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The School That Signed

The first student was a girl from Omaha named Katie Callahan. She came through the door of a school building on Twenty-Second Street, between St. Mary and Leavenworth, on April 1, 1869, and Nebraska began teaching its deaf children. The legislature had voted the school into existence two years earlier, and the man in charge of it was a deaf man. Principal William DeCoursey French ran the Nebraska School for the Deaf alongside a minister named Henry W. Kuhns, and the medium of instruction was sign language. A deaf child could walk in and see a deaf adult in charge, and most such children had never seen that before. Forty-two years later, the same state made that language illegal in the school’s classrooms.

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The Index Finger

Last night in Indianapolis, a man stood up and pointed at A’ja Wilson. It was late in Game 2 of a first-round playoff series at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, and Indiana was protecting a lead it would keep, 99-89. Wilson, the Las Vegas Aces’ four-time MVP, had just drawn a foul on Sophie Cunningham and was walking back up the floor. The man rose from the baseline seats, stepped toward her, and pointed, yelling. She told him one thing, twice. “You don’t point at me, you don’t point at me.” She went toward him, pointing back, and they were face-to-face before her teammates arrived to pull her away. The whole Aces bench emptied behind her, team security included, and Cheyenne Parker-Tyus pointed the man out for security. The referees gave Wilson a technical foul. Security walked the man and a woman out of the baseline seats to loud boos, then brought them back a few minutes later to applause. The Fever released a statement that night. A comment had been reported. Security found no violation of the Fan Code of Conduct, the fan was not removed, and the team considered the matter closed.

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Mel Gibson: Watch the Hands

On Saturday, August 29, at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Mel Gibson walked out from behind a curtain to begin a retrospective Q&A at Fan Expo Canada, the sprawling annual gathering billed as Canada’s largest comics and gaming event and the third-largest pop culture draw in North America. An American Sign Language interpreter stood at the edge of the stage, doing the work that makes such an event available to Deaf attendees, work interpreters were doing at panels across the hall all weekend. As Gibson passed behind the interpreter, his hands went up in a burst of empty flapping, a second or three of imitation nonsense played for the crowd, and then he waved and took his seat to talk about his career. Fans had paid 275 dollars apiece for photographs and autographs. The clip of the flapping traveled across social media before the weekend closed, and by Monday he had issued a statement through the trades, blaming the disorientation of being pushed into a spotlight and apologizing to anyone who took offense.

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The Name You Cannot Give Yourself

Every semester it happens by the second week. A student in ASL 1, bright and eager and already half in love with the language, waits until the room empties and asks me for a sign name. The asking is shy and confident at the same time, the way people ask for something they assume is a formality, a small ceremony the teacher performs on request, like handing back a quiz. I tell them no. Then I tell them why, and the why takes the rest of the semester, and if I teach it well, it takes the rest of their lives. I want to set the why down in one place, because the question deserves a fuller answer than a hallway can hold, and because the answer opens a door into how Deaf culture actually works, which is what my students came to learn whether they know it yet or not. Two notes on words before we start. Students usually say sign name; the scholarship says name sign; I answer to both terms and grant neither on request. And when I write Deaf with a capital D, I mean the culture: the language, the schools, the clubs, the families, the jokes, the weddings, the funerals, the whole inherited world of people who live in American Sign Language. Small-d deaf is an audiogram. Capital-D Deaf is a people. The name sign belongs to the people.

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Will The Metropolitan Opera Allow the Deaf to Sing?

[UPDATE: September 12, 2023; our ASL Opera Project website is now live! Join us there for new videos, translation updates, and for consultation concerning the right interpretation of Opera in American Sign Language!]

[UPDATE: July 11, 2023.  Janna and I met with the Metropolitan Opera to discuss heightened ASL interpreting for their performances. The meeting was positive, forward-thinking, and hopeful! We will soon update with more information! Here’s the July 11 update!]

My delightful wife Janna Sweenie and I are big lovers of opera. Opera is the pinnacle of all the Performing Arts — Painting, Acting, Voice, Costumes, Lights and Sets — and when put together, in unison, in an exaggerated and elevated performance, the entire world glows and resonates! We have always been dismayed that opera is not often, if ever, interpreted in American Sign Language for the Deaf like all Broadway shows are interpreted. Janna and I are currently working on our “Opera Project” where she will present ASL renderings of famous opera arias. We will place those performances online as proof-of-concept. This is a challenging, but rewarding, and complex academic process of interpretation and adaptation, and implementation.

Here’s my Boles.tv live stream discussion of the Deaf singing at The Met:

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The Shape of Water: Guillermo del Toro and the Failure to Consecrate

Guillermo del Toro’s new movie — The Shape of Water — is a high-minded movie that looks great, sounds good, but ultimately fails to consecrate the point of the story: Communication Creates Love.

There are all sorts of movie tropes packed into the The Shape of Water — but the center of the swirling is a “mute” janitor, played by Sally Hawkins, who falls in love with a sea monster because they are able to communicate using American Sign Language; and that major flaw in discovery, reason, and accessibility, will serve as the remainder of my argument why The Shape of Water, in the end, fails as a facilitation for a grander, romantic, connection of human/serpent longing.

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For Deaf People Only: Our Latest David Boles Books Book!

After writing four books together in in 2014 alone, Janna and I are now pleased to announce our latest, and first, book published in the year 2015 — For Deaf People Only! — a brand-new David Boles Books Writing & Publishing book!

BUY NOW!

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