Listening is exhausting.

I spend a lot of my time on Twitter these days. (@ronniecat) I follow local and national reporters, local people, businesses and institutions. And I follow a lot of deaf or hard-of-hearing (HoH) people.

I got a fair amount of reaction from hearing people when I retweeted (that means someone else I follow tweeted it, and I "forwarded" it) this article, titled "Listening is exhausting."

My deaf and HoH contacts on twitter tweeted, and retweeted, and retweeted this article. It was as if - no, it was that someone had exactly articulated something we all knew, but all thought we were alone in.

Hearing, for most people, is an entirely passive thing. You just hear. For the hearing-impaired, whether working with hearing aids or CI processors, hearing is an active thing. You are actively working mentally to understand everything that is going on. Depending on your situation, or your employment, this can mean up to 10 or more hours a day working, mentally. It is, as the article title says and the testimonials agree, exhausting. I really empathized with the student in the video who said that on Saturdays, he just crashed. Done in.

(This is why closed-captions are such a very, very big deal to HoH people. They transform active listening into passive listening. With them, watching a movie or tv show is recreational and pleasurable. Without them, it's more active listening, and inevitably a bit of a chore.)

And the woman in the video who says "If I miss a cue, and they start laughing, and I don't start laughing..." Oh, god, where to start at how awful that is? I usually laugh too, feeling like a goddamned idiot.

The article and video - coupled with a recent business trip to Ottawa - made me think about a lot of things. My work frequently takes me to meetings with my colleagues across the country. These are usually 2-day meetings and on the evening of the first day they always schedule a dinner at a local restaurant somewhere. This is an opportunity to socialize and get to know each other as people, not just bureaucrats. I used to love these group dinners. Now, I don't understand a word that is said at them. Recently I've stopped attending them because they usually end up in me saying nothing (am I hostile?) or else the poor people on the left and right of me try to make conversation and I either repeatedly ask them to repeat themselves, or I just pretend I understand what they're saying (at my great peril). It just makes them feel awkward and embarrasses them. So I beg off those dinners and just try to be incredibly pleasant at coffee breaks during the meetings so I don't seem hostile and weird. Any "bilateral negotiations" (discreet one-on-one conversations with my peers in other provinces or territories) all must take place during those breaks too.

And that made me think of another thing. I used to be funny. I certainly was never the life of the party - too introverted for that - but I was always able at group gatherings of friends or co-workers to come up with the well-timed quip that would leave the table in stitches. (I'm not bragging. I'm from Newfoundland. It's genetic.) That doesn't happen anymore, in gatherings big or small.You can't come up with a pithy comment if you're still trying to process two comments back. It's an aspect of my personality that is just - gone.

So that's what you lose, in the end. A bit of you. It's exhausting.

ronnie

Eye of the Sparrow: a Bad Lip Reading video

I do love these Bad Lip Reading videos. (There are a whole bunch of them on YouTube.) If nothing else, they highlight the difficulty of lip-reading under any circumstances. (I never, ever, picked up the knack, and to this day people ask me if I can.)

They get a bit too clever at times in this one - fudging words here and there that would clearly not be misread for the words substituted. Their earlier videos which were based solely on misread words were funnier. But still, given the event, the overall effect is pretty funny.

Forgetting to hear.

I was up, showered, shampooed, blow-dried, teeth brushed, eyeglassed, dressed, jewelried, and on my way out the door this morning when I realized I was still deaf.

On my walk to work - the CI processor now in place - I reflected on how exactly that could happen. How could I forget to hear?

I suppose there are late-deafened people like me who can't stand not wearing the processor. It's probably the first thing they reach for on waking up.

I find that - within reason - I transition very well between both states. And after several hours of being deaf - when sleeping, or swimming - I'm quite comfortable navigating the world not hearing. So much so that I can apparently forget to "turn hearing on" when I'm able to.

That's not to say I'd be comfortable without the option! The couple of times a component of the processor has failed - a wire broke, for example - I've been in a cold-sweat panic until the problem was solved.

But the fact is, when you've been there for a few hours - optionally - deafness is a very peaceful state. So much so that here's a secret: I don't enjoy putting the processor on in the morning.

Oh, I am enormously grateful for it! And, as I said, I'd have a panic attack if I put it on and it didn't work!

But it does work, and putting it on is just, honestly, not a terribly pleasant experience. You go from total silence to a sudden - LOUD - cacophony of noises, from the traffic on the street to the electricity humming through the appliances. The world is very, very loud. Having it hit you all at once is not a particularly pleasurable sensation.

I am grateful, enormously grateful, every single day for the miracle of the processor. But that first few seconds after activation is the thorn on the rose.

Perhaps that's unique to me. I don't know. It's just an observation. And I hope I never have to learn about the alternative.

ronnie

Music for everyone. Everyone!

Enjoy this video courtesy of the Deaf Professional Arts Network, of adorable kids signing a White Stripes song. I've always said that, speaking English, with forays into French, Spanish and ASL, that ASL was by far the most expressive and enjoyable language I ever "spoke". This video shows a little bit of why.

In case you're wondering, deaf people listen to music by putting speakers face-down on the floor and enjoying the vibrations. You can get a surprisingly rich experience by doing that. These videos add the "words" for deaf music fans.



There's lots more where that came from at the D-Pan website.

ronnie

"I can hear myself crying!"

Thanks to Brian Fies of The Fies Files who forwarded me this very moving video of a 29-year-old woman, deaf from birth, having her cochlear implant activated.



When I got activated, everybody in the room cried, including the audiologist. She told me that everyone who does this keeps a box of tissues on their desk. In fact, that was one of the first full sentences I heard.

Brian wondered how she could understand and respond to the audiologist if she had been deaf from birth. The video description says she reads lips, and she has obviously been taught to speak. (This is done with intense speech therapy and the use of mirrors to help teach the proper lip and tongue position to make letters and sounds). Her speech is so good, though, that I suspect her "limited use of hearing aids" has given her more to work with than the phrase would suggest.

A lovely video I'm glad I got to see.

ronnie

Goats for our computer industry.

Thank you to Mike, over at The Nellie Blog, who directed me to this hilarious video of some very bad lipreading. I told him this is why I never learned the skill.



ronnie

Blogger is having a nervous breakdown.

Blogger went into lockdown - sorry, "read-only"- mode yesterday, having lost a bunch of posts and a bunch of related comments. This was distressing to me, as I had not been able to read the 3 comments that had been left on my last significant blog post (the one about my trip to Halifax and my related nerves) - the list of websites blocked at work is mysterious and random, and I can see my blog from work, but not the related comments. First, Blogger lost both the post and the comments; now the post is back but the comment count is at "0". Blogger still says they're going to retrieve those lost comments, but I am well beyond skeptical. So thank you, those of you who cared enough to comment. Let's assume it was a group effort. Just the fact that there were 3 from someone made me feel like you all had my back.

It went very, very well. There's a lot to tell you but frankly, I've been flat-out since 7 a.m. and I am exhausted. I will continue to post random bits and bobs to the blog and more often to twitter while I am on the road, and will tell you everything when I get home. I am outside my comfort zone now, and part of me wants to switch back to my old program, which has been loaded into the processor as an "I can't handle this" failsafe backup; but there is potential here for growth, or, as my audiologist puts it, "I know you're uncomfortable. You're using the new features you paid nearly $7000 to upgrade to, for the first time."

I am functional, I can hear and carry on a conversation. But it's like putting on a new pair of shoes after wearing your comfortable old sneakers to death. You're very aware they're there, and they feel different.

They took my old one, so baby, failure is not an option.

ronnie

"Giants" bringing hearing and hope

Mike Peterson, who knows I don't follow American football news much - or, in fact, ever - alerted me to this great article about NFL players donating their time to work with the Starkey Hearing Foundation to provide hearing aids for Rwandans. (I almost forgot - check out Mike's Comic Strip of the Day website, with insightful commentary on current comic strips and panels. You won't be disappointed.)

I'm slightly familiar with the work of the Starkey Hearing Foundation - Marlee Matlin is one of their biggest supporters and promotes their work tirelessly. I was less familiar with the fact that their good works are so far-flung. When you think about the opportunities for the people in this article to access hearing aids without the intervention of an organization like Starkey, well...

The article itself by its very existence is evidence that the strategy of recruiting celebrities and athletes to participate in these programs pays off. I am impressed by the attitudes of the players quoted in the article, and by the fact that they're working, not standing around being famous. Being an agent of bringing someone out of the silence into communication with the world again must be a whole different kind of special feeling.

ronnie

Trying to get a word in edgewise

On his journal, Roger Ebert (worth reading any time in any form - his reviews, journal or twitter feed) has a wonderful post in response to an email sent to him by a man who, like Ebert, has lost his ability to speak.

When I went deaf, the most unexpected, profound and painful side effect was the isolation and the resulting frustration. It's unintentional on the part of your coworkers, family, companions - hell, many of mine went far out of their way to try to alleviate it - but it's inevitable and unavoidable. And awful and lonely.

Never did it occur to me that losing the power of speech would lead to the same experiences.

We really, really take our senses for granted.

ronnie

Hi, Johnathan!

An 8-month old deaf baby reacts to having his cochlear implant activated.



Such a look on his face! Thanks to Mary Ellen for sharing.

(I had no idea they did them that young - they must lose the bits and pieces constantly.)

ronnie

"Modern messaging a godsend for the deaf"

To say the least! So much so that even after now with my CI, Husband and I text about 90% more often than we actually call. Email didn't hurt, either. A friend said to me once that I was so lucky to have gone deaf when I did. That was true. I only had to use a clumsy TTY device twice or three times while completely deaf. Text messaging and email have opened so, so many doors for the deaf. Video relay (explained in the story below) is going to revolutionize things even more for native ASL speakers.

Great story in my local newspaper today.

ronnie

Sign in Space

Okay, as a deaf person and a space nut, I'm not ashamed to admit this made me cry.

American Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson, currently on the International Space Station, has sent the first-ever ASL message from spacen

I've written before about how it feels, as a deaf person. to be continually an afterthought.

Tracy Caldwell Dyson knows we we are here. And she spoke to us. Who knows what deaf kid will be inspired to pursue a career in space as a result of her six-minute video?

On the 41st anniversary of the moon landing, a very timely and moving development.

ronnie

This is just... wrong.

From failbook.org, of course, via Sister.

ronnie

Silence

I walked home deaf today; that is, when my battery died at around 4:45 as I left work, I chose not to put on a fresh one and instead made the walk home in the pleasant silence of voluntary deafness.

I like being voluntarily deaf by times. You can hear yourself think. In fact I was reminded of a passage I read recently in Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion", which I am close to finishing:

"[American psychologist Julian] Jaynes notes that many people perceive their own thought processes as a kind of dialogue between the 'self' and another internal protagonist inside the head. Nowadays we understand that both 'voices' are our own..."

I had been vaguely aware that my interior thoughts seemed to consist of some kind of dialogue, an ongoing conversation between - who? Me and me? - but had never seen it explained - or at least expressed - before.

So I had a nice, silent internal dialogue with myself on the way home, about silence and the nature of internal dialogue and Julian Jaynes and the Dawkins book.

How ironic that after all these years, this is where peace lies.

ronnie

Finally, someone understands.

ronnie

Deaf News

A roundup of some interesting deaf news that has crossed my desktop in recent days.

• Deaf actress Marlee Matlin is going to be on Dancing with the Stars this season, which is sure to alter the American public's perceptions of deaf people and how we live. I hesitate to say, "...and what we can do" as that makes us sound like some kind of stealth superhero, the stereotypical disabled kid who doesn't say a word all through the movie and then pulls off a miracle move in the last quarter, leaving everyone stunned but feel-good (all except those who bullied and mocked him, of course, who are now suitably chagrined). No, instead I hope it just makes people stop assuming that they know what deaf people can or can't do. (You'd be surprised how many people think that deaf people aren't allowed to drive, for example.)


• There is no victory so small that someone won't take the time to criticize it. In response to Pepsi's SuperBowl Pregame ad featuring ASL, the President of the Alexander Graham Bell Association sent a letter (pdf) to Pepsi complaining that the ad "perpetuates a common myth" that the deaf only communicate using ASL. (The Bell Association is an advocate for the "oral approach" to deafness - teaching children to speak and lipread, not sign. As you can imagine, this does not endear them to ASL-oriented Deaf culture.) The President of the National Association for the Deaf replied to that letter here.
  
  I've referred here often to the controversies and contentious issues that seem to infuse deaf culture, politics and policy. It is never enough to be deaf; you must be deaf the right way. I usually don't have much of a position on these controversies, coming late to the game as I do, but in this case, I'm solidly behind NAD, and not just on the tv ad issue, on the entire issue of ASL vs. the oral approach. But even if I wasn't, someone else's little parade is a poor time to pull out your rain-maker. It's just bad form.


• Remember the Ukranian sign language interpreter who refused to sign offical government propaganda during Ukraine's "Orange Revolution" and instead told the entire deaf country that they were being lied to? The last thing I wrote about her was, "I wonder what's happened to her since". Well, now we know what happened to her, up until 2005, anyway, when she was honoured for that act.


• Pitcher Ryan Ketchner, who is deaf, has been drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays and will be playing with their triple-A Syracuse farm team this season. Here's a fairly straight-ahead profile of Ketchner from the National Post, and here's a more "sportswriter-sentimental" take from the Toronto Sun. If called up, he won't be the first deaf player to play MLB; Monteal Expos outfielder Curtis Pride was one of Ketchner's childhood heroes, and Luther "Dummy" Taylor, as he was known, pitched for the New York Giants from 1900 to 1908. If Ketchner is called up to pitch for the Jays, he'll be the first deaf pitcher to play in the Majors in 100 years.
  

ronnie

Finding Bob's Place

Every year at Super Bowl time I grumble about the companies which spend around $750,000 on an ad, $250,000 for 30 seconds of airtime to show it during the advertising industry's Big Day, and who don't bother to spend $350 to close-caption it.

So it was great to hear that Pepsi has created an ad which will have its TV debut during this year's Super Bowl which is not only captioned, but which is completely performed in ASL. It was developed by a hearing Pepsi employee with ties to the deaf community and features him and two other deaf Pepsi employees in starring roles, and is based on a story that is kind of a deaf urban legend.

It won't air until the big game - but who wants to wait until then? Courtesy Pepsi and YouTube:



(Notice Bob's door"bell", which works like mine?)

Cool :)

ronnie

Talk Radio for the deaf??

What the hell did the deaf ever do to radio to deserve this?

LAS VEGAS—Talk radio may soon get a whole new audience: the deaf. At a pre-CES briefing in Las Vegas, radio transmitter manufacturer Harris Technology demoed a technology that would enable the deaf to "read" talk radio broadcasts in real time.

"We want to make radio accessible to people that are deaf and hearing impaired," said Hal Kneller, senior manager of business development at Harris Corporation.

And there are a lot of them. According to the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), nearly 10,000,000 persons are hard of hearing and close to 1,000,000 are functionally deaf.

The systems works a lot like close captioning does for television. The company will piggy-back a data stream on the standard audio signal. The text can then be read on radio fitted with a display. The system will only work with digital broadcasts, but the company says an Internet-based solution is possible.

More at the full PC Magazine article.

Now the deaf, too, can suffer the wave of seething, hate-filled vitriol that is right-wing talk radio. H'ray!

(Actually, given its potential beyond so-called 'talk radio' - a tainted term that has come to be code for 'right-wing blowhards whining about what victims they are' - I'm pretty excited about this development for the deaf. There are over 1500 HD radio stations in the US, and Canada has just opened the door to HD, allowing the CBC to begin testing HD radio in Ontario.)

ronnie

Miracle on Sami's Street

I am watching, for the umpteenth time, the 1994 remake of the 1947 classic "Miracle on 34th Street". While critical reviews of the remake were mixed, I'm with Roger Ebert's assessment - the movie is a "sweet, gentle, good-hearted film that stays true to the spirit of the original".

Any person has certain moments in a favourite movie which, for personal reasons, are absolute favourite moments - the scenes that affect you the very most emotionally, or which you enjoy enormously every time you watch them.

The past few years, the scene in the remake where Santa communicates with the little deaf girl, Sami, in (quite correct) ASL moves me nearly to tears, every single time. She is such a remarkable, dignified little character, and her pleasure at being able to communicate with Santa Claus is almost unbearable to watch.

ronnie

Hell of a way to start the day.

Yesterday, I noticed my hearing fading in and out a couple of times. I blamed it on the batteries, which lose their power with age, and which have out of necessity been left in a cold car for hours on end lately, which I know is bad for them... but such is the reality of living between two homes in winter in Canada.

By last night, it was happening more frequently. I mentioned it to husband - time, I said, to contact the Hearing and Speech Center about getting the thing checked out and figuring out what component was giving me trouble.

This morning, my worst nightmare came true. When I put on the processor...

...nothing happened.

Then, when I took it off to examine it, this happened.

I 'spect it goes without saying that the little black piece there next to the headpiece wire, used to be attached to the end of the headpiece wire.

That's a super way to start the day - and I am due to give a presentation at a meeting at 1pm this afternoon.

First, don't panic. So we didn't. Husband went to the office to call the NS Hearing and Speech Center and talk to "Helen", my audiology technician there and ask if we can get another headpiece couriered. I emailed my boss and explained that I wouldn't be making the meeting. She emailed back that she was sure everything would be fine in the end and not to worry. Husband emailed that Helen said there should be a spare headpiece in my CI kit. By the time I got the kit, found the spare headpiece in the bottom and got the processor on - and was hearing again - he was at the house, concerned I might not have checked my email.

Ok. Ok. Crisis over. Handled. I can hear again. Helen is sending yet another spare. (Apparently I should always have two on hand - guess that little wire is the most likely part to fail.) Emailed my boss. Crisis averted. See you at the meeting. Gotta go review the material I'm giving a presentation on.

It's amazing what you can get used to.

ronnie