Book Review: Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman

By Joanne Greenberg This is a memoir of fifteen months spent in Danbury Federal Prison work camp. In the range of prisons, this was the highest (best); the others were downhill from there. Piper had been a drug dealer, left the drug game, and ten years later was arrested in connection with a sweep arrest

Two Quick Stories

By Joanne Greenberg A lifetime of working with the Deaf has given me a wealth of great memories and stories to share. Here are 2 quick ones that come to mind. I was in the nursing home, watching deafened elders scratching spidery words on paper. Many of the words were unreadable. A group was sitting,

Concern at a Distance

By Joanne Greenberg In Lakewood, Colorado as in many other places in the United States, people are protesting the placement of schools and other facilities for the Deaf. They worry about increased traffic, and the lowering of property values. They fear danger from the pupils in those schools, or the recipients of those services. ”We

New Book Examines Drug Use in Treatment of Mentally Ill

The International Society for the Psychological Treatment of Schizophrenia (and other psychoses) U.S., is having their annual convention this year in Chicago. I am going to give a speech called, “The Lone Ranger is Busy and Tonto Has Split.” No matter what health plan is adopted for this country, it is going to feature large

Blacks and Whites Use Different Sign

The September 18th edition of the Washington Post – Health & Science section reports that even in the language of the deaf, race makes a difference. This story by Frances Stead Sellers of the Washington Post: Carolyn McCaskill remembers exactly when she discovered that she couldn’t understand white people. It was 1968, she was 15

Do Deaf people dream in ASL?

Often they do, but it depends on how long they have been deaf and what form of communication is natural to them. You can often see deaf people who are sleeping, talking to themselves in their sleep in full or half formed sign. Many report that the characters in their dreams use the same range

Just Visiting

The grounds are beautiful at the facilities I visit at the State Prison, Department Of Correction. I walk past careful beds of flowers, not a weed in sight. There are no trees or shrubs, though, nothing to interfere with the line of sight. We, the visiting group, go through the main door and into a

Not Everything is Captioned

Sometime ago, a Deaf friend asked me to interpret the 10:00 News. Captioning doesn’t always work with live TV feeds from on scene reporters, so I was glad to comply. “All of it,” she said. “Sure.” First, was a statement that the President said the country was on an even keel. Things were improving. This

The One Lovely Blog Award

August 1, 2012 I received a message recently, nominating me for the One Lovely Blog Award by Marsha Graham of iPhonePhotoMaven at http://iphonephotomaven.wordpress.com/awards/#comment-410. (She publishes several other blogs – her fingers are bleeding on the keyboard.) Thank you, Marsha, for your nomination. I’m glad you enjoy DeafInPrison.com.  We work hard at presenting news and information