When hearing people complain of their communication rights

You think only deaf people do this? Here's a case of hearing people complain about not having communication access with deaf people. In this particular case you had a deaf federal employee who preferred only an interpreter but the interpreter was only available once a week for one hour leaving the rest of the 39 hours without an interpreter during the work week.  This deaf employee has access to a typing communication device that would allow him/her to communicate to a hearing person face to face but refused to use it. Hearing federal employees were all too willing to use the typing device to communicate fully with their deaf employee. The refusal by this deaf employee to use the easy to use face to face communication device puts the work of everyone else in the office on hold for 39 hours. By doing that, the deaf employee also takes away the hearing employees’rights to communicate, ironically so. So, who is hurting who here? A case of a selfish deaf employee?

Comments are now open...again.

Looking at the survey I did last month I realized that there are more people wanting to see my comment form stay open and be available rather than have it closed to the public. And, so, I decided to turn my comments back on.

One word for ya'll.

Behave! And with less mewling, too.

Husband and wife - deaf farmers

In an old Deaf Mosaic video that was produced in 1994 I came across an old married deaf couple who were Oklahoma farmers for over 50 years known as Ruby and Harold Moeller. You can watch the video of the Moellers starting at the 21:19 mark. The Deaf Mosaic video of the Moellers was taken some 17 years ago when they were almost 70 years old. I'm sure they are probably not around anymore. And so the question becomes, where are the next generation of deaf farmers? And exactly how many deaf farmers are there in the United States? To have a deaf farmer, much less a married deaf couple who are both farmers, is a rare thing to come across. Much is appreciated to any and all farmers who help grow our food and other products for the United States. It ain't easy.

Midwest Living magazine

Here's something I found interesting. Dan Kaercher who helped start Midwest Living magazine grew up with deaf parents.

Kaercher compiled his travel notes into a chatty book, "Best of the Midwest: Rediscovering America's Heartland" released this May. His observations and experiences also formed the basis for "Dan On the Road," a one-hour special airing on Iowa Public TV and other Midwest PBS stations this spring and summer. A series of half-hour programs based on the trip will debut this winter.

It was Kaercher's ability to read other signs, though, that fostered such storytelling abilities. Kaercher's parents, Edward and Lillian, both were deaf and mute.

"Some of my verbal skills came from the fact that I was their interpreter many times from an early age," Kaercher says during a phone conversation from his office in Des Moines. "They would call on me to talk to the guy at the furniture store, to call my grandmother in Omaha. I had to develop my verbal skills very early."

It was a unique parent-child bond that came to an end only last summer when Kaercher's mother died at 95 years old—days before he was to begin the second leg of his journey. Lillian Kaercher caught a cold, then developed pneumonia. She spent one day in the hospital before dying. "Somebody who's 95 dying that mercifully and swiftly, if you will, was a blessing to us," Kaercher says.

Still, "it was a shock. It was tough. We buried her in Council Bluffs on Monday and then Tuesday afternoon I had to be in Chicago to start the next leg of the trip. I thought, ‘How can I get through this?' But . . . sometimes parents are helping you along when they're not physically along."

Roots

Married later in life, Edward and Lillian Kaercher were "totally not expecting a child" when their son came along in 1949. "Life was hard for my parents because life was hard for disabled people then," Kaercher says. "It's not easy now. Employment and things like that were very difficult."

Kaercher's father, a Philadelphia native, graduated from Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, Gallaudet College and Lutheran Theological Seminary. He is cited in the book, "Deaf Heritage: A Narrative History of Deaf America," as being the first deaf Lutheran pastor to be ordained, in 1929. Edward later established "preaching points" in various East Coast cities before illness forced him out of the pulpit in 1942.

Sometime after that he came to Nebraska, ostensibly to visit his sister, Hilda, who in 1943 formed Immanuel Lutheran Church in Bellevue. His real motivation was to meet a woman spoken of by a friend from Gallaudet College—Lillian, a Nebraska School for the Deaf graduate and recent widow. "There aren't all that many people to pick from, sometimes, if you have this disability of deafness," Kaercher says. "At that time, a deaf person almost always married a deaf person."

Edward and Lillian did just that, then moved to the Finger Lakes region of New York. Kaercher was born there, in Elmira, N.Y. "Despite that blemish," he jokes, "I can claim safely that I've been a Midwesterner for 52 out of my 56 years. I couldn't have asked for two better parents. Both very loving. My father . . . really opened up the world to me. He loved to travel."

When he was 4, the family "got a fresh start," moving to Omaha. They lived in Logan Fontenelle Homes, segregated public housing in North Omaha. Edward began a new career, teaching at Iowa School for the Deaf. Their son attended Kellom Grade School at 24th and Paul streets. "The project we lived in was segregated until the mid-'50s," Kaercher says. "The school was integrated. The majority of students in my grade school through fourth grade were black, which opened my horizons, too. At the time, I thought it was just normal."

The family moved to Council Bluffs in 1959, Kaercher attending Hoover Grade School and Abraham Lincoln High School (which has inducted him into its hall of fame). At Hoover in the fifth grade he met his wife-to-be, Julie. The two didn't begin dating until their senior at A.L., however. They graduated in 1967, Dan heading for the University of Omaha, Julie for Iowa State University.

Just to let you know that Julie and Dan Kaercher donated money to the Iowa School for the Deaf and was mentioned in the 2009/2010 newsletter. But upon researching the video magazine of Midwest Living as seen in YouTube isn't captioned which is strange considering Dan Kaercher's background on having deaf parents. I wonder if he realizes that there are over 30 million people in the United States with hearing loss that could benefit a lot from captioned videos? 

The mummified remains of Deaf Bill and hauntings

Here's an interesting story about Deaf Bill who died in 1915 at age 52 and was essentially "forgotten" when left in a closet and over the years the body essentially "dried up" and was mummified. Many believe Deaf Bill haunts Mineral Springs Hotel where he once worked and lived there in Alton, Illinois.

Comments are now closed

Comments are now closed. It was open for three days over the Labor Day weekend. You had your chance.

Comments are now open.

You can put your comments in now.  Comment box will remain open until Tuesday, Sept 6, after the Labor Day weekend. Say your piece while you still have time.

Bullying and mocking only because they look different?

A recent news of a deaf boy who was bullied and mocked on a school bus only because he was different and wore hearing aids. It got so bad when kids grabbed his two expensive hearing aids and threw them out of the bus window. The deaf boy explained using his clear and articulate voice  on what happened and you can tell he was upset by it all. This reminded me of an incident when I was a sophmore in high school during lunch in the school cafeteria. One hearing guy at the cafeteria table mocked me by putting up an empty paper cup (for ketchup) on his ear as if it were a hearing aid. A fake hearing aid. I wrote that one off as purely a case of immaturity and lack of education. What he did would be construed as a sort of bullying when done in such a mocking manner.

That incident also reminded me of the coda brothers, who are hearing, when they mocked cochlear implant wearers on camera by wearing fake cochlear implants.  There was also another video example with one of the coda brothers who mocked by pretending to be an oral deaf person by making exaggerated lips and mouth movements, and talking loudly thus painting a false stereotype of deaf people who prefer to talk or can speak.  There are deaf and hard of hearing people who talk just fine (for example, see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).  They may look different, they may speak differently, but so what? Why the need to mock and bully deaf people for who they are?

Watch the video below and turn on the CC button to get the captioning on the main YouTube page by clicking on the YouTube icon first.



Now, you wouldn't like it if hearing people go around on videos and mock deaf people by doing a bunch of fake signing, would you?

I hope that deaf boy's mother will get her money back for buying those expensive hearing aids and there'd be some justice in all this.