by Henry Kisor
And there are encouraging signs that more and more people in the signing and oral camps are recognizing that a united front of diversity accomplishes a lot more than Balkanized infighting. Increasingly groups of parents are adopting the idea that every case of deafness is different and that there is no one blanket solution for everybody. No matter one’s choice of communications philosophy, they say, it should be honored.
Perhaps, however, learning English skills—written, not necessarily spoken, although it is difficult to separate the two in the dynamics of language acquisition—ought to be stressed for all deaf children. English has become the standard business language of the globe, and those who do not use it with ease tend to be at a disadvantage. In fact, an enormous economic gap has developed between those who can speak English and those who don’t. This is the primary reason that people in such emerging nations as China have become obsessed with learning English as a second language.
Americans who can write clean and clear English have a definite leg up on those who don’t, so far as employment is concerned. Now that the computer keyboard is quickly becoming the most common way for people to communicate in business, a deaf desk worker who writes English well is bound to have an advantage over the hearing one who doesn’t. For this reason there’s a lot to be said for the bilingual-bicultural approach to deafness—provided that emphasis be divided honestly and equally between ASL and English. Too often, I believe, American schools for the deaf have focused heavily on sign at the expense of English, partly because it has been the path of least resistance and partly because of the demands of cultural ideologues. There are signs of change, however.
Despite my success in the hearing world, I am still deaf, and occasionally “deaf moments” spice my quiet life. One occurred when I recently drove Debby’s Civic through the neighborhood and down the nearby Central Street shopping area. Everything seemed normal, but why were people stopping and staring as I drove by? Two small boys ran out of a store and pointed. Shock enveloped the faces of an elderly couple at a corner. As I rounded the next turn onto a side street, an old lady flashed me a snaggle-toothed gape.
This was unsettling. People seem concerned and even angry. What could I have done that provoked such intense scrutiny?
Then I noticed the red light winking on the dash. It was a warning light I’d never seen. Maybe the engine was seizing and its dying screams were troubling the passersby. I pulled over, stopped the car and fished the instruction manual from the glove box. Riffling through a couple of dozen pages yielded the information that the red light means the security system is resetting itself. Oh, good, I thought. Soon the reset will be completed and all will be well. I started up again and drove off.
More stares. More gapes. And the red light was still blinking. Slowly the truth began to dawn on me. Two blocks later I pulled over again and rechecked the manual. Go to Page 127, it said. Insert the key in the outside door lock and turn it twice to turn off the alarm system.
I did so, and the small crowd that had gathered relaxed and wryly shook its collective head. “No crime happening, folks,” I wanted to say. “Let’s move along. Nothing to see.”
When I returned home, Debby met me at the door and smiled indulgently. “How far did you get before you realized the car alarm was on?” she said.
“Too far,” I muttered.
She had heard the alarm trigger as I slammed the door after getting in the car, and she had rushed out—too late—to try to stop me from driving away, yodeling and honking, headlights and taillights flashing merrily.
For me, being deaf has had few good uses, but one of them is for an occasional embarrassed laugh.
At the age of sixty-six in June, 2006, I took a buyout at the financially beleaguered Sun-Times along with two dozen other staff members, and retired. Those months were the beginning of the nationwide bloodbath among newspaper journalists, and the then editor of the Sun-Times congratulated me on my “exquisite timing” in bailing out of a rapidly failing industry.
It is ironic that I began my career at a time when booming newspapers all over the nation were so short of talent that they would hire anyone, even a deaf person, and ended that career of forty-two years, thirty-three of them as a literary journalist, just as strangling publishers began to jettison everyone they could.
Unaware of what has happened to the industry, some deaf high school students still write to me asking for advice on becoming print journalists. “Do something else,” I am tempted to say, as I would advise any student, deaf or hearing. But there always will be opportunities for good writers, especially those who also are talented at working on the Internet and designing Web sites. Exactly how journalism will adapt to the age of Facebook and Twitter is still developing at this writing, but I believe there will be room in it for educated, talented, and skilled young deaf adults.
At this writing also, I’m not yet ready to hang up the keyboard and play bridge at the local senior center. (I do sweat at the exercise machines there an hour almost every day.) There are blogs to be fed, mysteries to be written, books to be revised and updated (this one in particular), and I’m also working on a fat nineteenth-century historical novel having to do with a Quaker lad, the Erie Canal, and murder most foul. As long as I can rub two words together and get somebody to pay me for the result, I’ll keep on writing and communicating with the world.
And there are the grandchildren to spoil—besides William Henry, there are Conan Emmet, Elizabeth Maria, and Alice Flynn—if I can pry them away from their daddies and mommies (Melody Pershyn Kisor and Annie Frances Tully) long enough. It’s an adventure playing deaf grandpa to four hearing children, and I’m sure there will be tough moments but also joyful ones.
No longer, however, do I hang out at the airfield, babying my vintage Cessna two-seater and soaring over the countryside—my recent cardiac adventures have grounded me, possibly for good, but maybe not. Only time will tell. I do spend time in the basement workshop, fashioning what I think of as fine oak furniture in the Colonial and Arts and Crafts styles. Debby and I spend our summers on the shore of Lake Superior in western Upper Michigan, site of my fictional Faulknerian “postage stamp of native soil” called Porcupine County. In the winters we travel.
As much as I can, I sit by the fire in the evening with a book and a cup of tea, the dog warming my feet. Only this time I don’t need to read critically and professionally. I just plunge into pools of imagination and drift on waves of wonder.
Life without hearing has been fine and fulfilling.
Acknowledgments
Many people helped in the making of this book, both the first and second editions. Some did research. Some dredged their memories for anecdotes and insights. Others offered suggestions and encouragement when they were most needed. Still others provided valuable comments and corrections. I thank them all: Neil Bauman, Mirriel Bedell, William Brashler, Helen Estus Cason, Lamar Cason, Joan Catapano, Guyeda Cole, Sam Curtis, Steven S. Duke, Mary Everett, Anne Feiler, Faith Haber Galbraith, Dean Garstecki, Lew Golan, Paul Golob, Deborah Kisor Guy, Jean Inman, David James, C. Gary Jackson, M.D., Karl Kageff, Eugene Kennedy, Hugh Kenner, Colin A. Kisor, Conan H. W. Kisor, Deborah Abbott Kisor, Judith Kisor, Manown Kisor, Manown Kisor, Jr., Melody Pershyn Kisor, Robert Locher, James McCulloch, M.D., Marjorie Magner, Ann Percy Moores, Larry Orloff, Mary Bernice Percy, Walker Percy, Claire Peterson, Craig Peterson, Emilie Quast, Tilak Ratnanather, Tad Ringo, Lloyd Sachs, Jack Schnedler, Marcia Schnedler, Charlotte Searl, U.S. Senator Paul Simon, Rebecca Strauss, Studs Terkel, Paula Tucker, Annie Frances Tully, Lou Ann Walker, Arthur W. Wang, Samuel H. Williamson, Elizabeth Winick, and Eugene H. Winick.
Special thanks go to the Ragdale Foundation, Lake Forest, Illinois, for providing a sanctuary where the bulk of this book was written.
Henry Kisor is a retired book review editor and literary
columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. He is the author
of Zephyr: Tracking a Dream Across America and
F
light of the Gin Fizz: Midlife at 4,500 Feet, as well as
three mystery novels, Season’s Revenge, A Venture
into Murder, and Cache of Corpses.
The University of Illinois Press
is a founding member of the
Association of American University Presses.
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