Our Signing Town

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).

Enjeux, a French speaking TV program on Radio Canada of Quebec, did a story on Laurent, S.D. They filmed us October of last year, and the show aired last January. I thought it’d be cool to share this video with y’all! The program is primarily in spoken French. You may hear some English and see ASL as well! Sorry, no subtitling or transcript. I don’t even know French! Higher quality QuickTime .mov file here.

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Transcript of the Video Blog

Hi! I’m Marvin Miller. Nowadays, more and more deaf people are posting video blog commentaries. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that… hiding behind English words. But I decided to go ahead and do it anyway! Why? A lot of people have been asking us, "What is happening with Laurent? We’re curious. We want to know what’s happening. Is the town built already?"

No. Not yet.

Now, we are here in our office in a small town named Salem, S.D. We are about 40 miles west of big city of Sioux Falls.

I know, I know… you’re looking at me funny, "You call Sioux Falls a big city?!" It is indeed the largest city in South Dakota. To me, any city that has shopping mall and plenty of restaurants is a big city!

Now, we are working hard.  Funding… that angel group who have been working on the funding for the past 2 years, they thought we would get it done soon. Not so. That leaves us wondering. They are still working on it, and they haven’t quit or given up.

But we are still discussing on what our next steps. We have two organizations. One is non-profit, 501c3 tax exempt, The Laurent Institute for purposes of community development and the other is for profit, The Laurent Company to afford investors an opportunity to invest in the development. We are looking at both to move forward the vision of building Laurent. We’re still working out details of how.

We have one potential deaf investor who expressed an interest in working with us on financing the project. He feels he can bring others on board once the numbers are all worked out. We will be working with a different set of numbers for investors than our angel funding group.

So for next couple of weeks, we will be working hard on putting together the necessary numbers in order for the project to move forward.

We will keep you posted on this blog. The most important thing I can say is that we are not giving up. We are still here and working.

I will be giving a presentation on Laurent in Brattleboro, Vermont on October 28th at their local Deaf Expo. For those in the New England area or on the east coast, feel free to come up and see my presentation. You can ask me questions!

So with this video blog, I will be adding more information over the time especially on why building Laurent is so important and its impact worldwide.

So we’re working. Positive thoughts, prayers, ideas and feedback are definitely welcome! We may not be able to answer all e-mails, but we are all ears… or should I say, all eyes!

In closing with my first video blog, some of you may ask, "What can I do?" Talk about this vision. Why it benefits everyone and start thinking about your own business ideas and plans. Even start saving.

Also, you can donate online to The Laurent Institute, and your donation will be tax deductible. Any amounts from $1 to bazillions are definitely welcome!

Thank you.