About Me

I am a Deaf poet, educator, and photographer. I graduated from Gallaudet University in 1967 with a Bachelor’s in Social Philosophy. Earned two advanced degrees, a Master’s in deaf rehabilitation from NYU and a PhD in educational technology from the University of Maryland in 1985. For 40 years I worked in a variety of educational and rehabilitation programs for the deaf community. The last 20 years of my career was spent teaching American Sign Language and Deaf Culture. I have been deaf since one year old.

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There is a fictitious antagonist named Eustacia Vye whose miserable life on the heath would make her scream “stop the world I want to get off!” She marries the native who returns to the heath with the premonition of returning to Paris after a short stay but decidedly, he stays home for good; thus, dashing her hidden agenda to escape the heath. Another fictitious antagonist, Lemuel Gulliver, on the other hand, travelled wide and far but each time he made stopovers in four faraway lands. Each of these countries are inhabited by citizens and denizens physically and politically different with such extraordinarily remarkable characteristics personified – that he would become stigmatized, impeded, and unjustifiably scorned – practically lynched or attacked because of such differentiation. As oddly as it sounded in his time, it was hard for the readers to fathom those realities – but they seem so real, nonetheless. On the contrary, Baron Munchausen, a real eighteenth-century German aristocrat, laid claims to have traveled the world but wrote the most outrageous tales and fabrications about his adventures and misadventures that anyone should honestly think Dr. Strangelove is actually much more sane!

John Merrick, whose grotesquely ossified face masked his deep human qualities, became more profoundly handicapped when people including a doctor whose exploitations riddled Merrick with unmitigated chastisements through confinements, restrictions, and limited freedom. No matter the physical oddities, he, like so many others for time immemorial, were always riddled and needled – harassed for being so different. Yet, Helen Keller wrote her autobiography with such verve she rattled the world proving almost nothing was impossible even with her double sensory disability. Likewise, Pierre Desloges, a Deaf bookbinder and upholsterer in Paris just before the French Revolution, wrote a poignant book defending the egalitarian French Sign Language as a viable and meaningful means of communicating with one another. By the same token, Gallaudet University was established with President Lincoln’s endorsement with the belief that the Deaf are highly intelligent and capable of pursuing professional and artistic careers. Even to this day with the most insipid impression, no one in this world would ever care to acknowledge the fact.

And so, my friends, you have just read my biography.