DeafSide Due To A Divided DeafRead?

An analogy using my students as an example to make a case in point the title above.

DeafSide: Thanks, Tayler

Sending sincere thanks to Tayler Mayer for departing his ideology of what DeafRead should be and starting up an aggregator. We need our own space, and he felt us.

Thumbs UP

"Sweet Nothing In My Ear" has my double thumbs UPs. Well made and very wise decision not to include into the movie "the winner." The message of the story is the family needs to stay together for the sake of the child. A parent shouldn't make a decision based on their own fears. Dan Grisham was grieving for the hearing baby he once had and Laura Grisham was scared of losing Adam once he is CIed and speaks. Both had their own agendas and the movie was not about Adam at all. It was about the journeys of the parents, their inner struggles, their selfishnesses, their dreams, trying to fool themselves into thinking they wanted the best for Adam but the reality was they wanted something for themselves.

This is the journey many hearing parents experience when they have a deaf child.

I was hoping Dan and Laura might unite and ASK Adam what he wanted but it did not turn out that way - they wisely left off when Laura and Dan made their confessions and agreed what was the best for themselves was each other, and was not necessarily about Adam.

As always, Phyllis Frelich and Ed Waterstreet brought quality to the movie. I think were Phyllis younger, she would have made a better Laura, but MM did an excellent job, nonetheless. Jeff Daniels was full of surprises...he did a decent job.

Deanne Bray was a surprise cameo! Always good to see her on screen.

MM Has It Right!

CNN featured an article on tonight's airing of "Sweet Nothing In My Ear" with MM, Noah Valencia, and Jeff Daniels, a well known actor with a long list of blockbuster movies.

In this article, MM's character is 100% ASL - a challenge for MM who finally admits to being not an ASL user. She admits she speaks, lip-reads, and signs in English to deaf people. Pretty much the same roles she played in all of her movies - she spoke mostly and sometimes signed. These roles she played in her old movies were a walk in the park. Not much of a challenge for her.

In this one, her character is 100% ASL - a novelty for MM. She understands the concept that ASL has a very different system of syntaxes than what she is used to...thus a challenge for her since she does not sign in ASL - never has. She grew up in mainstreamed public school and was educated through interpreters. She socialized with general student population along with small group of deaf students in the Resources program. She grew up immersed in English.

Linda Bove, best known for her appearances on Sesame Street, was on site to instruct Daniels to learn ASL and to coach MM to keep her ASL-authentic. That included keeping her mouth motionless.

....to quote MM, "I have a very tough crowd watching me."

How very right she is! We all will be watching, MM!