Daniel Greene

Author: Daniel Greene

  • Our Chihuahua Zoey does her ground-scratching ballet

    The funniest thing about how our little dog scratches the ground is how she holds her hind legs back in a stretched pose. The other funny thing about her is she will scratch the ground to mark it with the scent glands in her paws even if she hasn’t peed or pooped. I’ve never seen a dog scratch for nothing before and hold the hind legs back in a stretch like that. She’s like a ballerina holding an arabesque.

  • Singing & signing “Imagine” on John Lennon’s 70th birthday

    This is my singing & signing contribution to the celebration of what would be John Lennon’s 70th birthday. (more…)

  • The -isms & -ists of Oralism & Oralists

    Since so many people responded on my blog to the first video about this topic, “Re Oralism vs Speaking” that I embedded in a blog post, I have been responding and thinking about this issue. One thing that stands out for me is the meaning of the suffices -ism and -ist. These can simply mean “system” or “practitioner” but they also have loaded connotations of strong belief systems and prejudices– and the people who espouse such attitudes and prejudices.

    My view is that there is nothing wrong with any mode of communication, be it ASL, signed English, or speaking and speechreading. Although I realize that “oralism” is a hot-button issue with many deaf people for whom it carries heavy emotional associations, I believe that if all of that emotional baggage is put aside, it can be seen that speaking and speechreading are simply ways of communicating. (To quote from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “…there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”)

    Far be it from me to tell oral deaf what to call themselves, but (more…)

  • Re Oralism vs Speaking

    This is my response to Ella Mae Lentz’s vlog about the difference between the philosophy of oralism and the mere act of speaking, either by deaf or hearing people. In this video, signed in ASL—PSE (along the continuum), I tell of my experience as an interpreter with oral deaf, English-oriented deaf, and strongly ASL deaf people. In my experience, I have not found oral deaf people to be against signing deaf or condescending toward culturally deaf people who choose to use sign language instead of speaking and lipreading. I share my experience being an oral transliterator for certain deaf people who were able to read almost 100% of what I mouthed, despite the “myth” that oral deaf people understand only 30–40% of what the get from reading lips. I also share my experience of having a deaf boyfriend who was culturally deaf and very strong in ASL, not so strong in English. When his mother came to visit, she insisted that he could read her lips even when she wasn’t facing him. He looked to me for interpretation, and I thought, “Why should I have to interpret for my boyfriend and his mother? Come on, Mom, learn sign!”

    My basic message echoes what Ella said in her blog: (more…)

  • Introducing our new doggie girl, Zoey

    We adopted a new dog into our lives. Her name is Zoey, and she’s a small Chihuahua. If a picture tells a thousand words, then eighteen photos of Zoey tells a nice story. And if a picture tells a thousand words, then a movie tells a million. Here’s a million reasons why we love our new girl: