Deaf Unschooling Comic Strip

updated a bit July 2019






These are by Adrean Clark and are on her Deviant Art page.


I'll need to ask for new links or images.

Meanwhile, years have passed and there are other links for Adrean's art and activities!

See (maybe buy!) graphic art in various forms
Adrean Clark dot com webpage


Comixpedia.org said (in early 2010; might still)

Adrean Clark is a deaf cartoonist currently based in St. Paul, MN. Former comics/webcomics she authored are My Hands Full, The Significance of Reality, and The Dark Side of the Moon.

As a strong advocate of American Sign Language, she often deals with signing community themes in her work. Her work has appeared in publications such as SIGNews and Deaf Rochester News.

Clark is the Visual Editor of Clerc Scar, where her current comic work appears.

As Adreanaline, Adrean posts on unschooling discussions sometimes, and is in the Monday and Friday unschooling chats when she's not too busy. Adrean created an image of clear singing, following one of the discussions. It is here: SandraDodd.com/clarity

Her husband is John Lee Clark, the editor of Deaf American Poetry.

They're unschoolers.

Metals

Hema Bharadwaj wrote on her blog

Raghu asked me to open a packet of salted peanuts which led to him requesting some salted, roasted cashews and then he started to say something about airplanes (which is where the salted peanut packet came from).. which then led to this question: "amma, which is heavier... metal or aluminium?" I replied that metal is like fish... a group word... so aluminum, iron, steel etc are metals... i was unable to remember more metals and he added tin and steel. then he said tin is lighter than iron... and that he got that observation from Iron Man... which led to a discussion of the suit the guy built for himself in the movie etc.

This entire conversation must have lasted about 10 minutes. It was so satisfying and amusing and interesting to see the connections, path of conversation topics etc. This morning i'm able to write it out... but these conversations happen often and by the time i get to write at the comp... i've forgotten the exact thread/topics and connections.

I added:

Those burst-of-learning sessions are my favorite things!

If it comes up again, tell him some metals are elements and some are alloys (combos) and that the U.S. coin "a nickel" is named because of what the coin is made of. And they use nickel in stainless steel.

Maybe someday "bronze age" and "iron age" will come up and that could be a part of that discussion too!

Cravings

What's known of cravings? Pregnant women have them (I did), but what's the current belief of people who are scientific? What are some of the folk beliefs about cravings?

The reason I ask is that I'm making pork for the third time in one week. Never in my life have I had a pork craving, but it seems I'm having one now. Could be coincidence, but I thought someone might come by here with some knowledge or theories or humorous speculations.

Once when Kirby was feverishly delirious, and was three or four, he kept saying he wanted "red food." We tried, guessed, asked, called friends he had visited to see if they'd fed him something red. When he was well he couldn't remember.

With the slightest little google search I found this:

Explains what food cravings mean and how to curb cravings naturally...

Should food cravings be curbed rather than indulged? Should people listen to their bodies just enough to say "no"?

Pork is a weird one for me. It's browned and in the crock pot with green chile and tomatoes, and it smells like cumin, which I love.

Same but different

Except that I scooted the top leaf over a bit, the only difference in these scans is that for the first one I put a solid cardboard box over the top of the scanner table, and for the other one I put the scanner lid down, "the right way."

These are from the fruitless mulberry tree right out my back door, the same tree from which this odd leaf came a few years ago:

I like scanner art. I have other things in a couple of places. Click for more:

Battleaxe or a Pike?

I've had a note in my desk for years that says "Find that battleaxe thing."

Today I found it. What "it" is is a post from 1998, on a forum that doesn't exist, but I printed it out then, so I'm transcribing it here.

Subject: Re: Calling Sandra Dodd...
Date: Tue, Sep 29, 1998
From SandraDodd

<<Oliver is looking over my shoulder, and he needs clarity on the difference between a battleaxe and a pike.>>

A battleaxe is a cranky old woman and a pike is a fish.

A pike is longer and has to have a pokey thing on the end (speartip). An axehead is optional.

A battleaxe is heavier, shorter, and the pokey thing is optional.

I'm saying this without looking in a book or calling my many knowledgeable friends. BRB. (Did you know I was gone?)

I would ask my husband but he's off buying a caster for my kick stool (because I'm short), which brings up the question what is the difference between a caster (or is it castor? they do make that oil...[just joking]) and a wheel?

Okay. I called my friend Jeff [a.k.a. Duke Artan MacAilin in the SCA]. He's a word-freak and medieval combat practitioner. I read him my definitions and he said "that's it."

I wanted to say something about knowing everything. I had a family visit my house last weekend. It was like an unschooling factory tour. I was showing them toys and telling stories about how if kids have played with all kinds of things and thereby gotten scientific principles down in a sensory and intellectual kind of way, after they're older all that's left is the vocabulary, the terminology.

I bought a dictionary with my own money at the age of nine. I've been accused of being a know-it-all my whole life, but what I mostly know is words. If you know the name for an alternator, if you know the difference between an alternator and a generator by definitions, it will seem you know about the electrical systems of cars, and you WILL know more than if you didn't know that.

So because I've read about the Middle Ages for fun all my life and then hung around guys who talk about and make and use weapons, I just know. Same way people can tell a poodle from a greyhound (terminology) people gradually add to the details of their knowledge every day that they live.

That's why unschooling works. That's HOW unschooling works. Because someone cares about the difference between a pike (the word "pike") and a battleaxe (the word and the parameters of its meaning).

Definitions. Look at the word itself, "definitions."

OKAY! If you read this post carefully you've just done more than many college courses in philosophy do in an hour. Congratulations, you unschooler!

pants, bum

I had chosen words for The Lyrics Game two months in advance, but the images weren't in them all. So I was in the U.K. when I searched google image for "bum," and turns out I got no photos of scraggly old homeless guys, but many female rumps. That made me more aware of words we use all the time in the U.S. that I don't even notice.

Then this ad from the Duluth Trading Company came, and I saw it in its way-too-American light. "Pants" and "bum" both in one place, with a free pocketknife.

Variations on English

English in different parts of the world... Links and comments are welcome! Because I'm going to England in a month and a few days, I'm reviewing how I could get myself in trouble or seem rude and tacky. This is one of my favorite sites about that:


The Septic's Companion: A British Slang Dictionary—A dictionary of British slang, written by a Scotsman living in America

It's been linked on my English Oddities page for a long time, and I was one of the contributors before it was a book, so cool! It's more fun that some of the other dictionaries I've seen, though I just love dictionaries and I love stories of words.

Hema Bharadwaj wrote recently that her son, Raghu, is having a hard time in India because the English is so different from what he learned in the U.S. My favorite part of watching "Slumdog Millionaire" was hearing the game show host's English.

I had lunch with my friend Charles Thursday. He's English, and told of a road trip to the Midwest last year or so, and of being in a restaurant with three friends of ours who grew up in New Mexico (one in Texas and New Mexico) who all ordered water and that was fine, but when he tried to order water, the waitress couldn't understand what he wanted at all, no matter how much he repeated it. That's because the main sound in the word "water" in that part of the U.S. is a heavy "r" and Charles has no "r" at all. Plus he pronounced the "t" in the middle of "water" as though it were, well... a "t."

Once I sang in a folk club in England. Maybe at St. Neot's, in a pub. Maybe in a different folk club meeting in a different pub. It was the late 1970's. I sang The Titanic, and showed them the singalong parts, and when they got to their part I laughed because I was used to "...to the bottom of the the sea" sounding like a southwestern U.S. "boddum" and got that very hard "t" from a group of Brits!