The chapter newsletter for February 2004:
Calendar:
February 10, 2004, Monthly Speaker’s Meeting
Our regular monthly speaker’s meeting will be cancelled. In its place we will hold a business meeting. This important meeting needs your attention. We will address issues related to budget and to our By-Laws. Even if you have not attended in a long time, these issues are important to you and we need you, your experience and viewpoint. If time permits, we will hold an open mike where you can express your desires or voice your gripes. Tell us how you want Derbytown to serve you.
In addition to captions, we will be using an induction loop system to aid communication. So check your “T-coils” (telephone switch) on your hearing aids. If you are not sure, contact
Ed
February 28, 2004 Informal Dinner at Piccadilly
We plan to have our monthly informal dinner at Piccadilly’s on Hurstbourne Lane at Shelbyville Rd. on the fourth Saturday, February 28 at 2:00 pm. Please let Ed know in advance if you want a table looped to facilitate conversation via your T-switch.
Sign Language Practice Group
Do you want to learn sign language as a back-up to your hearing aids?
Seven of our members met on Monday, January 26 for our first ASL group of the season. They decided to meet on the first, third and fourth Mondays of each month. (No meeting on the Monday before our Tuesday Speaker’s Meeting.) Please note: This is not an ASL class. This is members helping members to informally learn basic sign and to practice skills. There is no text. No formal instructor. We meet at Harvey Brown Presbyterian Church, 311 Browns Lane, near Shelbyville Rd. at 7:00.
Captioned Movies:
Louisville: All movies are shown at Stonybrook Cinemas, 2745 S. Hurstbourne Pkwy.
"Mystic River" – Feb. 8 and 9
"Peter Pan" - Feb 29 and March 1
Lexington: All movies are shown at Regal Hamburg Pavilion 16
"Peter Pan" – Feb 1 and 2
"Seabiscuit - Feb 15 and 16
"Looney Tunes Back in Action" – Feb 9 and March 1
Thanks:
Special thanks go to Carlene Ballard, Pat Flaherty, and Judy Rogers for their work on our Newcomer’s Folder. Melanie Magruder deserves special thanks for developing our History of Derbytown. It took a lot of time to bring the facts together and to write it in an interesting style. Mary Lee Nelson is updating and tweaking our web sites almost daily. Her time and talents are continuously serving Derbytown. We owe her and Melanie for their fantastic behind the scenes service. Finally, we want to thank Louise Wisdom and her friends for making last month’s speaker meeting so enjoyable and informative. Preparing a program and standing up in front of your peers is difficult and deserves a lot of reward. Thanks Louise. There was an excellent write up regarding Louise’s presentation in the Jan. 28 Courier Journal Neighborhood Section which netted us some interest in Derbytown SHHH
Budget
We will discuss all budget items at our February 10 business meeting.
Treasurer’s Report
Bob Stuckey was injured in an at work accident. Hopefully, by the time this comes out, he will have recuperated and ready to join us. Bob, our prayers are with you.
Legislative Coalition
The legislative coalition meeting was moved to February 7, 1:00 to 5:00 at the Commission’s office in Frankfort. We still need people to join us at this important meeting. Carpool with us.
Ky. Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
The 100th Meeting of the KY Commission on the Deaf and Hard of Hearing was held in Frankfort at the Executive Mansion January 23. There was a reception and several representatives of Gov. Fletcher’s new administration were present.
During this Legislative Session, the following bills pertain to the work of the Commission:
SB18Creating a license plate for the Hard of Hearing which would attempt to collect a contribution for the Commissions services if there were enough people requesting the plate.
HB60 Would develop a Medicaid Buy-In Program for persons with disabilities to remove barriers for employment.
HB260 Corrects serious deficits in the regulations in the state’s Early Intervention System which have permitted deaf and hard of hearing children to be denied services until they significantly developmentally delayed.
Additional info on these bills can be found at Legislative Research Commission
Due to the state’s budget shortfall, the Commission returned $60,000 to the general fund. The loss of the restricted funds designated for telecommunications equipment for the deaf and hard of hearing was particularly disappointing in light of our hopes of receiving Captel Service in the near future.
On Dec 5 a cut of $48,000 from the General Fund was made to the KCDHH budget. In addition, $60,000 unbudgeted rollover was taken from the TDD Distribution Program .On Dec 24, a 2.5% reduction was made to the FY2004 budget for both the General Fund and the TTY Distribution Program. This was an attempt to fill the $400million revenue for this Fiscal year.
The Hard of Hearing Study Group Proposal was reviewed and passed with funding for CART and will be funded through June 2005. At that time it will be reviewed for renewal for the next 12 months.
KCDHH Study Group
Group Members: Commissioners Pat Huddleston, Betty Timon, Jayne McRae; Commission Staff Anita Dowd; Vocational Rehab Counselor Lori Bishop; SHHH members Mary Lee Nelson, Ed Schickel, and Paula Esterle with two more deaf persons to be added.
Purpose: To further the study of the needs of hard of hearing people across Kentucky and increase outreach efforts.
Short Term Goals: Specific areas to be developed are improved usability of the KCDHH website, KY State Fair booth expansion for awareness and education, and PR for May’s Better Speech and Hearing Month. The Commission will be seeking partnerships with private business sponsors.
Long Term goals: To further public awareness of hearing health issues through May ‘05 Better Speech and Hearing Month.
Other Projects
Visor Alerts
Information regarding the visor alert will be presented in our March/April meeting
ALDs in Church
Ed met with the Director of Worship and her committee to discuss Assistive Listening Devices in churches in the Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville. We learned that a number of Catholic churches report that they have ALDs. Most of them are FM devices.
| Holy Family Church | HolyTrinityChurch |
| Mother of Good Counsel | St Albert the Great | St Bernard Church |
| St Francis of Assisi Church | St Helens Church | St Louis Bertrand |
| St Michaels J’town | St Raphael | St Stephen Martyr |
| St Ignatius Martyr | St Pius X | St Bartholomew |
| St Boniface | St Martin de Porres | St Elizabeth of Hungary |
| Holy Name | Incarnation | St Rita Church |
| St Denis Church | St Mary’ s, Lanesville | St Mary’s, New Albany |
| Transfiguration, Goshen | St Bridgid, Vine Grove | St Aloysius. PeWee Valley |
| St Francis, Henryville | St Joseph, Sellersburg | Cathedral of the Assumption |
If you attend or wish to attend one of these churches, please call ahead and ask about the assistive devices. It is possible that it has been so long since any one asked for them, that no one will know where they are. The director of worship encourages us to attend those churches which service us best. Losing parishioners is one way to stimulate pastors to provide the service we need.
Your using an assistive device during the service might induce others who need it to ask and use it.
If you need or want more information, please contact Ed. If you find these churches do not have alds, please let him know so that the word can be passed to the office of Worship.
It would be good if we could identify all the churches in the area that have assistive devices available. If you attend a church which uses ALDS, please let us know the name of the church and what they use.
Newcomer’s Folders
We are receiving feedback on the folders and hope to have them ready for our April/May meeting.
Volunteers are needed to greet newcomers as they arrive, introduce them to the group and connect them to a member who could act as a resource/mentor for them. Dale has agreed to head a committee.
Are you willing to assist others? Please consider volunteering. Please contact him to talk about ways to greet and assist our new members.
HOH/Deaf Health Fair
We have been asked to join with a Northern KY/Cincinnati Deaf/HOH group to plan and present a health fair on April 17. This health fair, sponsored by a local Cincinnati hospital, has taken place each spring for a number of years. Although they have over 500 participants, very few are HOH. They want to reach out to HOH people and have asked for our help. Ed and Judy Vinegar will be presenting a number of programs for the HOH. These programs will focus on assistive listening devices, hearing in a medical environment, better communication, and personal problems related to hearing loss. They asked about hearing dogs.
They are looking for other presenters and for booths. If Indiana or Ohio SHHH groups (if any) are not able to staff a booth, are we interested?? We would need volunteer help.
As a by-product, we have learned that there is a vendor for assistive listening devices in Cincinnati, Dick Rosenberger We will check into this further.
In October, I said that I wanted to develop a number of activities/meetings so that many members could participate in those that they find interesting. We are off and running with our ASL group—seven + members participating. Fourteen members attended our Saturday dinner at Piccadilly’s. We also have a small group meeting for dinner and a captioned movie when a good one is showing.
What activities interest you? Let’s find more interesting projects to include all of our members.
Please plan to attend our Budget, By-Laws and Open Mike meeting even if you have not attended in a while. We need your input.