Daniel Greene

Blog

  • Busy Rehearsing for Yom Kippur

    I haven’t had any spare time to blog this week, because I’m spending my spare time rehearsing the Kol Nidre song and the Isaiah haftarah for Yom Kippur services this Sunday evening and Monday morning.

    I first learned to read Hebrew at the age of 32, and I first learned torah and haftarah trope for my bar mitzvah at the age of 33. I read my first haftarah for Yom Kippur mincha service (Jonah) when I was 33, my second haftarah for Yom Kippur morning service (a selection from Isaiah) at 36, and my third haftarah for Yom Kippur morning service (the entire Isaiah haftarah) at 37.

    I am a bit out-of-practice since I don’t read Hebrew every day, and I haven’t seriously chanted trope since the time I chanted the Isaiah haftarah for my synagogue two years ago. This makes for a lot of cramming, and I have a tendency to put things off!

    Perhaps when I am done rehearsing and performing the Kol Nidre and Haftarah, I will publish audio or video of it, but I’m not sure whether or not that’s appropriate.

    Anyway, forgive my absence, and if you observe Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I wish you L’shanah tovah tikateivu v’tehateimu!

  • Two Fathers

    Andy received a link to this YouTube video this morning, and I was so happy to see it. Our friends who got married last weekend are going to adopt, and Andy and I have talked about it. Here’s to all those kids who have two fathers, and to all those male couples with children! A marvelous Dutch video with English subtitles.

  • Gay Cowboy Wedding at Mormon Lake Lodge

    Last weekend, Andy and I photographed and videotaped a wedding of two friends of ours, a male couple who had a country-western “cowboy”-themed wedding at Mormon Lake Lodge in Mormon Lake, Arizona (about a half-hour outside of Flagstaff).

    I will post more photos later, depending on the willingness of our friends, but for now, here’s a photo I took while I was outside the cabin taking photos of the beautiful trees and flowers.

    Buxley, Andy, and Me

  • More about Transparency

    Below I quote from this Wikipedia entry about Telecommunications Relay Service:

    As much of the tele-relay system, particularly IP-Relay, is open for public use, it is possible for anyone with the proper equipment to place calls. This includes people who are not members of the original intended user group (i.e., persons who are deaf, hard-of-hearing, or speech-impaired). Some such users have noted its usefulness in making long-distance or local calls free of charge and without a telephone. The accessibility even to those who are not deaf, etc. has been defended by providers as a necessary evil. This is because the principle of “transparency” – the belief that the operator and the mechanics of relay should generally go as unnoticed as possible in the call – requires that Relay be as easy to use as a normal telephone, which does not require any kind of verification for hearing people to use. This decision has been defended by leaders in the deaf community, and generally retains strong support among speech and hearing-disabled users of the service.

    One of the “necessary evils” the above quotation refers to is the use of text relay services by Nigerian scam artists. Some text relay operators actually gave up their jobs in order to stop doing what made them sick and be free to break the story to the news. Here are two of those news stories that are linked to from the aforementioned Wikipedia entry:
    Con artists target phone system for deaf – Security – MSNBC.com and Overseas crooks abuse phone service for deaf | www.azstarnet.com ®

    I feel sorry for those relay operators who lost their jobs, but (more…)

  • abc7news.com: Deaf Community Targeted By Scam, Again

    The local Bay Area ABC News “I-Team” (investigative team) ran this news story on Brian Malzkuhn and Michael Johnson, two men — both college teachers who are deaf! — who ripped off deaf people in the process of being ripped off themselves by Nigerian scam artists. These men asked their deaf friends and colleagues for “emergency business loans” so they could come up with the money that the rapacious Nigerian scam artists were demanding in ever-increasing amounts.

    I am incensed to read this! This is a prime example of the sort of abuse that led me to decide a couple of weeks ago not to interpret any kind of VRS call — or live interpreted event — that I believe is a scam.

    I think the ideology that it is not up to interpreters to decide what is good for their clients interpreters are not responsible for the content of their interpretation is potentially damaging, especially in the realm of VRS. This belief in “transparency” (which I actually saw signed as “no skin off my back” or “I’m not responsible” in discussions about TRS CA‘s in the ’90s), along with the “mandate for equal telecommunications access” by the FCC, leads interpreters to feel that they are compelled to interpret any kind of call that comes in, regardless of content. Do you know what it feels like to interpret a call that you know is a scam? It is demoralizing to say the least. You might not be responsible for the scam you interpret, but it’s hard not to feel dirty about it.

    I think it is high time that interpreters started standing up for what they know is right and “reserve the right to refuse service” to scam artists!

    And deaf people, if you agree with this, please make your feelings known to the FCC.

    Thank you.