Up Late Update

Hey all. Sorry I haven’t written. I hope you all are well. Lovely world keeps turning, bringing surprises and deadlines and new responsibilities, pushing the blog down on the to-do list. And even if, hypothetically, a semi-retired communications expert now living in a populated southeastern city with too much time on his hands were sending me stalker-like emails, I still can’t always find the time to write.

But I gave a talk tonight at the Yale Club in New York, a fantastical twenty-two story building across the street from Grand Central, and, feeling sleepy before hand, I drank a pot of coffee. So now I’m up. The club scared me a bit – I kept expecting someone to say, hey, who let you in here? No one did however, and after the talk, the martini they served with the complimentary meal at the rooftop restaurant was so big it came with an overflow carafe. Five bubbly young women were in the elevator on the way down and I thought of many clever things to say to them, but I had drunk two of those martinis. Also, my parents were in the elevator.

In a little more than a month, I’ll be moving to Washington, DC. I will be a visiting professor at Gallaudet. It’s been a lot of work arranging this position and I’m excited about the opportunity. I’ll be teaching a class, mentoring aspiring writers, and bringing in interesting folk for guest lectures, but aside from all that, the main thrust of my work there will be first, to help bridge the gap between the signing and speaking deaf communities; and second, to help develop a program at Walter Reed for deafened veterans.

This column in the Times points out why such a program is necessary. And I’ve talked enough in this blog about the unfortunate divide between the different deaf populations and why it’s a shame. Hopefully, we can begin to heal some of that.

I’m also hard at work at a novel whenever I have a free moment. It’s an interesting process, writing a novel – it’s really a constant discovery of how little I actually know about writing. I’ve thrown away hundreds of carefully thought-out pages while finding, on the flipside, that the most absurd shoelace-tying daydream opens up whole universes.

Next week, I’m off to Milwaukee for the national AGBell convention, then Maine for some scotch and R&R. This week Otis hopefully will start his hearing dog training. Last week was a commencement in Massachusetts, which had to be the most cynicism-free day I’ve experienced in some time (and I love the article headline -- it just nails it). I hope you all get to enjoy many days like that this summer. Wear sunscreen.