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Show Monday, Aug. 27,2007 Special Features Page 25 Register for Institute at our NEW website wise.ldsces.org •••; I. A *••«•» L * fln/wu/uung.... Irene Taylor BrodsKY filmed her parents, Sally and Paul Taylor, for a year after they got cochlear implants. The result is "Hear and Now." LA Times photo The Best Photo Took All Summer CorvUtt! Hear: What does sound sound like? •I continued from page 23 feeling the vibrations of a speaker and to lip read efficiently — so much so that in Sally's case, she was sometimes hired by police investigators and journalists to figure out what people were saying from as far away as 100 yards. Brodsky unearthed loads of footage from her parents' childhoods as well as her own. "In a lot of ways, it's a family album, especially those films which came in these old tin reels in a steel box that my father gave me," she said. "He'd forgotten about them. We had them professionally transferred to digital video.... There are definitely some beneficial byproducts of making a film about your family." There are images of Paul's return from boarding school for his first vacation, at what appears to be age 5 or 6. He recounts his parents' thrill when he spoke his first word — not "Mommy" or "Daddy," he said, but "thumb." "They were over the moon," he says. During the Taylors' 1964 trip to the New York World's Fair to celebrate their first anniversary, also captured on film, the pair is thunderstruck by Bell Lab's futuristic Picture Phone. "Why can't we have a picture phone?" Paul mouths to the camera. "Why don't deaf people have the right to communicate over the miles the way hearing people do?" Later, he would contribute to the invention of the TTY device that connects the deaf and hearing through Teletypes and telephones. At one point, he worked for the FCC in Washington, helping implement the law that requires relay operators to be available to the deaf and hard of hearing at all times. Her brother, David, reveals a poignant memory about his feeling of powerlessness when the neighborhood bully ran up behind his father and, telling his friends to "watch this," yelled an obscenity that only the little boy could hear. "Hear and Now" steers clear of deaf-community controversies such as the debate over signing versus lip reading, nor does it even explore in much depth what cochlear implants — electronic devices that stimulate auditory nerves rather than amplify sound like traditional hearing aids — are capable of doing for the profoundly deaf (there is controversy about ihis, as well). The Taylors' surgeon, who doesn't think any kind of psychological evaluation is necessary, believes that cochlear implants represent "the No. 1 medical advance of the 20th century," even more important than organ transplants, he says, because hearing is "the only sense that can be restored." In a classic doctor/patient disconnect, Sally's tumultuous recovery finds her falling apart in his office, telling him that "emotions play a big part in the process." His response as his patient, who is too dizzy to walk, sits weeping: "A little." But all that is really beside the point as the tension builds over whether the Taylors' lives will dramatically change for the better with the implants. In another post-op appointment, the Taylors' audiologist turns on a noise-emitting machine to test their ability to hear. "What does it sound like?" he asks. "That's tough," Paul replies. "How do you describe what green looks like?" £ Deadline for submissions: Sept. 15, 5 p.m. £ Submit digital files OJPft tiff, PS) to: statesman@cc.usu.edu, subject line "Photo Contest." ^Categories: I) Landscape/Scenic, 2) People/Activities, 3) Bizzare/Unusual. You pick the category for which you want your photos to be considered. SEND THEM TODAY! Vjr UTAJNSTATCSMAN You took some GREAT photos this summer. Time to Shoiv Them, 1 Off' to Local ff.ifcii^-^fcHijc •-•( UHEAA-Student Loans %m * "Still Your Sweetest Deal .. .•«!>%&.-' '-311 t » - , i -•^• .-'-- *£*• &?>' vFi? £& 4 .* i"!:W.-" -U^.' ^J?J w T*f Mi^ .21 J' -:i£ ?M •••*• iHEIffi STUDEJiTUGftH BGBfiQWER BE1IFJIS • GUARANTEE FEE BENEFIT UHEAA pays the guarantee fee • AUTOMATIC PAYMENT BENEFIT 1.25% point reduction in the interest rate UTAH SYSTEM OF HIGHER EDUCATION UTAH HIGHER EDUCATION ASSISTANCE AUTHORITY B u i l d i n g a S t r o n g e r S t a t e o f M i n d s " • ORIGINATION FEE CREDIT BENEFIT full credit of the loan origination fee charged on the loan • TIMELY PAYMENT BENEFIT 2% point reduction in the interest rate after 48 on-time payments • LOCAL SERVICE • STATE OF THE ART TECHNOLOGY Subject to change without notice.Terms and conditions apply / The terms UHEAA and Utah Higher Education Assistance Authority are service marked / Copyright © UHEAA 2007 • |