Knitting as TM?

A Little Red Hen knitted (knit? knat?) this fetching baby hat in TWO DAYS!! What's more, this blindingly speedy knitting feat was only ONE of the things LRH accomplished in those two days (not to mention blogging about it!!). Ufda! LRH seems to be a force of nature.

In any case, she is definitely individuated in the Jungian sense--not much group-think there. She said she also was pondering a remark I made in a recent post here about...oh, what? older folks vis-a-vis media attention? something like that. I probably stepped on a bunch of toes when I opined that nobody seems to cares about old people as a group, any more than they care about any other folks as a group. Maybe it's because I've been excluded from full participation in the media for so long, thanks to being deaf, that everything really wonderful has come to me from individual people--and mostly one at a time, too--and so I think everyone experiences life like that.

I don't know what the media are up to these days, but it doesn't seem good. I miss Bill Moyers every week on PBS. There's little I want to watch or read. And I'm not alone....Jamie Lee Curtis had a great essay in today's Huffington Post on not watching television.

Anyway, I'm too slow to take in more than one thing at a time. I could no more knit a hat for a small head in two days than I could fly. In fact, if I were a betting person, I'd put my dough on flying. Well, I know people can levitate. I spent an afternoon trying to take a nap in a basement bedroom while a bunch of TM practitioners met in the living room overhead to practice their meditations, or whatever. I couldn't sleep for all the banging and crashing...WHAM! THUD! At supper I asked my host wot in hey they were doing up there...seemed pretty noisy for meditating. She laughed and said they were levitating. Right. I can tell you that they did really well getting off the floor, but they needed some practice on those landings!!

Speaking of meditating, I'm wondering if knitting is an ancient forerunner of transcendental meditation--you know, sitting down and focusing on a mantra (knit one, purl two...). The only difference I can see is that they tell you to close your eyes to meditate. However, LRH and her coterie of fellow accomplished knitters can probably do that, too: Knit with their eyes closed....

Interview with Poet Chris Heuer

Several years ago, the Fall 2003 issue of World Around You (the magazine my friend Cathy conceived and managed for deaf teens) published a short interview I conducted with Chris Heuer, a deaf poet who teaches at Gallaudet. The World Around You website has a longer version of the interview, and I'm posting it here. I found the interview yesterday while going through a bunch of old zip disks as part of my clearout and filing before I retire. Heuer is a neat guy, and I like his poetry.

Heuer is the author of the "Man On The Street" column that appeared in the e-zine Tactile Mind Press Weekly. His poetry and short stories have appeared in No Walls of Stone, The Deaf Way II Anthology, Kaliedoscope Magazine, and in The Tactile Mind quarterlies. The Tactile Mind Press published Heuer's book, All Your Parts Intact: Poetry, in 2004. Another book, Bug: Deaf Identity and Internal Revolution, will be published in September, 2007, by Gallaudet University Press. Heuer and his wife, Amy, live in Alexandria, VA.

How and when did you become interested in writing poetry?

In the second grade, my teacher asked the class to write a story to complete the sentence “It was a dark and cloudy day….” Everyone else turned in one-page stories about rainstorms and such. I turned in eight pages (with handwriting on both sides) about mutant rat-men aliens invading the Earth; my friend Terry and I had to fight them off with bows and arrows. That was the first time I ever got a writing rush. Poetry just followed naturally from there.

Has any poet, living or dead, inspired you particularly? What poems do you know by heart? What poems do you like to read?

I really liked the confessional poets. Anne Sexton was a big influence on me. Sylvia Plath was another. I had a lot of influences—Charles Bukowski, Henry Rollins, Stan Rice. “Fire And Ice” (by Robert Frost) is a poem I hope someone reads at my funeral. “Their Share” by Stan Rice reminds me of trying to get through my teenage years. “Which Part Was Me And Which Part Was You” by Orson Scott Card is a poem my wife and I included in our wedding ceremony.

There are lots of ways to write and lots of advice on writing, but tell us….when do you do your writing? Do you write every day? Do you keep a journal? If so, do you use anything from your journal in your poems?

I’m a natural night guy, so I do most of my actual sitting-in-front-of-the-computer-and-pounding-away writing at night. There’s more to it than that, though. Thinking is a part of writing. I am in the constant process of noticing things and interpreting them in my own “voice.” I keep a journal for that reason, but I don’t try to be poetic there. Mostly my journal functions as a diary—it’s straight reporting, things that happened to me, things that are happening in the world. The poetry grows out of that later.

Do you think people have to be in love or miserable to write a poem?

I think a lot of poetry is naturally emotional whether it tries to be or not. I think being depressed or angry is really just a natural reaction to the influences of real life events. You can’t always see those influences, though, so you don’t always know why you’re depressed or angry. Poetry can help you figure that out. A poem doesn’t have to be clear in any sense of the word, but you can connect a lot of loose symbols and images in a poem and end up with a much clearer explanation of why you feel the way you feel than you ever would through straight reporting in a journal. Poetry picks up things hiding in your mind.

What do you think makes a good poem?

For the poet? Honesty. But here’s a twist: A poem can be about a lot more than it seems to be on the surface. Images stand for many things. I remember once reading Anne Rice’s description of a tree. If you look at a tree in one way, Rice said, it’s “a beautiful thing, turning the landscape green. Look at it another way and it’s a root-system monster gobbling up all the water, tyrannically blocking out the sunlight for smaller, frailer flowers.” When you read poetry, you have to decide consciously to suspend judgment and let the poet really speak to you. If you let the emotions as well as the images get through your defenses so you can feel the poet’s frustration or contentment, you’ll walk away from the poem having been opened to something you never saw before. It changes you, and I think that kind of change is a good thing and much needed.

How do you handle sign vs. the written word in your poems?

In my poetry class at Gallaudet, I have my students perform their written poetry in ASL. Sometimes what they don’t capture on the page comes out in the signs, and vice-versa. I also know of an editor, John Lee Clark of the Tactile Mind Press, who actively hunts for hidden ASL signs in English poetry. He thinks such poetry is a very important cultural expression of our art, and I agree with the man wholeheartedly. The deaf community needs poets, and not just ASL poets, either—English language poets. There are so many things waiting to be captured out there, things that deaf teenagers, children, young and old adults alike are all going through. It would be so wonderful to share those things, to have someone pick up your book of poems and realize “Hey, she felt the same way! Wow! I’m not alone in this!” That’s what I strive to do, with love, with anger, with grief, with calmness. I try to share who I am. That’s what I hope to see in poetry every time I pick up a book by a new deaf writer. And that’s starting to happen a lot these days—many voices struggling to really be heard, to really change things! It’s a wonderful, exciting thing! Wouldn’t it be great to be a part of that?

Obviously, people think it’s possible to teach someone how to write a poem, but do you think it’s possible to teach someone how to be a poet?

You can only teach yourself to be a poet—teaching yourself to recognize what is truly you as opposed to what everyone else wants you to be. When you can say, “This is me” when writing about everything from discrimination to a toothbrush to an oily pigeon outside of Union Station, you’re a poet. I can’t teach you how to do that—nobody can. You have to look deep into yourself and pierce all the beliefs that you protect yourself with. Now turn that gaze on the world and tell me what you see. That’s a poem waiting to be written.

Have you taken any classes in writing poetry?

I did—all through college. It was a great time. We had poetry readings in coffee shops, dance halls—you name it. People would come from thirty miles away to hear us read. The other students in the class were SO brutally critical! My God! But it was wonderful for me, because I was awakened from my own narrow-mindedness to those places where I was not being honest and where I was hiding behind other people’s perceptions. I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything.

Have you ever taken a workshop in writing poetry? What do you think of the workshop format itself?

Workshops help—definitely! I think the best teachers get out of the way and just become group participants. In my own class (which follows a workshop format), I have everyone sign up to present a poem. They make fifteen copies, hand those copies out to fifteen students, and then perform the poem. The class then critiques the poem and comments on the performance. This is how the poet learns what is not clear, what is a cliché, what is good, and so on. I give my own critiques right along with all of my students and beyond that try to let the class find its own way. I give brief explanations of what meter is, what different forms poetry can take, and I teach them games that help them to come up with metaphors and similes and images. The point is to have a great time and to learn to see in new ways. I really love those kinds of workshops.

You’ve mentioned several “ confessional" poets—people who write about disturbing things. It’s not as if these poets are not popular. They are. Why?

In modern life, everything is sanitized and sterilized. You aren't allowed to see deathly sick people wandering around, or even very, very old people. There is an institution for everything—including deafness, when you think about it. What everyone suspects and fears is true is hidden behind an institutional wall. In a way that's good. Order is kept. Society functions. But in a way it's bad, too, because a very large natural component of healing emotionally and moving on is facing something and accepting it. Since nobody can face it, nobody can accept it. The appeal of confessional poetry for me is that it rips down these society-made barriers. A lot of people keep saying, "This country/world is going to the dogs." They remember the “good old days.” The truth is, the world has always been like this.

Another appeal of confessional poetry is just knowing there's someone else out there who feels the same way you do, who sees the same way you do, who has enough spirit and bravery to say, "...what you think is going on is actually what is going on." I think reading this kind of poetry can be a recovery program, a giant pat on the shoulder—“There, there.” It's comforting. It's validating. It makes you feel less alone.

Is there another side of that argument?

Joseph Campbell argued that we have institutions and rituals and so forth—"coming of age" events like graduation, confirmation, marriage, etc.—to serve as a yardstick for people to measure their progress by. You need that yardstick to keep from being overwhelmed in a world of what would otherwise be senseless data, unconnected information. We coordinate and correlate that information. Marriage is associated with "being at least 18," and not being 13 (in the way it was back in the 1800s). A work day is considered 8 hours, and not 18 or 20 the way it was back in 1910 or even 1920 before labor unions. You didn't get a college degree before you graduated from high school, and you didn't buy your first house before you graduated from college. With institutions, with ritual, with coming-of-age events, we have order instead of chaos. Without that order, chaos is especially destructive.

It's strange how art and technology are often blamed for destructive behavior, when in fact I think that behavior is caused by something much deeper. People lose themselves. It's not "caused" by poetry or technology (the internet, for example) any more than it is caused by everything being swept into an institutional closet and hushed up. It is the tension between these two extremes and the lack of guides on the road between these two extremes that cause people to lose their way.

The line between order and chaos is very confusing. I have just as much trouble finding my way as anyone else, and I've made just as many mistakes. But overall the balance I've found forces me to look as deeply into myself and others as I possibly can, to really look and question which side of the line I'm on at any given moment. I think that's a good thing

Time to Retire….

I first retired in 1988, when I was 52 years old. I wanted to write for a living. Because my employer was a generous man, I had made a good salary (that I didn’t equal until ten years later!) and saved a nice little nest egg thanks to their profit-sharing program. The nest egg didn’t last long, but I found another job right away working for one of my former bosses, who had started his own company. In the meantime, I wrote and wrote some more but never sent anything in for publication. Then the first company called and asked if I’d like to come back to work—in another town. Sure!

I went there for about a year, then moved to NYC in January the next year. I had a couple of p/t jobs, then went to L.A. for a couple of months, then back to NY for one more month, then back to the Midwest—where I wondered what to do with my life. “I’ll teach deaf kids,” I thought. Back in the 1950s, the sisters had prepared me to teach high school science, so I thought I’d apply for certification to teach deaf students. Because I needed to work as well as go to school, I wrote to the on-campus publishing house, enclosed my resume, and asked if they needed any part-time workers. They called a few days later and asked if I wanted a full-time job. Sure!

In 1996, at the age of 59 going on 60, I retired again with another small nest egg and went back to NYC to concentrate one more time on writing. Because all of the classes in creative writing met late in the day, and because by this time I was too deaf to find more than a few p/t jobs, I took a morning class in anatomical drawing at the Art Students League. Every day on the subway, I sketched my fellow passengers and had a great time. In June of 1998, on what would have been my mother’s 101st birthday, I got an M.A. in creative writing. And I came back here to work as a writer/editor.

In two months, I’m going to retire again at age 70! Having retired twice and spent all the money, I’m feeling the need to figure out how to survive on FICA plus a small pension. One smart thing I did was start collecting Social Security when I was 65. That was the year they changed the rule so that you could work full time and not have anything deducted from your SS check. Because I kept earning money, my Social Security benefit kept going up! Today, it’s almost twice what it was in 2001.

Two very kind relatives have offered to take over my mortgage payment, etc., but I declined. They have enough uses for that money besides throwing it down a rat hole. It’s more fun to take care of yourself anyway, if you can possibly swing it. (You don’t feel guilty, and you don’t have to answer any nosy questions.) I don’t mind living frugally—been there. I learned long ago that a diet of rice, beans, kale, garlic, peanut butter, bread, apples, and bananas goes a long way for hardly any $$ at all. And there are LOTS of great Spanish wines (tempranillo, garnacha, rioja) for less than $10 a bottle. I don’t have a car—sold that in 1991 when I moved east.

When the real estate market recovers, I may sell my condo and move to France. Meanwhile—one of these days—farewell to the office! Time to write and paint again!!

Buy the Book 2

Glenn Greenwald wrote A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency not only to show us how and why the Bush presidency has been such a disaster but also to warn us that the forces behind Bush's presidency will still be alive even after Bush et al. are gone. We need to understand where these neocons are coming from and what we can do about it.

Some good news:
Greenwald yesterday announced that, following Jane Hamsher's campaign, A Tragic Legacy made it to #1 on Amazon's list last evening, and today is at #2. He says, in his lovely, reasoned prose:

Exactly the same thing happened with my first book, How Would a Patriot Act? -- it was ignored almost completely by establishment media outlets (not a single review, television interview, etc.), but nonetheless was pushed to the top of Amazon and the NYT Best Seller-List exclusively as a result of blogs. And other books pushed almost entirely by blogs have achieved similar success.

One can debate the true influence of blogs and whether they will continue to grow in size and influence. But what seems beyond reasonable dispute is the fact that nothing can match bloggers and their readers in terms of political interest, intensity and energy. And, most importantly, the ability of blogs to be self-sustaining is growing rapidly.

I'm assuming he's talking about the good guys who are blogging. Yaay, bloggers!!!

Midsummer's Eve, 2007

Cathy,
Barbara (L) and Yutta (R)

The little condo on Q Street was buzzing last week as Cathy and I prepared dinner for our guests, Barbara and Yutta. (John, at the last minute, stopped by to say he couldn’t make it.) Best of all, the Rain Kachina came to bless the day, which meant we dint have to haul everything out into the yard. We put Cathy’s mother’s lovely tablecloth & napkins and a vase with a dozen roses (traditional Midsummer's Eve decor in Sweden) on my coffee table, threw some cushions on the floor, and ate inside.

As often happens at such gatherings, we sat around after dinner and told how we had met each other. I met Barbara when my friend Tracy, the good rabbetzen out in L.A., went to Israel with Reb Lisa and wrote a book of herstories to while away the time. When she got back to the States, she had a whole bunch of herstories to edit. Since one of the women had been a Catholic before converting to Judaism, Tracy asked me if I would edit hers. Which I did. The woman’s story was very inspiring to me, especially at that time of my life. I’d been bouncing around from coast to coast—and into the middle and back again, too. Likewise, the woman's father had been in the Army, and they had moved so often, she went to 38 different schools before she graduated from high school. She said that in some places, she was welcomed and had plenty of friends, while in others, the other kids ignored her. When the latter happened, she would simply buckle down to her studies, go the library often, and wait for her father's next posting.

Such an attitude was a revelation to me. I'd grown up in one place, and you were either in or out. That designation pretty much has stayed with all of us, with few exceptions, for the rest of our lives. The highly popular kids back in grade school are still very popular today...they show up for every reunion where they make speeches to each other that basically say "I have always loved you guys...you are the best!" Some of us have never gone to a high school (or college) reunion. It's not that I don't love my old classmates--I do. It's that my life has changed radically many times over. It was a relief, therefore, to read about this woman and her ability to grow and adapt even as her circumstances and life changed.

Several years ago, a friend who volunteers a lot here in DC said, "I met this interesting Israeli woman in my volunteer group, and she's having brunch next Sunday. Want to come along?" I went, and after about half an hour, the Israeli woman and I realized we knew each other. It was the woman whose herstory I had edited for Tracy's book. It was Barbara!

Yutta is from Germany, also raised a Catholic, but now converted to Judaism. She and Barbara met in Israel, and she now works as a physical therapist here.

Cathy and I have been coworkers for 10 years. While still in graduate school in NYC, I came back here for a summer job. One day Cathy, a genteel Baltimorean, was sitting in her office, when she heard this distinctly Midwestern voice coming from the area of the balky Xerox machine. The voice was saying, "God damn this thing to hell!" Heh. C'est moi....

Getting Older, the Media, and other Pains in the Butt

I dunno. Women who go around complaining about being ignored by the media or about getting old (or the combination thereof) just don’t interest me very much. Considering who and what the media represent these days, I’d say having them ignore you would be quite desirable.

Actually, I’m not sure what kind of attention these women want from the media. Do they want to be taken seriously? Hello!! Nobody much takes old people as a group seriously—any more than they take any other folks as a group seriously. The most interesting woman I know, bar none, is soon to be 87 years old. She’s still working after a long creative life as a commercial photographer and now an artist. She gets plenty of attention from the media, too, because she knows how it works and she goes after their attention when she thinks it can benefit her. Media attention is not something that falls into your lap unless you’re Paris Hilton or her ilk.

When we lived in Iowa, we lived next door to two short, wiry sisters, both in their mid- to late 80s. Bertha, the youngest at 85, raised all their vegetables in a huge garden which took up their entire back yard, and Carrie put them up—by canning and freezing and pickling. (Carrie didn’t garden much because she had osteoporosis, and her bones tended to break and cause her to fall. So she stayed in and, with the support of her walker, did all the cooking.) To the back, our yard abutted Mrs. B’s. Mrs. B. was another woman in her 80s. Her whole yard was one spectacular flower garden, and she made fabulous pies, which she brought over with blessed frequency. I don’t think any of these women ever made it into the local newspaper except when they died. But they lived rich, productive, fulfilling lives, and everyone in town looked up to them.

Getting older does bring plenty of opportunities to let go of things—jobs, friends, health, wealth. You can’t take it with you, y’know. Being young and living through the polio epidemic and the loss of fathers and uncles and brothers during WWII was no freakin’ picnic, either.

Buy the Book!!

Jane Hamsher of firedoglake has a great plug for Glenn Greenwald's new book.

"Why," you say? Ms. Hamsher says

The response to his new book, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency, on the part of institutional book review organs has been complete silence. Glenn’s presence in the blog world and the progressive movement, not to mention the work he does in Salon, is invaluable. No bloviating pundit wants to be deconstructed by Glenn Greenwald and right wing pants pissers think of him as a boogeyman on the level of Osama Bin Forgotten. But if we want our own voices to be promoted, to resonate and continue to have influence, we’ve got to step up and support them.

She says "Glenn shows up for us every day. Let's show up for Glenn."

So buy the book, already!!

Midsummer's Eve's a-comin'!

(This is Rikke's birthday party in Chicago two weekends ago. Rikke knows how to have a great party...there was even a mime!)

My cochlear implant has brought lots of changes with it, and not just hearing stuff. In a tentative burst of bonhomie, I decided to have a modest party on Thursday, Midsummer's Eve--my favorite day of the year. I recruited Cathy as co-host. We invited our friends Barbara, Yutta, and John for supper. (John lives here in the other building, and his little dog Izzie guards the property. She puts Squeak (4x her size) in his place, which is AWAY from John. That all started when John gave Squeak a few goodies from Izzie's treat bag, and she did NOT like it!)

This party bidness has caused more than a little anxiety in the little condo on Q Street. Cathy is pretty good at throwing bashes several times a year, but I haven't really had any kind of a party since the Carews left North Dakota in the very early 1970s!!! Back then, Don and I served big, sloppy roast beef sandwiches and Irish coffee. I seem to recall some potato chips and dip and homemade date bars, too. Very simple. We lit a big fire in the lodge, everyone had a great time, and we moved away two weeks later. Deb and I had a couple of gatherings in Mt. Vernon. The last one was memorable mainly because one of my children, who shall be nameless, and some of her pals showed up and ate all the food!

Anyway, the menu was giving me fits. I wanted to make a fish boil, as they do every summer in places like the White Gull Inn in Fish Creek in Door County, Wisconsin, but the largest pot I have is but two gallons, and you need a 5 gallon pot to make even a small fish boil. But then, problem solved, I found these Food Network recipes online for fish escabeche, Mexican corn on the cob, and strawberries with Grand Marnier sauce. Cathy's making her great deviled eggs and homemade applesauce. No potato chips...so far.

The next hurdle was where to park everyone, but Yutta expressed a STRONG desire to eat outside in the delectable June air, so that will put us in the side yard with a card table & five chairs plus my kitchen table (which folds up) to hold the food. IF there are no thunderstorms, that is.

Plates? I think I have five big plates and enough glassware to hold our beverages plus the strawberry thing. And I have two Mexican tablecloths that belonged to my mom, and an assortment of cloth napkins, at least two of which Sally made, and the rest my cousin Pat did.

The fish escabeche is served chilled, and you can either put it on boiled new potatoes or nestle it on a green salad. Two of our guests eschew nightshades, so the spuds are out. Anyway, the escabeche is done, and the place smells heavenly. It's in the fridge now where the flavors will intensify for the next two days.

The strawberries are in the fridge, too, along with some raspberries and blueberries. And six ears of bicolored fresh corn. I hope this is the same stuff as the bicolored sweet corn they have in Iowa. It's the sweetest of all the sweet corn. [Quirk of the English language note....this is Xtreme English, y'know....in Iowa, if you live in the northern part of the state by Minnesota, you call it "corn on the cob." If you live in the southern part down near the Missouri border, you call it "roasting ears."]

We still need to get lettuce for the salad and a little grill to do the mexican corn on the cob. That's right...I'm buying a grill, unless John has one he can lend for the occasion. But maybe not.

Cathy said "We can get the flowers tomorrow." Flowers? Right, flowers. That'll means candles, too. Hmmm....I wonder where that box of sparklers is????

What Jane Eats....

I was reading Jane Goodall's wonderful book, Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating, (http://www.amazon.com/Harvest-Hope-Guide-Mindful-Eating/dp/0446533629) and I found a sidebar on pages 150-152 entitled "Jane's Diet."

Basically, she eats half a slice of toast with orange marmalade and coffee for breakfast, a boiled potato (or half a baked potato) with cheese and a green vegetable, more coffee, and "something sweet" (like two squares of a chocolate bar) for lunch, and one scrambled egg plus the other half of the toast plus a glass of red wine for supper. She also has a shot of Scotch plus a splash of water before supper. Throughout the day, she will snack on fruit, a cookie, whatever is around. Sounds good to me!!

There's much more to the book than simply Jane's personal eating habits. Her book's website (http://www.harvestforhope.com/) talks about school lunches, obesity in children, and her "Roots & Shoots" program (http://www.rootsandshoots.org) for young people. It's inspiring.

Check it out.....

so that's what it was....

although i've written thousands of words about deafness, being deaf, going deaf, getting implanted, etc., it took a visit to ronniecat's newest post on her blog (www.hearingloss.blogspot.com)* to see the words I need to describe the whole deafness meshugaas in print. to wit:

"the tinnitus, the being scattered, the forgetfulness, the inability to retain names, the overflowing sinks, the burned food, the unintentional isolation and exclusion by friends, the impact on one's marriage and family life. About the unintentional slights and hurts. The shock of becoming almost literally invisible to certain people who simply can't cope with you so don't engage or acknowledge you. About when to understand and let things go, and when to protest."

also, ronniecat, in today's above-mentioned post, said she has done peer counseling with other implantees. she's the second person to mention this kind of thing. nobody at my clinic has said anything about this. if i have a peer counselor, though, it's definitely ronniecat. she's been a tremendous support even though she lives dang near to iceland. many thanks, kid.

still the pricey little bottlecap under my scalp is humming along just fine all by itself. i'm hearing more and more everywhere i go. today on the metro i heard the two guys across from me talking. and the overhead announcements are flowing fast & thick. (jeez....do people really need to be told which stop they're at? you can figure that out from the maps all over, and from reading the signs as the cars whiz through the stations. they don't say the stop until you're already there, anyway. it might be mildly helpful if they'd say which stop is NEXT, like at farragut north, for example, "the next stop is dupont circle" or "the next stop is metro center" (depending on which way you're going). that would give you a few minutes to scrape yourself together and be ready to get off when the train stops. but quibble quibble.)

and peggy, one of these days, you're gonna get a call from me! i've been practicing, and i've had about 5 successful short phone calls now.....even using my cellphone!

*I'm reduced to using my laptop, my computer having conked out yesterday, and while it's faster, it doesn't seem to be able to let me LINK anything. maybe this laptop hasn't figured out that blogger has switched us all to google. maybe this is the old version. ver vaist??

Happy Birthday, Joe!

Today is my grandson Joe's birthday, and I didn't have time this morning to find a suitably cute picture of him as a baby to post. (Too bad, eh, Joe?) The decoration above is the great seal of Oxford University.

This particular great seal will become very familiar to him this summer, as he's been accepted into a summer school program there. He'll be taking classes in science and journalism.

Joe won the Merck Science Award this spring. His mom wrote, "...to give you an idea, out of 2700 science students in NJ, Joe was one of three who tied for second place in Biology." And he's been a wonderful writer since he wrote his "Spaceman Scott" novels at about age 8.

He hasn't lost his sweet disposition, either.

Have a wonderful birthday today, Joe....your card is in the mail.

Drink Recipe for Lazy Gardener

The Oldest Girl and I were yakking this aft about the par'lous condition of her throat. She's had this flu thing for some time now, and it still hurts to swallow. I told her the only other thing I could think of was her father's nostrum for sore throat: hot lemonade with a good slosh of bourbon.

OG said, "I hate bourbon. What about scotch?"

I knew of no medicinal drinks using scotch, but I said there must be something somewhere that uses lemon juice and scotch in the same drink. After a bit of googling, I found one on the following website:

http://www.easy-mixed-drinks.com/index.php/archives/category/mx/number/feed/

Here's the drink...I can't figure out from the website wot it's called (2nd Wester??) It sounds like it could be pretty lethal to microbes. I don't know who Josh Morgan and the boys are, but they must be wholesome young men.

12.0 oz Cola
3.0 Ice (three ice cubes?)
1.0 Lemon
2.0 Lime
4.0 oz Scotch
Directions:
Get a Mason Jar
Add Ice, Cola, Scotch
Squeeze Lemon Slice into drink and then drop into drink
Repeat with Limes
Cap Mason Jar
Shake and Enjoy
Courtesy of Josh Morgan and the Boys in 236 West

It WAS a joke....golly...but still...remind you of anyone??

**
First there was this post from a few days ago (which I accidentally deleted when trying to get "boots on the ground?" set up) (Sorry yr astute comment went with it, Ex-s!!):

Many will recall that on July 8, 1947, witnesses claimed that an unidentified object with five aliens aboard crashed onto a sheep and cattle ranch just outside Roswell, New Mexico. This is a well-known incident that many say has long been covered up by the U.S. Air Force and the federal government. However, what you may NOT know is that in the month of March 1948, exactly nine months later, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Condoleezza Rice, and Dan Quayle were all born. See what happens when aliens breed with sheep?
This information may clear up a lot of questions.

Then the ever-vigilant VC sent this:

Don't make me sic my librarian on you . . .


Subject: Tsk Tsk Re: this explains it!


You should know better than to send this to a librarian.
Setting aside the whole Area 51 premise ( I do not dispute *something*
happened).....

If conceived in March, a baby would be born in December.

Bush was born in July 46
Quayle was born Feb 47
Condoleeza Rice is my sister's age - born in 54
Rush Limbaugh is my age - born in 51
Cheney is older - born in Jan 41
Rumsfeld even older - born in 32
You can't believe anything O'Reilly says about his childhood.

Ahem..."If conceived in March, a baby would be born in December." Thankya, Jesus.

The aliens bred with the sheep in July of '47, so the offspring would be born in March of '48--if aliens mimic the gestational period of humans.

Now we don't really know wot KIND of aliens these were, how long their offspring gestate, etc.

Let's say that an alien ancestor of Bush had already landed some years ago. This can explain why in the name of all that is rational, Bush pere picked Quayle as vice president, causing the startled expression on the face of Ron Reagan, Sr.

Cheney is from Wyoming, so anything to do with sheep is possible.

Rumsfeld was born in Chicago, home of the stockyards--more sheep!

**Dutch Breeders Association of the Drentse Heideschap

Is this what they mean by "boots on the ground"?....

This arrived via e-mail last night from Chicago:

This morning I attended the opening of Eyes Wide Open, the display of combat boots representing American soldiers who have lost their lives since 2003. Because it's gotten so big, this was the last city where it will be shown in its entirety.

I didn't plan to stay past the introduction..., but the main speakers were parents of some of the troops and I just couldn't leave. They all had pictures of their sons - some childhood photos - and it was so sad. One dad talked about how for each pair of boots there was a person who was part of a family. People who should be here now but are not.



In one way or another, all of them said the reasons we were given for the war were false. One mom said this war was a choice, not a necessity, and that our government can't seem to choose to end the war. Many said that war can't create democracy. They talked about the staggering number of Iraqis including children who have been killed. One mom said that when they buried their son they made a promise to speak truth for him. She urged everyone who was listening to "speak relentlessly" to end this war, so this message is for her....

If anyone wants to see it in person, it's at Jackson and Columbus and goes through Memorial Day.

well....

Got this in the e-mail today:

A first grade teacher in Virginia had 25 students in her class. She took a bunch of well-known proverbs and read the first half of each one. Then she asked the kids to come up with the other half. It's hard to believe these were actually done by first graders. Their insight may surprise you. While reading, keep in mind that these are first graders, 6-year-olds, because the last one is a classic!


1. Don't change horses.............until they stop running.

2. Strike while the.............bug is close.

3. It's always darkest before................Daylight Saving Time.

4. Never underestimate the power of........termites.

5. You can lead a horse to water but.......how?

6. Don't bite the hand that...............looks dirty.

7. No news is..................impossible.

8. A miss is as good as a ..................Mr.

9. You can't teach an old dog new ..............math.

10. If you lie down with dogs, you'll.............stink in the morning.

11. Love all, trust..................me.

12. The pen is mightier than the..............pigs.

13. An idle mind is....................the best way to relax.

14. Where there's smoke there's.................pollution.

15. Happy is the bride who..................gets all the presents.

16. A penny saved is....................not much.

17. Two's company, three's ...............the Musketeers.

18. Don't put off till tomorrow what...............you put on to go to bed.

19. Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and.............you have to blow
your nose.

20. There are none so blind as..............Stevie Wonder.

21. Children should be seen and not..............spanked or grounded.

22. If at first you don't succeed.............get new batteries.

23. You get out of something only what you.............see in the picture on the
box.

24. When the blind lead the blind..............get out of the way.

And the WINNER!

25. Better late than...................pregnant.

It's Monday.....

And the news is guaranteed to get your blood pressure going as we begin the work week!

Liars Lying....In today's Salon.com, Greg Greenwald begins his column, "The administration's FISA falsehoods continue unabated,"
with these words:

Mike McConnell, the Bush administration's Director of National Intelligence, has a remarkably dishonest Op-Ed in The Washington Post this morning, in which he argues for completely unspecified "updates" and "changes" to FISA in order to expand -- yet again -- the Government's powers of eavesdropping on Americans. McConnell's entire argument for expansion of surveillance powers rests on a patent falsehood.

For the entire column, read it yourself here: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

The Assault on Reason
Al Gore talked about this same point in his new book, An Assault on Reason, on ABC News's "This Week" with George Stephanopolis. "President Bush has repeatedly violated the law for six years," Gore says, referring to FISA.

Here's the link to this story: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=3195676&page=1

Great Interview by Cate Woodruff in Truthout.org

Woodruff, an editor at Truthout.org, interviews Margaret Lazarus, whose documentary film, "Rape Is," "looks at rape from a global and historical perspective, but focuses mainly on the domestic cultural conditions that make this human rights violation the most underreported crime in America."

Woodruff asks, as Lazarus says, "hard questions," including, "Would you like to see more responsibility for social justice and change taken by filmmakers and the media in general?

Lazarus replies, "We all contribute to the cultural climate of our society, and we need to take responsibility for what we say and do. Media makers need to be held accountable for work that contributes to inequity, injustice, maintaining a destructive status quo."

And at this point, the interview gets really interesting....

Here's the link to the whole interview: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051807P.shtml

Gasohol....

In 1978, the year after we moved to Iowa, some filling stations there began selling gasohol, a blend of 90% gasoline and 10% ethanol. Even though it was a tad more expensive than good old gasoline, it sold well. Benefits included less reliance on foreign petroleum, less pollution, and support for Iowa's corn growers.

Wanting to be a good citizen, I tried it in my rotten old car--with the predictable result: hitchhiking to work and leaving my car at the side of the road for Bill, our town mechanic, to pick up later with his tow truck. The reason for the breakdown was that the ethanol in the blend was a champion solvent for engine goop. The loosened goop clogged the fuel line and made driving unpredictable--as when the engine started coughing and then stopped in mid-trip. Proponents of gasohol said that replacing the fuel line filters several times during the first few tankfuls of gasohol would solve that problem. And it did. Plus, If you had a new car, the gasohol was no problem at all. It was just the old cars, of which Iowa was full back in the late 70s, that caused this particular problem.

Fastforward to May 18, 2007....Truthout.org has a troubling article on the effect of the big push for biofuels by Noam Chomsky, first published in the International News on Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Starving the Poor
By Noam Chomsky
The International News

Wednesday 16 May 2007

The chaos that derives from the so-called international order can be painful if you are on the receiving end of the power that determines that order’s structure. Even tortillas come into play in the ungrand scheme of things. Recently, in many regions of Mexico, tortilla prices jumped by more than 50 per cent.

In January, in Mexico City, tens of thousands of workers and farmers rallied in the Zocalo, the city’s central square, to protest the skyrocketing cost of tortillas.

In response, the government of President Felipe Calderon cut a deal with Mexican producers and retailers to limit the price of tortillas and corn flour, very likely a temporary expedient.

In part the price-hike threat to the food staple for Mexican workers and the poor is what we might call the ethanol effect — a consequence of the US stampede to corn-based ethanol as an energy substitute for oil, whose major wellsprings, of course, are in regions that even more grievously defy international order.

In the United States, too, the ethanol effect has raised food prices over a broad range, including other crops, livestock and poultry.

The connection between instability in the Middle East and the cost of feeding a family in the Americas isn’t direct, of course. But as with all international trade, power tilts the balance. A leading goal of US foreign policy has long been to create a global order in which US corporations have free access to markets, resources and investment opportunities. The objective is commonly called “free trade,” a posture that collapses quickly on examination.

It’s not unlike what Britain, a predecessor in world domination, imagined during the latter part of the 19th century, when it embraced free trade, after 150 years of state intervention and violence had helped the nation achieve far greater industrial power than any rival.

The United States has followed much the same pattern. Generally, great powers are willing to enter into some limited degree of free trade when they’re convinced that the economic interests under their protection are going to do well. That has been, and remains, a primary feature of the international order.

The ethanol boom fits the pattern. As discussed by agricultural economists C Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, “the biofuel industry has long been dominated not by market forces but by politics and the interests of a few large companies,” in large part Archer Daniels Midland, the major ethanol producer. Ethanol production is feasible thanks to substantial state subsidies and very high tariffs to exclude much cheaper and more efficient sugar-based Brazilian ethanol. In March, during President Bush’s trip to Latin America, the one heralded achievement was a deal with Brazil on joint production of ethanol. But Bush, while spouting free-trade rhetoric for others in the conventional manner, emphasized forcefully that the high tariff to protect US producers would remain, of course along with the many forms of government subsidy for the industry.

Despite the huge, taxpayer-supported agricultural subsidies, the prices of corn — and tortillas — have been climbing rapidly. One factor is that industrial users of imported US corn increasingly purchase cheaper Mexican varieties used for tortillas, raising prices.

The 1994 US-sponsored NAFTA agreement may also play a significant role, one that is likely to increase. An unlevel-playing-field impact of NAFTA was to flood Mexico with highly subsidised agribusiness exports, driving Mexican producers off the land.

Mexican economist Carlos Salas reviews data showing that after a steady rise until 1993, agricultural employment began to decline when NAFTA came into force, primarily among corn producers — a direct consequence of NAFTA, he and other economists conclude. One-sixth of the Mexican agricultural work force has been displaced in the NAFTA years, a process that is continuing, depressing wages in other sectors of the economy and impelling emigration to the US.

It is, presumably, more than coincidental that President Clinton militarised the Mexican border, previously quite open, in 1994, along with implementation of NAFTA.

The “free trade” regime drives Mexico from self-sufficiency in food towards dependency on US exports. And as the price of corn goes up in the United States, stimulated by corporate power and state intervention, one can anticipate that the price of staples may continue its sharp rise in Mexico.

Increasingly, bio fuels are likely to “starve the poor” around the world, according to Runge and Senauer, as staples are converted to ethanol production for the privileged — cassava in sub-Saharan Africa, to take one ominous example. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, tropical forests are cleared and burned for oil palms destined for bio fuel, and there are threatening environmental effects from input-rich production of corn-based ethanol in the United States as well.

The high price of tortillas and other, crueler vagaries of the international order illustrate the interconnectedness of events, from the Middle East to the Middle West, and the urgency of establishing trade based on true democratic agreements among people, and not interests whose principal hunger is for profit for corporate interests protected and subsidised by the state they largely dominate, whatever the human cost.

The Sierra Club's clean car and global warming expert, Dan Becker, has this to say on the massive federal subsidies going to agribusiness for production of biofuel:

"...Given the billions of dollars of taxpayer money going to prop up ethanol, the money might be better spent elsewhere," he says. "If the American people were given a chance to decide how to spend that money, we'd have a much better environment and would have more energy independence." Many people would rather see money spent on wind and solar power, or on fuel-efficiency efforts, Becker said. "Making all our cars twice as energy efficient would take billions of dollars, but instead we're spending billions of dollars on ethanol."

I'll buy that. If we're going to continue to drive our gas guzzlers and eschew public transportation without regard to how much we and the other residents of this planet wind up paying for food, we won't have solved anything.

"Mozart Meets Cuba"....

Elvis (not his real name...heh), the audiologist at Johns Hopkins Listening Center, was very pleased with my progress on Wednesday, when I had my one-month checkup. He compared Wednesday's audiogram to the one he took on my first visit, pre-implant, and said, "This is fantastic!" For 250Hz, I scored a 10; for the next four (500Hz-4000Hz), a 20; and for the highest sounds (8000Hz), a 30. This puts my hearing in the "normal" range. Who knew??!! In the old days, the best I could do even with a hearing aid at 250Hz was 75, and all the rest went down past 100, making me profoundly deaf.



He said also that it takes two years for the implant to work at its optimum, and after just one month, I'm not anywhere near my peak efficiency yet. I don't think this means I'm gonna wind up hearing in the dog ranges, but it will mean that the sounds I'm hearing now will be richer and fuller, and speech without lipreading will be more recognizable. Even so, we let the sign language interpreter go, since I no longer need her to understand what Elvis is saying.

He re-mapped the four programs again so that program One will now be my usual setting, and it's both loudest and most sensitive. (Sensitivity picks up background noises.) So if I really want to hear what's going on everywhere, not just straight across a table from me or next to me on the metro, it'll be One. Program Two is about as loud as One, but not as sensitive. Three is fairly soft--less volume, and even less sensitivity--and it's focused. Four is very soft, and I can't imagine ever wanting to use it, but The King said many people prefer Three or even Four all the time. Everything else is too much.

When I got up this a.m., I put on my processor, now set at program One, and headed out. Running late, I grabbed a taxi. After settling in, I realized I was hearing the news on the radio, not the taxi driver: "It's 68 degrees in Washington; the time is 9:07." This means I was not lipreading the newscaster, but I was actually hearing him. Needless to say, I love it.

For practice last night, inspired by a number of things, I put a new disk in my CD player: The Klazz Brothers & Cuba Percussion's "Mozart Meets Cuba"



All I can say is that if I had a mind left, that disk would have blown it. It's Mozart's tunes played with a Cuban flavor by a bunch of jazz musicians. One thing Restak, the author of Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot, says in the chapter on art & music is "Perhaps Mozart can help you develop the ability to engage in multilevel thinking and thus use your brain in more creative ways." Well, what would Mozart played as Cuban jazz do to a brain? I'd say it'd give it a big boost in functioning. We'll see. My memory is still half shot from the three pain-killers I took after the implant surgery, but it's getting better. However, as mental stimulation, listening to "Mozart Meets Cuba" beats the hell out of watching "Throw Down by Bobby Flay" on the Food Network. Genug with the barbeque, already!!

Cochlear Implant - One Month Later.....

Tomorrow I'll hop on Amtrak and head for Baltimore to visit the audiologist at Johns Hopkins. What a difference a month makes!!

In the beginning, everyone, whether men or women, sounded exactly the same--like Donald Duck. Now people sound like themselves in all their individual richness.

In the beginning, too, music did not sound AT ALL like music. Now Mozart sounds like Mozart, and the Beatles sound like the Beatles. In the beginning, only the words of "Old McDonald Had a Farm," were recognizable. Now I can hear the tune, too (PLUS the COW MOOING in the background!!)

Everyday my implant gives me another gift as my hearing nerve revives under the stimulus of the implant: the best gifts by far have been the conversations I never would have heard before they turned on this implant: at first, just brief chats with store clerks, and finally, last Saturday, hearing my friend Lida's voice clearly and listening to her tell one of her inimitable stories (see "This Week"). Lida has a strong, vibrant voice with a NY accent that's at once earthy and sophisticated. You just might know she'd have a fabulous voice, too!!

But today, the implant surprised me completely! I haven't been able to use the telephone so far, but I ran into my lovely neighbor Patricia at the mailboxes after work. We talked for a bit--"Can you HEAR me???" she said..."You bet!!" She was very eager to try to call me on the phone, and I told her that phoning had eluded me for lack of practice and a number of other technological considerations, too. She said, "Let's practice the phone calling!" She took my number, and I took hers (they're on that list from the condo board, but who ever looks at that--if you can find it!?). Anyway, she ran upstairs, and I let myself into my condo (in which Patricia used to live before I moved in, btw!!) and poured a nice glass of New Zealand white wine. (Sally has a friend who was/is the wine person for Esquire, and she told Sally that ANY New Zealand white was good. Babies, if it's $7 a bottle, I'll take her word for it.) Anyway, with glass in hand, I went in and sat by my two phones (I had to buy another phone to work with this implant. My old phone is for TTY calls, and it doesn't have a T-coil (for use with hearing aids) or a volume control handset. Anyway, I called Patricia's number, and....no answer. Patricia is a real working artist, and a fabulous one at that, and she believes in simplicity in all things, so I don't think she has an answering machine. Anyway, I hung up, and two minutes later, MY phones rang. I hit the speaker phone button and said, "Hello?" and I heard, clear as a bell, "This is Patricia...can you hear me??" I sure could!! We talked for maybe two minutes, then we hung up. Next I called Lida's number, and she answered!! and I heard her voice again! We talked for another two minutes, then hung up.

OK, Peggy....I know I said YOU would get my first phone call, and I would call you right now, but it's 11:44 pm your time, and you are probably in the arms of Morpheus (as they say in the classics). After I've had a bit of local PRACTICE, I'll certainly call you, and you'll be the first person in the fambly to get a fone call from me.

As they say in Northern Wisconsin, "Holy Jumpin' Jesus!!!"

This Week....

This past week began with a welcome sight: elm seeds by the bus stop!! Here they are....aren't they cute? Bless 'em! They spell the end of the tree allergy season for me. But depending on what tree you're allergic to, it can go on a bit longer. The pollen piles up like cornmeal on the walks, and you can see that, too. The amber, stringy things belong to the oak, which is the #1 eye-itcher here.



This week's view across the street from the bus stop. The walled garden belongs to Dumbarton House, home of the first fiscal officer of the United States (they hadn't even started to call this person "Secretary of the Treasury"). The red flowers are azaleas, and the blue flowers?? Well, they're not bluebells.

Kramerbooks & Afterwords opens for breakfast at 7:30 a.m. during the week (it's open 24 hours on Fridays and Saturdays), and this week, I brought my camera along.

The waiters prepare your beverage orders in this little cubby created when they made a third level for dining at the back of the bookstore. It's a cozy spot for breakfast, especially if you love books and enjoy their company.




This week ended with Lida telling me about her plans to donate her body to science.

"When I die," she said....and she paused..."When I die, did you get that?"
"Yes, when you die...," I said.
"I'm 86, you know."
"Yes, I know...."
"I hate funerals!" she said. "I never go to them...well, I buried my father and I buried my mother and I buried my cousin, but that's it! I can't abide that stuff.
When my father died, my mother and I went to the funeral director, a fat guy with a big diamond on his pinky, and he started leading us around showing us the caskets. Finally, after about 10 minutes, my mother (oh, she was wonderful), said,
'Listen. You've never laid eyes on me before, and I've never laid eyes on you before, so stop telling me how I'm feeling about my husband! Just show me the cheapest one!'
So he led us way to the back of this big showroom, way to a far corner, where there was this plain little casket.
My mother said, 'Is that a CHILD'S casket??' and yes, it was.
Anyway, we got the cheapest adult casket, and when we left the funeral director's, she said,'That was a terrible experience. Nobody should ever have to go through that.' Then she said to me, 'When I die, I want you to bury me orthodox.'
Of course, we never went to temple or kept kosher or did any of those other things that make you crazy, but my mother said, 'Orthodox is the cheapest, and it's also the most dignified.'
So I thought that when she died, I'd have to go find an orthodox rabbi and say, 'Hello, you don't know me (you've never seen me in your temple), but....'
Wouldn't you know, before she died, I met this wonderful man, and when I was telling him about my mother's wishes, he said, 'I am an orthodox rabbi, but I don't practice. I can't do your mother's funeral, but my brother, who is also an orthodox rabbi, can.'
So when my mother died, these two wonderful men took care of the whole thing. She was wrapped in a white shroud and buried in a plain pine box. It was simple and very dignified.
But I'm not even going to have that. I'm donating my body to science. NO FUNERAL!!"

She looked pleased with herself now that she has arranged her exit from this plane. Then she went on to tell me that a friend once told her, "Lida, you must have been born with a lucky star over your head."

"It's true," she said. "The most wonderful things happen to me."



OK, but not just yet, Lida. Let's not have that last most wonderful thing you've arranged for your life just yet.

Props to An African Grandmother!

GLEANER/STEPHEN MACGILLIVRAY PHO

Hearing/loss posted a tribute this week to an African great-grandmother whose life has affected hers profoundly. Hearing/loss graciously has allowed me to post the tribute here, too. I love learning about women who have lived through exceptional challenges and become an inspiration to others. If you click on the link, you'll see a newspaper article about Mama Alice.

I want to introduce you all to someone who has had a profound influence on me and who is one of the most remarkable people I've ever met:

Great-grandmother's journey takes her to STU convocation

Althought the article gives the impression that it was her classmates who coined her nickname of "Mama" Alice, the name predates her University studies by years; it is what she has been known as ever since she came to Canada. She is in every way the spiritual Grandmother of every employee at the local multicultural association, and indeed the whole multicultural community. We all call her our "African Grandmother".

She has had a difficult life, touched by many hardships; and she is the most gentle, kindly, steadfast soul I've had the privilege of meeting to date in my life. She is compassionate - Husband and I saw her sitting outside the grocery store one day and asked if we could give her a ride home. No, she said, her grandson was coming to get her - but wait! She ran inside the store and found an elderly Russian lady who was a friend of hers and who didn't have a ride home, and we ended up chauffering this complete stranger and her groceries home. Like many times we've been with Mama Alice, the most mundane meetings can become adventures.

Meeting a woman like her teaches you that we are all the authors of much of our own fortune, and that whining is for wimps - change what you have the power to change, and quit your bitching.

The achievement is all hers, and hers alone, but we're all so proud of her.

Book Review, Sort Of....

I confess I’ve had it with being called “an older American,” “an ex-nun,” “hearing impaired/late deafened/hard of hearing,” “a divorcee,” or “a fallen-away Catholic.” I am, of course, all of these things, plus a few other choice labels, but none of them defines me.

Robin Roberts—and forgive me, dedicated sports fans and viewers of “Good Morning America,” but I had never heard of her until I saw her new book, From the Heart: Seven Rules to Live By, lying on the “New Nonfiction” table at B. Dalton’s day before yesterday—(pause for breath) Roberts has an interesting Rule #4: “Never Play the Race, Gender, or Any Other Card.”

She opens that chapter by saying that any time we think we can’t succeed because other people won’t let us, we’ve effectively “rolled a big boulder into our path.” Bingo!

I’ve been wondering why the whole notion of audism, the “ism” of the hour here at Gallaudet, bothers me so much. There are a whole bunch of young people here working hard at finding examples of audism from which they suffer now, have suffered in the past, or will suffer in the future. Audism, to this prevailing way of thinking, happens when hearing people dump on you because you are deaf.

Of course, they do. Hearing people, that is. Dump on us. In many ways. There’s no getting around it. Any time any of us deviates from any expected norm, whether it relates to our hearing status, our age, our race, our gender, our health and ability, our nationality, our religion, or whatever, we start getting those looks. And it doesn’t stop with the looks. Nobody denies that.

Roberts talks in the introduction to her book about her parents, who would never let her say, for example, “I didn’t get that job because I’m black.” Her parents never let any of their children complain about not getting anything they wanted out of school or life because they had been discriminated against. They’d say, “Maybe the other person knew more about the job than you did,” or when her sister, blessed with a beautiful voice, was in a school chorus and was sure, when she wasn’t picked for a special singing group, that it was because she was black, her mother said, “Maybe they wanted a different kind of voice—an alto or a soprano or just someone that fit in better with their plans.” Her parents instilled in them the importance of doing their best in whatever they were doing—at school or at home—and of being gracious, no matter what.

Roberts went on to become the first black woman sportscaster on ESPN—a daunting job for a woman, whatever her race. But she loves sports and then, later, news and is passionate about them. She says she has been in sports broadcasting for many years but never worked a day. She enjoys her job so much it doesn’t feel like work.

For deaf students to spend their precious youthful energy trying to combat audism is tragic. It’s a waste of time. The book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne tells us that whatever you focus on grows. (It doesn't matter if the focus is negative or positive--Want to stay fat? Keep saying "I hate being fat.") Deaf and hard of hearing students need to pour their hearts into learning and growing and having fun. No matter who you are or whatever life has thrown in your path, you can achieve unbelievable things with your life. Just don’t waste your precious minutes on this planet feeling sorry for yourself or bemoaning your victimhood or hating hearing people because they don’t understand. Roberts also tells us in the chapter on Rule #4 to do our best to think well of other people. (Well, I can think of a few people that are a real challenge to think well of, especially on the national scene, but it's good advice.) It's easy enough not to think well of others, at times, but it doesn't do us any good.

Actually, audism works both ways. The Deaf community has been the only place where I’ve ever run into roadblocks on a consistent basis because I am deaf. Why? Because I can talk. They think I’m hearing. And I’m a lousy signer to boot. I don’t fit the norm. Plus I can be a battleaxe of the first water, although I'm pretty much that way whether I'm dealing with hearing or with deaf people. No discrimination here! Equal opportunity to the core!!

I wanted to come to Gallaudet long before I actually did. The hearing person interviewing me for a deaf program (not at Gallaudet) was not impressed with a nonsigning deaf housewife with four small kids, so he rejected my application. Long story short, I got to Gallaudet, all right, but not until 16 years later. By then I could sign a bit, and I'd also acquired a profession that Gallaudet just happened to need at that very moment.

Do I hate the person who rejected me so long ago? Nope. The only thing about him that ever gave me pause is that after I got to Gallaudet, he was there, too. I worked in the office next to his, and his had a fireplace! Audism, pure and simple....

Masspeak

Masspeak, the enormous piles of braided and (mostly black) painted rope Little Red Hen mentions in her current post, "North Dakota Brought Closer," seem nothing like "giant washcloths," as one reviewer called them. Take a look.



Any old housewife is more likely to call this a "dishcloth," and it reaches almost to the ceiling. This old housewife found it kind of terrifying, which is probably grist for the psychoanalytic mill. There could be a horror movie about a dishcloth like this, and there probably is...hmmm...maybe the original "Father Knows Best"?

If you live in NYC, you can go scare yourself by looking at this massive piece of Orly Genger's art at Larissa Goldston Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, 3rd floor. The last day is May 5, 2007. Gallery hours are Tuesday-Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm.

Ufda!

Photos that didn't make the cut....

yesterday i posted about cathy's, sally's, naomi's and my visit to The Plains of Sweet Regret, a video installation by mary lucier. mary's husband is also an extraordinary artist. he paints near magical landscapes of mostly trees or water or both. one time i stayed overnight at his house with his then wife, who is a good friend, and from my vantage point on the living room sofa, i could see this one wall-sized painting every time i opened my eyes throughout the night and early the next morning. i swear the sky in the painting showed the passage of the hours, culminating in a fabulous rosy-gold glow behind the trees at daybreak. mary's work, too, has always intrigued me. she's gracious, warm, and friendly....just the sort of person to pick up the vibes of my home state. i couldn't wait to see her show.

anyway, sally laughed at the photo i posted of her yesterday, so i thought i'd show the ones that didn't make the cut. here they are: (the page from Condom Amulets is of "The Princeton.") sally's husband saw the NYC condom in her billfold and asked, "What were you ladies doing??"

"Plains of Sweet Regret"

The photo above is a video still on the back cover of a gallery handout celebrating The Plains of Sweet Regret, a video installation at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., 514 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001. Mary Lucier, an American video artist whose work is known internationally, created this installation on commission from the North Dakota Museum of Art. Saturday, April 28, was the last day of the show, so Cathy and I went up there to see it. Sally joined us, as did Naomi Dagen Bloom, known to knitters, peace activists, and bloggers as A Little Red Hen.

Mary Lucier's subject in The Plains of Sweet Regret is North Dakota, where I was raised and Sally was born. The videography of the plains and its present (shown in vivid shots of local rodeos, wheat fields, and farm animals) and former life (shown in the weathered, abandoned farmhouses and barns) was very moving.

I especially loved Lucier's video of a grasshopper, sitting at once alert and calm in a man's hand. We played a lot with grasshoppers as kids in North Dakota, and the brief, sunlit closeups of the insect captured for me the essence of North Dakota: the simplicity of the landscape and the life, the intimate relationship between people and creatures, and the peculiar luminosity of the light, which is very much like the light you see in the New England sky as you approach the ocean.

Naomi, also an installation artist (see CityWorm) and variously described in Google as an "environmental and performance artist" and a "mixed media environmental artist," brought along a copy of her handmade book, Condom Amulets.



The book evolved from one of her present concerns, safe sex for seniors. She promotes condom use (no longer necessary for prevention of pregnancy) for women over 50. She also celebrated Valentine's Day this year by distributing the free NYC Condoms at an icy subway stop near her home.





Sally and Cathy kept the conversation going with Naomi....I was in a new environment nobody told me about at the audiologist's office: New York City. The city pretty much overwhelmed the computer chips in my CI processor, and I didn't know how to adjust it. So...back to smiling and nodding and responding to anything that sounded like English. It was so bad that, at first, I thought I'd wrecked my processor when it fell on the sidewalk yesterday as I changed batteries, thinking that was the problem. But this morning after a quiet night in its dry box, the processor was working again. Scary to be so dependent on such a little object, but that was a good lesson to learn among friendly companions. Thanks, you guys....I could have asked Cathy to interpret for me, but I thought I'd just wade right in and experience the conversation as best I could. Dumb, huh?

comment problems

Several people have emailed me recently to say they tried to leave comments on my posts, but the comments were rejected. I have no idea why this is happening. From the beginning I've not had any restrictions on who could comment...."anyone" is allowed to comment. Why it's acting up like this, I dunno. I've gone over the comments settings again, and it seems to be fine. If you have a problem leaving a comment, please email me (email address is in my profile). Thanks, and sorry this is happening....I just don't know why.

Cochlear Implant, Week 3....

Three weeks ago, they turned my cochlear implant on. Today I was reading Wired for Sound, Bev Biderman's classic report on her experiences after her implant was turned on. And I realized that, disappointed though Biderman was initially with her lack of significant experiences compared with many, she was way ahead of me. I'm a bit disappointed that my results have not been more dramatic or even recognizable. Maybe they implanted the wrong ear....my left ear has much more hearing than the right one did (the one with the implant). Maybe this is as loud and distinct as it's going to get. Maybe the nerve in my right ear has atrophied from long disuse. Other people were having conversations in restaurants and making phone calls right off the bat. Not me. Of course, Biderman was lots younger than I am now when she got her implant. She was a mere kid of 46. Hmph.

Well, Biderman's book is a treasure trove of resources and support materials for implantees, and I need to get with the program. No use sitting around whining.

The magic continues....

While I am learning to interpret what my CI is giving me, I’ve also been involved for the past few days on a voluntary basis in a project that I belatedly discovered is firmly AGAINST cochlear implants, especially for infants and young children--before they are old enough to choose themselves to get an implant. The rationale behind these anti-CI opinions is that there is nothing wrong with deaf babies, and we do not need to fix them. Being deaf, according to these culturally Deaf (with a capitol D) opinions, does not prevent a person from experiencing life and its satisfactions to the fullest in every way.

And here I’ve been thinking that, yes, implanting infants makes the most sense of all! Let me explain.

My life and experience as hearing person prior to 1963 have not really helped me adapt to my CI except in the sense that I do know I can access beauty and information through my ears. I’ve been thinking that audiologically speaking, I’m really an infant with this CI. It’s not my remembered hearing but my BRAIN that is making sense of CI-facilitated sounds. The more sounds I hear, the more I practice listening, the more my brain synthesizes these chaotic, initially incomprehensible noises into meaningful sounds.

For example: the initial birdsongs all sounded alike and boring...”CHEEP, CHEEP, CHEEP”…like those little tin bird whistles you can buy in souvenir shops. Now I hear different birds, different songs (including, memorably, a mockingbird last week!).

Living in the city, I’ve seen emergency vehicles pass by with lights flashing every day. The first sirens I “heard” sounded like a bunch of high-pitched squeaks (or, as I put it elsewhere, "mosquitos with their tits in a wringer"). This morning, while I was riding the bus, an ambulance passed us, and I heard the actual siren. If I also heard the squeaks (and next time I hear a siren, I'll be sure to pay attention to this), my brain has learned to ignore them.

Daffy Duck is alive and well, but he’s been taking voice lessons. People’s voices, which two weeks ago were all flat, indistinguishable, and monotone are now individualized. I can tell Tim’s voice from Linda’s, Linda’s voice from Yinka’s, Yinka’s voice from Anita’s, and my own voice from everyone else’s. All of this has been the work of my brain.

I would guess that it’s the same work an infant does when it learns, finally, to say “Mama” or “Dada” or “I wan jooos!” I don’t remember what I heard as an infant, but the sounds of my own breathing and the rustling of my blanket had to be among the clearest and most identifiable. Then I learned to make sense of other sounds--my mother's voice, the dog growling. At 12 months, Peggy was saying “boog” proudly as she pointed to the Box Elder bugs swarming on the warm porch of our house in Bismarck. Tom used to say “boody” (for “birdy”) when he saw a bird. Now Peg and Tom can say “bug” and “birdy” like champions. But back then, it’s possible they had not heard all of the discrete sounds involved in “bug” or “birdy” in addition to being unable to reproduce them vocally. We call this cute baby language “baby talk.” Babies all over the world do this, and it takes them months to be able to put this into recognizable if imperfectly articulated speech.

My brain has been going through this same accumulation/synthesis process—at age 70! Of course, I’ve learned a few tricks in all that time, so already I can say bug and birdy, but if I hear those words on a recording via my CI without being able to SEE what the words are, they may not yet be familiar to my brain.

The cochlear implant is magical…there’s really no other word for it. Or rather, my brain is magical. Imagine taking this world of sounds and making sense of them! Of course they should implant babies who are born without a functional sense of hearing. Their brains won’t know the difference between what would have been theirs by nature and what is theirs now by technology.

Two Weeks....

Today was two weeks from turn-on day, and I decided to see if I actually could hear some music. I bought a CD Walkman yesterday, so tonight I hacked and wrestled it out of the nightmarish plastic packaging, found a fresh AA battery, and set it up with the only CD in the house: "Beatles 1." Sally must have forgotten it when she was here recently. I plugged the audio cord into my processor, turned everything on, propped the manual on the couch next to me, and tried to figure out the sound controls while the first tunes played. I recognized the Beatles unique beat almost at once...so far so good. After about 15 minutes of fiddling with various small controls, I was preparing to turn it off and find more appropriate music, when suddently I heard, as clear as a bell, "I want to hold your hand." Whaddya know?! That's all I could pick out, and it wasn't musical, but I heard it. That's progress!!

Today's Belly Laugh.....

[thankx and a tip o' the old tam o' shanter to Cathy for passing this along]

Saintly Man, Recently Retired...

It is important for men to remember that, as women grow older, it becomes harder for them to maintain the same quality of housekeeping as when they were younger. When you notice this, try not to yell at them. Some are oversensitive, and there's nothing worse than an oversensitive woman.

My name is Jim. Let me relate how I handled the situation with my wife, Peggy. When I retired a few years ago, it became necessary for Peggy to get a full-time job along with her part-time job, both for extra income and for the health benefits that we needed.

Shortly after she started working, I noticed she was beginning to show her age. I usually get home from the golf club about the same time she gets home from work. Although she knows how hungry I am, she almost always says she has to rest for half an hour or so before she starts dinner. I don't yell at her. Instead, I tell her to take her time and just wake me when she gets dinner on the table. I generally have lunch in the Men's Grill at the club so eating out is not reasonable. I'm ready for some home-cooked grub when I hit that door.

She used to do the dishes as soon as we finished eating. But now it's not unusual for them to sit on the table for several hours after dinner. I do what I can by diplomatically reminding her several times each evening that they won't clean themselves. I know she really appreciates this, as it does seem to motivate her to get them done before she goes to bed.

Another symptom of aging is complaining, I think. For example, she will say that it is difficult for her to find time to pay the monthly bills during her lunch hour. But, boys, we take 'em for better or worse, so I just smile and offer encouragement. I tell her to stretch it out over two or even three days. That way she won't have to rush so much. I also remind her that missing lunch completely now and then wouldn't hurt her any (if you know what I mean). I like to think tact is one of my strong points.

When doing simple jobs, she seems to think she needs more rest periods. She had to take a break when she was only half finished mowing the yard. I try not to make a scene. I'm a fair man. I tell her to fix herself a nice, big, cold glass of freshly squeezed lemonade and just sit for a while. And, as long as she is making one for herself, she may as well make one for me, too.

I know that I probably look like a saint in the way I support Peggy. I'm not saying that showing this much consideration is easy. Many men will find it difficult. Some will find it impossible! Nobody knows better than I do how frustrating women get as they get older. However, guys, even if you just use a little more tact and less criticism of your aging wife because of this article, I will consider that writing it was well worthwhile. After all, we are put on this earth to help each other.

Signed,
Jim

EDITOR'S NOTE:

Jim died suddenly on March 27 of a perforated rectum. The police report says he was found with a Calloway extra long 50-inch Big Bertha Driver II golf club jammed up his rear end, with barely 5 inches of grip showing and a sledgehammer lying nearby.

His wife Peggy was arrested and charged with murder. The all-woman jury took only 15 minutes to find her Not Guilty, accepting her defense that Jim somehow, without looking, accidentally sat down on his golf club.