Deaf Tranquil Life: Creative Writing

11/30/2010

An Example of Thoughts Running Through My Mind... as of Today

Emails to teachers.

Wikileaks...hm. What's happening to us? For what gain? For what loss? Honesty, really twisted, and empathy, where is it? ~sigh~

Vitamin D... not important? Thought it was closely related to the moods and immune system. Whatever.

Ahhh... South announcing to celebrate the history of Civil War... without acknowledging the role of slaves? Not good, a good example of what Dr. Don G.'s santicizing history vlog. Like Egyptians did to the role of Queen Netsphet. Well, both winners and losers write and re-write histories.

Need to buy a new snow shovel, now that Brian my husband will have a foot surgery next week... so I'd have to do all shovelling in the mornings before waking kids up for school when it snows...

Baked black beans with crusty Cheddar topping for dinner... hmmm... with tossed green salad, yup.

$$ for December rent.

Costs for heart failure pacemakers vs. costs for cochlear implants. Hm.

Unemployment benefits expiring... wrong time, especially too close to holidays.

Government involved in revamping food safety. Good? I hope so.

Bible... my daughter says Bible screwed history up. Hm.

Need to refill my van with gas.

Brian or me to take our son to swim this evening? Ahh, Brian would be good to drop him off, before he'd be an invalid for a month after the surgery.

Contact movie... really good, Jodie Foster. What's with her nowadays?

Blog. Yup, to show what kind of thoughts run through my head. Some meaningful and some meaningless... just like everyone else.

Road salt and the van's muffler.

Etc.

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Just an example of what my daily thoughts are like... not in order. Different thoughts everyday.

Posted at 01:04 PM in Creative Writing, Personal | Permalink | Comments (8)

10/31/2010

A Short Book Review about "The Legend of Five Great Deaf Ghost Stories"

Happy Hallowe'en :-P

One blogger, Candy, mentioned the book The Legend of Five Great Deaf Ghost Stories, written by James "Casey" Gillies, in her posting which grabbed my attention.

http://candysweetblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/scary-enough-without-sounds/

I LOVE reading any books that have Deaf characters, so I purchased it online, from Amazon.com. I don't recall reading any ghost stories about the DEAF ghosts who signed.

I got it yesterday so I settled down in my bed to read it. I finished it early this morning upon rising (oh I slept all right.) It's a relatively easy book to read, good for everyone. What Casey, being Deaf himself, did was to gather the oral ghost stories from the older generations of Deaf people who storytold them in ASL, and for preservation, he translated them into written English. One can immediately tell that those Deaf ghost stories are best told in ASL. The book tells five ghost stories in which the ghosts were Deaf people who signed. And it gives an idea of how they struggled as Deaf people in 19th and 20th centuries... three stories are somewhat macbre, inspiring outrage at how the Deaf victims died. The last story in the book is funny, reminding me of an old rhyming song "The MacDonald Had a Farm..." I am not going to give out any more spoilers other than giving this link:

http://www.myshelf.com/horror/03/legendoffivedeafghoststories.htm

Warning: The book has several grammar errors, so please don't be quick to criticize it. Casey did a good job in defining the settings, using descriptive vocabulary words which help us imagine where and how the stories took place. The point is that he is preserving the Deaf ghost stories so that they could be passed down over the generations, giving hearing people an idea of how Deaf people lived in the 19th and 20th centuries. He said that he planned to compile more Deaf ghost stories so I am looking forward to reading more of his future books. These ghost stories, as I said before, are best told in ASL, so anyone can read them and then sign them to any receptive audiences ;-)