spirit, it feels almost like it dishonors him to think of him feeling ill toward his disease, especially when it was part of what allowed him to reach so many. We've got the war on drugs, the war on terror (*war* on a sta