I just want to respond to one item from Minerva Shine [a poster on Gally-L e-mail discussion group] stating that, "laurent, sd is dead and marvin miller is more than half a million in debt."

As Mark Twain said, "The reports of [our] death are greatly exaggerated." :-)

We are still here. We are working out of my home, and we are continuing to work towards building a healthy, thriving signing community in South Dakota.

It is true that The Laurent Company is in debt, and the company will no longer be active. In debt to whom? $300,000 to our town planners, Nederveld Associates and $16,000 to deaf architect John Dickinson of Winter & Company. John Dickinson has generously offered to waive his fees. They have been -- and still are -- our strong supporters. They truly believe in the vision. The other $200,000 is from my partner/mother-in-law M.E. Barwacz. She and I invested our entire fortune into this project. Several close friends and family also loaned us money in expectation of being repaid immediately when our funding arrived as promised.

The funding never showed up. It was a classic case of a frog in water pot, and the frog slowly boiled to death. At least, in our case, we didn't die -- we just got hurt badly, but we are grateful to be still alive and capable of working full time on this project now. The funders say they are still working towards funding the project, and we wish them well. We are moving on without them. If they do come through for the project, our community will benefit tremendously. If not, we will still build this community and it will be a great thing to behold because of your support, involvement and so on.

We have never taken money from the signing community in general, in terms of deposits or services. We have received one unasked for $500 deposit from one person on the reservation list, and we put it in a separate savings account, untouched.

We have received over $1,000 in cash donations from the community to The Laurent Institute, a non-profit 501c3 organization. We do need more. We just received a generous offer of PowerMacintosh Dual G5 computer from Chad Taylor of Mosdeux.com in return for deferred payment at a later date. We will be working hard in the next few weeks to get the ball rolling in building our own fully integrated and fully accessible signing community, and we are confident we will have an announcement soon.

I am receiving feedback from the community that y'all want to be more involved in this process, and I agree. I have been gun-shy in involving more people because I did not want to pull you in and get hurt. I much rather that only we are exposed to the risks of this endeavor.

In meantime, perhaps y'all can help us select new board members for The Laurent Institute?

Thank you for your kind thoughts, prayers and support. Our hearts go out to those pushing for a positive, meaningful change at Gallaudet University.

Beautiful picutres of new, 28-acre development called Glenwood Park in Atlanta, Georgia.

 http://larryfeltonjohnson.typepad.com/atlantalarry/2006/10/new_glenwood_pa.html

 Enjoy!

Thank goodness its Friday! We moved out of our office into my home, and now -- as one witty commenter said -- I can work in my pajamas! No, seriously... M.E. would die of heart attack if she saw me in my Superman pajamas. Not good.

 A local TV station ran a story on Laurent 2 days ago, and it wasn't entirely positive. We explained that, yes -- The Laurent Company is in debt and unable to operate any longer. No, we do not realisitically expect the original funding group to come through for us any time soon. Yet, we are still here and 100% committed to building the signing community in McCook County, South Dakota.

I guess we're too stupid to give up. Like a dog on a bone, we just don't know when to throw in the towel.

Seriously, we are working on an alternative which is exciting. This alternative will involve a true community building approach. We are full of hope and energy now, and we have been in meetings with a few key leaders and will be working on this alternative for next two weeks.

I think we will be ready to announce by then. I wish I could tell you. If I did now, I would have to kill you. Sorry. 

Soon. 

We are moving out of our office on the Main Street this week into my home office. We simply did not have enough funds coming in to support the overhead of having an office open as well as the fact that we are working on something really positive and will change some things. Yup, we WILL build world's first sign language friendly town in South Dakota. That will not change. :-)

 Stay tuned.  The move has gone very well, and we have switched over to VOIP (voice over IP) telephone and fax service. We're pretty amazed by the service's features for the price. Our new phone number is 605-413-4140 voice. 605-413-4206 fax. We will also operate fully under The Laurent Institute, the non-profit organization, from now on. The Laurent Company will remain inactive until a future date.

Despite the changes and challenges we face, we remain absolutely optimistic about our future as a signing community and I know that we will yet build that town, and it will be a wonderful thing for many people worldwide.

Candace McCullough of Alternative Solutions Center blogged about the fact that fully accessible prison was on the bottom of our poll list, and I thought she brought up several interesting points. 

Now, I can not imagine advocating building prison in our town -- especially in the early years, even though it would generate a lot of jobs in the town -- because of its potential negative impact.

Prison guards, workers and professionals -- do they have negative "effect" on the community because of their required and constant contact with criminals, deaf or not? Probably yes. We'd need more research on cities that have large prisons in them.

The whole problem with framing this kind of discussion is... we assume that prisons do work in rehabilitating the criminals. Unfortunately, they do not. I did a term paper for my Sociology class at Gallaudet years ago -- ok, I'm old but not THAT old. I recall some statistics showing as high as 67% of inmates bounce back into prisons after being freed. In the prisons, they learn new "trades" from other inmates -- if one comes in for burglary, one could come out with newly acquired skills in drug selling, money laundering, and so on. 

Yet, what are humanistic alternative for the deaf and hard of hearing population who are serving out their time in loneliness, isolation and often without any access to much needed psychotherapy, medication and fully accessible group therapy?

What alternatives? Indeed. Discuss in comments! Thanks, Candace!

http://www.ascdeaf.com/blog/?p=210

Final count... ok, the poll is still open but I think we get the picture.

Basically, the top vote getters were: School, Small Grocery Store (Organic/Natural stuff), Medical Clinic. And Fourth place had a 3-way tie between: city-wide WiFi, bookstore & cafe, and open captioned first-run movie theater.

Medical clinic surprised me. I knew it was important, but in top 3? Especially when there's a good sized hospital 20 to 40 minutes away and an excellent (and talk about EASY in and out!) clinic in Salem, S.D. - 3 to 10 miles away.

Question... do you think the poll gives us a good picture of what's considered as a critical need in a small, new town? If so, why? If not, can you share in comments reasons why?

1    School (K-12) in town (ASL & English bilingual for ALL)       4.09
2    Small Grocery Store (Including organic & gourment foods)      4.05
3    Bookstore & Cafe      3.72
4    Movie Theater (Open Captioned ALL time)      3.62
5    Medical Clinic (One now available 4 to 10 miles away)      3.56
6    Restaurant (general American menu)      3.55
7    Community Theater with stage for ASL & English Performances      3.55
8    City-wide WiFi network      3.49
9    Community Center adjacent to pool      3.47
10    Senior Citizen housing      3.42
11    Farmer's Market      3.3
12    Mental Health center (full accessible in ASL and English)      3.25
13    Restaurant (International menu)      3.24
14    Indoor Swimming Pool (Open year around)      2.94
15    Bar & Grille      2.83
16    Fitness Gym      2.74
17    Crafts Store (Arts, quilts, crafts, supplies, etc.)      2.72
18    Clothing Store      2.52
19    Hairstylist & barbershop (Many available 4 to 10 miles away)      2.37
20    Outdoor Swimming Pool (One now available 4 to 10 miles away)      2.05
21    Bowling Alley (8-lane alley, smoking in Salem, SD)      2.02
22    Prison (fully accessible in ASL and English)      1.66

 This was based on 76 votes on the poll. I think the list and ranking is pretty interesting, and be sure to check our comments section on our first post asking for 3 top things.

I would agree that having a K-12 school in your local town is one of the MOST important things a town can have because it serves as a glue that keeps the community together, regardless of your age. Naturally, I am not surprised that having 100% accessible prison isn't quite a priority for everyone. *grin*

Please do keep coming back because we will have more stuff for you on this blog. 

Good comments so far! Now let's vote and rate each item! Remember, this is what you NEED in the beginning stages of a new town. Not when the town "grows up". Just in the beginning. Choose wisely! 

Click on the link: Rank most important things in a new town.

Imagine a new town like Laurent or a new town that's relatively empty, and assume that there are some homes already there, a community hall, a church, maybe a gas station and convenience store. Water, sewer, high-speed (DSL), roads are all included.

But that's it. This would be the condition of Laurent in the first couple of years. What are 3 things you GOT TO HAVE in this town before you and your family will move in?

Remember, this town WILL grow. This town WILL have more and more services and businesses added over the time, but what are 3 things in this town you gotta have for yourself and your family in the first 1-3 years?

Also assume that within 20-35 minute drive, there's 24-hour Wal-Mart, big local food store, Walgreens, Ruby Tuesday's, hotels & motels, large mall, Menards, and so on.

Please respond in our comments section below. If you can, tell us a little about yourself (single or married? age? Kids or no? Senior Citizen? Soon to retire?)

Thanks! 

I gave a presentation at Edmonds Community College in Lynnwood, Washington last spring to a crowd of over 100 people, and the presentation was videotaped by the college. They generously shared a copy with us. I had a really cool beard at that time... Ok, ok... not cool — moving on.

The video is really ideal for hearing people because the camera did not stay on me most of the time so a lot of my signing were not visible, and the presentation is not captioned. Greg Frohriep, a deaf businessman and an owner of CaptWorks has graciously agreed to caption the video for us, and as soon as we receive it, we will share with y'all.

 And, I adjust my presentation style according to the audience. More hearing folks, I downshift. More deaf folks, I go like, "Warp Factor 7, Mr. Sulu!" And no interpreter — living or dead — would be able to keep up with me. ;-)

Or, download for your video iPod (QuickTime .MP4).