Last night, my husband and I went to our favorite local place of gossip and entertainment,..the local WalMart, which is just up the road from us. I met Mrs. L----, whose daughter once studied sign language in one of Carrie Dixon's sign language classes at the Red Feather building in Canton, Ohio..so many years ago. Mrs. L----- spoke of how she had met Carrie and then repeated the story of how Carrie and her husband and grand-daughter had died so tragically in their home and how many local people missed them and thought about them!

I stood and thought as I heard this woman speaking of some one, who had died almost thirty years ago and wondered just what kind of a person Carrie must have been to have another person speak of them in such a reverent manner after almost thirty years after they had died!! You see,..Carrie Dixon taught Jim S----- sign language and Jim S----- taught me sign language!!

Carrie Dixon was the Deaf lady, who found Nellie Zimmerman, the Deaf-Blind lady of Walking Free fame,.. in the Massillon State Hospital!! Here is a woman, this Carrie Dixon, who has been dead over thirty years,..this deaf woman, who dropped a stone in the pool of life and the ripple s of it have touched me twice in my life time--Jim S-----'s teaching me PSE sign language and me meeting up with and living with Nellie Zimmerman!!

What kind of a human being was this woman, who died thirty years ago and the folks, who knew her in her life time,..are still talking about her thirty years later as if she had died yesterday and say that they miss her as much as they missed her at the time that she died? My snooping instincts have been spiked!! I gotta go a huntin' down stories and more facts about Carrie!! How can one ignore a woman like this!!

I HAVE NEVER HEARD ANYONE IN THE OVER THIRTY YEARS THAT I HAVE BEEN HEARING STORIES OF HER NEVER SAY ANYTHING BAD ABOUT HER. Whooooooo! That alone is a personal record that many politicians would envy!! So it's back to deaf church,..tomorrow!!

(fact finding expedition!!)

(If you have not been reading my blog,..go down a paragaraph or two and you will see the Carrie's name and my comments on how she taught sign language in public to both deaf and hearing students. She was a heroine in my eyes for doing so because at that time,...IT WAS ILLEGAL to teach sign language in the public schools to deaf stidents in Ohio!! This Deaf lady not only had the gumption to teach sign language to other deaf in those years,..but she taught ASL to HEARing students--the very children of the folks, who made laws saying that one could not teach the sign language in the schools and discourage the public use of ASL!!!)

The book signing, Thursday night, and the talk,..that I gave on PSE sign language and the manual alphabet at the small private school, went very well. I was invited back to the school to speak again, and I will if I can physically do so.

(Thanks, Mississippi, for the breathing exercises! You've made life much easier for me. I just hope that by thanking you that I am not hurting your cyber-social life.

---The "aunties" still don't believe that having a house insulated with asbestos could be dangerous to their collective health!! Gaaaaaaaah! It's like talking to a wall!! They can take up the discussion with their...oncologists!!...(don't know and don't care if that is spelled correctly!!)

I fell down again last night. I keep telling myself..over and over, "It's not the falling down. It is "just"..the getting back up, and will always be.."JUST"...how one gets back up,...that matters."

I had one very extreme and satisfying moment at the school. One of the little girls,..who was showing me her version of the manual alphabet,...looked up at me and said,..."Oh, I want to be just like you when I grow up!"

Hmmmmmmn! That kind of statement,..from one so innocent,..kind of grabbed me in the gut. I know that she was not REFERING to my physical being,..but if she was....OH DEAR!!

Half my face,..more like 13% of the muscles in the left side of my face are functional;..(I can't swallow properly because of the facial nerve damage,)...my hearing depends totally on the amount of antibiotic that I have in my system;..my right knee is almost totally destroyed from working since 1976 with kids, who have been placed into group homes, from mental institutions...(The one deaf MR kind of guy, who pushed me down in 1984 and then jumped up and down on said knee..sort of started the damage.),...I have to TAKE OFF my glasses to see a computer screen clearly,...I have chronic hypertension of the type that sets off "non-stop internal bleeding in my gut"....(don't know the medical term for it at this moment)..if something or someone "stresses me out..too much," and I have just started the list.

I say, "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeek! Little child! You don't know what you're asking for!!"

Heh! I also have two articles to finish about a book or two for a small newspaper,..a manuscript,..which I have been trying to pull together for the past two years,..some "underground" writings that need to be finished and two cats, one twelve pounds and one ten pounds...(poor, poor, poor pathetic starving miserable little babies),..screaming for food, at my refrigerator door!!)

My chief complaint?

Life is much, much,..MUCH too short!!!!!!!!

"Fiction is based on reality...." so he said,.."..You have to get you knowledge of life..(from)..somewhere!"

Hunter Thomas,."the gonzo journalist,"...committed suicide. He was sixty-seven years old.

OK! So we have a BIG book signing coming up!! Why am I not rolling over and over with joy? If it were a matter of backing out of it,..I could just say no and that would be the end of it.

I REALLY do enjoy book signings!! I really do appreciate folks coming up to me and asking me for an autograph, or asking me if I plan to write anything under my own name again. I enjoy speaking in college classes and I enjoy the newspaper articles. I'd be a fool,..no--a "TOM fool" to say that I don't enjoy the attention. I guess that in certain circles,..my name is known around here,..but not to the point that it is annoying or repulsive as it was almost twenty five years ago!!

I have "sweetened my presentation,"..will not wear blue jeans and an old sweatshirt,...will smile at everyone and speak to everyone.....nicely,..refrain from asking the mayor's wife if she remembers the date of her first.."bush-colt,"..will smile some more and not have licorice or spinach implanted in the cracks of my teeth,...and behave myself in general!!

In the back of my mind,..I still hear the words to that little song,

"I am not a famous person,
I never wanted to be!
I'd rather ride my bike!
I'd rather climb a tree!"

I am not FAMOUS,..just slightly noticed in certain circles.