On Emotions and the Classroom—A Forbidden Combination?
After vehemently protesting a classmate’s opining on how Latin@s*–“illegal” ones, to be exact—have more language rights than Deaf U.S. citizens do, based on the availability of the “press 2 for español” telephone option. The professor emailed me later in the day, urging me to remove emotions from classroom discussions. When I name [...]
Science of the Orgasm
[During orgasm, parts of the brain show heightened activity as other regions… (Janniko R. Georgiadis / University Medical Center Groningen).] To unlock the secrets of the climax researchers are looking behind the scenes and into the nervous system, where the true magic happens. AS they seek to document and demystify one of life’s great [...]
Notes from a Helicopter Dad
My son is three. Keep this in mind. So I walk into his pre-school classroom last week, right? This room has two teachers: Mr. Rogers* and his assistant—let’s call her Vladmilla. Mr. Rogers is a young guy. Professional, mindful of the children as human beings with feelings… yes, even at the tender age of [...]
Don’t Blame Yourself: How We Flew Under the Radar for 15 Months
If you’re the parent of a deaf child, especially one that manages to avoid early detection from newborn hearing screenings, you might find yourself with a lot of guilt. Though my son did fail his newborn hearing screening, he later somehow passed an otoacoustic emission test (OAE) and was declared hearing until 15 months [...]
An Open Letter to Deafblind People Out There
Life is created by you only. People, objects, events, and education come into your life and they leave with some kind of mark, but only you as a human being remain. So it’s important to live your life the way you want to. If you find purpose in your life, then you have found [...]
The YouTube Video You Don’t See
It has been about a week now since the video of Sarah Churman was posted on YouTube. You know what happened next… it went viral, major news networks picked up on the story and reposted the video on their websites, and since then there has even been a television interview or two. Sarah Churman, if [...]
A Flawed System
There was a brief time when I could not have cared less if my deaf son ever knew any ASL. I wanted him only to be oral. I figured if he got a cochlear implant, he wouldn’t “need” sign language, so why learn it? As irrational as it sounds, I almost feared him becoming [...]
Who Would We Be If We Weren’t Deaf?
We as Deaf folks are defined by our deafness. Â Our deafness makes us who we are and shapes our way of thinking and moral structure. Being deaf makes people treat us in different ways, both good and bad. It propels us to make our decisions in a certain way and shapes our life philosophy [...]
Spirit (Part II of an Ongoing Series)
A spiritual journey forces you to confront the concept of self-directed motion. The action that you take is of secondary importance to the realization that action is yours to take. * Until I was seventeen years old, I thought I believed in God. In retrospect I think I was much too busy at the [...]
Spirit (Part I of an Ongoing Series)
I went to the Devils Tower recently with my wife Amy and three year old son Jack. It was a slightly hot day. There was an easily accessible footpath around the entire Tower, but before we had even circled a third of it, Amy began to tire. I in no way blame her for this. [...]