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.

Oh, hello

I gotta make this quick because I'm under strict instructions from my advisor not to get distracted from working on my dissertation. He had a whole list of things I wasn't supposed to get distracted by, and I think "the internet" was on it, but I wasn't really paying attention because there was something pretty outside the window.

Speaking of writing my dissertation, hey, remember that time I was in college and I was writing my senior thesis and I accidentally listened to so much Bruce Springsteen while I was in my thesis office that I accidentally trained myself to ONLY be able to write my thesis if there was Bruce Springsteen in the background?

Seriously. It started with a 1-week period where I was all "ooh this live album is great! I'll listen to it over and over on giant headphones for a while!" And then I think it was habit, or I didn't have any other CDs in my office, or something. Anyway I kept listening to it for a few more days while I worked.

And then I got bored of Bruce Springsteen so I started listening to something else, but my brain had been Pavlov's-dog-'d into not being able to write my thesis to any soundtrack other than the Boss. I tried, and every time I tried, I didn't get anything accomplished. When I switched back to Live 1975-1985 (Disc 1) I would churn out lots of pages of beautiful ideas about Hildegard von Bingen and her sources of authority.

Man, by the end of that spring, I HATED Bruce Springsteen and his stupid E Street Band. I did graduate though.*

The point of this story is that I might have accidentally trained my brain again to demand only old school Billy Joel. Specifically, mainly, "The Longest Time" and "You May Be Right". I'm trying to branch out but it's hard work, and I'm worried that fooling around with my background music might count as being distracted.

Another thing that might count as being distracted is all the daydreaming/internet browsing I am doing about Bluetooth hearing aids. They are so shiny! If only I had $4,000. You know how I could get $4,000? If I had a real job. You know how I could get a real job? If I finished my stupid dissertation. So, back to that. See you around!



*My thesis advisor also mentioned to me, at one point, that I should try not to "get distracted by shiny things". I don't know why everyone thinks I'm so flaky, I totally know how to finish

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!

Feedback

I spent the morning in a VL2 meeting. The setup was: the director standing with his presentation projected onto a screen, and then everyone else sitting at a bunch of tables arranged in a U shape. The interpreters were at the bottom of the U (opposite the director) with the hearing people bunched around them, and the deaf people at the ends of the U.

The room we were meeting in was not designed well for discussion in any modality, which made it interesting. There were stained glass windows and skylights and all kind of distracting lights and shadows going on on peoples' hands and faces. But also the acoustics seemed to be really bad, because none of the hearing people could hear any of the other hearing people talk unless they leaned way in right next to the speaker.

I think we're moving downstairs after this week.

Anyway meetings and presentations and such always make me hyper-self-conscious about whether or not I am doing feedback (backchanneling, to you linguistics types) correctly. Usually I am not. Interpreters are always coming up to me afterwards to find out what they did wrong or if I am mad at them or something. Deaf people do a lot of nodding and smiling and eyebrow raising when they're listening to other people. (Hearing people say "mhm, mhm" to accomplish the same thing, but I know how to do that right, more or less.)

Lindsay and I were talking about this last semester, because we were both taking consortium classes at Georgetown and it was weird. Normally, all of our academic discussions are either in ASL or on paper; I'm strangely unused to discussing linguistics in spoken English. Lindsay agreed with me about being used to talking about something in one langauge versus another, but she also said just the dynamic of what you are supposed to do as a lecture-goer was startling: she noticed after the first few classes that the professor seemed to be making eye contact with Lindsay way more than anyone else. She was nervous about why (do I have something in my teeth?!) until she realized that everyone else in the class was looking at their desk, taking notes and listening, and she was the only one who watched the professor consistently. "So I tried looking at my notes, but it felt really rude!" she said.

Our classes at Gallaudet are always conducted in ASL, and so everyone pays attention to whether or not people are looking at them. There's no point in making awesome and undeniably true arguments if your interlocutor can't see you. And also people are generally very aware of other visual competition; you have to wait for everybody to look at your powerpoint before you start talking, and when everybody rushes to write down the brilliant remark you just made, you have to give them time to look back up before starting again. In group discussions, people take turns.

For my Georgetown class, I had a CART reporter and voiced for myself, so I wasn't looking at the professor any more than anyone else, but there were a couple of other oddities I hadn't really anticipated. I had never used CART in a classroom before; usually (in my experience) a captioner is used for things like big meetings or performances or presentations, where there is little or no chance for audience participation, and for things like classes you get an interpreter. I requested CART because of the subject matter, but it was trickier than I thought it would be to have conversations with people where I would talk to them and then quick look at a computer screen when it was their turn.

It was also hard to remember if I was supposed to be talking or signing. A lot of how my subconscious decides what language/modality to use (and yours, too, I bet) is based on which one other people are using. It's automatic to respond to speech with speech or to sign with sign. Or to writing with writing. I didn't have any automatically easy choice in this setting, though (I didn't have a computer or I probably would have accidentally typed to everybody, imagining that they could somehow see my screen). Every time I wanted to make a comment or ask a question, I'd raise my hand and then panic for a second while figuring out what language to use.

Now I am back to all-ASL-all-the-time, so I only have to panic about whether I am about to say a joke that will earn dirty looks, or applause.

The other situation in which I frequently pick the wrong language is if I have been drinking a lot of beer. But that's for other reasons. The joke thing is always true.

Tangentially-related story: My brother hates regular relay and only likes video relay. This is true not because of speed or intonation or any of the normal reasons, but because with regular relay each person has to wait for the other one to say "go ahead" before talking, and, says my brother, "if you can't interrupt, how do you know who's winning?"

Grrrr...

I accidentally got into an internet fight last week (with someone I don't even know! Man, I fight with EVERYBODY these days). Here is the result:

(be careful! This funny cartoon involves unladylike language!)
d

NOTE: My roommate says he thinks it looks like the dinosaur is just throwing a violent tantrum. This is a fine interpretation, but I was intending for him to be walking along. Oh well.

I Spy

Well, my brother (among others) really did say something to Our Dear Leader. They said it in a letter format, and very politely too. Good job, Scholars!

My brother also said something directly to old GW about "having more respect for human rights", to which he apparently got no response at all.

Yesterday we (me and the brother, not me and GW) went to the Spy Museum. It was fun. Or it had its moments at least. I was really cranky because of the deathly heat, already, and then I became even crankier because of the dumbness of their "accommodations". I asked if they had captioning on their video things, to make sure they had it turned on, and instead the front desk guy gave me a little device to wear on a (very fetching) lanyard around my neck. I asked him how it worked and he was vague. "Just wear it, you'll see."

Well, I didn't see. Nothing happened. The first room where we all got shepherded in had some video and some audio going on, and when I asked the staff person THERE what was up, she seemed taken aback, and went to ask someone else. After that, we were sent into another room to watch a movie and the doors were locked behind us. Again, no captioning. I fought my way out of the theater and was told to "sit closer to the screen".

That seemed to work okay (apparently the screen needed to be able to sense my presence via the little lanyard device), although I was annoyed because it meant I was not sitting with my brother, and why didn't someone explain it ahead of time?

But after that, my proximity to the screens made no difference. And after that, there was no way out of the museum and no staff member in sight. I seriously went all the way through it to the end and back, looking for someone because maybe I am just doing something wrong with this little device item. Maybe it needs a new battery. That's fine, I will accept a replacement, I will just ask some friendly museum worker to assist me with this issue.

Or I would have, but there was NO ONE to ask. I have never seen a museum with so little supervision.

There were a LOT of videos and audio things. A few of them had transcripts hanging on nearby pegs, but not anything like all of them, and by halfway through I was so focused on being upset about access that I sort of quit paying attention anyway.

Which was too bad for me because there was a lot of good stuff to look at. WWII army jackets with cameras hidden in the buttonholes and 19th-century revolvers hidden on jeweled rings. Nice.

One especially great item, I thought, was a big ornamental decoration that a bunch of schoolchildren in the USSR presented to the US Ambassador in the days of the cold war. And it had a bug in it! Those crafty Soviet schoolchildren. I wish the Presidential Scholars would have hidden a practical joke or something in the Oval Office, just to keep old George on his toes.

Anyway, at the end of the museum I went and complained for awhile and got apologized to and was given comp tickets and a promise that next time it will be better. So we shall see. Who wants to go to the Spy Museum with me?

more science

I had a scientific birthday party, once again. It was good. There was interpretive dancing, which was in turn interpreted into English, and then again interpreted into ASL. I'm sure we all learned a lot.

Me and good old Trim Zander looked deeply into one another's souls, and were duly shocked and somewhat dismayed by what we found there.



Next: three weeks of non stop academic hilarity!

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.