From Echolalia to Coprolalia: Civility on Deaf Echo
Hello readers! It has been a long time, hasn’t it? Three cheers to administrators Bobby, Adam, and Chris for rising like the phoenix from the ashes of DeafDC to give us Deaf Echo. I’m humbled to be invited to blog along, and grateful for another chance to engage in deaf community discourse. Another chance? Yes, [...]
Choices
Henry Ford famously said that his customers could have their cars in any color they wanted, as long as it was black. How’s that for wide variety of choices, eh? Well, the same is true when it comes to Deaf education. If I was oral, and wanted my child to be raised orally, I wouldn’t [...]
Stuff Deaf People Like #1: Feeling Up Car Door Handles
This new series attempts to address an age-old mystery: Listing stuff deaf people like. A mix of science, art, and foolhardiness. Idea taken from Stuff White People Like, which is hilarious and far funnier than I could ever hope to be. Next time you go for a drive in the neighboorhood with a deaf person, [...]
“Parents” Shouldn’t Be A Lot Of Talk
I want you to run an experiment with me. Go to Google. Type in “deafness.” Look at what pops up—the top five sites. As of right now, as I type this at precisely 9:00 p.m. on August 26th, 2010, those sites belong to: – Wikipedia – About.com – The World Health Organization – The National [...]
CaptionFish iPhone App Released
Old-timers, gather for some reminiscing! Remember those captioned movie listings on DeafDC.com? They were updated every Thursday (or was it Tuesday?) and showed RWC, DTS, open-captioned, and subtitled movies playing in D.C., Maryland, and northern Virginia. By 2004 standards, it was a slick setup, programmed from scratch by Tayler Mayer, but it was also all manually [...]
FaceTime is the Future
I believe that the platform known as FaceTime, introduced with the iPhone 4, is the future platform of choice for all video telephony in the deaf community. I don’t say this because I’m a Mac fan, or for any technological evangelism purposes. I say this because it just makes sense. First, a little bit of [...]
YouTube Video: Deafhood the Journey
Check out this gem of stop-motion animation by Paul Ososki: I’ve never seen anything like this before: a video where ASL, as used by the story narrator, becomes a deuteragonist in a two-and-a-half-dimensional animated setting. The video’s message is clear. ASL is what enables the character to scale the various obstacles in his path. Taking [...]
The road to a better community
Deaf Echo is a milepost on a long road, the long road of writing in the deaf community, the path of literacy, and ultimately, the highway of community improvement. Chris and I walked alone along a lonely stretch of this road recently, discussing what we wanted to contribute back to the community, from writing to [...]
Deaf Echo… Taking Away the Stick
By way of trying to communicate what I think Deaf Echo should be about (at least my small part of it), let me start by reciting my favorite Zen parable: A Zen Master is looking for a candidate to govern the village after he dies. Three are likely: a hunter known for his aim, a [...]
Do-mest-ic Vio-lence
Domestic violence. Behind those Latin and emotionless words lie other, more meaty words. Pain. Hurt. Beatings. Mind games. Harsh words. Rihanna and Chris Brown are the current face of domestic violence, prompting us (especially youth) to think about that anew. Closer to home I am saddened by the events around Ericka Peters’ death; a life [...]