(If not, why not?)

This is not the official page of the Association of Late-Deafened Adults (ALDA). You want to write to them, you better look them up on the web. There has been a new address almost every year. Fortunately, they have a page on the web. If you go to their web site, you can fill in a membership form, print the form out, then you mail it in. As they say on their page “ALDA’s membership is international in scope.” You will also find information about their next ALDAcon on their site as soon as the information is available.

In over ten years out of the deafened closet, I’ve spent four of them in service to ALDA. I originated the ALDA Reader annual anthology series (over the objections of the leadership at the time) and mounted an emergency ALDAcon with the assistance of scarce few thankless souls (thankless because I burned out afterwards, before I had a chance to thank them. Thanks France Dubois. Thanks Janice Smith. Thanks Miguel Aguayo.) Volunteering isn’t pretty and glamourous all the time, you know, meeting with the caterer for the charity ball. In 1993-1994, I estimated I spent roughly 3,000 hours on ALDA business, a full time unpaid job for almost two years. Much of this was after midnight, converting, programming and maintaining the membership database that ALDA needed to survive several years of indiscriminate adding of unpaid names by the founders, answering letters from isolated individual deafened people while the Board and membership apparently debated the question: is ALDA really just a fan club? In the run-up to ALDAcon 1994, I worked 16 hours a day, seven days a week, for three months. It took me a year to recover. Meeting the demands of ALDA led me to neglect my PhD dissertation long enough to see an entire research topic bite the dust. All’s well that ends well: I’ve been able to keep my distance from ALDA and the PhD is safely in the bag (first deaf woman to receive a PhD in engineering, in fact.) We can all take a deep breath.

Roses and Thistles

ALDA is a unique organization. No other organization recognizes that deafened adults are different from hard-of-hearing or always-deaf people. ALDAcon is an irreplaceable experience. While I will not give advice on how anyone should deal with deafness, I will wholeheartedly advocate every deafened person moving heaven and earth to go to ALDAcon at least once, and thereafter as desired. Even those who participate in local deafened groups will be bowled over to encounter sheer masses of deafened people just humming with understanding. Even in a local group, one can still feel like a peculiarity, but among 200 or 300 others, there is bound to be someone with a similar story and experiences to compare.

On the con side, ALDA has the tendency to descend into being a social club. Some wonderful members are sweating bullets to seek out and welcome isolated deafened people and newly deafened people. However, in one established chapter, some members complained when a party had been openly publicized, because “it’s tedious when new people come”. In another chapter, the elected leaders decided that meetings were really not necessary because the members were quite satisfied with their ability to cope; the deafened people in that community who are still isolated and not yet members don’t even enter into consideration. And that is wrong.

Letters of inquiry from individuals sometimes get old while they pass from outdated mailing address to address, hand to hand, until they find someone who has the time to answer it between coming home from work and going to bed, or maybe next week, when the kids sleep over at a friend’s …. ALDA is suffering for want of a staffed office, but no Board to date has managed to secure a reliable source of funding. Not even close. Boards have done a fair job of getting ALDA known around and about, getting listed in directories, mentioned in articles, and invited to speak at panels, all of which whips up enthusiasm and generates new outpourings of this vastly unmet need of deafened people, and the Association has no staff to answer all those needy letters within any respectful amount of time.

Every Board has also spent undue amounts of time reporting amongst themselves on excursions to various hearings (as in, government or agency) and on exchanging opinions on insignificant things particularly, for some reason, on giving permissions. Why permissions should be such a dominant theme in Board discussions, I can’t fathom. In some cases, the request is even just merely hypothetical. Yet Boards have debated at length the wisdom of renting the mailing list, giving ALDA’s endorsement of a research proposal, allowing someone to start a group, go give a speech about ALDA, give something (ranging from services to envelopes for mailing) to ALDA, and my favourite because it occurs year after year despite being addressed again and again, who has the prerogative to invite presenters/performers to ALDAcon. I’ve served on dozens of committees, boards, panels, and task forces, and I’ve never seen one so consumed with permissions as ALDA. I’ll concede that some of the issues are important, and a new organization needs policies to deal with conflict of interests, prerogatives, spokespersons, and these often grow out of conflicts. But not one of the debates about permissions that I’ve observed firsthand or secondhand has ever had any relevance to the isolated person sitting in their living room in some small city somewhere, fearful that soon they will be unable to perform at work or school, and distressed because they are shut out of their own family.

Bringing this up is not encouraged. There’s a lot of “we love you—hugs!!!!” stuff spread liberally around ALDA correspondence, sort of like laying down that foam when a jet is coming in without landing gear, to squelch the flames. This is neither news nor ancient history. Unfortunately, you just can’t love your problems away. Unfortunately, it isn’t enough to have good intentions; it isn’t enough to try; and it isn’t enough to do well on other things. Members, prospective members, and professionals who make referrals all judge ALDA by their personal “moments of truth” (as in Service America; Albrecht, 1985). ALDA needs to be ready to provide a flawless—not necessarily lovable—moment of truth to those people. This isn’t accomplished by having a nomadic mailing address, uneven print material, negligible web presence, slow response, and not being prepared (with fact sheets, for instance) for the questions ALDA receives again and again.

I emphasize the Board because while ALDA has no staff, ALDA is the Board. In the eyes of the members and prospective members, all they see is what the Board members, Board-approved volunteers, and convention organizers do. Getting a reliable operating budget, adequate to support the newsletter, a web presence, perhaps some exhibits at other conferences and conventions, and staff for public inquiries, and then the Board can relax and boast about their latest lobbying foray and squabble about who this year’s banquet speaker is.

ALDA Battle scars

Chair, Host Committee; 1994, International Convention (ALDAcon)
program book copywriter, editor, and publisher, 1994
ALDA membership infrastructure (database) development and maintenance, 1993–1994
first non-USA director, Secretary, and Chair, Membership Committee 1993
Member, Planning Committee, ALDAcon: Chicago 1991 and Boston 1992
Program Committee ALDAcon 1992, 1993, 1994
Established ALDA Reader (annual anthology series) and edited three volumes, contributing dozens of articles
Editor & Publisher, Blue Jay Bulletin 1992–1994