An online newsletter ... was ... Re: [sw-l] a few things...and Obama logo O plus rainbow

Tue Nov 11 01:13:04 UTC 2008

SignWriting List
November 10, 2008

Years ago we published the SignWriter Newspaper...from 1981 to 1984 (http://www.signwriting.org/library/history/hist005.html 
), with a staff of ten native signers. It was funded in part, by a  
publishing company in Newport Beach, California...They paid for the  
printing of 11,000 newspapers four times a year, and they also paid  
for the postage to ship the newspapers free of charge to schools for  
the Deaf etc around the country and to several European countries. It  
was a wonderful grant that really was exciting. The SignWriter  
Newspaper gave us four years of important experiences...it is because  
of the SignWriter Newspaper that we now are writing expressively and  
also in vertical columns, because through the experience of writing  
articles for the newspaper, our Deaf staff learned what was needed to  
make a better writing system and that is why Lucinda O'Grady Batch and  
Meriam Ina Schroeder and Dennis Schemenauer and others felt so  
strongly that the writing system had to be expressive and  
vertical...so I see those years of the SignWriter Newspaper as one of  
the best research projects we have ever had...

Then as you know, we stopped publication of the SignWriter Newspaper  
from 1984 to 1989...to develop the SignWriter Computer Program, and  
then we started a SignWriter Newsletter version for just a small group  
of people...and it was typed by computer...Recently we have added  
those SignWriter Newsletter articles starting in 1989, into the ASL  
Literature Puddle. We could re-publish them now, in our new  
formatting, using SignPuddle, and start sending the articles through  
SignMail...

Once we have sent a few by SignMail to the SignWriting List, we can  
ask all of our List members if they want to receive more...creating a  
specific list of subscribers...and if there is interest, this could  
become a wonderful project for me to ask for funding for...from new  
sponsors...

Because of the financial crisis in the world right now, some of our  
annual sponsors have not been sending their funding to us...I can  
really understand why...one person told me that he lost a great deal  
of money in the stock market and he couldn't help us right now...I  
totally understand but I have also become stressed about this and I am  
looking for new angles to encourage people to give...this new idea  
might help...the idea that we can provide good information to Deaf  
adults about the world, and at the same time encourage literacy too...

So let me see what I can do, Adam...

Meanwhile, your animated GIFs are so great and I look forward to  
finishing the web pages for that, so everyone here on the List and see  
your wonderful animated GIFs of the ISWA handshapes ;-))

Val ;-)

--------

On Nov 10, 2008, at 4:32 PM, Adam Frost wrote:

> And maybe also make it available in print for special requests. This  
> would be a very fun thing to get involved in. ;-) I just know from  
> experience that it would require more that just me to do this as I  
> have tried to do it alone before.
>
> Adam
>
> On Nov 10, 2008, at 4:22 PM, Valerie Sutton wrote:
>
>> SignWriting List
>> November 10, 2008
>>
>>> On Nov 10, 2008, at 3:53 PM, Adam Frost wrote:
>>>> I completely understand, and it makes sense to me as well. Most  
>>>> Deaf in the US can't get involved with politics even if they  
>>>> wanted to because there is no news station that is given in any  
>>>> form of SL. In fact, most of the captioning on news stations are  
>>>> horrible. Newspapers have been the way for Deaf people to get  
>>>> information for a long time, but those are dying out. Now the  
>>>> main place to get news in on the internet, but there are a lot of  
>>>> people who do not know how to use the internet, then the is the  
>>>> question of where to go to a trusted source, and lastly is the  
>>>> frustration that all of the news sites all too often use videos  
>>>> from the TV stations......
>>
>>
>>
>> We could have an ongoing "newsletter through email" to those who  
>> subscribe, written in ASL and English. We could have different  
>> topics, related to the daily news and other important topics that  
>> Deaf people might be isolated from...
>>
>> There will be very few readers in the beginning, but in time the  
>> readership might build, and maybe it would provide more information  
>> to the Deaf Community. It could arrive on your blackberry or  
>> handhelds...We could also post these articles in the new  
>> SignWriting WikiMedia Plugin on the web, which can lead to a real  
>> Wikipedia later...
>>
>> Would anyone be interested in helping with this? The problem is  
>> that I am quite overbooked and at the moment we have no funding for  
>> this...so it really needs funding...but imagine if we could get  
>> funding to write this ASL newsletter on the topics of the day...
>>
>> That would be a great project for all of us - and inform the Deaf  
>> Community...it is a shame they are cut off so badly from daily  
>> news...
>>
>> By the way, the logo for the Obama campaign is an O with a  
>> rainbow...it is a lovely logo...and that is why some of those name  
>> signs were an O hand and then the number 4 in a curve for the  
>> rainbow...it was "O with a rainbow" to match his logo...
>>
>> So that logo might influence the sign for him in time...
>>
>> Here it is:
>>
>> <Obama.jpg>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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