Hearing people are such crybabies

"It's too loud! Tell me later!" Yeah, trying to have a conversation using spoken language when you can barely hear anything is a lot of work. Suck it up, whiners. Pay closer attention! Use more of your energy trying to figure out what words might make sense there! Think harder about cues like facial expressions and prosody! WORK HARDER, you spoiled, lazy brats! Oh, I'm sorry, are you tired? Does the baby need a nap?

I swear I'm a nice person most of the time.

Listen to those congressmen arguing!

If this bill becomes a law*, maybe it will be easier to find a captioned version of its biopic.**


(click through to the youtube page and then click underneath the video for a transcript)

*It passed in the House. See 01:58-02:02 of the video for a visual aid about what happens now.
**It won't. Youtube videos aren't covered.

Happy birthday, limited civil rights

The ADA is 20. Tom Harkin says pretty words, but since Glee has already been signed on for a third season, I don't think we're really winning.

The Best Health Care in the World: multiple choice quiz

1. Today I went to the doctor for symptoms including intermittent fever. Without being reminded, the highly-trained medical staff remembered to do which 2 of the following 3 things?

a. take my blood pressure
b. weigh me
c. take my temperature

2. I have been exhibiting flu-like symptoms. There is a flu pandemic, and it is Normal Non-pandemic Flu Season. I do not have white spots on my throat, and I do have a cough. Which of the following tests was I given? (pick one)

a. Strep
b. seasonal flu
c. H1N1

3. After it had been determined that I do not have strep throat, which astute follow-up question was I asked?

a. Can you hear?
b. Can you read lips?
c. Have you seen a doctor about hearing loss?
d. all of the above

There is no answer sheet. The answer is screaming.

Big Brother is taking good care of me

Cab drivers in DC used to just drive around until they got somewhere and then turn to you, palm up, for money. An amount of money that as far as anyone could tell they had invented, or dreamt, or received from the gods. And the place wasn't always the place you had in mind, either.

Now, cab drivers in DC have meters and GPS. And my world is much better.

It is particularly difficult to correct-en-route a cab driver when you are deaf. Even if your voice is pretty understandable and the cab driver can hear you, he* probably won't internalize the fact that you can't hear him*. So when you try to say "turn here" or "take a right on Rhode Island" he* will probably respond to you with something you can't hear, and then later chastise you for it.

If you don't talk, and you just hand him* a piece of paper with the address/directions written on it, then you have no way of knowing what kind of mental processes are occurring as you drive. Particularly if you are a little bit or a lot drunk, this is true. Which is problematic because everyone [read: me] takes cabs a lot more often when they are a little bit or a lot drunk.

But, now, with the new fancy Fare Meter GPS rule, it is much better! You can sit in the back seat, drunkenly musing on whatever you would care to muse on, and keep an eye on the little screens in the front. One little screen will tell you where you are, and what the cab driver thinks he* is doing. There is a big bright line telling you where he* thinks he* is going! It is easy to object and correct when necessary.

Tonight, for example, I gave the nice cab driver man* a piece of paper with my address and several other ways to consider my address written on it. First, the actual mailing address. Second, the cross streets with letter and number streets. Third, the actual closest intersection to my house. In the past, this same information has yielded widely varying results, including cab drivers who thought I meant I (Eye) Street when I wrote 1st (First), and also multiple confusions between quadrants even though I was very careful to specify.

But tonight, Cab Driver Man* just typed what I wrote into his little GPS meter dealy, and I could tell right away that we were on the right track. The GPS even knew the appropriate shortcuts to take. Cab Driver Man* did not get stressed out, and I got home with zero problems and for an acceptable number of dollars.

Moral: I love GPS.

*I've not yet had a female cab driver in DC. I have no idea if this is a statistically useful sample.

"This conference should be more accessible" she said definitively

Hi! I'm in Connecticut!

I'm at a conference about sign language linguistics. Specifically phonology: my favorite! So far so good except that for a conference about sign language linguistics, this conference is surprisingly non-deaf-friendly. People keep coming up to me and talking, and then acting really surprised when I tell them I'm deaf. Or announcing to Julie "it's okay, I'm hearing, you can just talk."

"Yes, but I am deaf" said Julie resignedly.

Re SIGN ed ly! HAHAHAHAHA. 'Cause who expects you to SIGN at a conference about sign languages? It's funny because it's not true!

We probably are just spoiled by how politically aware and sensitive and smart and fantastic our professors all are. (Hi guys! I get an A for attitude, right?)

Audiological identity

Utter sabotage- complete with beer. humph. I swear Cecily wants me to fail out of school // oh wait, HAHA, never mind.

“Oh she doesn't talk?”

What is interesting here, as the hearing person, is that I get all the comments about us signing.

Actually that is not true. What I get is, “So, she can't talk?” And with this question and in this situation I always freeze, like a Mutzig in the freezer*. How am I supposed to respond?!

My first thought is to say, “Yes, she can.” (However, this seems a bit like if I got pulled over for speeding in South Carolina and as he hands me a ridiculous ticket, the police officer asks if I have any questions and then I ask him how many seagulls are there on Hunting Island**.) It seems to me that they are actually inquiring about why we are flailing our hands about and that saying “Yes” will not actually answer their question even if it IS their question.

Cecily, I agree- discourse is confusing!

So...after an awkward silence to a seemingly simple question... I just continue to freeze. I think most of the time I just mumble my way through and smile. Who wants to get into a whole freaking debate about the difference between being Deaf and not being able to speak and why signed languages are important ...and....and.... who knows what else in the grocery line at the German butchery. I SURELY do not-- as you all must know by now, I have more important things to attend to—like going to watch the storks!***

No, Cecily's driving; LINDSAY must be deaf!

And recently, at the school (full of Deaf children) we have sort of, half way been in a bunch of conversations discussing why Cecily is driving and why I am not. As I try calmly to explain that it'd be better for society in general if I do not drive-- they get into their own arguments about who in fact is deaf and who in fact is hearing. Apparently the driving conditions these labels. Then we have to clarify, once again, Cecily is Deaf. Lindsay is not. Cecily is driving. Lindsay is not. END OF DISCUSSION.

Then they all ask for a ride.



* SOMEONE may have accidentally left 5 or 10 giant bottles of beer in the freezer after the dinner party last Friday. This may or may not have been the reason we were buying more beer at the German Butchery.

**This happened once. In my head only. Thus, I did not spend the night in jail.

*** and drink the beer!

interpreters!

Dear Internet,
I didn't forget about you. Well, I kind of forgot about you. Mostly though I just have other things to do.

Here is an interesting thing that happened in my life recently: lots of interpreting all at the same time! A group of educators and students from Vietnam visited my school. (I think they are still visiting really.) Some of them are Americans, one hearing and one Deaf, who set up a Deaf Ed program in Hanoi. Some of them are Deaf Vietnamese students from that program. One of them is a hearing Vietnamese woman who runs the high school. And a bunch of them are other Education Ministry officials from Vietnam. And one guy from Japan I think, although I'm not totally sure why he was there.

Anyway they all came to one of my classes last Monday to observe Deaf Education in Action. That class has one professor and five students. And on Monday we also had 10 plus visitors and two ASL interpreters. So we all shared some information about ourselves and it went like this (for example):

1. Cecily (ASL)
2. interpreter (ASL to spoken English) and
interpreter (ASL to Vietnam sign language)
3. interpreter (English to spoken Vietnamese)

then for a reply (for example)
1. Vietnamese official (spoken Vietnamese)
2. interpreter (spoken Vietnames to English)
3. interpreter (English to ASL)
4. interpreter (ASL to Vietnam sign language)

or
1. Deaf Vietnamese student (Vietnam sign language)
2. Interpreter (Vietnam sign language to ASL)
3. Interpreter (ASL to English)
4. Interpreter (English to spoken Vietnamese)

Sometimes there were shortcuts. Like straight from Vietnam sign language to spoken Vietnamese. Then everyone would have to back up to make sure all the languages got their turns in. Or sometimes more than one step happened at once. Like simultaneous Vietnam sign language to ASL and to spoken Vietnamese. Or simultaneous ASL to spoken English and Vietnam sign language.

Those conversations took a long time! It was very fun and interesting. And the school program in Vietnam that these guys are running is super impressive. American Deaf schools could learn something from them.

Tent City

Julie and Jenny and I are making a website about the people who live in the tents at Gallaudet. Well, really Julie is making it. I only provided the fancy pictures of tents (look at those colorful tents!)

My contribution to this protest has mostly been artisticity. What, it's TOTALLY a word. Anyway I made some posters last night too, after I made all those tents for the website. It was fun although by the end of the session you could practically see the marker fumes. It was hazardous to my health. That's what I'm willing to do for the revolution: breathe marker fumes.

May Day

My school is in an uproar.







The Board of Trustees announced the new president yesterday. Chaos ensued.



The pictures are from yesterday afternoon (thanks Julie!). But as of 8:00 this morning, the front gate is still blocked off.

I'm not really sure what I think about all of this. I've been too wrapped up in my own projects to be very involved. I still am too wrapped up in my own projects to have any kind of well-thought-out opinion. You can learn about other peoples' opinions here and here and here. And there is a Washington Post article here.

I have to finish my schoolwork.

"accessibility"

d

A Biography of Gerald Ford, in Portuguese

My newest favorite way to waste time is to read all the archives of Overheard in New York. Seriously I think I have spent about 10 hours over the last week reading that website. It's addictive and I'm obsessive so we're like a match made in heaven.

My other old standby favorite way to waste time was watching Law & Order on television, but as of this morning, we no longer have a television at my house. There was a breakup and a custody battle and the loser (in an extremely superficial sense, unrelated to actual human feelings, since I wasn't one of the breaking up parties) was me. Me and my evenings of watching Law & Order. Adieu, Detective Vincent D'Onofrio! I'll miss you!

Since I couldn't watch any crappy dramedies this evening, instead I started watching Issue # 1 of Wholphin, which is some kind of highbrow arty DVD publication from those guys at McSweeney's. It came free when I bought a copy of the Believer, which is their literary review magazine publication that I LOVE.

Anyway I am sad and disappointed by the DVD, because although it is full of what look like fine performances by people I admire (Miranda July! Spike Jonze! David Byrne!), none of it is captioned. I still watched part of it and I'll probably watch the rest at some point, because the visual element is not to be sneezed at. But there's a bunch of stories and people talking and I'm sure it would all be much more enthralling if I knew what they were saying.

I wasn't really expecting captions, because McSweeney's included a DVD with issue 11 of their quarterly. And on that DVD, there are captions, but mostly they are not in English. And none of them are captions of what is happening on the DVD. The notes in the back of the book say this:

*Subtitles available; drawn from The History of the Goths and Visigoths in German and Portuguese.
**Subtitles available; drawn from A Biography of Gerald Ford, in Portuguese.
U.S.S. Indicates that the author is in the Navy, and thus the reading is audio-only.
***Subtitles available; drawn from Spenser's The Faerie Queene; in Spanish.
+Subtitles available; drawn from the Book of Genesis.

I do see the humor in this, and I am a great appreciator of absurdity and nonsense and hilarious jokes. However, if you are deaf, watching this DVD (which is a "documentary" of the making of the issue of the quarterly literary journal) is tedious and annoying with no subtitles, and it doesn't become any less so if you turn the Portuguese Gerald Ford Biography subtitles on.

The "English Subtitles" option on DVDs is not because the people who make DVDs are stupid, it's because some people can't hear the spoken English.

The McSweeney's DVD may be tedious and annoying even when you can understand it. I'm sure some people, at least, think so. Sadly, I have no way to judge either the documentary or the newer Wholphin issue on its own merits. Which is too bad for the McSweeney's guys, because I really like almost everything those McSweeney's guys come up with. I buy their books and their magazines and their t-shirts and their bookplates. And I would probably like and buy and say nice things to my friends about their DVDs, too, if they hadn't decided that accessibility was too banal to be included.

you don't LOOK stupid

On Tuesday I went to see Noam Chomsky talk about language origins at Georgetown. At several points during the talk he mentioned ASL and directed everyone's attention to the interpreter and/or the "signers" in the audience.

That was fine; he was open and respectful and there was no problem. Sadly (in many ways), not everyone is Noam Chomsky. As I was making my way down the stairs after the lecture ended, I happened to be immediately behind one of the interpreters. Some boy came up and started asking the interpreter something. The interpreter turned around and (I guess) recognized me. "Are you deaf?" he asked. "yes" I said. Then we all started interviewing myself about if my internal monologue is in ASL or English.

That part was tedious and annoying but this is the best part: at the end of the conversation when I was trying to look like I had somewhere to go, the boy said this: "It's always been a dream of mine to learn to do sign language."

That's quite a dream, there, buddy. Keep your feet on the ground!

People say some weird things when they are confronted by deafness for the first time.

My main favorites are:
-Oh, I'm so sorry.
-Oh, that's great!!!!
-No, you're not.
-You don't look deaf
-When I was in 2nd grade 20 years ago there was a kid in my class with a hearing aid. We weren't really friends though. But he was cool!

One of my friends was once given a wheelchair during check-in at the airport. She doesn't use one. Several other friends have been given Braille menus or taken by the elbow and guided across the room. Or told (loudly) that they would for sure be going to Heaven, and in Heaven everyone can hear.

I understand that people are not familiar with disability in general in our culture, and with deafness in particular, and that people are just trying to be nice, and that they mean well, and they probably are actually really great people deep down, just like me.

I don't really care. Think, just a LITTLE bit, before you talk. That's all I'm asking.