Hi everyone, my name is Snoopi Botten. Most of you
know who I am. I feel lucky that Caroline asked me to write on her blog every
month. For those of you who don't know me, I am a 48 year old male with
cerebral palsy. Right now I use the Eco2 to communicate. I am a writer, artist,
comedian, singer, poet and speaker.
When I was growing up, I didn't know very many
disabled adults and there was only one that I knew of that was in the public
eye. It was a woman with cerebral palsy who played on "The Facts Of
Life." I don't remember the name of the actress or the characters, but she
was the cousin of one of the girls. I remember it was so cool when I had a baby
sitter. Whenever I told them I had cerebral palsy, they would say "Oh
yeah, like that woman on The Facts of Life." It used to help a lot because
when they would know how normal she was, it would help them look past my
disability.
As I got older I remembered that, and it inspired
me to try and be a role model for the disabled. I have done a lot of things in
my lifetime. As far as I know I was the first person to sing the National
Anthem with Dectalk in 1997 for the Twins baseball game at the Metrodome in
Minneapolis, Minnesota. After that, it paved the way for many other people to
do the same thing. I hope I can keep on inspiring people.
Over the years I have been on many news programs,
in newspapers and on radio programs. In 2009, I was on a program called Main
Menu. It's an Internet radio show and it features blind and disabled people. I
did a segment on what I do with Dectalk, demonstrations of how I make different
voices and I did a couple song samples. One song was in both English and
Spanish.
Being that this blog is probably read by a lot of
people, I want to share the Main Menu program that I was on. I hope that it
will inspire others. If no one knows how high the bar is set, no one can raise
the bar higher.
As most of you may know, Dectalk was made by Dennis
Klatt and a team at MIT. His vision was to provide a way for disabled people to
sing. Even though I never met Dennis Klatt, I worked hard at keeping his vision
alive. If you have a communication device with Windows and you don't have
Dectalk, you can download it from my web site.
If you have problems installing or running it, you
can email my friend Blake Roberts at
He can answer most questions. If there are
questions he can't answer, he will pass them along to me and I'll help answer
them.
Role models are always important because they help
the next generation. You are never too young or too old to be a role model, all
you have to do is pass on what you know to other people and be willing to learn
new things. If we all can do this, AAC will never stop growing.
Feel free to check out my web site at
Snoopi Botten
