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The Daily News Online > Area News > Groups brings hearing impaired together to communicate
Cathy Rasmussen’s husband and two sons all know sign language, but it can still be difficult to communicate with them sometimes, she said.
Rasmussen, who is deaf, spent part of Saturday afternoon talking with nine other deaf people at the Fusion Bubble Tea cafe in downtown Longview. It was a chance, organizers said, for local deaf people to communicate with each other on their own terms, without the complications of trying to express themselves in a world designed for ears.
For those who sign, “everything’s different,” said Ginny Prever, 66, who lives in Cathlamet and helps host this meeting of deaf people once a month.
“The jokes — it’s totally different from the hearing world,” said Prever, whose daughter Cynthia Ryals, 44, is deaf.
Prever said she and Mary Mullins of Rainier started the group in October to give deaf people a chance to get to know each other.
Mullins, 54, said she’s learning to sign because her daughter married a deaf man who pastors a church for the deaf in California.
The group sat Saturday in several of the cafe’s couches, chatting away with their hands. They ate pastries, sipped sodas and played a party game designed to help get to know each other better.
“I just enjoy it,” Rasmussen said through an interpreter. The people she meets during these monthly meetings, she said, are “beautiful.”
Teeta Bacus, 52, of Longview said, also through an interpreter, that it’s nice to be in a place where she is understood. “It’s wonderful,” she said.
And Barbara Ribera, 57, of Kelso, who is deaf, said that she can’t hear at baseball games or at the movies, but here, it’s easier to connect with her surroundings.
“I love it,” she said. “I enjoy socializing.”
Cathy Rasmussen’s husband and two sons all know sign language, but it can still be difficult to communicate with them sometimes, she said.
Rasmussen, who is deaf, spent part of Saturday afternoon talking with nine other deaf people at the Fusion Bubble Tea cafe in downtown Longview. It was a chance, organizers said, for local deaf people to communicate with each other on their own terms, without the complications of trying to express themselves in a world designed for ears.
For those who sign, “everything’s different,” said Ginny Prever, 66, who lives in Cathlamet and helps host this meeting of deaf people once a month.
“The jokes — it’s totally different from the hearing world,” said Prever, whose daughter Cynthia Ryals, 44, is deaf.
Prever said she and Mary Mullins of Rainier started the group in October to give deaf people a chance to get to know each other.
Mullins, 54, said she’s learning to sign because her daughter married a deaf man who pastors a church for the deaf in California.
The group sat Saturday in several of the cafe’s couches, chatting away with their hands. They ate pastries, sipped sodas and played a party game designed to help get to know each other better.
“I just enjoy it,” Rasmussen said through an interpreter. The people she meets during these monthly meetings, she said, are “beautiful.”
Teeta Bacus, 52, of Longview said, also through an interpreter, that it’s nice to be in a place where she is understood. “It’s wonderful,” she said.
And Barbara Ribera, 57, of Kelso, who is deaf, said that she can’t hear at baseball games or at the movies, but here, it’s easier to connect with her surroundings.
“I love it,” she said. “I enjoy socializing.”