Deaf Sentence

My friend Sammy in Cornwall, UK knows how much I love to read, and she sent several books to me for Christmas. The very first one I grabbed hold of was Deaf Sentence, by David Lodge. Friends that know me well enough will remember that my parents were Deaf. I was intrigued by the title.

I started howling with laughter before I’d read a few pages. This is a very funny novel about what it’s like to lose your hearing as you get older. What set me off was the conversation Desmond had with his wife Winifred (Fred). She’s talking to him and he’s missing important clue words and misunderstanding her. She must repeat herself, sometimes to the point of “Oh, never mind!” It reminded me of conversations my husband and I have had! It can be hilarious and tragic at the same time.

Intertwined with Desmond’s difficulties navigating the hearing world now that he’s nearly totally deaf is a comedic side story involving a young graduate student pursuing Desmond to help her with her Ph.D. thesis. Think of Alex as a female George Santos and you can only imagine some of the complications she causes not only for Desmond but another professor she’s roped in.

Loss of hearing and the isolation it can cause is a thread throughout the book and that’s what I wanted to turn to. It’s scary to lose a sense you’ve had since babyhood. Some people do fear losing their hearing, believing then they won’t hear loved ones’ voices or music or birdsong anymore. I’m not as afraid of that because I grew up with Deaf parents. I am terrified of losing my sight.

I recommend this book to anyone. You’ll gain some insight into later age hearing loss and have a few good laughs as well.

I remember when I began learning American Sign Language at a Methodist Church for the Deaf. One of my classmates was an elderly woman named Myrtle. Myrtle was like the Desmond character in the book. She’d begun to lose her hearing gradually early on and was nearly stone deaf in her 60s. She had fine, clear speech but was isolated because she could no longer follow the conversations of family or friends in group settings. She was desperate to be able to communicate and had decided to take sign language. Sadly, I also learned this was Myrtle’s 3rd or 4th attempt. Her fingers were also twisted with rheumatoid arthritis, and it was difficult for her to form letters. Remembering the signs were beyond her. I felt sorry for her. Everyone in the class and the teacher were helpful, but she just couldn’t seem to get it down.

I mentioned earlier that some of the scenes between Desmond and Fred remind me of myself and my husband, Ted. He is mostly deaf from environmental noises. Like Myrtle, we've tried to teach him some fundamental signs but he has a hard time remembering how they're formed. His hands are also twisted with arthritis and overuse so some of the signs are difficult to make. He compensates well with his residual hearing and by making sure he faces the speaker.

Becoming deaf at a later age reminds me of the Big D, Little d designations. When you see big D Deaf, it means a person who was born deaf or became prelingually deaf. Before the advent of legislation for people with disabilities to have equal access to jobs and educations, Deaf children went to special schools. There they learned sign language from teachers and classmates. Deaf culture began in Deaf residential schools. Deaf people do not miss hearing. They are proud of themselves, their language, and their culture. American Sign Language (ASL) is now recognized as a foreign language with its own rules and syntax. It isn’t English.

Small d deaf refers to those with hearing loss but don’t identify with the Deaf community. Maybe they lost their hearing later in life, like Desmond. All their lives, they’ve only used spoken language and interacted with the hearing community. Learning to sign isn’t easy at an older age. Some deaf people were raised by hearing parents that wanted their children to assimilate easily into the speaking community. As children, they used lipreading to communicate. In the 1980s, parents willingly tried the use of cued speech, which uses a set of handshapes to help distinguish sound-alike words. In the 1990s, there was the miraculous cochlear implant and parents jumped on that technology almost with a sense of desperation.

Some deaf children become Deaf in their teens or later years. How does that happen? I worked in a school district that mainstreamed deaf and Deaf students into the hearing population once they got to middle school. A whole new world opened for deaf children and many quickly picked up ASL. At the age of 16, some of the deaf students demanded to have their individualized education plans (IEPs) changed so that they might have ASL interpreters. They began to learn about the Deaf culture from their classmates. As adults, they moved into the Deaf community, meaning they’d go to Deaf clubs and churches.

I. King Jordan was the first Deaf President of Gallaudet University. He wasn’t born Deaf. He was involved in a motorcycle accident at the age of 21 which severed the nerves in one ear and damaged them in the other. As traumatic as his loss was, he didn’t give up. He went to Gallaudet, having never met a Deaf person before and not knowing any sign language at all. Deaf people are generally very willing to help someone struggling to learn their language and he was able to move up to the point where he was considered a candidate to become President of Gallaudet University. Read more about him here.

This was much more involved than your usual book review but sometimes I just must travel where my thoughts take me. 

Becoming Aware

 

Happy Heavenly Birthday, Dr. King.

Although it’s officially celebrated tomorrow, Rev. Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. was born on this day in 1929. This Day in History provides a recounting of his involvement in and impact on the civil rights movement, beginning more than sixty years ago. Ancient history? The 1940s seemed ancient to me when I was growing up.

I was completely unaware of who Dr. King was until the day of his assassination in 1968. I was 13 years old and completely unaware of the civil rights movement and racial unrest against discriminatory practices based on the color of a person’s skin. If I looked at the newspaper, it was only to read the comics or to clip a world news article for current events day. In school, there was never any discussion of the unrest and discord in our country.

When I came downstairs, I had a few minutes before I needed to leave. I turned on the news to see if there was any other exciting world news I could report on. The coverage was all about Dr. King; that he had been assassinated. There were clips of men standing on a balcony, pointing. They were showing police where the shots had come from.

My parents were sitting at the dining room table, having coffee, and reading the paper. They didn’t watch television much because captioning for the Deaf on Line 21 was years away. They could not lipread the news or most programs because the speech was too fast for them to be able to decipher words. They got their news from the paper.  I thought they’d know who Dr. King was.  I took my time, slowly mouthing the gist of the story.

My parents’ reaction surprised me. They were happy and exclaimed, “Oh, good!”

“Why?” I wanted to know.

“He is trouble, a troublemaker.”

What did that mean? Was he a criminal? Was he doing something wrong? Their response was that he was making Black people angry and that was wrong. Their joy turned suddenly to seriousness. That means there will be trouble.

Trouble? Why?

They didn’t give me a straight answer but warned me to be careful in school. In fact, they would drive me.

That day, I became aware. All day, all we talked about in all the classes was who Dr. King was, what he’d accomplished in his short life, and the social injustices that were still going on. I had been totally unaware that life was harder for Blacks in terms of employment, housing, and everything I’d always taken for granted because I am white.

To Kill a Mockingbird made a deep impression on me. I realized that my parents were also racist, picking up patterns and bigoted ideas from their families, teachers, and friends. They were wrong. Dr. King wasn’t a troublemaker. He was a hero.

After Dr. King, discussion of racial injustice in school stopped. I went on reading, learning more awful truths I’d been totally unaware of before.

Today, I am angry that Dr. King’s inspiring words are twisted by the conservative politicians in Congress, the ones I’ve relabeled Rethugs and GQP. They are made up of many traitors who were involved in the January 6^th insurrection and coup attempt at the Capitol. Recently, The Conversation had an article in their newsletter called “How the distortion of Martin Luther King Jr. ‘s words enable more, not less, racial division within American society.” Please read the article. It explains how the conservative right wingers began sanitizing and misusing Dr. King’s quotes.

I also get a newsletter called Now This/Know This. There are so many links to follow, I thought I would just copy and paste the whole thing. I hope citing this and giving credit to the reporter will be okay:

“Reclaiming some of Martin Luther King Jr.'s most famous quotes

MLK weekend is upon us once again. In addition to most of us getting a well-deserved Monday off and time to spend with friends, family, or other pursuits, it should serve as a time to reflect on the man himself and the role we all play in forging a more just society. It’s also a time for Republicans to really, really, REALLY remind you that they apparently love Martin Luther King Jr., too. But the way they go about showing it is usually just taking his most famous quotes out of their original contexts and using them to defend preexisting conservative worldviews. From Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) co-opting Martin Luther King Jr.'s depiction of “The Other America,” to former Vice President Mike Pence inexplicably finding similarities between MLK and former President Donald Trump, there’s nothing disingenuous people love more than misusing King’s words to support their own ideas and goals. Or, as the folks at The Recount once aptly put it, “If you only listen to Republicans, MLK said exactly one thing one time.” So in honor of MLK weekend, we’re taking a look at a few of the civil rights leader’s most famous quotes and putting them back into their CORRECT context.  “I have a dream that my 4 little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” This quote is often used to promote a “post-racial” agenda, criticize affirmative action, and silence those who advocate for race to be taken into consideration while working toward a fairer and more equitable America.  The quote is taken from Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which was delivered before a crowd of more than 250,000 people on August 28, 1963, at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. That march was organized because King and his collaborators recognized the racial inequalities and injustices that persisted in society. They did not seek a “post-racial” existence; they sought equity.   “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” This is another quote that’s often used to condemn people who fight for racial justice and equity. When misused, it insinuates that those who advocate for an end to white supremacy are the real people who harbor hate, not the ones challenging it. In July 1962, King was arrested while holding a prayer vigil outside Georgia’s Albany City Hall during efforts to eradicate racial segregation and discrimination in the area. During a short stint in jail, King drafted sermons for what would become “Strength to Love,” a landmark collection of religious writings that was released in 1963. It became the first volume of its kind made available to a white audience. This quotation can be found among those sermons. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” In April 1963, King was arrested for leading civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham. On the day of his arrest, 8 white Alabama clergy members published a criticism of King’s methods of pursuing racial equality in the Birmingham News.  In response, King penned “Letter from Birmingham Jail” from his cell, denouncing white liberals and moderates who he said were “more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice,” underscoring the immediate need for racial justice. This quote comes from that 21-page-long publication. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”  Almost as if MLK knew his fate and wanted to leave his followers with words of encouragement, he spoke these words in his final Sunday sermon before his assassination. The sermon is titled “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution” and was given in the Washington National Cathedral on March 31, 1968. 4 days later, King was killed. In short, Martin Luther King Jr. had a beautiful way with words, and anyone looking to show reverence for his memory should do their homework before borrowing a quote for a cause he would have never co-signed. — Luria Freeman, NowThis Correspondent  ⭢ KnowThis

 

2023 marks the 37th year Martin Luther King Jr. Day will have been observed in the U.S. since it first gained federal recognition in 1986. The AP put together a roundup of several rallies, town halls, and other events set to be held in cities across the country in honor of the occasion. President Joe Biden will also be traveling to Atlanta this weekend to visit Ebenezer Baptist Church, MLK’s former parish. Biden will be the first sitting president to speak at Sunday service in that space, doing so on what would’ve been Dr. King’s 94th birthday.” I stand with those still dealing with inequality and justice. I am an advocate, a role I took on as a young adult. I have carried signs and marched, and I sat in support of disabled people seeking equality in all areas. I will always be an advocate.  Finally, this old gray mare is still learning. I love Dan Rather’s article called  Music of a Movement. I had no idea, and if you read all the way through, then maybe you'll learn something new too.

When did Missouri become part of Iran or the Taliban?

It's not just Missouri. This has been happening over the past year in the red states. Fascism. Control of anyone not a white male Protestant.

Focusing just on the Missouri House for a moment, there is a new dress attire just for women. I don’t think it has become the rule yet, but it was proposed that female legislators would have to make sure their arms are covered. I mean, WTAF? Women must be controlled and not allowed to make choices in dress for themselves now.  This is still the United States, right? Well, for white misogynistic men, but wait! A woman introduced this. Now my mind is truly blown.

This was the total rotten cherry on top of toxic icing on a poisonous cake called GQP Gone Wild.

Look at all the red states that have restricted or outlawed a woman’s right to choose. They were champing at the bit to do it even before the corrupt Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. I just read a heart-breaking story of a pregnant mother who, learning that her baby was going to be born without a skull, was told she could not end the pregnancy. She was sent home to endure a heart-breaking pregnancy and to bid her baby goodbye at birth because he or she would either be born dead or die within minutes.  She’s not the only one that has to endure a pregnancy with the outcome of delivering a dead or dying baby. It’s cruel and inhuman.

And what about the mothers who begin to miscarry, but it’s not completed? In these red states, doctors’ hands are tied, and they are unable to help these mothers. Many of them develop life threatening complications and the doctors are still not supposed to intervene. Inhuman. Cruel.

Then there are the women and children who are raped and are now forced to carry their rapist’s child. Nowadays, said rapist can sue for visitation. That adds insult to injury.

“It’s a man’s world.” That’s the Rethuglican point of view. We are stuck with them for the next two years.

It isn’t only women the Rethuglicans seek to oppress. It’s also children, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, non-White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestants, the elderly, and the physically/mentally challenged.

Children? They are being denied correct knowledge. They are forbidden to learn the country’s true history. This is ridiculous and pathetic: Gov. Ron DeSantis of FL had math books scoured for anything that might remotely be related to CRT. CRT isn’t taught in any public school anywhere in the country, yet Rethuglicans yell and scream about it all the time. Death Santis proudly proclaims that CRT comes to Florida to die.

Not just Florida. In Ohio, a third-grade teacher was reading Dr. Seuss' book The Sneetches to her class. Do you remember that story? The star-bellied Sneetches were elite. They got the best of everything and looked down their noses at the plain bellied Sneetches. The two groups were the same except for the stars. Plain bellied Sneetches suffered bigotry and discrimination from their star bellied brothers and sisters.

And so, the plain bellied Sneetches began to wear stars on their bellies so that they could be treated equally, with respect. Did that happen? No, the star bellied Sneetches had theirs removed and continued to ostracize the others. A gentle lesson in what racism can do.

One of the little ones figured it out. He raised his hand and when called on, saw this is how the white people were treating the Black people. This kid was astute and totally right on. If only his little mind continues to expand with exposure to books like this and classes taught with true history, not whitewashed, he would grow into an open-minded young man.

But no. There was a school district official sitting there, and now she jumped up and stopped the discussion. What was she afraid those kids would learn from an open discussion? Her excuse for stopping the discussion was because the teacher was supposed to focus on the economics in the story. Who decided economics and racism couldn’t be discussed together? I think the students of Ohio are about to be as cheated as the ones in Florida and the other red states that moved to have any discussion of slavery, Jim Crow, Japanese internment, and so many other topics removed from school curriculums.

That’s not what America’s about. Presidents from Abraham Lincoln to John Kennedy to President Joe Biden have emphasized the importance of a quality education. But the Rethuglicans would like to keep everyone stupid and swallowing their Kool-Aid. Now the GQP-Rethuglicans are running the House.

In addition to some of the most ridiculous posturing and vindictive bills they’ve been introducing (which won’t pass the Senate or President Biden and so are wasting time), they have no legislative agenda other than to force the US to the brink of defaulting. Why would they do that? They want to extort the Senate and President so that they can make massive cuts into Social Securityand Medicare.

It doesn’t matter that those dependent on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security can barely support themselves. It doesn’t matter that they want to take away money we’ve been putting into the system for years and years. It doesn’t matter that seniors already are on the verge of losing their homes because prices have gone so high, they have to decide between paying the rent or mortgage or food. The gas and electric bill or prescriptions. Once again, it’s cruel and inhuman.

I feel a heavy weight on me. Every day the news is full of just awful stories. If it’s not this, it’s about the corrupt tRump, unscathed and living the life of Riley, thumbing his nose at justice. It’s more white cops killing more innocent black men. 2023 seems to be a continuation of 2022, a year filled with GQP evil. Now I must go lie down and pull the covers over my head.

 

Why is finding a remote job so damn hard?

 

It is so hard for this disabled senior citizen to find a decent remote job.

I am sixty-eight. I should not have to look for work, but we are on fixed incomes and the prices of everything have been skyrocketing. We were just squeaking by before but now it is hard to stay afloat. And so.

I became disabled in 2002. Since then, I have done volunteer work for the Retired Senior Volunteers Program in two programs and for three or four phone banks. Does that really count for anything? I thought it did, but now it does not seem to be true.

For twenty years, I was an interpreter for the Deaf. I was also a sometime tutor of school subjects for Deaf students and of American Sign Language for beginning interpreters. To supplement my income during slow times, I worked as a market research interviewer/supervisor. I trained new hires.

Before I became a certified interpreter, I was Secretary to the Executive Director of the National Center for Law & the Deaf when it was located at Gallaudet College (now University). I would secretly voice interpret for my boss when he met with Deaf people because his receptive skills were not top notch. He did not fool all the Deaf people. One took me aside and asked why I was making coffee when I should be interpreting.

Before that, I was a unit secretary at the Maryland Rehabilitation Center. My first job was clerk typist for one of the large insurance firms in Baltimore.

You see, I have a lot of experience. I am a very proficient typist and I have worked with MS Office for years as a writer/blogger. I am empathetic and use active listening skills. I make connections with people easily.

I would be an asset to somebody, but employers do not consider me. I have more polite rejection letters from employers than I have from my story submissions.

Too long unemployed?

Too old?

Sucky resume?

There must be an employer out there that would see me as a valuable employee.