Pulling a few thoughts together today. Last night I went with a friend of mine to a coffee shop to meet up with other Deaf and signing people. Both of us are basically rank beginners with ASL although we’re both pretty quick linguistically. I had the most amazing and fun evening, and [...]

Definite food for thought here. What struck me about this video was yet another way in which people equate spoken language with intelligence. Just note: the first three minutes of this video has only background sounds: I believe it’s the water running, some humming, that sort of thing. After that, she uses [...]

Nothing new, of course — many people have pointed out similar things. But I keep coming back to the whole question of deaf education and how it’s gotten so screwed over by the ADA.
I mean, when the ADA came out I thought it was great. Not perfect, nothing ever is. But in [...]

Over at Mike Schmidt’s Oh I See blog, he’s got a great vlog called From Solitaire to Poker. Go take a look if you haven’t already. I very much enjoyed watching it and picked up a couple of new words as well!

Wow! Go read this!
I thought this was a very well laid out overview. In particular, he addresses the inherent problems behind the whole definition of Deaf Culture — problems that are readily apparent to me as an outsider but a yes-I-am-deaf solitaire. I do have some quibbles; at one point he says:
The [...]

Came across this post and this one. How so very true. I was in gymnastics in high school. I loved it, was pretty good at it, but the way I dealt with bus rides? I was the champion french-braider, and would do most people’s hair during the ride so I could [...]

I was talking with a friend the other day and I happened to mention how I didn’t care for most sound outside of people’s voices and he said, birds chirping in the morning
OK, let’s take a beautiful morning. You’ve got the sun peeking up, maybe through some clouds but either way the [...]

(optional: jump to notes on captioning or start reading here)
What I want to do with this post is to put together some background on myself and some of my thoughts on these things. I don’t want to feel like I’m continually harping on certain subjects and such, but I find that people interpret my [...]

[Please note that I supported the protesters at Gallaudet]
Some random thoughts tossed out there for the more militant of Deaf folk…
Let’s examine the notion of “safe spaces” What is a safe space? Some place where you can air your concerns or talk about issues without fear of criticisms or reprisals for those very [...]

OK, this is fucking hilarious:
Defining who is “deaf enough” always gives me chest pain. For one thing, that’s a bludgeon the Deaf Culture uses to beat many deafened people with. Whether they intend to leave deafened people bleeding on the sidewalk outside the deaf club (figuratively), that is a frequent emotional consequence, and I personally [...]