Deaf Music

FeelRhythm 230
Originally uploaded by KhueKhue

Recently it happened that I ended up involved in a debate about whether music is part of Deaf culture.
The group of people were mostly late-deafened, though not all. You must understand I don’t have much first hand knowledge of Deaf culture. But I’m aware that many Deaf people enjoy music, and [...]

Disclosure

Esme’s awesome pink hearing aids
Originally uploaded by Grayfamilia

As someone who identifies with being hard-of-hearing, late-deafened, and/or little-d deaf I have learned it matters little what words I use to label my hearing loss. The important thing is getting others to understand I don’t communicate like they do.
This is probably the single biggest issue most late-deafened people [...]

Captioning One Theater and Stadium at a Time

Many of you know I hold season tickets to the opera.  This used to be one of the few stage experiences I could enjoy with friends and family since it always offered subtitling in English, (due to the fact that operas are sung in other languages.)  Over the past three decades many musicals I would have like to have [...]

Philly Day Two at the Zoo!

Day Two in Philadelphia there was nothing planned until the Welcome Party at 7pm. Lorne would be flying in around 4-ish and Robyn wanted to see the zoo. She had never seen American animals in real life, she said. Which ones, I asked? She wanted to see a raccoon, which made me smile. I’ve got [...]

Piece of Pie?

Something of an epiphany occurred while I was gone. Think about this. At the IFHOH (International Federation of Hard of Hearing People) Congress, people gathered from all over the world to discuss issues that impact ALL deaf, hard-of-hearing and Deaf people worldwide. It didn’t matter whether we spoke, signed, were late-deafened, wore hearing aids, cochlear [...]

International Federation of Hard of Hearing Congress 2008– Part 1

This is just a quick recap of the IFHOH. (International Federation of Hard of Hearing) Congress in Vancouver, BC.
Since I hate driving in Vancouver, and didn’t want to mess with long lines over the border crossing during TWO Independence Day holidays, I took the train. The IFHOH began a day after Canadian Independence Day and [...]

tunnel of deaf

Up in the Cascade mountains there is a bike path with a crumbling old two-mile tunnel called the Iron Horse Trail. Even on the most beautiful summer day, the tunnel is cold, dank and pitch-black. Once inside if you hold your hand in front of your face you can’t see it. After riding about the [...]

Pajama Epiphany

I had an epiphany last night while sleeping. I must be kind of dim because for days I’ve been wondering what “deficit thinking” REALLY means. It seems I’ve read at least twenty-five different definitions by now and I wasn’t getting it.
Earlier in the evening I had my Kundalini meditation session with Subhan– which was was [...]

Communication Barriers

Last Wednesday marked my fourth day in ASL class and I was pleased with my test score of 99 out of 100. This wasn’t a huge surprise because much of the vocabulary was a review since I’ve already taken courses at the Hearing Speech and Deafness Cntr. and have spent lots of time conversing with [...]

Menieres Hell

Today I awoke to a familiar sound– my husband puking in the toilet. Retching must fall in the 250 hertz range on an audiogram because I can hear it perfectly without hearing aids. 250 hertz is my only normal score. Sometimes I wonder if God preserved just this one frequency so I would always know [...]