Ageless Passions by Karen Putz

Tag: deaf

  • ZVRS and Barefooting, Crammed in Two Days

    I arrived at the World Barefoot Center on Sunday evening in time to have dinner with Swampy, Lauren Lindeman and a great group of younger skiers from all over the world, including A. J. Porreca, a 17-year-old barefooter from Willowbrook, Il who is featured on the cover of Water Skier magazine.  After a great dinner, I headed back to the Z Team home that I was staying at.

    At the ZVRS headquarters, we filmed a VCO Plus video all day.  Because Ann Marie Mickelson and I are no actresses, we ended up with a lot of shots for the blooper file.  Hollywood will not be calling us soon.  Nonetheless, we had a blast and after the first half hour of filming, we kicked off our shoes.  Roger Vass put me on a cardboard platform so that Ann Marie wouldn’t tower over me.  I begged Roger to airbrush 30 pounds off of me but no amount of money could convince him.

    Joined the Z Team for dinner:

    Then I went for a walk on the beach at dusk and stayed out until it was pitch black.  Just a sliver of the moon and a bright star shone in the sky.  Turned off the hearing aids and walked in dead silence– every now and then it’s nice to tune out and just enjoy the visual stuff.  The house I was staying at was a few steps from the beach.

    Yesterday morning, we finished up some filming and I had this awful urge to go barefooting.  I paged A. J. Albrecht, who also works for ZVRS as a Z Specialist and asked him if he was available for the afternoon.  I’m working the HLAA conference the next four days and Texas the weekend after, so I figured I could play hooky for the afternoon. The only catch– he was two hours away.  Did I really want to drive four hours in one afternoon?

    Heck yeah.

    And I’m glad I did.  A. J. and I had an amazing afternoon on the water.  I started off on the boom, back to the basics.  Get up, sit back down on the water, get up again.  Over and over.  Here’s A. J. showing me what to do:

    I asked A. J. to teach me how to barefoot on one foot — something that eluded me as a teen.  Every time I would lift a foot, I’d end up face first in the water.  Kicking off a ski was tough for me.

    My first attempt ended in a face plant.

    Here we go again, I thought.

    My second attempt ended in success– I shifted my weight and lifted my foot up!  Did a couple more of those and rode a little longer to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.  That felt good!  The last several weeks at the gym, I practiced  balancing on one foot and I guess that paid off.

    I switched places with A. J. and drove while he showed me his stuff.  He jumped out of the boat on to the boom while I drove– take a look:

    The next trick– a backwards deep water start and then he got up barefooting backwards, then flipped around from a back-to-front:

    A. J. is a master on the chair ski/hydrofoil, I was in awe of all the flips he can do.   Take a look:

    I worked on the deep water start on the five-foot extension off the boom and had no problem getting up each time.  I moved to the back of the boat on the long line and out of five attempts, I got up once for a short run and promptly landed face first again.  The long line continues to be a battling beast for me.  A. J. turned around to take a picture and of course, I crashed at that moment:

    When we finished, a storm was brewing so I went back to the boom and practiced skiing in rough water back to the landing.  We pulled the boat out and covered it just as it began to pour.

    I hit the road back to Tampa and sat in the airport until ten p.m.  Needless to say, I conked out on the plane.  I sure hope my snoring didn’t bother anyone.

  • I Married a Good Man

    I was sitting in the car repair shop this morning with my laptop on a table, getting ready to join a meeting using the Z4 videophone.  Two ladies sat nearby and one of them began talking to me.  I looked up and said, “Oh, sorry, I didn’t hear what you said, I’m deaf.”

    She laughed and pointed to the hearing aids perched in her ear.  “I am too, she said with a smile.”   The other lady scooted over and we began talking about videophones and webcams and I showed them the Z4 from ZVRS and explained my job.  The lady with the hearing aids had to leave and I continued to chat with the other lady.

    “I’m Sally Goodman,” she said.  “I like to tell people that I married a good man.”

    I laughed. 

    “Well, I’m Karen Putz,” I said.  “I usually tell people that I married a putz.”

    She let out a big a laugh. 

    We talked and found some neat connections between us.  Her husband is hard of hearing and her brother-in-law and several other relatives are deaf and hard of hearing.  Her daughter is an author of several books, and currently working on a non-fiction book.  Her great-grandfather founded the town of Battle Creek, Michigan. 

    She asked me if I was born deaf and I explained the deaf gene in my family and how I went from hard of hearing to deaf after a fall while barefoot waterskiing.  She shared her story of being diagnosed with MS twenty years ago and how she worked her way out of a wheelchair and back into great health again.  We exchanged emails and a hug before parting ways.

    I’m always amazed at the folks that I cross paths with in daily life– I know these are not just chance encounters, but interactions that are rich with learning and growth. 

    Every day, that circle of life just grows bigger and bigger.

  • Happy Birthday, Dave!

    Eighteen years ago in August, my life changed.  I know you’re mentally calculating and saying, “Wait a minute, David just turned seventeen today, what’s this about eighteen years ago?”  I know my friend Sue is reading this with a smile, because she got pregnant on the same night that I did and we always laugh at the memory.  Ok, so technically it was nine months before today, but you get the idea.

    David and Sue’s son, Alex, were born exactly a week apart, down to the exact minute of their birth.  Alex arrived first, and I went nuts for an entire week waiting for David to make his arrival into the world.  David was born by cesarean, thanks to a doctor who I suspect was simply impatient to get back to his rounds.  I ended up with an allergic reaction to the epidural and broke out in hives, which the doctor blamed on the hospital sheets.  It wasn’t until I had the same reaction to Lauren’s birth and a different doctor, that we realized the epidural medicine was the cause.

    As a kiddo, David was my Energizer Bunny, and I’m always so thankful that he was my first born because I had the energy back then to keep up with him.  Both Grandmas often handed him back with a sigh after babysitting him, they were exhausted just chasing him around.   I can remember many battles of stuffing him in his car seat and hoping that he’d stay in one place but only to turn around and find him dancing in the back of the van.  I can’t even begin to count the many times that I lost him in the mall while shopping with Sue.  Alex would be sitting contentedly in his stroller and we’d have to take off yet again to hunt for David.

    In the photo above, we had just returned home from the hospital after getting six stitches.  David was riding around on Joe’s back and fell off.  He landed kaput into the corner of a Lego model that he had just put together.

    When Lauren came along, David was the ultimate big brother.  He did everything with his sister in tow.  I think one of the reasons he likes to cook today is because we spent so much time making cookies and brownies just to keep him in one place for a few minutes.  The most memorable moment was the time that he and Lauren ran their crayons all over the kitchen wall and the day that he threw a brand new book into the bathtub.

    By the time Steven came along, David was the helpful older brother and the Energizer battery started to wind down a little bit.  I say just a “little bit,” because he would still do stuff that would make my hair stand on end, like the time that he put the slide on top of the picnic table so that he could “get a better ride into the pool.”

    So Happy Birthday to my seventeen-year-old– I cannot believe that you are just one year away from being an adult and soon to fly off to college.  It’s been seventeen amazing years and I’m looking forward to watching you grow even more.

  • On Being Deaf

    On Being Deaf

    Someone asked me recently, “Do you wish you could hear?”

    I had to stop and ponder that one.

    If you asked me that question when I was nineteen, shortly after I became deaf from a fall while barefooting, I would have said, “Hell, yes.”  No pause.  No reflection there.  The answer would have been simple: give me full-fledged hearing and I will dance a jig until the end of time.

    I was born with hearing in the normal range.  I can remember my Dad telling me stories about a dog named Scamp.  My Dad worked double shifts, so I would crawl into bed when he arrived home and lie there while he told me stories.  I was about five or six when the warning signs began showing– I’d misunderstand a sentence or would ask him to repeat the words.  I grew up hard of hearing and had developed lipreading skills since I was young — I was firmly entrenched in the “hearing” world and knew no sign language.

    I was miserable being hard of hearing. The struggle to lipread and understand people in group conversations was next to impossible at times. So I found my solace in books and in my small circles of friends who knew me inside out. Those friends accepted me so well and knew what to do to make communication happen.

    The last shred of what I could hear without hearing aids was gone the moment I climbed into the boat after cartwheeling on the water.  I didn’t realize it that day– I just figured I had water in my ears and it would subside.  It wasn’t until the day that I left for college that I realized that “being deaf” was here to stay.   I spent my college nights lying there in the dark and…  crying.  Grief was a heavy cloak that wrapped around me in the darkness.  I cursed the piece of electronic equipment that I stuffed into my ear each day which did nothing more than bring environmental sounds to life and made lipreading a tad easier.  I had already spent most of my life lipreading, but I could at least hear the sounds around me and turn when spoken to without the hearing aid.  After that fall, there was nothing but silence without hearing aids.  A blessing at night, indeed, when the roar of tinnitus eventually stopped.  But it wasn’t a real blessing until I was deep into the journey.

    College life was filled with deaf and hard of hearing friends; some who had arrived into the Deaf Community like me– with no knowledge of American Sign Language.  I spent my days learning to lipread the interpreters and match their lip movements to their rapid hand movements.  I took several ASL classes and slowly incorporated the language into everyday life.  Before I knew it, life had become a happy journey down this new road. I met Joe–also deaf–who later became my husband. We spent twelve years traveling with a deaf volleyball team and playing in tournaments.

    And then one day, I realized that I no longer grieved. Instead, I celebrated.  There was much to enjoy from this new life path– an amazing language, a wonderful community and a blessed acceptance that a deaf life was indeed full and beautiful. And…three deaf and hard of hearing kids.

    So, you can see why today, I pause and ponder the answer to the question, “Do you wish you could hear?”

    The answer is a complicated one.  On one hand, yes.  I close my eyes and imagine being able to hear what others are saying when I hang out in groups.  I imagine the sweet bliss of being able to go anywhere, anytime and have access to the audio jungle out there.  But there is the sweet bliss of being content with how my life has unfolded on this journey; because you see, becoming deaf didn’t rob me of life, instead, it gave me a whole, new, beautiful life.

     

    Karen Putz is known as The Passion Mentor.  Want to learn how you can live a PASSIONATE life? Schedule your 30-minute Passion Consult here:

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  • We are the World– in American Sign Language

    In early February, Jane Holtz and I dropped off our two Laurens at the Desales Family Center in Michigan so they could participate in a D-Pan weekend camp.  While Jane and I stayed in our pajamas all weekend and read books, our girls were having fun with Sean Forbes and a group of fellow campers.  They produced two videos, “We are the World” (below) and “Smile,” (coming soon) in a tribute to Michael Jackson and in recognition of the Haiti earthquake.

    Enjoy!

    Photos from the weekend:

  • Join the Z-Team at the Chicago Z-Fest!

    It’s been a busy year for the Z-Team– we’ve launched a new Z videophone: the Z4! Come and join the Z-Team at the Chicago Z-Fest on Saturday, March 20th from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Hinsdale South Cafeteria  at 7401 S Clarendon Hills Rd, Darien IL.  Pizza and pop will be provided. You’ll have a chance to meet folks from the Z-Team and learn about the four different videophones that Z provides.

    You can RSVP on the Zvrs Facebook page: Chicago Z-Fest

    And guess what, we’ve got some new services coming up– join us to find out what they are!

    Some photos from our visit with the folks from St. Louis Deaf Professional Happy Hour:

    See you at the Z-Fest!

  • Are You Ready to Leap?

    Last week, I hit the library in search of some books for a weekend getaway.  Jane and I dropped off our daughters at DeSales Center in Michigan for a workshop with Sean Forbes from D-Pan and we planned to hang at the hotel and do nothing but read all weekend.  While at the library, my eyes caught a title in the “Hot” books section: The Leap: How 3 Simple Changes Can Propel Your Career from Good to Great. 

    Hmmm, I figured, can’t hurt to know how to go from good to great where I’m at now.

    I spent Friday night wading through emails, Twittering time away, chatting with folks on the Z4 and watching the Comedy Channel.  “Ahhh, this is so nice,” I said to Jane.  “No one to interrupt me, no dishes to wash and a whole bed to myself. I could get used to this.”  Jane just smiled– she was deep into a Harry Potter book.

    Saturday morning found me submerged in the bathtub and I dove into ” The Leap.”  Written by Rick Smith, he describes it best in this paragraph:

    The Leap is a guide to personal evolution.  It’s a “good to great” manual for individuals, a book about aligning passions and skills, and about the amazing energy that gets released when we find our personal “sweet spot.”  All of us have a special place on the spectrum where the best of our ability intersects with what most inspires us.  Too few of us ever find that spot or even know it’s there. But it is there, and it’s magic.  This book will point you to it.

    And sure enough, it did.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Back in the bathtub, I dove into the first chapter where Rick describes a climb to success that ended up with him riding down the elevator after being let go by his company.  He had written a best-selling book, The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers: The Guide for Achieving Success and Satisfaction and all of a sudden, he was facing the fact that his career had suddenly ended.

    Rick came up with the idea of putting together a company that would network the top well-known, highly respected executives in the world.  He named his networking group/company World50.  He faced opposition right from the beginning, with nay-sayers shooting down his idea left and right.

    His first customer turned out to be Carl Gustin.  Suddenly, I sat up in the bathtub and read on with even more interest.  Carl Gustin was the former Chief Marketing Officer for Kodak and Apple.  I had met Carl Gustin last summer in Las Vegas when he came to the Zvrs Team Week and gave a presentation.  He also sat through our each of our team presentations where we shared our marketing ideas. I could see that he was a little nervous at first, after all, it was his first opporunity to spend a day surrounded by deaf and hard of hearing folks with all the hands zipping through the air.  By the end of the day, Carl was laughing along with us.  “This company reminds me of Apple in the early days,” he told us at the end of the day.  “You guys have a lot of passion.”   Carl joined us all for dinner and I had the opportunity to chat with him and ask questions.  Soon after, he joined the board of Zvrs and has been with us ever since.

    After I finished the book, I took the “What’s Your Primary Color” analysis over at www.theleap.com.  I found myself smack dab in the middle of the spectrum, a gray-blue color:

    The book is filled with questions to explore– I’m saving those for later in the week when I can focus more on that.  I have some ideas of how I want to go from good to great this year, but I also learned that my work with Zvrs is right where I want to be– my passion and my talents are aligned with where I want to go.

    Now all I gotta do is…

    Leap.

  • Deborah Mayer, Life Coach


    Deborah S. Mayer, president and owner of Crossroad Solutions Coach, Bio:
    Deborah is a professional certified coach with training in leadership coaching at Georgetown University and Adler Professional School of Coaching-Arizona and is recognized by the International Coach Federation (ICF).
    Deborah coaches one-to-one and leads interactive workshops and retreats on life, transition and leadership development for both deaf and hearing communities.Deborah demonstrates a remarkable commitment to her clients’ growth and achievements. Deborah is a local and national educator, facilitator and a strong advocate for deaf children’s and adults’ rights. Deborah has a bachelor’s degree in deaf education from the University of Tennessee and a master’s in deafness rehabilitation and counseling from New York University. She holds professional certifications in rehabilitation counseling and rehabilitation administration from the Commission on Rehabilitation Counseling and the Post-Employment Training-Administration of Programs Serving Individuals who are Deaf, Late-Deafened and Hard of Hearing program (PET-D) at San Diego State University. Deborah is certified as a Deaf Mentor in Illinois and Parent Advisor in Missouri trained in the SKI-Hi Curriculum. Professional experiences include director/counselor in programs for deaf/HOH students at Lehman College and LaGuardia Community College, both in NYC, and outreach specialist for Relay Missouri. She provided MCPO/PEPNet with consulting, informational and training services. She taught graduate courses at Maryville University. Deborah loves learning, traveling, cooking, dancing, family life and beach walking.

    Tell me about your job– how did you get into this line of work?

    I entered the coaching field when as a deaf parent, I saw how effectively and quickly my deaf child enthusiastically responded to coaching techniques by a Parent Coach over traditional counseling approaches.
    I work with deaf and hearing individuals, families, groups, teams and leaders. Coaching sessions are anywhere in person, through videophone, webcam or video relay. I also give presentations, workshops, retreats and training sessions.
    If you are stuck at a crossroad in your life and dont know how to move forward, that is where coaching comes in.
    An advisor, counselor, psychiatrist, social worker or therapist usually focuses on the past to define current problems and tells you what to do. This is the old do-as-I say approach that deprives you of personal achievement. A coach enters a partnership  with you. You coach walks with you to discover the greatest in you. You will be empowered to create your own action plan and move forward to a fulfilling and meaningful life.

    What is the best part of your job?
    Reaching out to more people and see satisfying results.
    What are some of the challenges of your job?
    Geographical location and being visible.
    I find myself dealing with different people from all walks of life. Not one person has the same goal or desire to change.
    What was it like growing up deaf/hard of hearing?
    My generation was different than today’s generation as my deaf teenagers grew up with technology advancement.  We didn’t have captions, TTYs or even pagers. Cochlear implants did not exist yet. Education was through touch, feel and see.
    What advice would you give a deaf/hard of hearing person who is looking for a career like yours?

    I would advise deaf/ hard of hearing person to acknowledge if they are either people oriented person or hands on person before they take this job. The person would love being with people and understand the human mind and emotions with training in Human Services field before taking on coaching work.

  • Laura Nuccio, Restaurant Manager

     

    I work as a General Manager for Nibbles Play Cafe located in  Wheeling , IL.  It is a restaurant with play areas for kids ages one to seven to come and play while families dine, eat and talk away!!

    A few years after birth,  my parents found out that I had a hearing loss. Doctors back then didn’t think anything was wrong with me. My parents struggled with doctors– saying, “she’s not hearing us and responding.” My mom had german measles while pregnant  with me. Finally after going to kindergarten, the speech therapist said I had a hearing loss.  Boy, did we visit Northwestern so many times!  I’m glad I spent alot of time there learning the speech skill drills over and over.   I can read lips very well for the hearing loss I have and wear a hearing aid. This really helps my career and working with people who can hear.

    My job as a General Manager, I communicate daily with customers,  taking their orders ( remember, I have to try my best to understand the different languages) and it’s not easy to read their lips if they use a language other than English!  I communicate with my employees, my boss and they are all good to me– we get along very well. I use the phone but recently purchased a videophone with VCO built in.   This will make my life so much easier to communicate with the customers on the phone when we plan birthday parties!! I also communicate with different vendors when I need to place orders. I also communicate with children.

    We have deaf kids come to our restaurant and this really makes my day to see them! I am a former Hersey student class of 1981 and have welcomed Hersey’s job co-op program to come and volunteer to work at our place.  This gives them the experience to work in a real world and also having a “deaf” boss working there they really like that, but I try to explain it doesn’t happen everywhere you work!

    Growing up was challenging. You have people looking at you like you are from Mars, you speak funny….until they realize that you are deaf/hard of hearing.  You judge to see if people will accept you or not. You need to stand up for yourself and be strong and say I can do anything that people with normal hearing can do.

    Come and visit us at “NibblesPlayCafe” !!
    www.nibblesplaycafe.com

    my work email is :  laura@nibblesplaycafe.com

  • Fashionable Hearing Aids

    I came across a post this morning, The Shame of Wearing Hearing Aids and it brought back memories.  I was one of those kids who hid a hearing aid under long hair.  It wasn’t until I was in college that I finally wore my hair up and my hearing aid perched for all to see.  Kinda sad, eh?  All those years spent trying to hide something that was basically a part of me– except I didn’t want any part of it.

    I decided to raise my kids with a different attitude about their hearing aids.  From the start, we went with brightly-colored earmolds with swirls and glitter.  I even joined my daughter in getting matching glitter earmolds.  I’m pretty sure I saw my audiologist hold back a gulp when I asked for the blue with glitter when she squeezed the earmold goop into my ear.

    So far, no one has had the guts to tell me that I look foolish sporting glitter at my age.

    Despite my years of preaching about being proud of those two pieces of technology on their ears, my kids had minds of their own– each of them have made decisions about color vs. minimal color.  My 12-year-old recently decided that he had enough of the wild colors and chose clear earmolds at the last fitting.  After years of wearing boring beige hearing aids, the oldest went for a slick black pair with clear earmolds.  It was now my daughter’s turn for new hearing aids and we sat down to go over the colors for a new pair of hearing aids.  Staring at the hearing aid website, I was floored at the color choices.  When I was growing up, it was pretty much beige and black as the choices.

    I was pretty sure she was going to pick out something cool.

    “Look, there’s zebra and giraffe patterns!” I exclaimed.  “And look at this cool blue and whoa– that purple!  Oh and look–they have this cool see-through hearing aid!”

    She picked beige.

    Yes, boring, typical, oh-so-ordinary… beige.

    “Mom, I’m going to be wearing these hearing aids for a couple of years, maybe even into adulthood,” she said.  “Do you really think I want to go to prom with a giraffe pattern or purple– what if it doesn’t match my dress?  Besides, I can change my earmold colors anytime I want.”

    Yeah, she’s got a point there.  Earmolds are $125 a pop.  Hearing aids are nearly five grand.

    “The beige looks nice,” I said.