Daniel Greene

Tag: thoughts

Personal reflections on myself and other people— introspection, examination, reflections, musings, contemplations, examinations, probing— feelings you can probably relate to

  • Meeting Liza Minelli

    I met Liza when I worked at J.W. Robinson in Beverly Hills in 1987. I walked up to her and gushed! She smiled, shook my hand, and said, “Thank you.”

    I worked at Fred Segal on Melrose for about a week and waited on Liza Minelli. She was looking for a scoop-necked t-shirt. At one point, she was said something silly and then chided herself, saying, “Oh, Liza!” I was able to find her the shirt she wanted.

    I just thought of something very interesting. Liza Minelli: Three Weeks at Carnegie Hall was the first CD I ever bought. And I met Liza only weeks after buying that CD. I sang with ABBA when I was 11, and “Dancing Queen” was the first 45 RPM single I ever bought. I met Toni Tenille at Robinson’s, too, and Love Will Keep Us Together was the first LP vinyl record I ever bought. Basically, I have met all the artists I admired so much that theirs were the first recordings I rushed out to buy. How many people can say that?

  • Sad story on NPR made me cry

    Yesterday I heard this story about girls with obstectric fistulas in Ethiopia on NPR. It was so sad, I called Andy to share my grief, and when he answered, I was so choked up I couldn’t even speak. I wish that ignorance and lack of access to resources didn’t cause such awful things to happen anywhere in the world.

  • Would You Want a Leader Who’s Not One of You?

    As an American Sign Language interpreter, I think I have a perspective of American Deaf culture and the issues at Gallaudet University that few hearing people can grasp — and, unfortunately, the messages the average hearing person gleans from the hearing media don’t seem to be doing much to illuminate the situation. I would like to try my best today to speak as one hearing person to another about my understanding of the issues transpiring at Gallaudet University from the perspective of a person who has a fairly good understanding of both the deaf and hearing worlds.

    It seems to me that the only message hearing people are getting about the protests against Jane K. Fernandes (JKF) as the incoming president of Gallaudet is that she is “not deaf enough.” I would like you (my fellow American who can hear) to put yourself in the shoes of those deaf students and ask yourself not “is she deaf enough” but “is she one of us?” And ask yourself, would you want a leader who’s not one of you?

    Perhaps we must begin with the understanding that the main criterion for membership in the American Deaf culture is the use of American Sign Language — not one’s degree of hearing loss! There are plenty of people — particular senior citizens — who are stone deaf, but they do not use American Sign Language, and they do not identify themselves with the Deaf culture. In light of the imperative that one reach out to other users of American Sign Language and make themselves understood in that language, my opinion as someone who has been trained for many years at communicating fluently in ASL is that JKF fails this primary criterion.

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  • Publishing on the Web for the Greater Good

    I found the following blog post while searching the Internet to see who was linking to my pages. The guy quoted below found the answers he was looking for in my post “Legal Requirements for Self Employed Persons.” I feel happy that publishing my research helped someone!

    Wednesday, June 14, 2006

    Its so nice when you search on Google and the exact (and somewhat obsure) thing you have been searching for comes up on the first page, giving you all the information you need and ending your worries. This has, fortunately, recently been the case in my search ofhow to work from home in San Diego and report one’s own taxes. As I searched for the requirements in California one of the first things that appeared was this highly instructive piece from Daniel Greene. It really is so great and makes me optomistic about our society that people actually bother to put this stuff up on the web, simply for the use of other people. They themselves benefit nothing from doing so but they help people like myself immensley.

    Posted by Dave Hunter at 7:37 PM

    Business School in Cyber Space
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