I love Michelle McAuliffe, better known as MUCK. Not just because she’s my long-lost fake sister*, a cooler, hotter version of me but also because she creates gorgeous, thought-provoking work.  I had the privilege of visiting her studio and viewing Muck’s most recent body of work, When The Horse Is Dead, Get Off, created as a part of her thesis for the MFA program at George Washington University.

Can You Read my ABCs? reminds me of painter Chuck Close’s recent beautifully photographed portraits, although he doesn’t display related works in a grid.

“Lip-reading is difficult.  By not assembling these photographs in alphabetical order, I’m trying to help the audience get a sense of what it is like to be a deaf person, depending on lip-reading for communication,” said Muck.

The photos in this work are overlaid with a film of tissue.  This filmy veil gives the viewer a sense of separation, obscuring the ABCs.  You think you know what you’re looking at but you aren’t quite sure.  You can fill in the blanks because you see the unobstructed parts of the face but the whole face is not fully visible.  Much like lip-reading, where you think you know what they’re talking about and you’re following along, filling in the blanks through context.

Thin Edges is a series of color photographs arranged on a grid, somewhat like the ABCs piece.The piece is composed of halves of different photos being sewn back together with golden thread, some with neat rows, others a tangled magpie’s nest.

“I can’t leave a photograph naked!  I need to add to it,” exclaimed Muck.

These photographs have intense color and are of things objects, settings, and locations that fascinated Muck at some point.  She says, “This is my attempt to preserve a moment, a precise time and place, and the attached memory.”  When asked about the intense, vivid color in the photographs, Muck said, “Color is important to me.  It is my sound.”

As I looked at the wall of photographs, that been cut in half and then sewn back together, I thought about the phenomenon experienced by many deaf people who are from hearing families or in a field where they don’t work with other deaf people. 

“Everyday, I’m always in two places,” said Muck.

Muck’s work captures that feeling of discombulation and is a reflection of how many of us make our way through the world, and in the end, cobble together a world of our own making that isn’t exactly a choice between the deaf community and the hearing world but a co-existence, a meditation of identity and language at the border to make something wholly new and unique—two worlds combined.

Traditional feminist art rejected craft, but this piece incorporates and celebrates traditional craft.  Some critics would call Muck a post-feminist artist but Muck herself resists theory and labels.  “It’s all bullshit,” she says. 

You’ll find that bullshit is a running theme in Muck’s work but the “Bullshit” piece is something you’ll have to find on your own at her opening on Tuesday.

The contrast between perfect and imperfect, destroyed and reassembled, the highbrow and the base is a tension that resonates throughout Muck’s body of work.  This is unexpected tension, and feels like seeing a beautiful innocent little girl with blonde curls bust out screaming profanities, such as in The Exorcist.  You jump back a little, somewhat repulsed, but the scene, idea and images compel you to stay and look a little longer.

*When we were in college, people would often confuse the two of us because we looked so alike. At one point, people thought we were twins. Tragically, that doesn’t really happen anymore. Maybe if I lost some weight…

The show:

Michelle McAuliffe
When The Horse Is Dead, Get Off
MFA Solo Thesis Exhibition
April 1-April 4

Artist’s Reception:
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
5:00pm - 7:00pm

The Dimock Gallery at The George Washington University
(Lisner Auditorium, Lower Lobby)

730 21st Street NW (21st and H Street)
Washington, DC

Gallery Hours:
Monday-Friday 11am-3pm

I love my Digital Influence class. It’s being taught by John Bell, managing director/executive creative director of 360 Degree Digital Influence. Public relations in the age of digital influence is about leveraging social media to create conversations with potential influencers. Heady stuff.

As much as I’m enjoying what I’m learning about in class, I’m becoming more and more frustrated that deaf people will be left behind again. When A.G. Bell patented the telephone (the true inventor was Antonio Meucci), he ended up isolating the deaf community, the very people he set out to help. Bell’s famous words, “Mr. Waston, come here,” was only the first of many technological milestones that marginalized deaf people.

We were managing to get caught up by working with the FCC to regulate access for television and telecommunications, then came along the internet. At first, the internet wasn’t so bad. It was still pretty equal footing for those of us who had a computer. Now, with the advent of Web 2.0, we’re about to be screwed, or, should I say, Bellized, yet again.

YouTube is becoming more and more popular as a means of exchanging information. Ditto for podcasts. My professor assigned the class a podcast to listen to, but luckily, I was able to get a transcript from him. What about the other podcasts with information that would benefit me, such as those from NPR or The New York Times? Much of this information is so new; traditional media hasn’t caught up yet. This information could be critical to a person working in a cutting-edge industry. We’d better get on the horn, and fast, if we want to remain competitive.

Why, oh, why doesn’t anyone use universal design principles?! We wouldn’t have to go to the FCC or Congress to regulate access every time a new invention rolls along.

I’ve been obsessively reading and rereading media coverage of the tragedy at Virginia Tech. This incident is disturbing on many levels. It’s upsetting to me as a person who works on a college campus. I feel now, more than ever, that there really is no safe zone. This is the same feeling that I had on 9-11.

There is now a national debate on this issue, and many pundits are stepping up to talk about this…except deaf pundits. I checked DeafRead and all I see are vlogs and blogs about ASL, SLCC, deaf this, and deaf that.

I’m curious…why? Why isn’t anyone discussing this horrible incident and the implications it has for the rest of us? Is the deaf community too busy gazing at its collective navel?

Every morning, I slowly wake up by drinking bad office coffee spiked with a snowy cascade of sugar and reading the New York Times. I’m not sure what really wakes me up, the cheap acidic coffee or what I read.

This morning, I read Dr. Jordan’s op-ed piece in the Post for the second time in two days, groused a bit and then I moved on to the more interesting articles in the Times. As I read about the Chinese baby shortage and a documentary called “Crazy Love,” on a woman who married a guy who was responsible for her being blinded by lye, I kept thinking about the op-ed article in the Post.

My initial reaction was bemusement about the timing of this article and Dr. Jordan’s rationale for dredging up what should have been bygones. Now, I’m still thinking and I am frustrated because we have a powerful advocate determined to see Rome, oops, Gallaudet burn (and unfortunately, there are some people who are making it easy for him).

This op-ed exploits the fear that is an inherent reaction to a traditionally disfranchised community that has asserted its power. This op-ed, intentionally or unintentionally, reinforces the idea of deaf people as the “other.” That is damaging but at the same time, some introspection is in order.

I don’t agree with what Dr. Jordan wrote and question his motives for writing this but there is some validity to his argument. By making this statement, I am in no way endorsing this op-ed but beliefs don’t just come out of nowhere. They are shaped by experiences and situations. For example, according to some of my peers, there is an audist lurking behind every bush, waiting to jump out and oppress me. The glib use of the word “audist” undermines the legitimacy of the movement. Immediately finding everything and everyone who doesn’t spout the Deaf Power Party rhetoric suspect makes it harder to move forward. If I see the shadow of an audist behind every tree, how will I recognize the real thing when he leans out to pinch me on the butt?

It is our responsibility as committed and thoughtful citizens of this world to examine this polarity and the reasons for its existence. That is what this op-ed failed to do. The onus is on us to do this now, in the interests of moving forward.

Instead of being reactionary and worrying about the size of the audiology department relative to the size of the deaf studies department or trying to scare Jill Q. Public by invoking the specter of “absolutists,” we need to understand the protests, place them into context and remember that history has a way of repeating itself. We just need to take a look at post-colonial regimes in Africa that exploit their lands and citizens in brutal ways comparable to or worse than the Europeans.

This op-ed saddens me because instead of trying to understand the protests as a disfranchised group’s bid to gain a measure of power, dignity and redemption, Dr. Jordan used a polarized paradigm to try to shame his opponents for refusing to conform to his vision of what Gallaudet should be. People in power are convinced that their policies, beliefs and way of doing things are the right way and this is how they rationalize forcing them upon a resistant group. It’s for your own good.

It is our job to critically examine why the protests took place. Where does the resistance come from? Was there a failure to get buy-in for this vision? Is this vision really at all different than the reality of what Gallaudet already is? What abuses of power (real or imagined) contributed to the pressures that built up inside the volcano that exploded on the hapless President-Designate, Dr. Fernandes? What external forces are at play in shaping this movement? Above all, we must be mindful that the “other” has its own other too. We are the other, and they are us.

Protests don’t just happen in a vacuum. Absolutist is another word for extremist, and be cautioned…it goes both ways. Here’s looking at ya, kiddo.

So, I got into grad school. Now I need to decide what kind of accommodations to request for my classes.

As an undergraduate, I had note takers and interpreters. The problem with going to school in an Oralist stronghold…not a big pool of sign language interpreters to choose from. My college ended up hiring one full-time but before he came abroad, I went through the short list pretty quickly.

The interpreter I had is brilliant, one of the best in the area and a science fiction writer to boot, but before he was hired as a staff member, I had to deal with one who showed up late for my classes, and who had an unstable ex-army medic boyfriend and voiced in ASL. The problem with the crazy ex-army medic boyfriend wasn’t just that he was crazy, he was also an interpreter and they’d troll my signing hearing friends looking for someone they could take under their wing. Understand that this meant not only mentoring a fledging interpreter so they could expand their business but also finding a third person to join their relationship. There were suspicious personal ads appearing every week in the local free paper looking for a short brown-haired shapely woman, must be willing to learn sign language. What’s more, is that I had a straight male interpreter for my yoga class and he was visibly getting off on the class, looking down my shirt and ogling the other women in my class. The one that ended up becoming my interpreter for the next four years was a life-saver. He’s brilliant, handsome, muscular, witty, and not straight, so he fit in at a women’s college perfectly.

My note takers were usually good but it was difficult trying to decipher someone else’s writing and I always wanted my own notebook. It’s funny, but having a notebook of one’s very own is important. I was sad I didn’t have my own lined notebook filled with my own handwriting. I had to figure out how to organize my notes from the readings, the Xeroxed paper filled with someone else’s writing and the handouts from class. I always wanted to have a perfect notebook with neat writing and appropriately high-lighted phrases, but you know, people in hell want iced water too. Now at work, I have notebooks filled with to-do lists, ideas and strategies. That little composition book is such a pleasure, especially because it’s orange and has an elephant on the cover.

I didn’t even know about CART back then. If I knew, I would have asked for CART for my art history lecture classes. Perfect notes and it’d have been so much easier to process information in my first language, written English. I also wish I knew cued speech. I would be so set! No worries about missing content-specific vocabulary.

Now…I’m in DC and there are plenty of top interpreters in the area. I just have to give Johns Hopkins a list and I should be all set to go, that is, if they’re able to get the people I asked for. I’d like to try CART, though. So guys, what did you use and why? I really wish I could get CART and an interpreter but I know that it’s outrageously expensive to have both. Is that fair? What are “reasonable accommodations” to ask for?

Also, do you ever feel guilty because of how expensive you are?

Standing amid the rubble of the recent cultural earthquake, I think to myself, “There is so much work to do.”

Much has appeared in the media recently about deafness and the deaf community. Most of this coverage has not been good. During the recent crisis at Gallaudet University, the deaf community’s dirty laundry was tossed out of an upper story window much like a cheating wife’s clothing is strewn on the front lawn for the world to see that all is not well in that house. The media is now scavenging through these items, holding shirts and skirts up for inspection before carting them off.

An opinion piece appeared in the Wall Street Journal that ridiculed the activists at Gallaudet. The writer said, “Like the black-power activists before them, the deaf are supposed to be an oppressed minority. And Ms. Fernandes is a sort of “Uncle Tom” figure who denies her own identity for the sake of pleasing the oppressor, that is, the hearing world.” This goes on to say, “If this sounds slightly absurd, well, it is.”

This writer, like many others writing about the recent events at Gallaudet, cherry-picked the issues that emerged during the course of this movement to create a one-dimensional representation of the deaf community. The media’s reduction of the complex issues in the deaf community has resulted in the creation of a simple paradigm of deaf people—those who assimilate and those who will not.

It is easy for people to understand essentialisms and polarity. It is more difficult to understand the various life experiences that deaf people have. The media ignores the multiple deaf identities and varied deaf experiences that comprise the deaf community in favor of a perverse representation of the protests as a dying culture fighting for its survival.

Instead of trying to better understand why this cultural earthquake happened and what needs to be done to move forward, it is easier for the media to subscribe to the party line of “identity politics,” which in reality was a cynical public relations strategy employed to win a fight.

People love the idea of dying cultures. People love being witnesses to a conflict between culture and technology. It’s an age-old infatuation that dates back to the days of armchair anthropology when Victorians would read about the “savages” of the Americas being confounded by “sticks shooting fire.”

The individuals who pushed the “not deaf enough” issue and the “identity politics” aspect of this cultural earthquake are just as guilty as the European historians who wrote about Captain Cook’s death at the hands of the people of Hawaii. Those white historians theorized that Captain Cook was deified by the natives of Hawaii as an incarnation of the god Lono, and then killed when they realized he wasn’t really Lono. Of course. Those silly natives always think white people are gods. Happens all the time!

It took a “native” anthropologist, Gananath Obeyesekere, Ph.D., the Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University, to dispute the widely accepted notion that white explorers are always deified by the people they encounter. This “fact” has been part of the story of conquest for centuries, until Obeyeskere wrote, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific in 1992.

Those myths are widely accepted and have become a part of the western cultural currency, much like the myth that the deaf community is polarized into groups—those who embrace technology that will allow them to become more like hearing people, and their detractors, the noble savages who hate all things and people hearing, especially cochlear implants.

Change is constant. All cultures are predisposed to change and resisting change at the same time. These dynamic processes happen naturally as a result of inventions and contact between cultures. The cochlear implant is just ONE invention out of many that has changed the deaf community. The deaf community has come to terms with the cochlear implant and assimilated it, as it has done for other inventions. To reduce these protests to being about a group rejecting Dr. Fernandes because it is threatened by technology, and change, is a great disservice.

This cultural earthquake is not about resisting technology, identity, or a “fringe” group demanding rights based on their victim status and hating on others who aren’t exactly like them. It’s about the broken promise of the ADA and the fact people outside the deaf community continue to speak for us—like those brilliant public relations consultants who thought that pushing the “not deaf enough” issue would help them with their cause.

Thanks. Now we have to clean up after you.

In a sense, Dr. Jane K. Fernandes was right. To paraphrase what she told the Washington Post, she just happened to be the woman standing next to the volcano when it erupted.

A volcano erupts when pressure builds up in its recesses. The pressure causes magma–molten rock–to force its way to the surface. Eruptions can be caused by gas bubbles from chemical processes, or by more magma crashing the house party from deeper inside the earth. The magma in the volcano chamber is just waiting for a little incentive to blow. In this case, the incentive—unfortunately—was Dr. Fernandes’ selection as the next president of Gallaudet University.

This eruption happened in the middle of a cultural earthquake. Postcolonial theory recently started to trickle down from academia and influence how people inside the deaf community understood themselves. Theories of oppression and marginalization are beginning to seep into the deaf community’s collective consciousness. Basically, words such as “deafhood” and “audism” escaped from academic discourse and found their way to the deaf club.

Now, deaf people are angry. We finally understand just how much the world does not want to make room for us.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), signed into law by President George H. Bush in 1990, promised a world where deaf people had equal access. In the post-ADA and post-Deaf President Now era, we have bitterly come to realize that the famous words said by Dr. I. King Jordan, first deaf president of Gallaudet University, “Deaf people can do anything but hear” were a lie. It’s not his fault. It was a hopeful lie. He believed it…and we desperately wanted to believe him.

We wanted to believe that after DPN and ADA, the world understood, and would make room for us.

In April 2006, sixteen years after ADA was signed into law, a doctor refused me service because he did not want to pay for an interpreter. In May 2006, ignorant hearing people called in to a NPR show celebrating the legacy of Dr. Jordan to complain about the high cost of interpreting services. Deaf people died in Hurricane Katrina because emergency communications broadcasts were not closed-captioned. It’s over a year later. They’re still not closed-captioned.

Last year, I met a woman who worked for the Human Rights Campaign—an organization that works for gay, bisexual and lesbian equality and has in their mission statement, HRC strives to end discrimination…and realize a nation that achieves fundamental fairness and equality for all. In an attempt to connect with me (or more likely, to pick me up, it was a gay bar), she grasped at the only deaf connection she had. She told me that the HRC had a deaf intern working there who was “really good.” She then added, “But he wasn’t considered for a permanent job.” I asked her why, and she said, “He just didn’t fit in.” When I pressed her further, she admitted that it was just too difficult to communicate with him.

The little things. It’s the little things.

My humanity is taken away from me when people dismiss me in tiny little ways. It’s unbelievable…the frustration I feel when my flight has been moved to another gate and the gate agent won’t take the time to write down where I should go, just waving me off as someone else steps up to take my space in the line. The rage I feel when the person behind the counter gives me a look, like I’m stupid, after I ask for a pen. The helplessness I feel when a cab slows down, and then speeds off when I proffer paper with the destination written on it. The words I want to shout at the people who have mistreated me but don’t because I refuse to give anyone an opportunity to look at me as less than human because my speech is not clear and sounds different.

What I hate the most though, is when someone has more power than I do because she can hear and talk. She can barely read or write but that doesn’t matter, right? She can talk. And talk, she does, for me, as I depend on a sign language interpreter. I must grit my teeth as her voice says, “We are giving Board of Trustees evil eye,” when I actually signed, “We are going to closely monitor the Board of Trustees.” (This didn’t actually happen to me but I did see this on the news recently, and who knows how many more misunderstandings have happened since interpreting became a profession) It’s always a crapshoot, waiting to see who shows up to interpret for you.

To hearing people who don’t use sign language, I am nothing without that voice. There is an empty space where my thoughts and feelings should be. They can project whatever they want onto that space, and they do.

Put together countless dehumanizing little things like this happening and a group that has just had its consciousness raised, you get a volcano. It is terrible, what happened to the woman standing next to the volcano, but the anger that burnt her to a crisp is real. It wasn’t identity politics. It was many and many lifetimes of not having a voice because, who’s going to pay for that voice? And even then, there’s no guarantee that voice’s going to say what you really mean.

That, my friends, is why the signing deaf community united against Dr. Fernandes.

The New York Times published an article this morning about men who are married to women but also sleep with men. Over the past year, there have been some articles in this vein about well-known cruising places near the city where men stop off for a quickie before speeding down the highway towards their children and a nice penne dinner. This seems to be more common than we realize.

This article describes the pain that these men go through trying to figure out how to live their lives. There are some men who want to remain married to their wives (also known as “beards”) but also have someone on the side. This arrangement has worked for various couples throughout the years but often, when the wife finds out that her husband is in an active homosexual relationship, she wants to end the marriage. (more…)

I first discovered blogs when I was living in Sioux Falls. It was around the time I started to realize that I couldn’t spend any more Saturdays at the same antique store, eat any more aged Stilton from the only cheese place in town or walk through the same museum for the zillionth time. I was also exhausted by my own navel-gazing so it was thrilling to stumble across the minutiae of someone else’s life, especially if it named names (we’re not supposed to admit it but we all know we like this stuff). (more…)

Patrick Henry College is a small liberal arts college about an hour’s drive outside of Washington, D.C. in Purcellville, VA. It’s only six years old and has 300 students-it has been described in the media as “the Christian college with a right-wing political agenda.” The college’s vision is to be a faith-based institution on the same level as an Ivy and its mission is to “lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical values.”

The campus is currently embroiled in an ideological conflict. Patrick Henry College’s vision of being a rigorous faith-based institution is at odds with its classical liberal arts curriculum. A conflict between professors at Patrick Henry College and its president has raised questions about faith-based higher education and if a commitment to liberal arts can co-exist with a biblical worldview. (more…)