Kristin Mick

The Sun

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 10:02:47 -0500

The Sun

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-12-6)

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:12:58 -0500

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-12-6):

Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz

Shred Like a Geek: Recycled Circuit Board Guitar Picks [Guitar...

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 19:27:01 -0500

Shred Like a Geek: Recycled Circuit Board Guitar Picks [Guitar Pics]

Love this. Even though mountains freak me out, I’ve always...

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:43:38 -0500

Love this. Even though mountains freak me out, I’ve always thought that this passage was pretty. I stopped at the scenic overlook on time. Totally worth it.

wooliebear:

The Sideling Hill road cut is a 340-foot deep notch excavated from the ridge of Sideling Hill for Interstate 68, about 6 miles west of Hancock in Washington County, Maryland. It is notable as an impressive man-made mountain pass, visible from miles away and is considered one of the best rock exposures in Maryland and the entire northeastern United States. Almost 810 feet of strata in a tightly folded syncline are exposed in this road cut. Although other exposures may surpass Sideling Hill in either thickness of exposed strata or in quality of geologic structure, few can equal its combination of both.

via Wikipedia

Photo: me

Dana Stevens yes oh yes.

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:37:18 -0500

Thank you! I cannot stand Natalie Portman. She is BORING!

krankmills:

katiebakes:

Unfortunately, Brothers also assumes that Natalie Portman is interesting enough to watch suffer for two hours. Here I come up against what I’m fully willing to admit may be a personal limitation: I can’t stand Natalie Portman. I’ve never believed her in a single role. She evokes no emotional response in me beyond, “Oh, there’s Natalie Portman.” She doesn’t overact or underact; she just stands around with whatever the appropriate expression for the scene seems to be on her sweet, pretty, childlike face. If there’s something going on behind that face, I neither know nor care what it is, which means that long stretches of Brothers involving her character’s interiority struck me as dramatically inert. If you possess the gene that enables Portman-caring, you may find them brilliant.

Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.

I know, right?

In Case of Asteroid, Use Lasso [Space]

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 14:51:47 -0500

In Case of Asteroid, Use Lasso [Space]

See the World From Your Couch: Pompeii Ruins Now on Google...

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 14:51:40 -0500

See the World From Your Couch: Pompeii Ruins Now on Google Street View [Tourism]

capriquarius: (via fullofwhitehotrage) So true. Just add a...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 07:43:45 -0500

capriquarius:

(via fullofwhitehotrage)

So true. Just add a second cat.

Modern Day Michelangelo Paints Ceilings With BIC Lighter [Art]

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:25:37 -0500

Modern Day Michelangelo Paints Ceilings With BIC Lighter [Art]

Did Luke Wilson just stop trying?

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:11:42 -0500

That commercial looks like it was made in a warehouse with a white board. You have to try harder than that AT&T. I mean, come on.

wooliebear:

jgh:

He’s even wearing an ill-fitted suit in that AT&T ad.

I saw that last night and it made me very sad.

100 days in Glacier National Park

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:20:51 -0500

100 days in Glacier National Park

"Hear and Now"

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:46:01 -0500

thumbwrestlinginbaltimore:

For various reasons, I’ve had a curiosity about deafness and the deaf community since I was a child. The obvious impetus was the fact that my mother’s sister, Donna, is deaf (she was born able to hear, but lost her hearing as an infant when she got the Mumps) and two of my mother’s other siblings are also relatively severely hard of hearing.

I’ve also independently come to find the deaf community, and more specifically their unique pride, to be a really interesting and beautiful aspect of the impairment. One of the main characters in the novel I’m writing right now is deaf and I’m fascinated by what I learn as I research her. I wear a charm on my necklace of a hand making an “n” (for Nicole) in American Sign Language and I’m taking further ASL classes this spring.

Last night I finally got around to watching the documentary “Hear and Now” (which I plan on re-watching as soon as possible) which is the story of a 65-year old deaf couple (as told by their adult daughter) who make the decision to get cochlear implants together in an attempt to be able to hear sound for the first time in their lives. This film is deeply touching and I downright sobbed for good parts of it as they spoke of their longing to communicate with the rest of the world and their curiosity about which items, so familiar to them in sight, might suddenly take on a new character with sound. The wife stands along a rural path while walking their dogs and snaps branches and limbs of the plants she passes repeating “does this make a sound”, “does this make a sound”, “does this make a sound”? It is truly moving.

Perhaps the most poignant aspect to their story is the fact that this is a journey they’ve decided, for better or worse, to undertake together, and with the potential to change literally everything as they know it, including perhaps the very nature of their relationship and their own individual character. The monologue the husband delivers about waiting for his wife’s progress to catch up with his own is one of the most sincere sentiments of partnership I’ve heard.

What I cannot stop thinking about today, however, is not how much the implants changed their lives, but how little. The husband is one of the original inventors of the TTY (a device which deaf people may use to communicate via the telephone with the hearing) and he comments that that changed his life far more than the implant since TTY gave him the ability to interact with the world around him, while the implant only gave him the ability to hear it.

Their daughter describes sound for her parents as a “polite house guest” that is welcomed into their routines, but which, after a few hours, they no longer know what to do with. There is a scene where the husband is sitting in their living room reading the paper with the TV on, closed captioned, with the sound turned off in his hearing aids and his daughter asks “Dad, why do you have your hearing aids turned off?”

To which he replies “I just wanted to relax, read the paper and watch the news in peace.”

I too watched this documentary about a year ago. My mother & my aunt (they are twins) both have lost most of the hearing. They started losing their hearing in their 20’s for causes that are still unknown. By the last measure, my mom had lost about 60% of her hearing while my aunt about 75%. This was several years ago & I am sure that it has gotten worse since then.

Since this started happening to my mother long before I was born & even before she met my father, this is the only way that we have ever known her. I grew up speaking loudly, repeating things that I say several times, not being able to talk on the phone with her & just generally constantly being aware of how difficult it is to survive without hearing. To this day, I have the closed captioning on on my own TVs because I like it & it’s how I have always watched TV. (My parents actually credit the closed captioning with how quickly I learned to read & how I can read so quickly to this day).

I was intrigued when I saw this documentary on HBO. I remember the night that I watched it, alone in my bedroom. I knew that my boyfriend wouldn’t be interested in it & just wouldn’t get it as much as I would. I too downright sobbed at several instances during this movie. The scene with the woman walking down the dirt road beside their house, asking if certain things make noise was very close to home. My mom will constantly ask this question. Even though she does have some hearing & is not completely deaf, most of the background white noise that we can hear (leaves rustling, dirt crunching, etc.), she cannot. My parents too live in a rural area & my mom is always outside walking. She misses out on hearing the sound of the wind through the trees, the sound of squirrels in trees, the sound of the water flowing in the river. All of this is silent to her just like it is silent to the couple in the movie.

The most heart breaking part of the movie, for me, was when the couple realizes that they like their life better before they could hear. Being as part of the hearing public, we forget the most important part about hearing: what not to hear. We have learned to tune out all of the white noise the surrounds us every day. What was interesting to me was the every background noise that the couple would hear would be just as loud as someone talking directly to them. They didn’t know how to filter out the white noise from the important noise. It’s something that we don’t usually (or ever) think about & something that is basically impossible to learn as an adult.

And it proved impossible for this couple. By the end of the film, they were turning off their implants (despite the direct instructions from their doctors to never turn them off) so that they could relax away from all of the noise of every day life. This is something that my mom does too. She will turn off her hearing aids when she’s reading, when she sleeps, whenever she wants to relax. It’s like shutting out the outside world & going inside to a quiet & relaxing place. There’s something so peaceful about this but also so frightening. I don’t think that I would be able to do it. I think it would totally freak me out. But I guess that the opposite is true for deaf or people who wear hearing aids. They have to learn to tune out the white noise that we all do every day. I can’t imagine how difficult that would be.

What’s so interesting about the film is that it seemed as if this couple were happier without the ability to hear. It was just too hard for them to learn how NOT to hear then it was for them to learn to hear. That’s what broke my heart. There’s so much more to the hearing world than that but it’s hard to see (or hear) that when you’re hearing for the first time at 60 years old.

Needless to say, I loved this movie. Not in the way that I would watch it over & over again. I have only watched it once. But in the way that makes me think (& cry!). I called my mom the day after I watched this & tried the best that I could to tell her about it (phone conversations are difficult & the irony was not lost on me). I told her how it made me cry hysterically at certain points & how it reminded me of her in some ways. She has no plans of getting the implant & I really hope that she never will. I never want her to lose that place where she is able to go when everything is silent.

Lest we forget…

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:22:56 -0500

Lest we forget…

Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar 2009

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:33:44 -0500

Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar 2009

lauriebreaker: My dear friend Caitlin has launched her...

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:51:27 -0500

lauriebreaker:

My dear friend Caitlin has launched her website.

She is a maker of prints.
Prints chock full of story, heart, detail, and quirk.

(nevermind stunning, visually engaging and flat-out gorgeous)

click through to check out more of her prints!

"One day at a time, one sequin at a time. Changing the world."

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:50:17 -0500

“One day at a time, one sequin at a time. Changing the world.”

- Lady Gaga

(My motto for life)

(via jcup) (via cosmicsquirreljustice)
(via marcusallenthecat)

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-11-29)

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:56:31 -0500

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-11-29):

Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz

DIY Mood-Lighting Wine Bottle [Decorating]

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:22:40 -0500

DIY Mood-Lighting Wine Bottle [Decorating]

National Geographic’s International Photography Contest...

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:15:50 -0500

National Geographic’s International Photography Contest 2009

quiethouse: (via kaylynashley) this was attended tonight, and...

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:08:57 -0500

quiethouse:

(via kaylynashley)

this was attended tonight, and it was just as awkward as I hoped it would be!

How did I miss this??