In DC, is there a place you can go where everyone knows your name in sign? (Okay, sorry for the lame attempt at trying to re-create the spirit of the theme song from “Cheers” … Where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came. You wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the same. You wanna be where everybody knows your name… ) I’ve got [...]

Last week during a hot cloudy hour when we couldn’t swim in the pool (I had a housesitting gig at a friend’s house with a pool), Muck (or Michelle McAuliffe, artist extraordinarie) and I were driving around College Park, talking about everything from IKEA lightbulbs to hearing boys. “One of the perils of dating hearing boys,” I told her, “is having to be patient and smile while we teach them [...]

Based on my experience, twenty-nine year old Deaf women should have twelve tattoos, read Paul Auster, and have a penchant for watching Buffy shows. Based on my experience, Deaf women my age should be spending their days and nights reading the latest (and the oldest) articles about what a sentence means in ASL. Based on my experience, Deaf women should consider themselves culturally Deaf but still cherish their participation in [...]

My good friend, Rachel Knopf, gave me “the unheard: a memoir of deafness and africa” (words in the title uncapitalized in respect to how it was printed on the cover of the book) by Josh Swiller for a birthday present a few weeks ago. When I pulled the book out of the gift bag, I knew immediately what it was. The book was about a man, born deaf but raised [...]

“Stammering Children, Laughing Clinton, and Nonsigning Cops” Isn’t that a lovely title? I bet you clicked on this just to see if there could possibly be a connection between all of them. And yes, there is. The connection is this: I can’t believe how stupid people can be. Now you may be shaking your head and thinking, “whoa, slow down a bit there, Julie, aren’t you getting a bit too [...]

So on Saturday night, I went out to Madam’s Organ in Adams Morgan with four other girlfriends. One’s Deaf, two are interpreters, and one was in the Peace Corps around the same time as me and learned KSL (Kenyan Sign Language). So we all used ASL, sometimes KSL, while chatting with one another. The table next to us was filled with some men who kept looking over at our table. [...]

Today I got an email from the sign language linguistics email list that announced a new dinosaur comic about sign language. Spoiler alert! Look at the comic now if you want to be surprised before reading on. Not that there’s much of a plot… So first off, I’m not really sure how I feel about dinosaur comics. They’re dead, extinct, gone. Is it fair to make fun of them when [...]

No, I’m not going on an ill-advised mission for advocating speech therapy. Rather, what my subject heading refers to is the multitude of speeches some of us in the DC area were lucky enough to enjoy (subtext: gagged, tied down, and unwillingly made to watch) last week. As many of you know, last week was graduation at Gallaudet. What this means is many people get up on stage and spout [...]

I’ve been carrying around this thought with me for the past few weeks. It’s a pretty interesting thought. A bit scary though when I peek a look. It’s a bit intense. It’s a bit confusing. This thought, it whispers boldly, “maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all if Gallaudet closed.” When I first thought it, I blanched with fear and looked quickly over my shoulder. As if maybe people [...]

Sunday night, I sat down to dinner at a Thai restaurant in Eastern Market with two of my friends. The waiter had just served my dinner, a vegetarian glass noodles dish, and I was about to dig in when I felt the vibration of my Sidekick. I’d been waiting for it all day, really all month. The Board of Trustees had just met to decide whether or not to continue [...]