By now, many of you are aware of the article in today’s Los Angeles Times, and on the front page at that. The profile of Shawn McDonald (and by extension, a profile of his school), one of the team captains of California School for the Deaf, Riverside’s football squad, has already been commented on by Ridor and twice by Jamie Berke (here and here). I first became aware of the article when I received a page from a friend of mine who also subscribes to the Times. After my Sunday breakfast, I settled down with the paper, and of course, since it was on the front page, the article was one of the first things I read.

So what’s my verdict? Well, I’m somewhere between Ricky and Jamie (who seem to be angling for a third edition of their self-proclaimed “Great Blogger War”– popcorn, anyone?). While I agree with Ridor that the publicity is good for CSDR, and the article as a whole was fine, I agree with Jamie that parts of it threatened to overshadow the overall thrust of the article.

I saw it first and foremost as a profile of McDonald and his life, but of course, when it comes to deafness and such, there’s never any such thing. Unfortunately, the following phrases and paragraphs jumped out at me:

“‘CaaahhhIIIIhuuuuppuuu?’ he said, praying that the customers would understand: Can I help you?”

“…his new deaf friends highlighted their feelings by contorting their faces and making exaggerated, mime-like motions with their bodies.”

“Cubs coaches wanted a timeout. One of them waved, then stomped, then tried to shout. “Tieowwww! Tieowwww!” Timeout. Timeout.”

Guttural voices– words collapsed together, and people trying “to shout.” This is what we’re about? This is what deafness is reduced to– the act of speaking, or rather, trying to speak, through our vocal cords? ASL is mimelike? Signing is about “exagerrated motions?” These are the kinds of impressions you see from someone who either has had zero exposure to ASL and deafness, or has just started their first sign classes (I’ve taught ASL, and a lot of beginners are so entranced with the “beauty” and the “picture-like” qualities; it doesn’t hit them til later that it’s a language, and as such, deserves far more respect than they’re according it.).

Yes, I know the article as a whole didn’t focus on speech training or the lack thereof- but it might just as well have been. Instead of talking about how a team that is small compared with their opponents (and this is not unusual– there are small-town schools across the nation that have a limited number of players, or struggle to maintain a full roster, or don’t even have sports teams because they don’t have enough interested or capable players) is able to maintain a full schedule and compete, or about how deaf players compensate for being unable to hear plays or adjust for play on the field (gee, the huddle was supposed to have originated at Gallaudet– you’d think perhaps someone would have pointed this out to the author of this piece? Gallaudet, for that matter, has had a few winning seasons in its history, including beating teams such as Georgetown.), or about a player (McDonald) maturing and growing in the face of personal and familial adversity (which I believe was the author’s main intent in telling this story), the average hearing reader is going to come away thinking of deaf people as “the other.”

While I disagree with Jamie that the author shouldn’t have highlighted certain facts about the future students face (the sad fact is a number of students at Riverside and other schools will enter the blue-collar workforce or be chronically unemployed), I do think the author should have balanced this piece with more information about what being deaf is like for others– while we can’t hide the sad truths about life after graduation, we can certainly point out that there are plenty of places, from inner-city schools to poorly supplied rural schoolhouses, where students face a bleak future. There certainly was room to point out that for every person that faces an uncertain future, there’s another that will go to college and achieve success, whether that means returning to the schools to teach (John Castrese and Keith Adams didn’t just appear out of nowhere) or working with hearing people in all kinds of businesses and companies. This parallels the hearing experience to a degree.

“Could he ever buy a house?” There’s plenty of people here in L.A. alone whose ears work just fine who are asking exactly the same question. This is where the author failed– because the reality of being deaf, while at times frustrating and potentially bleak, is just as much the same reality the average person in this country faces.

So while I thought it was a nice piece in some ways, in other ways I think the author needs a crash course not just in writing on a piece of paper or knowing how to use an interpreter, but in what the reality of being deaf is. It isn’t about “guttural shouts” and English being a foreign language, it’s about the fact that somewhere out there is a hearing equivalent to Shawn– a football player who is hearing who struggles with school and life, who comes from a family with economic problems, who faces a future full of questions. How do we make life better for everyone, hearing or deaf? How can the hearing public be best educated about what life as a deaf person is like? How can someone reading this article best appreciate that the deaf person they meet is someone they can relate to, not someone they can make fun of or pity?

This is where I agree with Jamie: first impressions count, and for readers of today’s article who have yet to meet a deaf person, is this the first impression we want to give them?

What is the largest cell in the human body? What’s the smallest?

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Sunday is my time, and has been for years. A nice Sunday breakfast is always complemented by the Sunday paper. I may work or play afterwards (or blank out on the fact that the next day is Monday, and consequently do absolutely nothing), but a nice “special” breakfast (eggs and bacon, or waffles, or pancakes, or french toast, or whatever…) followed by the Sunday edition is a must.

This was true even when I was growing up– my parents would fix a nice breakfast, and then we’d all read the papers together (or fight over it, especially as I aged and gained siblings. Having dibs on the comics section is one of life’s greater struggles, it seems). These relaxing Sundays are part of my earlier memories.

When I was growing up, we got the San Francisco Chronicle. I can remember sort of looking at the headlines, or having an important story explained to me (I still remember my parents telling me who Patty Hearst was, why they were upset whenever there was mention of Vietnam, and why Watergate was important). But from a very young age, I always enjoyed the comics. There were two places in the paper I could find comics: the first was in the all-important, all-color, all-coveted comics section. Here I would start with “Bringing Up Father,” and then enjoy “Blondie,” “Dick Tracy,” “Peanuts,” and a host of other well-known strips, as well as comics that have either dwindled in circulation over the years or passed into the great Comic Strip Heaven, from “Miss Peach” to “Boner’s Ark” to “Alley Oop.”

The second place I could find cartoons were the editorial cartoons, which were ensconced for decades in the Chronicle’s Sunday Punch section. Today’s Chron is different from the grand old paper of yore, but the Punch was the “blue” section (as opposed to the Datebook’s “pink” section (Datebook was the arts section, where movies, theater, art, and other like aspects of the arts hung out on Sundays)). Sunday Punch in its prime was the Op-Ed page of all Op-Ed pages, and not only contained the editorial cartoon(s), the letters to the editor, the Chron’s own editorial, but also some of the most interesting columnists, from Art Hoppe to Stan Delaplane to the oft-imitated but never equalled Herb Caen, of three-dot journalism fame. Sunday Punch also had a column by a guy named L.M. Boyd, called Grab Bag. It was here that I learned the kinds of facts that not only made me go “hmm,” but primed me to be a contender for world armchair champion of “Jeopardy!” in my adult years. It was also an amusing column that broke the solemnity of the various op-ed pieces on weighty issues such as war, poverty, housing, politics, and other topical issues.

Well, an era has definitely ended (although in my opinion, it ended a while ago): L.M. Boyd just died, at 79 (Grab Bag itself died a while back). Delaplane, Hoppe, and Caen had already passed from the scene, and the Sunday Punch is no longer the Sunday Punch I knew. I’m now entertained by the Los Angeles Times, but like many other papers that I’ve perused over the years, it doesn’t have the same cachet as the newspapers of old. The comics sections has changed over the years, and with the exception of Bill Watterson’s rebellion against the incredible shrinking strip, resembles nothing like the comics I fell in love with as a child. While newspapers as a whole were never wholly free of partisanship, there definitely was a golden age of journalism, and I count myself fortunate to have witnessed the tail end of it. Today, newspapers are not owned locally as much as they are by corporate entities, bent on reaping whatever profit is available, and ignoring what a newspaper is all about. Someday I’d love to see a newspaper bring back comics on the scale that they used to be, hire columnists of the caliber of Caen and his contemporaries, keep on staff reporters that do more than just act as stenographers, support editors who will uphold standards, and support their home communities. It may be a pipe dream, but one can always wish.

In the meantime, I can thank the Chronicle and other newspapers for entertaining and educating me– it was through newspapers that I strengthened my abilities to read and reason, it was through newspapers that I developed my love of comics and art, and it was through newspapers that I learned bits and pieces of trivia. Adieu, L.M. Boyd– the Sunday paper was a bit more fun because of you.

Oh, and the largest cell? It’s the female egg, while the smallest cell is the male sperm– a fact Boyd shared with me and millions of others.

One of the great things about books is what I learn from them. Today’s Book Club reading selection was an example of that. We gathered at Jaipur on Pico for a wonderful repast of Indian fare and a discussion of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake. Even though I finished the book long before we met, it certainly didn’t help, because within the exploration of an Indian-American family from the immigrant parents to their American-born (and Americanized) children were names and descriptions of Indian dishes. My mouth watered for naan, samosas, chicken korma, and dhal as I read about Gogol, his family, and the Indian-American experience as interpreted through Lahiri.

One of the interesting things I learned was the tradition of naming in Bengali culture. While what is the case in Bengali areas is not true of all India, it’s still fascinating– two names are given, one being a nickname that is used on a personal basis, and one that is a formal name used for official purposes. While naming conventions vary from region to region and culture to culture, it’s interesting to think about how people assume their names, how they change their names, and how names are central to our identity. We discussed how this is true in Deaf culture as well– where we might have more than one name sign throughout our lifetime, or how nicknames would develop at school, only to be replaced later. We talked about how our ethnic traditions played a role in who we are, from Catholic traditions such as naming children after the saints to giving newborns the names of dead relatives to granting a birth name that is later replaced by an adult name (as many Native American cultures did).

The book was a great way to segue into a conversation about immigration and what it means to be American, leading us to examine both our recent histories within our lives to the history of the United States, and how the American identity has changed over time. While we didn’t thoroughly dissect the book by the time the last bite of rice or the last ball of gulab jamun was consumed, we still walked away with a new appreciation for a culture none of us had personally experienced, and full bellies besides.

So far we’ve ventured from Spanish tapas to junk food to a Jewish deli to an Indian meal– what’s next, in this delightful marriage of beautiful minds, great books, and delectable cuisines? Only two months (and a Montebello resident) will tell…