October 28 Disabilities Awareness Item

Hi Friends




Today’s posting is all somewhere between work and poetry and translation and being rightly led. If you like, read it fast and think of it as throwing the pot of spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks for whom. The poetry part is mixed in unfortunately. Also it’s pouring rain and I do not know whether I will go out so my fingers have more time to run wild than some days.



Here is DiversityInc’s item from today about Disabilities Employment Awareness Month. It has some statistics I have not read and some other links that look interesting:

http://diversityinc.com/diversity-facts/disability-employment-awareness-month-facts-figures-2/?mgs1=bbee5ZAqcE


someone I know only from interpreter email lists who I will call Blind Poet recently got a job teaching at a new community college.



The “rightly led” piece has a number of aspects.



First, I did a phone interview for a student of interpreting from Pierce County community College. She got my name out of the local translators’ society directory and found my comments about the business of translation and interpretation and life and networking much more “spiritual” than someone else she talked to. At the end of the interview she asked me for advice. I told her something like:

--Here is my experience and special circumstances. Your mileage may vary.

--There are a large number of ways to have a difficult career and a large number of reasons another person she talked to might be right on about it being a miserable business BUT there are also opportunities.

--Follow your heart and the money will come

--Know yourself and what you need to take care of. Some people enjoy the gamesmanship of business negotiations. Some people find it rewarding to accompany people through medical care and other sometimes heartrending difficulties. Especially recognize what you need if you are walking with people through traumas.

--Network with other interpreters; teamwork rocks.

--Never be afraid to contract out the things you hate or are less than adept about.

Second, I spent FOUR HOURS writing up life experience in response to supplemental questions for a job I applied for. The “rightly led” was just that, even though my resume shows no paid jobs that answer their questions, the words to explain how my experiences DO relate kept coming and coming. Luckily the torrents still left time for at least a fast proofread.



Then my mind wandered to last year’s Disabilities employment event at Microsoft, a couple guys I talked to from disability insurance companies who were all hot about the issue of ergonomics and a story about someone I will call Blind Poet. I have never met Blind Poet in person but she is a very incisive contributor to a couple email lists I am on. In addition to translation and interpretation work she also teaches business writing at different community colleges. Awhile ago, at the school where she was teaching, someone in the administrative food chain above her got upset and did some kind of very discriminatory review of her teaching. Blind Poet had to file a discrimination complaint and ask her students to help her document the issues which she ultimately won about.



Recently Blind Poet got a new job at a different institution and found herself grousing: as a result of making a reasonable accommodations request, she had to step through a 29-point questionnaire. One of these days I mean to get a blog post written about how at least there is a 29-point list to help overcome some awkwardness. But then, thinking of the guys hot about ergonomics I have been wondering, what if instead of only disabled people having to deal with the 29-point list, everyone got asked the same questions. I am sure some people think that would just lead to lots of people slacking off and asking for help they don’t “really” need, but I think asking everyone could cut down on a lot of workplace-induced strains and encourage people to get help before problems become disabling.



Apropros the workplace, I would be interested to know whether any of you who are reading my dispatches with an eye to your workplace experiences, whether you hire people or just deal with co-workers, have found ANYTHING I have sent vaguely topical to issues or questions in your workplace. For my part, I have been meditating about one difference between self-employment and working for someone else: at the moment I am self-employed so I get to call this month’s efforts free consulting. I am not sure what I would call them if someone I were supervising undertook such a campaign. But it’s Friday and I feel more like poetic excursions anyway:



Looking at the site for last night’s PBS documentary, Independent Lens short of an ASL poetry slam

http://video.pbs.org/video/2144680866


One of the things I like about this short is the way the translations are shown in parallel with the movements of ASL. For comparison, one time I went to a concert by the Seattle Pro Musica. The program was all different settings of the Ave Maria so the words were always the same. There was ASL interpretation and one of the interesting things to me was what what the interpreter did with the text to reflect differences in the music.



More from the teenagers in the poetry video: What do you love about being Deaf?

http://video.pbs.org/video/2144612276




Another really fun item. The Turrell Skyspace is this wonderful room designed by Quaker architect James Turrell at the Henry Art museum on the UW campus and this is a link about an upcoming event there.

Poetry in Translation at the Turrell Skyspace

http://www.wavepoetry.com/catalog/114-3-days-of-poetry-poetry-in-translation




Another thing about translation, nothing particularly about disability because who wants to talk about that all the time anyway?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/books/review/is-that-a-fish-in-your-ear-translation-and-the-meaning-of-everything-by-david-bellos-book-review.html


In the Light



(RantWoman)



An item off blogroll about leadings:

http://esrquaker.blogspot.com/2011/10/learning-about-leadings.html





Another about language and indirectly about the occupy movement

http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2011/10/thinking-about-afsc.html