The old ambiguous curse/blessing, "may you live in interesting times," certainly seems to have been applied to those of us engaged in the daily activities of facilitated communication. We are blessed/cursed with a very high profile in national and local media. On the one hand, there are frequent positive articles and televised reports telling the stories of previously non-speaking people, people who now take active participatory roles that were once closed to them. Each such story is followed by many people seeking out access to facilitated communication for relatives and friends. On the other hand, those people who have decided that facilitated communication is nothing but an unwitting or purposeful fraud being foisted on wishful parents and a gullible public have been quite active as well. Each such negative news article or broadcast has its own grim repercussions: access to facilitated communication is withdrawn from some; parents and clinicians are "warned away" from trying the technique with others; and people using facilitated communication as their primary tool of daily conversation find themselves viewed with increasing suspicion, find their daily interactions filled with speculative glances and nonchalant "pop-quizzes" that fool no one. The recent Frontline documentary, "Prisoners of Silence," which aired last month, is only the most recent (although possibly the most destructive) of a series of such one-sided and simplistic reports.

So how are we to proceed in these interesting times? For those of us who find ourselves in positions of advocacy and teaching around this issue, the luxury of ignoring the attacks in the hope that they will "dry up and blow away" is denied to us. We must respond to attacks, to the sheer volume of disinformation and rumor which is being disseminated. At the same time, the rewards and challenges of the daily work continue. That work is vitally important and must not be slighted; ultimately, it will be the accounts of lives transformed, opportunities created, relationships deepened and autonomy asserted that will make this a safe world in which people with communication challenges can speak what is in their hearts.

This issue of the Digest, then, is dedicated to moving forward in two directions at once -- "un-telling lies," and advancing day-to-day practice. The article by Hill and Harvith is written as a direct response to the deliberately biased Frontline documentary. Other articles such as those by Douglas Biklen and Arthur Schawlow are written to counter the misinformation about facilitated communication which has been disseminated in certain negative media reports and other accounts. Lori Jensen-Wilde article continues the work of demystifying facilitated commu- nication, and Chris Kliewer identifies ways of documenting the reality of facilitated communications for people engaged in daily interactions. The article by Gene Marcus and myself addresses the issue of friendships among facilitated communication users and facilitators -- an area of great impact on peoples' lives. Most importantly, the statement by Sharisa Kochmeister which opens this issue reminds us all why we are doing what we do -- this issue of the Digest is dedicated to the hundreds of people who listened with open hearts and full attention when Ms. Kochmeister very simply and eloquently typed her truth, and who stood and cheered as she ended: ITS OUR TURN NOW.