I was intrigued by a number of comments made recently on DeafDC.com regarding whether or not an “oral deaf person” (note the lower-case “d”) can become a member of “Deaf Culture” (note the upper-case “D”). I do not wish to further pursue that particular discussion here–rather I have an entirely different set of questions. But first some background. . .

Here are a number of web definitions that I have found on the word “culture:”

• Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.
• Culture is the systems of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people.
• Culture is communication, communication is culture.
• Culture in its broadest sense is cultivated behavior; that is the totality of a person’s learned, accumulated experience which is socially transmitted, or more briefly, behavior through social learning.
• A culture is a way of life of a group of people–the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.
• Culture is symbolic communication. Some of its symbols include a group’s skills, knowledge, attitudes, values, and motives. The meanings of the symbols are learned and deliberately perpetuated in a society through its institutions.
• Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other hand, as conditioning influences upon further action.
• Culture is the sum of total of the learned behavior of a group of people that are generally considered to be the tradition of that people and are transmitted from generation to generation.
• Culture is a collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.

Now, when people speak of “Deaf culture,” what they usually mean (or at least allude to) is signing Deaf culture (in America, ASL-signing Deaf culture, to be precise). They aren’t usually talking about the “Deaf community,” which includes a broad range of D/deaf people who use a broad range of different types of sign communication, and they aren’t usually talking about “deaf” people (note again the lower-case “d,” which denotes biological and not cultural deafness).

All of that might seem a complicated enough mess to make sense out of. But here’s a new question that might potentially complicate things even more:

Is it possible for an oral deaf person to be a member of “Oral Deaf culture?”

I confess to extensive ignorance regarding the following questions, and I’d be fascinated upon learning the answers: Are there residential oral schools for the deaf? If so can they pass on systems of knowledge, a way of life, and other things that fit the criteria listed above? Can they offer a unique sense of identity that is separate and distinct from what is known as “hearing society” (although “hearing society” is so diffuse it is difficult to argue that it is capable of generating a universal set of values, norms, or mores related solely to “hearing”)?

If the answer to any of the above questions is yes, then what we may end up with is evidence for the argument that a non-signing, oral deaf person can indeed be culturally deaf… but he or she would belong to a “deaf culture” (or would it be “Oral Deaf culture?” I have no idea) that has nothing to do with American Sign Language.

Now again, I don’t know the answers to these questions. I’m no sociologist. And truthfully this isn’t an area I’ve really explored. So I leave these questions to the readers, and we’ll see where the discussion goes. However, I’d like to propose a modest guideline for anyone who might wish to comment. It’s not my intention to start up another debate on who can rightfully claim a place in ASL-using Deaf culture. That’s not the point of this post. To repeat, the primary questions here are whether or not an oral deaf culture is even possible, and if so (or not), why or why not? And how would such a culture be distinct from hearing society—in other words, how would we know that we’re talking about “oral deaf culture” and not “hearing people in general?” Remember also that we’d be talking about people who were raised under oralism, and by virtue of being so raised, this particular group would by definition exclude deaf people who are “merely” biologically deaf (such as late-deafened people who were born hearing, went to mainstream schools their whole lives, never once had to sit through a speech therapy session or a lip reading class, etc.). So a lower-case “d” would no longer do the job of adequately distinguishing these two groups.

What are your thoughts? To start the discussion off, think on these things: Do the vast majority of hearing people take speech training classes or lip reading classes? No. Thus the oral deaf are distinct from the hearing not only because of their deafness, but also because of a set of skills that they can certainly pass down to later generations if they so choose. Do the oral deaf in America have their own language? Well, perhaps not their own, (whatever that means. . . who living amongst us currently invented ASL?) but they do have one: English, and so far as that goes, their language is just as symbollic as anyone else’s…

We’re all familiar with the expression, “Time is money.” For mathematic fanatics, you can calculate exactly how much your time is worth by using this formula: V=(W((100-t)/100))/C. Math is Greek to me, despite the fact that I managed to squeak by in Calculus, so don’t hold me accountable.

However, you don’t need to use the formula to know that the value of a doctor’s time is worth far more than a child care provider’s. The money a lawyer makes in two hours may take about two days for a carpenter to earn. The list of comparisons goes on and on, and one trend becomes apparent: Certain kind of jobs such as advocating for social change, caring for the vulnerable people such as children, elderly, and the frail, and even working to protect the environment are not considered on par with specialized work such as those in the legal, medical, and technology fields. A chasm is widening between the those who generally have “marketable” skills and those who do not. Is there a bridge to reconcile these two groups?

One possible solution is the concept of Time Banking, a social change movement. According to the website, “At its most basic level, Time Banking is simply about spending an hour doing something for somebody in your community. That hour goes into the Time Bank as a Time Dollar.” Keep in mind that the price of the Time Dollar is not calculated according to market value. Each hour of any service offered translates to exactly one Time Dollar, no more or no less. This isn’t to be confused with a barter system, where someone fixes your car, and then you return the favor by performing a service with similar monetary value. So cleaning a house from top to bottom, repairing a computer, drafting up legal documents, or simply spending time with someone are all on equal footing in terms of value in the Time Banking system.

The website then goes on to to explain that “…you have a Time dollar to spend on having someone doing something for you. It’s a simple idea, but it has powerful ripple effects in building community connections.” Community connections which, in recent generations, have crumbled like crumbs from a freshly-baked cookie. Used to be a time when families ate at the dinner table every evening, elders were respected, and neighborhoods were relatively safe enough that children could play without adult supervision.

Nowadays, it’s more likely that people would not know their neighbors. Instead of family members taking turns caring for the infirm (remember a certain room where Grandma/Grandpa would take really long naps?), professionals provide hospice services. No one is willing to take responsibility for each other anymore. In short, there is no longer a village to raise a child. That sense of detachment within the communities is what Time Banking hopes to eradicate. The concept of earning one time dollar for each hour of service provided may be a simple idea, but one that they hope would generate a ripple effect within the communities and beyond. People would *gasp* take the time to know each other. Someone with a Jaguar in the garage could assist a person who happens to drive a beat-up hooptie, and vice versa. Maybe then, they could foster a bond that transcends beyond which tax bracket a person is in.

These are the five core values that Time Banking promotes:

Assets
We are all assets.
Every human being has something to contribute.

Redefining Work
Some work is beyond price.
Work has to be redefined to value whatever it takes to raise healthy children, build strong families, revitalize neighborhoods, make democracy work, advance social justice, make the planet sustainable. That kind of work needs to be honored, recorded and rewarded.

Reciprocity
Helping works better as a two-way street.
The question: “How can I help you?” needs to change so we ask: “How can we help each other build the world we both will live in?”

Social Networks
We need each other.
Networks are stronger than individuals. People helping each other reweave communities of support, strength & trust. Community is built upon sinking roots, building trust, creating networks. Special relationships are built on commitment.

Respect
Every human being matters.
Respect underlies freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and everything we value. Respect supplies the heart and soul of democracy. When respect is denied to anyone, we all are injured. We must respect where people are in the moment, not where we hope they will be at some future point.

Gradually, individuals help rebuild neighborhoods and strengthen communities, just like how it used to be. One person commented that he used to live in a small town when he was little, where everyone knew his name. “You felt like family. And that’s what I feel like with Time Banking…they’re my family.”

The gift of time is the best gift you can give someone. “Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time,” says Jim Rohn, a motivational speaker, philosopher and entrepreneur. Time banking is an innovative approach, one that values giving as much as receiving. Eventually, Time Banking hopes to create “a large scale parallel economy of people taking care of each other,” according to Mark McDonough, current chief technology officer.

This may just be one bank that I would not mind making a deposit in. After all, there’s no time like the present. Gift-wrapped with pretty bows, of course.

By Richard Brklacich

It annoys me to no tomorrow seeing a hearing parent preach to a profoundly deaf child, “With an education, you can be anything you want to be.” To demonstrate how so little hearing parents know, I picked 14 hearing friends and 14 deaf friends. I picked only the ones from high school classrooms, social settings not related to any event or my childhood in an effort to ensure a truly random selection. I have never worked with any one of them. One group has deaf people and one group has hearing people. Here’s what they do for a living:

First group: 1) bar owner, 2) business owner, 3) vice-president at a bank, 4) fire department paramedic, 5) lawyer, 6) lawyer, 7) music agent, 8) nurse, 9) plastics engineer, 10) recording studio owner and lead singer of a band, 11) sales clerk, 12) regional sales manager, 13) saleswoman, 14) UPS driver. All have completed college except 1, 2, 7, 11, 12, 13, and 14 (or 50% completed college). Two came from affluent families. All own or have owned their homes.

Second group: 1) actor, 2) business owner, 3) communications specialist, 4) IT specialist, 5) entertainment industry, 6) professor, 7) shipping clerk, 8) student, 9) teacher, 10) teacher, 11) teacher, 12) teacher, 13) teacher, 14) teacher. All have completed college except 4 and 7 (or 85% completed college). Three came from affluent families. All except three own or have owned their homes.

As you may have guessed, the second group features deaf people. Of worthy mention is that half of my deaf classmates now live at least 100 miles away from here while all but one of my seven hearing childhood friends still live within the 5-mile radius. And half of the deaf people on the list can speak and all were raised using sign language. I have sufficient reason to believe the deaf people in the list are well above average compared to the general deaf population.

It is unfortunate the deaf cannot hack it in the corporate world despite their qualifications and can only thrive in non-competitive positions within the public sector (i.e., teaching) or jobs within entities that cater primarily to the deaf such as CSD, Hawk Relay, HOVRS, or Sorenson. After all, it makes sense for these entities to hire somebody their clientèle can relate to. That, in return, opened doors for many deaf professionals holding college degrees who otherwise would not have fared well in their hometowns. However, the downside is that they had to move thousands of miles away from their childhood friends, families, and memories. And I do not think the weather in South Dakota is that great to boot, but did the deaf professionals have a choice?

Of the hearing group, only one works in the public sector as a paramedic while more than half of the deaf work in the public sector. There are 3.8 million teachers in the United States with a population of 300 million. That makes it 1 out of 80, but that doesn’t stop me from bumping into deaf teachers at social gatherings and I can name at least 17 deaf teachers off of my head, having known them all before they were teachers!

The lack of justification in obtaining a degree that would inevitably render itself worthless was the very reason why I dropped out of school. It all started when I was a 16-year-old beaming with optimism exploring different avenues for my future. An older man asked me point-blank, “So you really think you’re going to get a cushy job as a deaf person?” I shrugged, oblivious to reality, “I can speak, and I am going to college.”

It turned out he was able to speak and he spoke with excellent English, signing at the same time, “There are phone calls, there are meetings with lots of people, there are foreigners with thick accents, and you got to do all of that. So much for my Master’s, it was a sham.” He found all my buttons with such startling accuracy and my carefully stacked house of cards collapsed. On my 17th birthday, I dropped out of school, to my mother’s chagrin.

By the time I was 24-year-old, my ability to type 120 words per minute got me a job as a word processor at a local engineering firm. My strategy was to start from the bottom, prove myself, learn new things along the way, mold the job to my specifications, and climb up from there. Nowadays, I do a lot of things, brochures, graphics, proposals, technical editing, desktop publishing, video editing, working with outside printers, creating animated presentations, photoshopping, among many other things. My salary grew and I was able to afford an ocean view home in an affluent area and travel extensively around the world, Japan, Australia, England, and so forth. I am now a slightly-wiser 37-year-old who looks back not regretting it a bit.

Are deaf people truly discriminated against when it comes to seeking jobs? What if there was an excellent engineer who spoke only Tagalog with a $60,000 salary and employing a full-time interpreter was $120,000 a year? It would make economic sense to require that the Tagalog-speaker learn spoken English, a feat deaf engineers cannot perform. As fate would have it, more people in America speak Tagalog than sign ASL. In fact, more people speak Spanish, Chinese, French, German, Vietnamese, Italian, Korean, Russian, Polish, Arabic, and Portuguese than sign ASL. There is no truth to the notion ASL is the third most widely used language in the United States when there are only 500,000 ASL signers in America. Why, ASL is not even in the top ten.

Given the scarcity of the ASL, it is no wonder deaf people are subconsciously drawn to each other. Making matters worse, the FCC started the massive exodus of community interpreters by offering Video Relay Service (VRS) providers $17.044 per minute ($177,256 per month for one interpreter working 40 hours a week). If a single interpreter can net a VRS provider $2 million per year, think of how much twenty interpreters can generate! Realizing a potential cash cow, the VRS providers in turn offered interpreters generous six-figure salaries. Recently, the FCC cut its rate to $6.644 a minute (or $69,100 a month), prompting shrill cries from VRS providers, and I cannot for the life of me understand why. It was disgusting to say the least when VRS providers resorted to strong-arm tactics by reducing hours and telling misguided people to protest against the rate reduction with the FCC. I am in favor of further reductions to alleviate the acute shortage of qualified interpreters in schools!

The playing field will never be leveled despite the numerous technological advancements. Face it, for every one the deaf get, the hearing gets ten. The relay service through Sidekicks is nifty but I still need 20 seconds to type, “I am stuck in traffic right now, I should be coming in 15 minutes after eight. Go ahead with the meeting.” Saying it out loud takes five seconds. I have a friend always yammering on the phone, “Yeah, at the recording studio… fine, I will talk to Mike… good, I have it right here… sure, lunch is great… two, perfect, see you…” I envy him! It’s much better than typing in all that and then the caller has to speak slowly. I have had friends admit they dreaded my relay calls and they even taught me how to use text messaging on my cellular phone. Soon, there will be a cellular phone equipped with VRS and I can’t wait!

I would like to stress that I am simply speaking up for the rest of deaf population, not myself. It would not be fair for me to take things for granted and I want others to understand that. I understand some are content working for the government or as a teacher, and some even have the passion to be a teacher, but I have also come across teachers who readily admitted to me that teaching was the only avenue to success.

Granted, a very small minority have gone through college and got an ideal job within commuting distance. An unacceptably small minority, that is. In the meantime, how do we overcome the huge obstacle without being resigned to governmental positions? Are deaf people truly discriminated against? When does it fall under the “discrimination” category? How can we level the playing field without expecting too much from them? When is it “too much” for them to accommodate us? So many questions remain unanswered and will remain so for many years to come.

Born and raised in California, Richard Brklacich has traveled extensively around the world, ranging from Europe to Asia to Australia, yet proudly calls Dana Point his home. Others consider him an oddity for he has never read a single book in his entire life since he prefers playing poker, but that doesn’t render him incapable of enjoying a roundtable discussion, covering a wide range of subjects with his friends over a dry martini.

On the surface, it may appear that there is a marginal difference between deaf and hard of people. Navel-gazing identity politics aside (including the white hot Oralism vs. ASL conflict which has little to do with this blog), the needs of these groups are different. Deaf signers who do not use assistive listening devices (i.e. hearing aids, cochlear implants, etc.) may not care whether or not there is a “loop” system in a room, and hard of hearing people who do not know American Sign Language (ASL) may not need ASL interpreters, and so it goes. Sure, many people fall in the gray area. They could be hard of hearing, wear cochlear implants, and be fluent in ASL or any other interesting combination. Regardless, people with hearing loss have specific needs in order to effectively communicate.

Hearing politicians often lump all people with “hearing loss” into a neatly compartmentalized category, or worse, with all “people with disabilities” or those who have “special needs”. This puts all people with a vested interest in any type of hearing loss in a position where they may collaborate to achieve somewhat dissimilar goals (loops for hard of hearing people and ASL interpreters for deaf signers, for example). However, scarce resources and a growing awareness of the difference between deaf and hard of hearing people can unravel well-intentioned efforts.

For example, a recent email from the Northern Virginia Resource Center announced that the Chicago O’Hare and Midway airports plan to install 11 videophones for the deaf or hard of hearing where users can request airport services and receive tourist information via VRS or call friends and relatives who have videophones. Great news, right? Well, one reader replied:

How is this going to help those who do not use sign language or even know it, and need to get services and information? Are those airports even aware that only a very small percentage of people with hearing loss will benefit from this service, while they ignore the rest?

That was an unfortunate response, it reeks of “we outnumber them, why give them this much attention and support?” And that is where the argument seems to be distilled at: numbers.

Some hard of hearing people, when seeking support from political leaders, argue that people with a hearing loss who do not use sign language vastly outnumber those who do. Their claim is true. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders at the National Institutes of Health, there are 28 million people with hearing loss in the United States. The Maryland legislation for the ASL as a foreign credit bill (HB0586 Maryland ASL Bill) in 2005 stated:

ASL is used as the preferred means of communication for approximately 500,000 deaf individuals in the U.S. and Canada.

Is the sign language community really that small? Mike McConnell wrote an insightful blog on the number of deaf and hard of hearing people in the U.S., and estimates that the number could be 930,000 or even 1 million. Assuming that the signing population is on the higher-end of McConnell’s estimate, 1 million, that is only 3.5% of the entire population of people with a hearing loss in the United States. A drop in the bucket.

Consequently, the “we outnumber them” argument is gaining traction with more and more advocates in the hard of hearing community. Terry Portis, executive director of the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA) — formerly known as Self Help for Hard of Hearing People (SHHH) — threw down the gauntlet in the July-August 2005 issue of Hearing Loss:

In spite of this [the miniscule number of signers in the U.S.], how much of state and federal dollars are used to support the communication choice of the vast majority of people whose lives are impacted by hearing loss? While it is difficult to come up with exact numbers, I would suggest that state and federal funding for supporting hearing loss is exactly opposite of what it should be. The statistics of people who are hard of hearing are used to justify funding that then usually never gets to them.

According to Portis, less than 3% of HLAA members use ASL, so he represents a specific, albeit enormous, segment of the deaf and hard of hearing community. Porits explains that most HLAA members rely on hearing technology and visual clues such as speechreading (or lip reading) to help them communicate. A brief glimpse of HLAA position papers reveal the organization’s priorities such as insurance coverage of hearing aids, telecoils, education of hard of hearing children in regular school, and assistive device warranty laws.

Unfortunately Portis neglects the fact that there is a continued alarming lack of access for deaf signers all over the country. While the funding may be disproportionate, the available amount still does not provide the deaf signer with the equal access protected under the law or with the opportunities that a U.S. citizen deserves. Arguing that a proportionate amount of resources should be diverted to a much larger number of individuals with hearing loss who do not know how to sign could make logical sense to political leaders. However, it overlooks the unequal amount of access and opportunities for both groups.

A profoundly deaf person who does not use his/her voice or lipread well could have a more difficult time finding meaningful employment compared to a hard of hearing person who has a good command of lip-reading and speaks almost normally. In another example, a deaf signer who does not use his/her voice that has been taken to the emergency room could have a harder time communicating with a doctor without an interpreter compared to a hard of hearing person. There are different degrees of inequality in these situations.

Portis concludes that “it is time that advocates for people who are hard of hearing start to make some noise about serious funding inequities that are found throughout the country” and some have taken up his charge. Put another way, the tables have been turned for the signing deaf community. It is also possible that hard of hearing people who desire to become integrated into the hearing world with minimal barriers have ramped up their advocacy efforts while signers, more content among their own, may not feel as compelled to correct inequities. A larger population with a stronger desire to become part of the hearing world can easily overshadow the signing community. But that should not be the case.

The solution isn’t to transfer funds from one group to another or even to compare the amount of funding. Both groups should endeavor to create more funding for both, signers and hard of hearing people. There is no fixed amount of the funding pie that will be split between both groups of people with hearing loss that we must squabble over. Instead of taking $1 away from signers and giving it to hard of hearing people, both should be increased by $1. Together, we should seek equal access for both groups, even if the other is not present. So if a signing person is advocating for greater services for signers, they could also do the same for hard of hearing people, and vice versa. After all, we both understand the difficulty of being denied communication access, don’t we?

By Teresa Blankmeyer Burke

I know what you’re thinking. You’re asking yourself why is there a blog about cell phone usage on a website focused on deaf people? Or perhaps you are thinking about what the rules for polite cell phone usage could be for hard of hearing people — don’t shout too loudly? Turn down your volume when people start to glare at you? Notify your callers that you have the volume turned up so loudly that everyone within 30 feet can hear your not-so-private conversation?

Although these are issues for discussion, I’m more interested in the minefield of cell phone etiquette that hard of hearing people navigate when they are in deaf spaces, that is, places where there are many deaf people — places where social mores of the signing deaf community predominate and trump hearing world norms. For the moment, I’ll define hard of hearing people as those who opt to use their hearing, such as it is (I know this definition is oversimplified, but stay with me for a few paragraphs before you start to quibble with me on this…).

I’ll out myself: I can use a phone in certain circumstances with certain people.

I can’t use it with everyone, or in any given circumstance. I use various strategies for different kinds of calls and different people, and in some situations you’ll never see me using a phone of any sort, but I do use a cell phone on occasion — especially with my family. Since I spend a good chunk of my life in a predominantly signing deaf space, I try to be sensitive to this.

To make matters more complicated, although I grew up hard of hearing in a mainstreamed hearing environment, two moments in my life stand out in stark relief: meeting signing deaf people for the first time, and (in a different context) meeting other hard of hearing people who had grown up hard of hearing and had been mainstreamed. I was a young adult when this happened: meeting my peeps was a defining life moment I rank right up there with the birth of my children!

There are times when I definitely prefer the signing deaf community, just as there are times when I prefer hanging out with hard of hearing people or even (gasp!) the hearing world. I have just as many (if not more) deaf and/or hard of hearing friends than I do hearing, and I certainly do not think that hearing or hard of hearing people are superior to deaf people (or vice versa, for whatever that is worth). I do think that people who read both Harper’s and Scientific American are superior to those who don’t, but that’s another matter…

All this is to say that I try very hard to be open-minded and culturally sensitive wherever I am, but especially in signing deaf environments, mostly because I know what it feels like to be left out of whatever communication is going on. I’ve been there way too many times in my life, and I’m not about to perpetuate any kind of behavior that closes people out of the communication loop if I can help it.

Recently I had yet another conversation with a hearing person about the appropriate protocols for using a cell phone in a predominantly signing deaf environment. Now, I’ve seen the gamut of responses from hearing people - everything from “I’m hearing and I’m gonna use a cell phone whenever I want!” to “I’m hearing, but I respect deaf people so much that I would never use a cell phone around them.” And there are the actions in between – picking up a call, but leaving the group to carry on a conversation in private, that fall under the purview of everyday cell phone etiquette for polite hearing folks.

But what about hard of hearing people who use cell phones? What should we do when the cell phone issue comes up? I’ve seen responses no different from what hearing people do — some will use a cell phone no matter what, others will opt never to use a cell phone in a situation where there are signing deaf people. There’s another, more interesting response though that I see from time to time. This is the response of denial; the response of hiding: the response of stigma and shame. I’m talking about the hard of hearing person who has a cell phone, but who doesn’t cop to using it. The person who covers up and dissembles when he is caught using a phone, for fear that this behavior will seem disrespectful or even as a betrayal to the signing deaf community. Is the very act of using a cell phone (or any phone at all, for that matter) an act of community betrayal? A rejection of community solidarity? Perhaps it is. Or maybe not. What do you think?

I’ve cobbled together three rules that I follow in signing deaf environments based on intuition, but I have no idea how this matches up to what other people think and do. Here’s what I do:

1. I don’t take calls in public when I’m in a signing deaf environment unless they could possibly be emergency calls regarding family members.
2. If the phone vibrates (I never hear it ring) and it is not an emergency, I let it roll over to voice mail – which tells people to send me an e-mail or text me.
3. I use my cell phone when I am alone in a predominantly deaf space – in my home, my office or my car.

These seem straightforward, at least to me. Here are a few situations that are less clear and similar to those I’ve seen come up in more than a few discussions:

Example 1
Person is in a predominantly deaf space (such as a school for the deaf) and is alone in a parking lot, talking on a cell phone. Deaf people can see the person talking on the cell phone, but are far enough away that if they were hearing, they would not be able to understand the conversation, but close enough so that if it were two deaf people signing to each other, the conversation would be understandable.

Example 2
Person is walking around a track at a school for the deaf talking into a cell phone; it is night, but the track is reasonably well lit. Other people, deaf and hearing, are running and walking around the track, passing the cell phone user on occasion.

In both these cases – the person using the cell phone is alone, but within conversational range given Deaf norms of line of sight/distance. Does this matter? I suppose I’m wondering about a few things here – first, what are the general rules of etiquette for cell phone usage in a signing deaf environment; and second, are the rules different for hard of hearing people than they are for hearing people? I’m certainly no expert here – what do you think?

In my day job, I’m a philosopher. I spend most of my time thinking about ethics and values. Ethics is not etiquette, to be sure, but sometimes the purported bright line between them blurs. I think this is such a case. What I think I’m honing in on here is the bigger question of what are the core values of the signing deaf community? Of the Deaf Community? But that’s another blog…

Teresa Blankmeyer Burke was inclined at a young age towards endless questioning, she opted to put this to good use and become a philosopher. After learning that philosophers can come to bad ends when they are not sanctioned by authority (witness Socrates), Teresa decided to acquire the stamp of philosophical legitimacy by pursuing a doctorate in philosophy at the University of New Mexico. She is currently writing a dissertation on bioethics and the deaf community, focusing on the ethics of genetic technology. As does any tenure-seeking philosopher, Teresa has prepared back-up career plans in case her day job as an instructor of philosophy at Gallaudet University doesn’t pan out. Her other employable skills include adobe mud plastering, copyediting, and making quesadillas with nontraditional ingredients.

Although Teresa Blankmeyer Burke has many institutional and other affiliations, the contents of this blog represent Teresa’s personal views only, and not associated with any of her professional affiliations.

Yep, we’ve fallen victim to the latest fad…we set up a “group” over at Facebook for the DC DPHH! Got a Facebook profile? Please join the DC DPHH group! Simply search for “DPHH” within Facebook “groups” and you’ll find us.

We will make the same announcements about the day and location of the next DPHH over there, so you’ll be alerted to the next location in your news feed the instant we post it. Come see who else is part of our group; share your DC DPHH photos/videos with others, discuss possible new locations for future DPHHs, find your DC area buddies, poke someone who you just met at the last DPHH, and more.

Social networking, for the win!

Viable is the exclusive sponsor of the Washington DC area DPHH. Their generous support has ensured the continued success of our DPHH!

By Catharine McNally

Whether you are a DC metro resident, tourist, or a passerby, you are in for a treat this fall. A plethora of activities at Washington DC museums await you, your family, and friends. Believe it or not, you can do many for a relatively low-cost, if not free as it is in most cases. Here’s a brief overview of a few happenings in the DC metro region this week and in October. Hopefully you’ll venture out to these places and find some inspiration; perhaps our paths will cross and well find ourselves in intellectual discourse.

Thursday, September 27, 2007 at the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, VSA arts is presenting a one-act play, “Izzy Icarus Fell Off the World.” This talented 15-year old playwright provides this brief synopsis:

The play is about Dove, an aspiring young photographer who is bored with small town life and turns her attention and camera to “Izzy Icarus”, a local boy who has autism. Dove is convinced that Izzy can fly despite all evidence pointing to the contrary.

The tickets are available online ($15 dollars), and it will be presented at 7:30 in the Family Theater. What better way to view a play than attend an open-captioned play with an ASL interpreter in one of the world’s most acclaimed performance centers? Hearing about other perspectives is of great interest to me, especially when it concerns matters relating to disabilities, and I think this play might provide us with a glimpse. Perhaps, it will provide insight on a disability other than deafness.

October 1, 2007, the National Gallery of Art: J.M.W. Turner, West Building, Main Floor (closing January 6, 2008) is an exhibition featuring the most extensive and comprehensive survey on J.M.W. Turner’s work ever exhibited in the United States. I’m especially excited about seeing the work of one of my favorite painters. I consider Turner the first impressionist painter because he abstracts his brushstrokes and eliminates precise detail, unlike the picturesque paintings from English Romantic artists like John Constable. He brings the late 19th century Industrial Revolution to light by mastering the use of light (no pun intended) and dynamic brushstrokes. Turner’s paintings are full of symbolic, historical, and cultural references; I encourage you to visit and see if you can come up with your own analysis.

Current Exhibition, Edward Hopper at the National Gallery of Art through January 21, 2008. I visited the Hopper exhibit this past weekend and was impressed with the selection of artwork, particularly as the visitors are given a good foundational understanding of Hopper’s work (prints and watercolors) in the rooms preceding the section featuring more recognizable oil-paintings toward the end like Nighthawks (1937). His artwork is very introspective as he tries to capture the scenery separate from the rising drama of modernity. It is as if the action of the picture stands still as society moves forward like a distant memory. Certainly, that is my view and there are others equally as insightful—those that I hope to be expressed on DeafDC.com. The beauty of viewing art is that, many interpretations are and can be applicable. It is essentially like a puzzle, which makes it all the more fun! Both exhibits are free of charge.

Friday, October 5, 2007: 8 p.m. to midnight is the Hishhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden After Hours fall event, a perfect outing for your friends who may be visiting DC on the long-weekend (Columbus Day is on the following Monday). For a $10 advance purchase ($12 at the door), you will have the opportunity to see the current exhibition, Morris Louis Now, featuring the famous modern artist who was an influential player in the Color Field movement and listen to live bands (Fools and Horses and DJ Yum Yum will play 80s and 90s hits). Sip on your cocktail from the cash bar and create your own Outsider Art masterpiece tote with techniques comparable to modern artist Morris Louis (while supplies last). Hishhorn Curator Valerie Fletcher will lead an Insomniac Tour of the Morris Louis exhibit at 10 p.m. If you don’t wish to go on the tour, you can set your own pace and view the gallery and hang out with your friends, and meet new people. You can always visit the Hishhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden during the regular hours for free since it is part of the Smithsonian.

Closing October 14, 2007: Frida Kahlo: Public Image, Private Life. A Selection of Photographs and Letters at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA). As a celebration of Kahlo’s 100th birthday, this exhibition includes a glimpse of her private life by making public ten of Kahlo’s unpublished personal letters to family and friends. As if that weren’t private enough, this exhibit also includes 12 exclusive photographs of Kahlo’s private bathroom at the Casa Azul. This is particularly notable because contents in this bathroom brought to light the relationship between Frida’s artistic image and the difficulties endured in her personal life. The National Museum of Women in the Art includes its most valuable asset, Kahlo’s Self-portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky in this insightful exhibit.

I also would like to mention, that WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution also opened at the NMWA on September 21 and will close December 16, 2007. I have to yet visit, but will be interested in exploring the “formation, development, and impact of feminism in post-war contemporary art from 1965 to 1980.” For those of you interested in women and the arts, I encourage you to do a double take and view both exhibits in the next three weeks if you haven’t already done so. Adult admission: $10 dollars, Students $8.00, and Visitors over 60: $8.00; Youth 18 and under, Free.

Part of the fun of these exhibits is finding them yourself—it’s your turn to let me and DeafDC.com know about other exhibits worth seeing. If your grandmother came to town this weekend, where would you take her to show off this wonderful, cultural city?

Catharine McNally hails from North Carolina where she graduated from Wake Forest University with a concentration in art history. She finds it impossible to be bored with all the activities that Washington, D.C. has to offer. Catharine enjoys volunteering, working on art projects, and preparing dinner parties for family and friends. Last but not least, she loves visiting museums.

Pretty soon, you may be seeing this icon in malls, airports, and restaurants, near the restrooms or in other designated areas, as well as on product packages: an international symbol for breastfeeding, designed by one of our community’s foremost designers, Matt Daigle, who is also known for his Deaf-related comics.

One of my co-workers, who is currently breastfeeding her son, alerted me to this news article on www.mothering.com, which is run by Mothering—Natural Family Living. They hosted a contest inviting designers to submit icon designs for breastfeeding, and to the thrill of Mothering and mothers everywhere, Daigle came up with the winning design: 

If you look through the news article and its related links, you’ll see the other design submissions. Now let me emphasize, icon and symbol design is incredibly difficult. IBM, Coca-Cola, and Apple (Macintosh) paid millions in developing their logos, mainly because in order to sell or promote a product, the image must be memorable and instantly recognizable. Daigle has achieved this effect with his design.  

The other icons submitted to Mothering…some of them have the quality of being recognizable in the sense that they represent breastfeeding, while others were more obscure…and none of them achieve the same fluid simplicity that infuses Daigle’s design. They all had flaws such as gender bias, too much detail, awkward sharpness, or graphic explicitness.  

Most societies could not cope with an icon that showed the female breast in plain terms, which some of the submitted designs did. Daigle was smart enough to avoid this while still evoking a relationship between the baby’s head and the breast, simply by using a circle positioned in just the right place. In his interview with Mothering, Daigle said he wanted to invoke a feeling of femininity, without being too blatant about it, and indeed, his choice of shapes, especially in how the contours are soft, carry this out very well.  

Daigle’s sensitivity to the needs of motherhood and breastfeeding stems from personal experience, both as a father and husband, and as a deaf person. His wife breastfed their son, and he recalls the difficulty in finding public facilities that catered to the needs of young families. Furthermore, he said that as “a profoundly deaf individual, I know how important it is to communicate through visual means.” Of course, this icon would be beneficial for all mothers, but as a deaf woman myself, I can’t help thinking about how nice it would be if deaf mothers everywhere could now just look for this icon and go take care of their babies, without having to go through the embarrassment of inquiring after such facilities, when communication with service personnel might be difficult.  

Daigle has signed his design over into the public domain, making it free of copyright and royalty restrictions. This means corporations, small businesses, organizations and individuals everywhere can now use this icon. Kudos to you, Mr. Daigle, for making a solid contribution to humanity!

Pretty much everyone knows that the expression “24/7″ means 24 hours on all seven days of the week. With our lifestyles and skewed work schedules, the demand has been increasing for stores and businesses to open up earlier and stay open later. With thanks mostly to the Internet, many of these companies are conducting business around the clock, virtually non-stop. The old adage is becoming true: you can make money while you’re asleep.

But I saw something a few days ago that made me stop in my tracks. A commercial van was parked in front of a residence on what was obviously a service call. There was the obligatory company logo plastered all over the side of the van, but the slogan underneath the logo caught my attention.

“23 1/2 hours of service. Seven days of the week!”

I scratched my noggin, trying to figure this out. Why the “1/2″? As luck would have it, the repairman sauntered out of the house, with his lips puckered in a whistle. He must have been satisfied with a job well done. I went up to him and jarred him slightly out of his working man haze.

“Excuse me,” I said in a polite tone, “but I must ask you something.”

“Sure, what?” He drawled out, with a bushy eyebrow slightly raised.

“Why are you guys only available 23 and half hours out of a day? What do you do on that half-hour?” I queried.

He looked at me as if I asked a moronic question. “Well, lady, I don’t know. I just work for them,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “But I do know one thing… my lunch break is coming up!” With that, he jumped into the loudly colored van. “Maybe that’s what it is…half hour for lunch!” I retorted.

The man proceeded to give me a two-fingered “peace-out” sign and drove off. It was obvious that this particular employee didn’t buy into his company’s vision, because even he didn’t know what that “23 1/2 service” slogan meant.

I don’t know why I’m bothered by this “1/2″. Maybe because I am somewhat of a purist with the English language, especially when it comes to advertising. Don’t get me wrong, I love nothing more than a good pun, or conceptual play of words. I’ve been known to throw in a couple of those myself. But if you’re going to try to bend the concept, at least do it right. Touting “24 hours of service” would be way more effective than “23 1/2.”

Think about it. What if someone has the misfortune to call on that reserved half-hour block and discovered that “oh, sorry, services aren’t available right now. Try again in a half hour.” The customer would be undoubtedly spurned away and look for business elsewhere. I know I would.

The ironic part? Right underneath the questionable slogan was another one: “The difference between almost right and EXACTLY right.” I would venture to say that they need to take their own advice, and get it right.

I love pizza, I’ll admit.  In between stops at my local pizzeria (Today’s Pizza in Capitol Hill), I’ll snack on frozen pizza from the grocery store and an occasional slice from a place near where I work.

I’ve always decried that DC was not a pizza city, but perhaps this is changing.  New places are popping up.  Pizza is in the air.  DCist has reviewed a few of the new ones (2Amys, Bebo Trattoria, Red Rocks, Comet Ping Pong).  Summary: verdict was for Comet Ping Pong.

What is your favorite pizza place in DC?  Some people swear by Ledo’s in College Park.  Others say waterfront Alexandria has good pizza.  Yet others shrug and say, “There’s no great pizza in DC.”