Clerc Scar 13 29-30 September 2009 CONTENTS ===== CHASING VISTAS 11 Melanie Bond [Memoir] ===== Hearing-Ear Dog 10 Kendra Harness [Comic] ===== Vistionary, Please Jesse Thomas [Essay] ===== I am waiting Karen Christie [Poem] ===== The Sistine Secrets Mary J. Thornley [Book Review] ===== A Is For America Raymond Luczak [Book Review] ===== We welcome letters to the editor in response to this piece. Send to editor@clercscar.com. We reserve the right to edit letters for space and clarity or not to publish a letter. We are always open to submissions. Submit your writing, artwork, or video to editor@clercscar.com. To subscribe, email subscribe@clercscar.com with the message "Subscribe daily" or "Subscribe weekly." To unsubscribe, email subscribe@clercscar.com with the message "Unsubscribe me." Find us on Twitter and Facebook! Visit our archives or bookstore at http://www.clercscar.com. Copyright 2009 by Clerc Scar. All rights reserved. ==================================================================================== Clerc Scar 13.1 ===== Deaf American Poetry showcases for the first time the best works of Deaf poets throughout the nation's history--John R. Burnet, Laura C. Redden, George M. Teegarden, Agatha Tiegel Hanson, Loy E. Golladay, Robert F. Panara, Mervin D. Garretson, Clayton Valli, Willy Conley, Raymond Luczak, Christopher Jon Heuer, Pamela Wright-Meinhardt, and many others. Own your copy today at http://www.clercscar.com/books/dap.html ! ===== CHASING VISTAS 12 Melanie Bond Words: 1,383 [Memoir] Chapter 315 Bacon Debate After the drama of last night's storm and watching gusting winds flutter down to a more gentle breeze, we drove three miles north to Garrison for dinner. We enjoyed our fine meal. I had one of the best fried chicken meals ever. The skin was fried to a golden crisp and the meat was tender and well seasoned. If you know me, I like my turkey bacon that way too, crispy and crunchy! Harvey cringes whenever he sees me crunching down on a piece of bacon. He'd yelp, "I think it's totally revolting to see bacon cooked to a crisp, especially when it begins to crumble!" But Dano and I disagreed with Harvey's twisted reasoning. We'd tease him back by telling him, "Well, it's just as disgusting to see you eating nuked rubbery bacon! It'd be like pulling teeth trying to chew a large rubber tire!" Back and forth we'd go with our silly games, with neither of us giving in. We always ended up laughing over it. By the way, did I mention that we also have a small microwave oven in our camper? It really was the most convenient and handiest kitchen appliance to have whenever electric hook-ups were available. I felt a lot more comfortable microwaving food inside the camper than cooking over the propane burners or the campfire outside the camper. Chapter 36 Sakakawea Lake It was a wet and blustery Sabbath afternoon. Harvey and I read our Royal Vision magazines while Dano worked on his Youth Bible lessons. I loved the title "Royal Vision" because of all its possible implications. Royal Vision--isn't that what we all want--not just to be able to see with our physical eyes but to also see from our hearts and minds and to use our body, hands and feet to really "see" life? I felt that for those of us with vision loss and a positive and healthy attitude, we were given a special sixth sense that would add another dimension to our living experience. I had already made peace with my deafblindness and accepted that my life would be about forging a new way of life that would take me down a different path. After our 12-week cross-country travels ended, we would move to Sierra Vista, Arizona, and buy 6.4 acres of land in the San Pedro Valley surrounded by the majestic Huachuca Mountains, Mule Mountains and the Sierra Madres. We would also be given the honor of naming our brand-new gravel road where our new home would be located. We named it "Royal Vision Trail." After concluding our Bible studies, we felt the need to get some fresh air and to stretch our legs. We decided to drive around Fort Stevenson State Park to see what there was to see and whether there were any special activities going on. Earlier this morning, plans for a parade had fizzled out due to inclement weather and a soggy campground. Wearing our raincoats, we stood on the beach and watched the restless waves of Sakakawea Lake. So, this was the lake that I could not see last night! This lake was named after a brave indian woman called Sakakawea, also known as Sacagawea. She accompanied Lewis & Clark on their famous expedition to find a passageway to the Northwest and the Pacific. Though I had seen Sakakawea Lake with my own eyes, I had no idea how large it really was. It was a huge reservoir lake about 178 miles long with about 1,340 miles of shoreline. This was most definitely the biggest lake in North Dakota. It is well stocked with a variety of fish, including Garrison?s mascot, the walleye. And to think that this lake was at one time the old and humble Missouri River which Lewis & Clark paddled on! Chapter 38 First Prairie Dog Town While we drove around Fort Stevenson State Park, guess what we stumbled onto? Our very first prairie dog town! This one was a deluxe prairie dog resort town because of its location on the waterfront and its beautiful view of Sakakawea Lake and reddened bluffs just across a small inlet. It was so exciting for us to see mounds scattered everywhere in this large grassy field. These mounds looked like tiny little mini-volcanoes with crater-like holes which provided these prairie dogs with access to their underground burrows. These also served as lookout points. One prairie dog popped its head out of a hole and quickly darted back down inside as if it sensed danger. Maybe we were the enemy! But then another one popped its head out at a different mound and stood real still while he surveyed the landscape as far as he could without turning his head. No doubt he was also sniffing the air for additional environmental clues. With our excited chattering, we made a nuisance of ourselves and he too darted right back down into his underground shelter. We agreed to all be silent so that we could see some more prairie dogs. It rained on and off so that may have put a damper on some prairie dog activity. It didn't dampen our spirits though. We all sat quietly in our van and waited patiently for about 20-25 minutes, hoping to catch another glimpse of these curious little dogs. Actually, they really aren't dogs--they're rodents, big ones! But they were so named because of the barking sounds they make. We were finally rewarded for our patience when we spied another prairie dog popping its head up from yet another mound. We all watched quietly for a few minutes while it came out of its hole to search for any signs of potential trouble. Sometimes, it stood very still as if on guard, but it never strayed more than one or two feet away from its lookout post. Dano made a loud noise and the prairie dog suddenly went into a warning mode. It popped its head back into the hole, but instead of going all the way back in, it used its head as a pivot in the hole and its legs to run around the hole in complete circles! And while his back-half was running around in circles, his black-tipped tail was quickly flapping up and down as if it were waving the death flag to warn any potential predators away and to warn its own coterie to stay hidden. Then it popped back into its hole. We had never quite seen anything so hilarious like this before! That was so cute watching his exposed rump running and flapping in circles! Not to disrespect them, of course, but in their fight for survival, they had developed an elaborate system of communication that ensured their best chance for survival. After all, they were the most important part of the food chain. Without them, the prairie ecological system would not be able to thrive. Again, we waited patiently and sat real still, hoping they'd be brave enough to come back out and give an "all clear" signal so that business could go on as usual. After a short while, a prairie dog came back out of the same mound and surveyed the area once more. Harvey and Dano quietly slid the van door open and proceeded to tiptoe stealthily with their backs lowered. They inched closer and closer toward this prairie dog while it watched them very carefully. I was surprised to see that this critter allowed them to approach without ducking back into its hole. Harvey snapped a close-up shot of this prairie dog on guard duty with his camera and it bowed out by suddenly zipping back into its burrowed place of safety. I was able to enjoy watching these prairie dogs through the use of my monocular. Harvey and Dano borrowed it often so that they too could enjoy close-up views of the critters at play and at work. When we finally turned around to leave this gem of a prairie dog town, I was able to see hundreds of white and yellow butterflutters, er, butterflies, flitting and fluttering in and out and around every blade of grass, every clump of leaves and every dainty blossom in the butterfields, er, the golden fields, that graced the road back to our campsite. ===== Melanie Bond is a deaf-blind writer based in Bay City, Michigan. Back to Top ==================================================================================== Clerc Scar 13.2 ===== Are you a "Harry Potter" fan? Then you'll love "Hector's Magic" by S. M. Stoffel. This exciting fantasy story is more than just a novel! Test your wits with the optional Reader Challenge Game as you read. Can you solve the riddle to escape the Cobra Room? Can you find the hidden entrance to the desert temple? How can you get past the Lady Shadows? Can you figure out how to defeat the terrifying Nightmare? But even if you don't want to take on the Reader Challenge, "Hector's Magic" is a lively adventure story for readers of all ages. It can be purchased at http://www.amazon.com in paperback ($9.99) or Kindle download ($2.99). ===== ===== The Hearing-Ear Dog 9 Kendra Harness [Comic] http://www.clercscar.com/archives/20090914b.html To view the comic, click on the link above. For those who are Braille readers, a text description is provided below. Not by Popular Demand! "The Hearing Ear Dog" Attack of the Killer Mice. The household mice, peeved at being victims of compulsory population control, form a peon to stop Puffy and Killer . . . At night, while all sleep . . . Puffy dreams of dancing cooked Thanksgiving turkeys. M. A. C. E.* strikes! (*Mice against certain extinction.) A group of mice run with army helmets and a cannon. The leader, with Mickey Mouse ears, urges them on. "Onward, soldiers! To the death!" The mice have captured Melvin, the baby. "Ok, let's move it!" "This kid's so heavy!" "Maybe they feed him ball bearings." "That's not what comes out." Killer the cat wakes up at the sound of skittering. "What's this? Better check it out!" Killer walks into the group of mice, and screeches with surprise. The mouse leader points at her with his saber. "Get her, soldiers!" A fight ensues. Finally, Killer is tied down and a note attached to her. "We have the kid! Cooperate or else!" NEXT! Will Puffy and Killer save the day? Will we resort to telling dead baby jokes? ===== Kendra Harness is a Deaf artist currently living in sunny California, cranking out sign language rubber stamps, T-shirt designs, and whatever else comes out of her fevered brain. Her website is at http://www.aslstuff.com Back to Top ==================================================================================== Clerc Scar 13.3 ===== Find your sign language teacher's and ILY rubber stamps at: http://www.aslstamp.com Get your colorful fingerspelling and sign designs on T-shirts, buttons, mugs, and more goodies at: http://www.cafepress.com/aslstuff Astound your eyeballs with unique art and cool links at: http://www.aslstuff.com ===== Visionary, Please Jesse Thomas Words: 971 [Essay] Much to my dismay nobody, as far as I can tell (someone gladden my heart by correcting me if I am wrong, please), is blogging about the Gallaudet Presidential Search process occurring on Kendall Green this week and next week. It brought me back to the days when we cried, sweated, bled, were traumatized and in Brian Morrison's case, lost a toenail, for the Protest because we did not want the status quo. Jane K. Fernandes, her personality and leadership flaws notwithstanding, represented the status quo. Our lack of confidence in the status quo, ironically, was validated when the MSCHE hammer came down on Gallaudet. Remarkable work by the faculty, students and Provost Dr. Steve Weiner has since mostly relieved the pressure of the MSCHE. Considering all that, the lack of attention to the current process, at least from my end as someone who is not on campus, is very odd to me. That being said, I took it upon myself to take up the search committee's invitation to email them at psac@gallaudet.edu with my thoughts. I have not seen any of the candidates' presentations and frankly, I don't have to. I saw the presentation by Dr. Ron Stern prior to Fernandes's selection. He floored me. He was inspiring, charismatic, remarkably intelligent, and he exuded confidence and humility at the same time. He presented himself as a genuine visionary. This is more or less what I told the PSAC (the email I sent is copy and pasted below, fear not). I'd like to add that I have enormous respect for Dr. Steve Weiner and Dr. Roz Rosen, but I am confident that Ron Stern is the man for the job if Gallaudet truly wants to take the next step as an university, as a Mecca for deaf people and as a stalwart we can all depend on and look on for inspiration worldwide. Today in an email a friend whose views I hold in high esteem remarked: "I have been hearing more and more that the Gallaudet community wants a 'college' person, but that is bs. I do know that Ron has wowed the community his first time around, and now he's not college enough? come on. "I remember reading somewhere and I am pretty sure it was Harvard (maybe not but one of them top ivy league schools). They hired a young (40-50 years old) man who did not have a PhD [Dr. Stern does have a PhD in Educational leadership] or collegiate managerial experience. He was not even in a college system but, you know--was hired because of his visionary leadership. And if they can do that and if they are happy with the hire, why not Gallaudet?" I agree with my friend. Dr. Stern presents at Gallaudet tomorrow (Thursday, September 24) and I have a feeling he will "wow" everybody again, so to speak. Let's hope the Board of Trustees is more attuned to Gallaudet than it was a few years ago and I pray that the Board of Trustees will choose the visionary, the born leader unafraid to try new things. Because, my friends, that is what every University needs in this rapidly changing world and for Gallaudet this is even more--and urgently--so. Here is my email to the PSAC: "Dear the PSAC and Board of Trustees, "I would like to express my sincere hope that the Board of Trustees will not immerse itself into the muck of evaluating each candidate's 'paper achievements.' It should be assumed, that since these 4 candidates reached this point, that they are all qualified in this sense. "What we should be looking for is a forward thinking visionary that will lead Gallaudet into the 20th century and claim its rightful place in the Deaf-World. The Board of Trustees may be tempted to make a 'safe pick,' such as the currently entrenched Steve Weiner, and this may be the correct decision. However, they should not limit themselves to this option. Steve Weiner might be best situated by continuing as the Provost, where he has done an excellent job. In addition, I have always felt that Gallaudet should exert more influence on improving the dismal state of Deaf education in America. In this instance, a wealth of precollege experience might be a huge plus. "Do not be afraid, dear Board of Trustees, to select someone with true leadership potential, a visionary leader with a creative intelligence capable of embracing and trying new ideas. Gallaudet would benefit greatly from a breath of fresh air and the inspirational, forward thinking leader that is Dr. Ronald Stern. That being said, I would like to assert that Dr. Steve Weiner and Dr. Roz Rosen would make interesting and intelligent choices as well. It would be nice if all three could end up at Gallaudet somehow--if one wins, the other two should be lured to Gallaudet to hold high posts. That, indeed, would be a 'dream team.' Shouldn't Gallaudet, after all, have the best that the Deaf community has to offer? And not just one of the three best, but all three? "Dr. Ronald Stern may not be viewed as a 'safe pick,' but I believe he is. He brings to the table the persona of the truly energetic, fresh and creative leadership that Gallaudet needs to stride confidently into the 21st century. Hopefully all the three people I mentioned above, and perhaps Dr. Hurwitz (whom I admittedly don't know enough about to make a judgement), can form Gallaudet's first-ever 'dream team.' In this case, the dream team's mission would not be to merely win a gold medal but, to hammer this point home, to usher Gallaudet into the future and realize its full potential and place in not only the Deaf-World but in the world, period. "Thank you, "Jesse Thomas, Class of 2009" ===== This essay first appeared as an entry on Jesse Thomas's blog at http://www.powhog.xanga.com Jesse Thomas, recently graduated from Gallaudet with a degree in history, is passionate about life, including travel, reading, sports, biking, and outdoor activities. He does not believe in fancy bios and believes his words and actions should speak for themselves. Back to Top ==================================================================================== Clerc Scar 13.4 ===== Within the category of poetry chapbooks, John Lee Clark's SUDDENLY SLOW is one of the hottest bestsellers out there. Order your own copy and find out why! Autographed copies are available at http://www.clercscar.com/books ===== I am Waiting Karen Christie Lines: 87 [Poem] I am waiting Yes, I am waiting for the finalist to be announced for the speeches to be given for the inauguration to end Yes, I am waiting for the next leader of this community of teachers and scholars and those of us beyond Washington, D.C. to get to work Also, I am waiting for Deaf people to be ready to dysfunction in a Hearing World I am waiting for someone to be just Deaf enough And I am waiting for a new order of Hearing people I am waiting for D-E-A-F to be redefined and published along with audism in Webster's Dictionary I am waiting for White Deaf folks to be given the privilege of learning about white privilege And I am perpetually waiting for the noble hunger of Deaf Women to finally be satisfied I am waiting for the communication methodology war to be declared unjust and unconstitutional I am waiting for the REAL weapons of mass destruction of oralism to be eliminated or at least annihilated in a really violent videogame I am waiting for all the genetic engineers to be placed in concentration camps where they are forced to concentrate really hard on the meaning of the word, "human" And I am waiting for all cochlear implants to be secretly programmed to broadcast ongoing messages of radical Deaf Nationalism I am waiting for those twittering in the Volta Bureau to invite Audism Free America folks in for tea, Scottish shortbread, and appropriate signed conversation And I am impatiently waiting for the A.g. Bell Association to expand its goals and become a chapter of the Deaf Bilingual Coalition I am waiting anxiously awaiting the Deaf-Blind Panthers to IED that stupid well pump at Helen Keller's Alabama home I am waiting for Martha's Vineyard to become a blossoming bilingual community again I am waiting for the next president of Gallaudet University to get to work ===== Karen Christie teaches in the Department of Creative and cultural Studies at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. Back to Top ==================================================================================== Clerc Scar 13.5 ===== Help KISSFIST grow! Share with your friends about art, poetry, fiction, photography, and talents of the signing community by visiting http://read.kiss-fist.com ===== The Sistine Secrets Mary J. Thornley Words: 613 [Book Review] Book under review: The Sistine Secrets: Michangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican Benjamin Blech & Roy Doliner HarperCollins, $26.95 Available at: http://bit.ly/16I0Rk "The Sistine Secrets: Michangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican" by Benjamin Blech & Roy Doliner is about secrets, yes. But it is also about so much more. The authors argue, convincingly, that Michangelo had studied the Kabbalah, and held beliefs or convictions at odds with the Catholic Church. For example, there is a human figure on the Sistine ceiling that wears a yellow circle on its left shoulder, suggesting a connection to Jews or Judaism. On page 35 there is an intriguing section titled "Deciphering the Esoteric." The authors write that there was much symbolism used in Renaissance works, particularly "esoteric knowledge." Knowing a number of codes, images, and symbols, artists and musicians of the Renaissance created messages in music or art that would escape detection by all but a few. Mozart and Shakespeare are believed to have used these tools. An example the authors give of how these codes might be hidden in art is in woven carpets. Jews fleeing the Holy Inquisition in Spain in 1492 wove carpets hiding the forbidden wisdom of the Kabbalah. Very popular, these carpets found their way into India and China where they were used in palaces. But also, to communicate secretly, Renaissance artists used the gestural language of deaf people. The authors write: "Unknown to most people today, Renaissance Italian artists had no difficulties working with their hearing-impaired friends and colleagues. Even today, especially in southern Italy, there is a deeply engrained tradition of expressing oneself through nonverbal communications, using hand gestures, facial expressions, and body language." In fact, Leonardo da Vinci directed artists to learn from the deaf. (Thomas Hart Benton, the painter of Martha's Vineyard, could be said to have followed this tradition since he used deaf models. A student of Benton's was Jackson Pollock, famous for his 'drip' paintings.) There were two successful deaf artists in Renaissance Italy: Pinturicchio, who did frescoes for the Sistine Chapel as well as other locations, and Cristoforo de Pretis, who worked with his hearing half-brother. They welcomed Leonardo da Vinci to Milan in 1483. The authors suggest that a famous painting, Madonna of the Rocks, may have been worked on by both Leonardo and Anbrogio de Petis, the hearing brother of Cristoforo, and this contention is supported by art historians. Madonna of the Rocks employs symbolism in the form of hands using visual imagery not unlike the statue of Lincoln by Daniel Chester French in Washington D.C., two works the authors' compare in "The Sistine Secrets." Into this rich tradition of visual language and hidden symbolism stepped Michangelo, a prodigious sculptor. For some reason, although he preferred sculpture, he agreed to paint the Sistine ceiling, a labor of four years. Michangelo devised scaffolding that allowed him to paint the ceiling, and no one was ever after able to recreate this feat. The authors provide extensive analysis of symbols used in the Sistine Chapel by Michangelo who had his designs and codes destroyed before his death. Disappointingly, there are no further references to the use of sign. Having made their point--that sign was a prominent part of the artistic heritage of the Renaissance--the reader would like the authors to share more on this topic, to be brought to closure. Maybe, not being sufficiently familiar with sign, the authors didn't feel capable of tackling this subject in its entirety. As a result, sign as a secret language or code remains an undeveloped element of this book. Had Michangelo's writing and records not been destroyed, would those reveal something about his use of sign, or the use of sign among Renaissance artists--or the use of sign in the images of the Sistine Chapel? ===== Morgan Grayce Willow wrote Corssing That Bridge, a guide on making literary events accessible to Deaf people, and has published three collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Between. Her Web site is at http://www.morgangraycewillow.com This piece first appeared in Third Coast. Back to Top ==================================================================================== Clerc Scar 13.6 ===== The American Society for Deaf Children, http://www.deafchildren.org , would like to invite writers to submit articles for their magazine, The Endeavor. The topic is Celebrating Deaf Children in Diverse Family Backgrounds. Examples: Deaf parents/adopted Deaf child, Same sex parents/Deaf child, Parents with a Deaf child and other special needs, etc. 800 to 1000 words. Submit to Tami Hossler at asdctami@aol.com by October 1st. ===== A Is For American Raymond Luczak Words: 2,370 [Book Review] Book under review: A is for American: Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States Jill Lepore Alfred A. Knopf, 240 pp., 2002 Available at: http://bit.ly/ezrCY How I chanced upon this book is rather like how the stories of its seven characters are told in this book. Initially, when I read in Mabs Holcomb and Sharon Wood's book Deaf Women: A Parade Through the Decades (Dawn Sign Press, 1989) about the famed inventor Samuel F. B. Morse's deaf wife and that "they communicated by using Morse code on their hands," something went off in my head. Something about that story didn't strike me as right, but what? I decided to do a little research on Samuel Morse and his second wife via Google, which showed in a sample of Jill Lepore's book that when he was in the market for his second wife, he said to his brother that "her misfortune of not hearing, and her defective speech only excited the more my love & pity for her." It turns out that marrying a poor deaf woman was Morse's way in feeling "doubly & trebly sure" of "her sincere devoted affection." That revelation led me to read the rest of Jill Lepore's A Is for American: Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States, which is unlike most historical nonfiction books I've read. When the United States finally won its independence from England in 1783, the question of what makes a country a nation became paramount. Yes, many of the colonists spoke English, but how could we make ourselves wholly distinct from our forebears now that we had a country of our own? As language and its implications were key to that discussion of the first 100 years of America's history, Jill Lepore explores this question through the lives of seven men who tried to answer that nagging question: Noah Webster, William Thornton, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, Samuel F. B. Morse, Sequoyah, Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima, and Alexander Graham Bell. (Three of these men have the curious element of marrying deaf women, but according to Lepore, none of them met each other.) Aside from these three men (Gallaudet, Morse, and Bell), why should readers of CLERC SCAR care about the other four? Plenty. All of these men contributed to the larger dialogue of what it meant to be a nationalist, and its corollary, language and how it should be used. Lepore explores this very corollary by starting off with Noah Webster. An extremely unpleasant man in person and in writing, Webster is still remembered for having produced the first dictionary in this country. Not only that, his spelling book sold approximately a million copies which in turn influenced how we came to spell in the American way. He thought the idea of dropping "ou" as in "favour" in favor of "favor" ridiculous, and resisted it in his own writing. But his thoughts and concerns on the conventional spelling system of a language, or orthography, were indeed crucial to the creation of a national identity. Before Webster, writers varied their spelling of the same word on the same page, so there was never any consistency. He felt that if spelling could be standardized, every American would be able to talk the same way. Then came along William Thornton, whom Webster came to hate. Thornton, himself an immigrant from the Caribbean who'd won the competition to design the nation's capitol in Washington, D.C., aimed to create a "universal alphabet" in order to unify all the countries in the world, but these attempts failed, partly because the concept of an "universal alphabet" didn't take into account the concept of cultural shadings inherent in each foreign language. (The book doesn't say anything at all about Signing Exact English, but reasons why SEE doesn't work as a language seem comparable to Thornton's failures.) The book explores here the politics of the times, particularly with the sea changes happening politically in France and the subsequent fears that our fledgling country would be thrown into similar chaos. It's become clear that the crisis of defining ourselves as Americans, rather than just a country of immigrants, isn't an idle one. As a result, Webster announced plans to compile a "Dictionary of the American Language." Because he was so unpleasant to begin with, his dictionary idea got booed in practically every quarter. But he didn't give up. In order to get his dictionary published, he had to give up on his ideas of spelling reform when his printer said that they'd standardize the spelling their way. The chapter on Sequoyah, a Native American who invented a Cherokee syllabary, a set of written characters representing syllables, and became for the Cherokees far easier to master than the English that Christian missionaries had tried to teach, seems to be the most relevant to our ongoing history of deaf education in a circuitous way. While I won't go into great detail here about how he came to develop his syllabary, I should mention the thoughts that flashed through my mind as I read this: Christian missionaries could be compared to advocates of oralism, and their attempts to preach the superiority of their religion to whom they considered "heathen" (or "savages," as some people had considered deaf people who couldn't speak to be such since a lack of speech had to equal a lack of intelligence). I thought it most telling that a Cherokee, not a white man, could enable the literacy rates of his people to skyrocket to the point of being on par with their white counterparts. But was Sequoyah taken seriously? Yes, at first, but because he was a "savage," his invention was discounted. Even Noah Webster felt that, in Lepore's words, "a syllabary, according to prevailing theories, was a grossly imperfect, even savage form of writing." This is stunningly parallel to how sign language was viewed prior to the researcher William Stokoe's assertion in the 1960s that American Sign Language (ASL) was indeed a true foreign language on par with any spoken language. According to many oralists back in the day, ASL wasn't quite on the same level as English because it looked incapable of conveying philosophical concepts. In any case, Sequoyah was more interested in retaining the Cherokee ways in spite of his people being constantly forced out from their homes as the white Americans insisted on their racial superiority and took away their lands. I found this chapter particularly filled with resonance for the signing community. This segues nicely into the oft-told story of how Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet traveled to Europe in order to find the best educational methods to teach Alice Cogswell, his benefactor's deaf daughter, and met Laurent Clerc, a brilliant deaf Frenchman whom he convinced to come to America with him to set up the first school for the deaf in America. I will assume that readers of CLERC SCAR know the salient details of this story, so I won't repeat them here. However, what's fresh here is Lepore's bigger-picture approach of what makes any language "natural," and her use of Gallaudet's assertion that sign language was truly a "natural language," perhaps quite universal in nature. We now know that sign language is not universal; even Clerc mistakenly believed in this idea. Lepore does a concise job of explaining how this is not so. She quotes Gallaudet himself on English here: "Our language, so far from being [deaf people's] mother tongue, is to them a foreign language." Clerc even wrote, "Every spoken language is necessarily a learned language" for deaf people. Then the question of separatism versus nationalism is expounded through the deaf community's controversy surrounding John J. Flournoy's radical idea of setting up a state run by deaf people, preferably somewhere in the West where the land would be cheap. In the next chapter, Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima turns out to be a different case altogether. Originally captured in Africa, he was brought to Natchez, Mississippi, as a slave, where he toiled for 40 years. He had the curious luck of having a white man whom his father had saved from death while in Timbuktu recognize him; he was eventually freed. Ibrahima was actually an Arab who had been raised to read and write in Arabic prior to his unfortunate capture, so when people began to realize that he could write beautifully, they felt a bit frightened because it was felt that literate slaves had the power to incite other slaves to revolt against their masters. That Ibrahima's writing was in Arabic made him all the more mysterious, and compelling material in the newspapers. Throughout his story, the debate of returning freed slaves to Africa and the notion of a freed slave being able to read and write comes up over and over again. A Natchez newspaper editor stressed that "[Not] a drop of negro blood runs in his veins. [Ibrahima] places the negro in a scale of being infinitely below the Moor." Gallaudet himself was so touched by his story that he toured for two months with Ibrahima in order to help raise money to free his wife and their nine children and grandchildren so he and his family could return to Africa, and gave electrifying speeches. Samuel Morse, a failed painter best known for making the telegraph a totally workable concept on a national--and then global--scale, has a surprisingly weak chapter in an otherwise strong book. Yes, the idea of using dots and dashes is interesting, but pushing it to construe it as "universal communication" seems a bit repetitive after the book's earlier discussion on creating a universal alphabet. (Incidentally, I had found Tom Standage's book The Victorian Internet (Walker & Company, 1998), a concise look at not only the technological advances but also the social impact of the telegraph on the world to be far more revealing when compared to the Internet today, which is probably why I'd found this particular chapter wanting.) Lepore gives a quick background on how various inventors had attempted to make the telegraph work, and how Morse was able to break through once he understood the concept of electromagnetism and developed through his experimentation a feasible telegraph that could transmit across very long cables. The subsequent fortune that he and his business partner, Amos Kendall, had amassed from setting up a telegraph line enabled Kendall to set aside a few acres of land what later became Gallaudet University. (Oddly, Lepore used the old name of Gallaudet College even though her book appeared in 2002. And was I able to confirm elsewhere the story of how Morse communicated with his wife via Morse code on the hands? No, but his wife was apparently an excellent lipreader with flawed speech who could sign.) The book ends with Alexander Graham Bell and his obsession with Visible Speech, an educational and visual method created by his father to enable--theoretically, anyway--anyone to reproduce vocally just about any word from any language from reading the phonetic spelling of such words; this was geared for hearing students. Even though Bell had a late-deafened mother who required the use of an ear trumpet for communication, it didn't seem to have occurred to his father to adapt his method for deaf students. (Bell said, "My father invented a symbol, and, finally, I invented an apparatus by which the vibrations of speech could be seen, and it turned out to be a telephone." He patented it in 1877.) Lepore describes Bell's growing obsession with educating deaf children, even pointing out that Bell did learn the two-hand fingerspelling British alphabet in order to talk with his mother and became a good signer when he moved to America at the age of 23. I was a bit disappointed that the writer didn't go into detail about how he began to let go of his initial feeling that sign language wasn't bad in favor of speech only for deaf children. For those familiar with the historical war between speech and sign, those on the side of signers might be amused to learn that William Dwight Whitney, a leading authority on the structure, historical development, and relationships of languages, otherwise known as a philologist, said this in the North American Review about Visible Speech in 1868: "We do not see that [Bell] has notably advanced in a single particular or scientific comprehension of the processes of utterance." Lepore herself continues on page 170, "According to Whitney, Bell's systems included symbols for sounds a human voice cannot make and lacked symbols for sounds it can. Visible Speech, Whitney remarked, 'does violence to nature, both by introducing symbols for unreal acts, and by omitting to symbolize others having a real existence and importance.' Whitney complained that no one who had not been taught in person by Bell himself could read Visible Speech. The symbols did not immediately and transparently communicate anything at all; they could communicate only what Bell personally might instruct a student to pronounce." Even though Lepore doesn't make the connection between Visible Speech and Sequoyah's Cherokee syllabary implicit here, I suspect that readers intimately familiar with the history of deaf education in America would draw similar conclusions. The book doesn't explore in great detail Bell's obsession with eugenics, as in the quality of human breeding, or his fear that deaf people intermarrying would produce even more deaf children, but it's interesting to note that even though Bell was anti-immigration, he himself had been born in Scotland! The telephone alone imbued almost everything he said with the weight of authority even when later research has proven him wrong on many counts, particularly in his eugenicist rationale for keeping deaf people apart; otherwise Bell would've been a footnote in the history of the American signing community. (Today it appears that 90% of children born to deaf people are hearing. Bell's paranoia was clearly unjustified.) A is for American: Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States is an illuminating slice through the prism of language, written and otherwise, and nationalism during our country's first century. Even though Jill Lepore's focus isn't on deafness, its big-picture debate on language and its power to corral a group towards specific ends, through the stories of seven people who's had a hand in shaping how we communicate whether we can speak or not, is a worthy contribution to our understanding of just why language is so paramount. ===== Raymond Luczak's latest books are Assembly Required: Notes from a Deaf Gay Life and Whispers of a Savage Sort and other Plays About the Deaf American Experience. Six of his poems appear in Deaf American Poetry, which is available at http://www.clercscar.com/books Raymond's Web site is at http://www.raymondluczak.com Back to Top ==================================================================================== privacy policy : site map : contact us