Hello all!

After all the energy that went into pulling together out NYE celebration at the Lake Wright Inn Hotel in Virginia Beach, we (as in the NYE committee) were all pooped! I think we’re just now starting to come back to life and get into the swing of a brand new year – really, it feels like a brand new era!

Today is January 20th, 2009 – the inauguration of Barrack Obama took place today and I watched in on the internet from my office, complete with captioning, thanks to NAD’s blog about ASL interpreted and captioned broadcasts of the inauguration. I couldn’t view the interpreted one – I hope it was good – too many people were on the network at my work thus the internet was slow… I saw the important parts, though… the singing of “My Country Tis of thee” and the swearing in of our 44th president, Obama’s incredibly moving speech. It so hard not to to feel chills up my arms and tears at the corner of my eyes… it’s that old feeling of optimism creeping up.

Heck, yes! I’m optimistic that we’re coming into a new era! I am optimistic that we will see progress in our society, the likes of which we haven’t seen in a good long while. I have a good feeling that the deaf community will be riding one of the waves of that progress.

At our first SVSD meeting of the year last Saturday, we discussed our usual business of the organization… nothing too exciting if you’ve ever taking part as a member of any club or org: upcoming events, progress with the 501c3 paperwork, how to expand our resources, events within the community and events we should take part in, etc., etc. Really mundane stuff that makes up the business of making a go of an organization.

I think the most valuable part of the meeting was at the end: I put up three large sheets of paper and laeled each one in this order…

1) Resolutions or VISIONS for SVSD for the next year

2) Resolutions or VISIONS for SVSD for the next five years

3) Personal resolutions (from each participating member, not just me or officers or only a select few – but ALL who were present) regarding service to the community.

I think it was important to get it all on paper what both our collective and individual vision is for SVSD… what we want to see SVSD develop into… what we want to see happen for the Deaf community… what positive steps we can take.

At first, people had a hard time thinking of anything to say. It’s as if we really don’t know, or had a difficult time imagining what our deaf community can evolve into. But, as the comments trickled on each page, the juices started flowing, you could see the excitment growing and our papers started looking more and more like graffited walls covered with the many ideas – both small and big – of what we want to see happen and how we can service our deaf community so – pah! – we can start making some real progress in this new era!

You’ve got to know what you want to see, before you know what you need to do.

I will post the list in a new blog, but meanwhile – I wonder… what are your resolutions or visions for the deaf community? What do YOU want to see happen in the new year, five years and then what are YOUR PERSONAL goals for contributing to them?

Think about it and write them down.  Post below – I’m curious as to YOUR vision and our collective vision for the deaf community.

Peace,

Star