*whew* Who would have thought a three-day jaunt to the wilderness (and at times it feels like the deaf community is spending 40 years there!) would have generated so much bloggable material? I have a little more I want to bare in the way of personal opinions about my experiences at NAD; as always, these are my personal experiences, my opinions, and my conclusions. You may have been there at the same time, the same day, maybe even sitting next to, behind, in front of, under, or above me at the exact same moment, but you’ll have come away with a different perspective– and that’s how it should be.

Saturday night heralded a different event: the College Bowl. This biennial entertainment is something I appreciate, as a long-time Jeopardy! fan, but also as a Bowl alumni. Quite a few people were in attendance who had participated in College Bowl, and it was great to see them again, and catch up on where we were in our lives. One of the judges and several of the committee members had also participated in years past. I looked online at NAD’s website, and scanned the names of past participants. To my surprise, ever since College Bowl started nearly twenty years ago, I have known or have since met (and gotten to know) at least one person from one of the teams from each Bowl. The Tenth College Bowl at Palm Desert would be the first time I didn’t know anyone from any of the three teams (and for those of you who were keeping track with me earlier, no– my wife doesn’t know any of the twelve either, so I have absolutely no association with any of them!). In any event, I was looking forward to the evening.

After making my way as far forward as possible, with my pom-pom ready, I vicariously participated in the competition. This time, I was on the other side of the fence, and I’m glad of it. Let me tell you, the competition is nerve-wracking enough without the heat (and accompanying sweat!) of the klieg lights above, shining down on the stage. There were a few changes, but much of it was similar to when I participated. The cups were new to me, and I greatly enjoyed RJ Kidd’s constant ritual of standing or half-standing, pivoting his head from left to right, then solemnly placing the cup down in challenge.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed in the quality of the questions– some seemed way too easy to me, while others precipitated controversy. Regardless of the merits of a disputed question, if there is a problem with a question, then it probably wasn’t well-written to begin with. As someone who knows Ty Giordano, I thought the Gally team were fools for wasting time and potential points challenging the (in)formal use of his name (for what it’s worth, I talked about it with Ty afterward, and he found it hilarious) as the answer to the question about him. While the question regarding semantics was somewhat picky, I was bemused: I wish all those people, professionals, well-meaning teachers, officials, parents, and others who assert that deaf people aren’t capable of mastering English had been there to witness that particular moment. We may never be disc jockeys or air traffic controllers, but our minds, capabilities, and intellectual accomplishments are equal to any hearing person.

My biggest beef was the question about Deaf Smith. As a trained historian and amateur Deaf historian, I knew that Deaf Smith hadn’t died at the Alamo; San Jacinto sounded plausible, but I vaguely remembered in the recesses of my mind that he’d been present at the surrender of Santa Anna — that hardly sounded like he’d died on the battlefield. As soon as the answer was revealed, I knew immediately that it was wrong. I used a few precious moments checking on my Sidekick (hurrah for portable technology!), and confirmed what I suspected: Erastus “Deaf ” Smith, a hero of the war for Texas’ independence, died peacefully at a friend’s house in 1837. Armed with this knowledge, I approached the judges’ bench, and presented my information to them. They listened politely, and took my correction under advisement. Thankfully, Gallaudet pulled so far ahead that publicly acknowledging the error and adjusting the score wasn’t neccessary. But I do hope in the future the NAD considers handing the question-writing chores to someone else. For a full run-down on the Bowl, check out Jared Evans’ summary of the competition.

In the wake of the Bowl and the College Bowl reception, I meandered downstairs to the area around Starbucks and witnessed what a friend termed “the meat market”– the mostly single deaf attendees in their 20s and 30s, mingling earnestly, most with a drink in hand. Being an old married fella, I decided to head on back upstairs and grab some much needed sleep.

We had planned to leave on Sunday, but decided to attend one more workshop: JAC’s take on think tanks, titled “Deaf Think Tank Is the Now Thing!” While I was already slightly familiar with the concept, since I knew of JAC’s group in the San Francisco Bay Area (BADTT), I wanted to hear more.

Think tanks aren’t new, and as Roger Kraft pointed out during the Q&A session, think tanks’ functions have been conducted informally among deaf people for decades. But formalizing a group that will then discuss, analyze, and implement ideas and solutions to community issues and challenges is a new concept in our community. It is also an idea that could facilitate the concept of Deafhood from the personal and abstract to the applicable; by using think tanks on the local level to engage local communities, we can build up connections across the aisle to various constituencies, groups, and individuals, whether they be other deaf-oriented groups such as SHHH (now known as the Hearing Loss Association of America), local politicians, governing boards, business associations, or influential community individuals. Think tanks in a sense have already existed: chapters of state associations for the deaf could be considered think tanks of a sort (maybe not these days, but definitely in past years!), and university alumni associations have long had the potential for such formal intellectual discussions.

I’m not sure how effective think tanks will be outside of the Bay Area, or how long-lasting they will be, but this workshop and others attest to Eberwein’s comment regarding the “politics of the possible;” for too long, as JAC pointed out, we react to situations, we assess and contain the aftermath of events. It’s time for us, as individuals and as a group, to take the bull by the horns and shape our own destinies and the destiny of our community, rather than letting others define it for us. In political parlance, we need to frame the debate, not be framed.

While the workshops I attended were fantastic, and others that I heard of were interesting or went smoothly and stretched people’s minds, I’m disappointed that some of the more mundane bread-and-butter issues of the community weren’t presented, such as un/underemployment. Often we have diverse workshops, novel issues, or breakout sessions on various technological or cultural advancements, but there are still fundamental challenges that I think NAD and the community need to take on.

Originally we planned to leave Sunday afternoon, but my walking partner wanted to attend another workshop, and we both were curious about the relatively impromptu FSSA rally in the late afternoon, outside the exhibit hall. The rally was a curious undertaking; in itself, it was nothing more than a “feel-good” moment, replete with chants, brief speeches, and ASL poetry. For those of us who were unable to attend the FSSA workshop, whether due to arriving afterwards (plenty of attendees in the LA area and other regions of Southern California had to work Friday, and arrived late Friday eve or early Saturday morning), or attending the Deafhood session (again, poor planning on the scheduler’s part!), or other reasons, all we got was essentially a pep rally.

The real flashpoint were the circles of concerned individuals who huddled afterwards, discussing the protest and its current state of affairs in depth, bringing each other up to date, conversing about who did what and who said what when, and comparing different ideas for how to proceed. I missed Friday morning’s session, but for me, this was the high point of any FSSA/Gallaudet-related gathering or discussion. From time to time, people gathered here and there, commenting on the appearance of Jane Fernandes, or I. King Jordan, the recent Gallaudet communiques, various personalities (especially the number of bloggers present at the conference and their involvement or lack thereof thus far). I participated in my fair share of conversations on the subject, but the overall spirit I felt was one of a community trying to move beyond the controversy, trying to separate the divisions at Gallaudet from the future of the community. This is a process that can and must happen. Regardless of what happens later this summer or in the fall, we must move on.

How successful the message of Deafhood, and the various ideas and concepts presented in Palm Desert are will be determined in the year to come, and the year after that. By 2008, when we gather once again in New Orleans, it will be interesting to see whether this conference marked a sea change, or if it was just another step in the ongoing growth and development in our community.

For those of you joining me via the NAD’s link, welcome. I know my cover’s blown, but c’est la vie. Enjoy, anyway.

Let’s see… I left off my thoughts at the Friday evening entertainment, hosted by JAC and CJ. That night I perused the program book to see what workshops or events I wanted to go to the next day. I know conference planning is never exact, but I regret that I had no way of knowing which workshops were going to be held when, and that I (along with tons of others, I’m sure!) was forced to schedule my trip far in advance. As a veteran of several history conferences, among other gatherings, I’m used to having a program book or schedule sent to me along with registration. It’s too bad this didn’t happen with NAD. Fortunately, I was able to attend the second half of the Deafhood workshops.

A caveat before I continue: I haven’t yet read Paddy Ladd’s Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood. Because of this, I’ve largely avoided the discussions of Deafhood in various venues, and confined my comments to fairly broad opinions based on my own personal experiences. I now have the book, and I’m in the process of reading it. I may change my opinion as I go along, and I certainly will be better able to understand and discuss the concept when I’m done.

That said, I was impressed by Genie Gertz’s presentation. Genie’s main message was that linguistic, cultural, and audiological differences can and should be stripped away– that underneath, we are all deaf. The differences that we have are dimensions of our experience as deaf people, but at heart, we share the common experience of being deaf. She explained that Deafhood was a process, and one that repeated itself as a cycle throughout our lives. This is true for all parts of our lives, really– we all go through different types of cycles in our lives, as we learn, grow, mature, and start all over again. For someone who is born deaf or someone who has recently become deaf, they will experience their deafness individually, and often collectively, but there will always be examples of new experiences, new challenges, new coping mechanisms, new reactions and proactive behaviors. Nothing is ever the same.

It’s a rather simple concept, and in a sense, not even new, but it’s a new paradigm, a new way of thinking, that I think is important to each of us. Most, if not all, of us have accepted that we are deaf– whether this happened almost innately due to being deaf from birth, or as part of a longer, more difficult adjustment as children, teens, or adults, we have come to terms with our deafness. There have been quite a few books published on this, from David Wright’s Deafness to Henry Kisor’s What’s That Pig Outdoors?: A Memoir of Deafness, to treatises on deaf identity such as Leo Jacobs’ A Deaf Adult Speaks Out. Most books that discuss deaf education, deaf identity, and just plain being deaf are and were written by medical and audiological professionals, parents of or children of deaf children/adults, and others who are directly or peripherally involved with deafness. There have been quite a few memoirs, but their focus has been on unusual journeys or aspects of people’s lives; for example, Frances Parsons’ I Didn’t Hear the Dragon Roar, which focuses primarily on her travels through China and with less emphasis on the development of her identity as a deaf woman. While essentially a biography, John Man’s The Survival of Jan Little is far more memorable for its tale of a harrowing experience homesteading in the Amazon than it is a reflection of being deaf-blind. We’re starting to see books and first-person narratives about the deaf experience that explore identity from an overall perspective. I especially enjoyed Mark Drolsbaugh’s Deaf Again — his experiences encompass a wide range of the deaf experience, and speaks of common experiences that we’ve all had, regardless of our educational bona fides and choice/use of language.

With external audiences writing about and defining deaf people as deaf, it’s difficult sometimes to find common grounds. It’s even more difficult when you have such variety within the entire deaf and hard-of-hearing population. Even with the many people who came up during the Q&A sessions after Gertz’s presentation, and later, during David Eberwein’s session on the politics of Deafhood, and outed themselves as products of mainstreaming, the audience at NAD by and large were largely white, middle-class, fairly well-educated, and for the most part, could afford to travel in the summer to a conference in a man-made oasis in the middle of the desert. The audience also used ASL or other signed languages. Despite NAD’s inclusive offering of captions, I doubt that there were that many people there who really needed it (and if they did, woe to them– “deaf” came out as “teaf;” Eberwein’s discussion of the parallels with AIDS and acceptance within the larger community was captioned as oralism until the interpreter finally corrected the mistake; and heterodoxy came out as HeteroDo XY– yes, I’m aware heteros do stuff that contributes to the mating of X and Y, but somehow I think the speaker wasn’t exactly examining sexual practices). (For a somewhat more detailed summary of Eberwein’s presentation, see Jared Evans’ account that he wrote for the NAD.)

So while I thought Gertz did a wonderful job, and Eberwein’s pronouncement that we need to think in terms of “politics of the possible,” that at this point, the discussion is geared both to those already in the know, so to speak, and towards those of us of a certain class and educational background. What *is* important is that everyone, hopefully, will return home and continue the discussion with their friends, neighbors, and co-workers who couldn’t attend, and that this conversation (and it needs to be a conversation!) filters down, out, and across. As I and others have noted elsewhere, we each need to shoulder the responsibility for examining our own identity, and then helping the community to find its identity– an identity that needs to be open and welcoming, whether dealing with class, race, sex, or other variables. Eventually we need to reach out to other populations (and they need to reach out to us!) on issues and aspects in common: our childhoods (regardless of whether you used sign, cuing, voice, etc., there are experiences we share– feelings of being left out, of not fully understanding conversations or situations, of having to struggle to make ourselves heard, etc.), our adult lives, our needs, our desire for equal access, and areas where we can and need to fight together.

I’m not just talking about captioning advocacy, either. I’ve done plenty of that, and that’s a common and obvious area for cooperation. I’m talking about employment issues, access to education, telecommunications, and tons of other aspects of our daily lives. NAD is already working with other groups on these issues, but these group efforts need to be better publicized. Regardless of whether we consider ourselves culturally deaf or not, we need to support efforts to reach across the aisle.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that we will have a kumbaya moment, that all deaf people will be as one. There are still sharp differences, especially where education is concerned. But even within such broad gulfs, there are and can be points of overlapping, of likeminded goals. For example, pushing for a mandate that all infants be given hearing tests. Not all states require this at this point, and I can’t see where anyone would disagree on asking that this be implemented.

It’s also going to be hard work; no one has said the process is going to happen overnight. But it is important for us to let go of the grudges we bear from the past; it’s important for us to reinforce a sense of open-mindedness and acceptance in our youth. It’s important to remember that for most of us, we didn’t have a choice as to where we were educated or how we were brought up.

This last point is very important, and I think the success of this nascent movement is how it will be viewed, discussed, and disseminated a year from now, not just this past week and the next few weeks. It will be quite important this fall, as Gallaudet welcomes students for the fall semester, and the FSSA movement either strengthens or falters, wins or loses its battle. While Gallaudet is a key part of our community, it is not by itself the culturally deaf community. It is not the end-all and be-all of who we are. For most of us, it is a pleasant four- or five-year interlude (for others, slightly longer, but I digress); our lives as deaf adults continue long after graduation or departure from campus. The key to welcoming everyone to our community and recognizing them as deaf is to remember that while we may have been forced to go to an oral program or be mainstreamed by ourselves, no one forces students to attend college. Most people make that decision themselves. Regardless of the high numbers of mainstreamed and oral students enrolling at Gallaudet, they are attending Gallaudet. They are attending NTID. They are choosing large mainstreamed programs like CSUN.

When the average person has guests come to their home, they open the door, and they welcome that person in– whether for the first time or the thousandth. We do not bolt the door and refuse entry. We need to view the deaf community the same way– we open the gates, and welcome each person in as a deaf person– whether they are well into the process of Deafhood, or just beginning the journey. We don’t call them “borgs,” or insist that they stop using their voice (and this is the community’s dirty little secret– there’s far more of us that have the ability to use our voices than we care to admit– it’s not the only thing about us, it’s not the only thing that defines us; it’s simply a part of who we are, not the whole); we accept them for who they are, and in turn, they will accept us for who we are.

I could go on and on (and I think I have!), but this is what I took away from me from the workshops. In that sense alone, this edition of the NAD conference has left me with much to think about.

Normally, I don’t have the money or ability to attend the NAD convention; I had only been once, in 1994 at Knoxville, and only then because I was a direct participant. I did consider the possibility of Portland in 1996, but being a poor, unemployed student at the time, I decided to take a pass. In 2002, we chose to spend our time and hard-earned cash on Deaf Way II; considering half the Deaf-World was at Deaf Way, I doubt we missed a lot– as it is, I have very fond memories of Deaf Way II (for all you wild-eyed conspiracy theorists out there, consider this: I. King Jordan helped with and was President of Gallaudet during both Deaf Way events… Make of that what you will). This time, we’re poor and unemployed, but hell– Palm Desert is just over a couple hours away. So out came our checkbook, and away we went.

First of all, spending my time in 110+ heat is not my idea of fun. But then again, sitting in a puddle in humid, sweaty New Orleans at the height of summer wouldn’t have been on the top of my to-do list either. Luckily, I spent 99.9% of my time inside, with the rare exception being those moments I stepped outside to quickly ensure my Sidekick would sputter back to life, enabling me to keep in touch with everyone else inside.

The first thing we did after checking into Le Resort was hit the exhibit room. I regret that I didn’t pay attention to every booth, because later I was told that I could find X services there, or Y product at that table. My wife raved over the Ubi Duo– if you’re curious about this, check this blog by frequent commenter McConnell out– there’s tons here about it. While I don’t think the Ubi Duo is going to be the be-all and end-all that McConnell thinks it is, it does sound like another excellent tool in the never-ending search for communication between deaf and hearing people.

I did run into a couple of old friends– one was a 1994 Knoxville companion, and I finally got to meet his wife, in addition to catching up on our lives. Another was a former housemate, and unfortunately we had all of five minutes to talk– never saw him again during the conference. Walking up and down the halls brought yet another familiar face, followed by another… I bet you regardless of all the hoopla regarding NAD, and especially this year’s edition replete with the Gallaudet saga, that at heart this is what it all comes down to– we deaf pay to socialize. *grin*

The TDI booth afforded me the opportunity to be handed some papers on emergency measures regarding communications equipment– some of it is quite useful to know. Other booths had the usual information on colleges, social services, and telecommunications. Despite knowing that T-Mobile had just released the SKIII, I somehow never arrived at their booth to ask if I could test it out.

One unique booth was Clerc Tea, run by MSSD alumni and current Gallaudet student Branic Keltz. This company, founded within the past year, sells three different kinds of tea and tea accessories. The web page is a bit sparse, and could use some work (perhaps a job that could be contracted out to deaf-owned and operated companies such as TaylerInfomedia). But since my dishwashing partner LOVES tea, I’m definitely keeping the website bookmarked. It’s opportunities to learn about new ventures like this that are great about such gatherings/conferences/events.

One thing that struck me as different from past conferences and conventions was the message board near the information booth. In years past, it would have been covered with messages, notes, and the like (I remember Knoxville– there was absolutely no room left on the board by the end of the first afternoon!). During this past week, I noticed a grand total of 4-5 messages over the three days I passed it, and most of what was posted there were job announcements. As a community, we’ve progressed into the information age and modern telecommunications with no problems, but age-old issues such as un- and underemployment and job networking remain with us…

The workshops I attended were great, although given the prevalence of Deafhood throughout the blogosphere the last few months, you’d think the workshop coordinators would have done two things:

1) found a much larger space for all four Deafhood workshops (to their credit, they checked with the hotel management after the first two workshops resulted in people on the floor, along the wall, at the door, and out in the hallway; but unfortunately, there was no switch to a larger venue); a friend ventured that it was not only a problem for people who wanted to see the presenters, but it raised concerns of fire safety issues.

2) we need a mea culpa from whomever scheduled the FSSA workshop and the first Deafhood presentation at the exact same time. Given the recent fireworks at Gallaudet, it was a given the FSSA workshop was going to be heavily attended. The same was true for the Deafhood series (I attended the last two, and the room was *packed* both times). A lot of people I know wanted to attend both, and had to be forced to choose. Let’s hope the next conference brings a more evenly distributed schedule. Naturally, there will always be workshops that are scheduled at the same time– you can’t avoid that– but the top two issues of the month/year/decade at the same time? Come on…

One thing I thought could be improved for those of us in the audience is the seating placement. At many conferences I’ve gone to for history associations and the like, the typical seating is in rows. But I think such seating (which was provided at NAD) isn’t as deaf friendly as it could be. I know hotel staff set up and broke down the seating/tables, but perhaps next time it could be arranged to have the rows set up diagonally, so that on the left side, the row could start at top left and slope downward to the right, and on the right side, from top right and ending sloped to the left? This would prevent us from having a permanent crick in our neck as we twist our necks to the left or right to view the speaker.

I greatly enjoyed the “Tribute to ASL and Deaf Culture” entertainment on Friday night. While some of it clearly was Deaf-World in-jokes and humor (witness Vikee Waltrip’s hilarious take on a SEE teacher’s instructions to her class on how to sign/say the Pledge of Allegiance), some of it was magical, such as TOYS, which some of us saw at previous events/gatherings (Deaf Way II, for example). All of us in the room witnessed parity with the hearing community when Sam Costner and Todd Behanna presented a commercial disguised as a classic comedy routine for the edification of the audience; like most commercials, I could have done without it. I suggest that next year, a different company allow its employees to stage a scene from “A Streetcar Named Desire,” or appropriate a Burns and Allen routine– lord knows we need some classic material in our commercials…

But for me, two highlights were Bernard Bragg and Mark Morales. Bragg was hardly in the sunset of his career as he reminded us that we are all “just deaf.” I felt this set a great tone for the unity that the community has claimed is present, but that seemed woefully lacking in the wake of the Gallaudet protests in May. Morales completely stunned me with his brilliant rendering of the historical encounter between the Spanish conquistadors and the Aztecs, narrated as an ABC story, starting from A to Z, then 1 through 10, then backwards through the numbers and alphabet. I ran into Morales the next day, and we discovered a mutual love of Latin American history. I’m hoping he’ll continue to create such brilliant syntheses of ASL and history and other subjects.

This is getting a wee bit long. I’ll continue this later, but before I quit, I just want to say that those of you who I haven’t seen for ages, those of you who shared your mealtimes with me, sat and caught up with me… I greatly enjoyed the time we had, wished we had more, and value your friendship. As for the half-European, I’m gonna see if I can book in advance some time with you for the next time you’re in the States, whether it’s a year from now or five. *grin*