Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
Today in China and Hong Kong the Mid Autumn Festival took place. This celebration, with a history of 1,300 years, is marked on the full moon by children carrying decorative lanterns, special foods, and especially by the exchange of moon cakes. It is a beautiful and engaging time in Hong Kong and I miss it!
As we mark 20 years of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, we celebrate a recognition: national sign languages as full and equal languages. 20 years on, recognizing national sign languages means reaffirming a commitment to deaf people’s human rights and ensuring these rights are fully implemented.
After 42 years in Asia, I returned home to Kentucky. But it isn’t the home I left. Things I saw THEN are different NOW. Life HERE is different from life THERE. Here is another example of the differences.
Funeral homes have a long tradition of providing “Comfort & Service to Families” upon the death of a loved one, as the Rattermans ad below indicates.
The loved ones of the family apparently now include the family pets. I wouldn’t have seen THAT forty years ago!
Make sure you are registered! Check online to see if you are current because the Republicans and the present administration are doing everything they can to remove voters from rolls.
50 years ago when I was teaching seniors at Angela Merici High School, I invited some of the girls to help with activities of the Catholic deaf community in Louisville, assisting with spaghetti dinners or Christmas parties or things like that. The volunteers learned sign language and were a real asset for the deaf group. And some of them are still volunteering!
Above L to R are Charlie, Peg, Donna, Nancy, and Fr. Randy Hubbard who replaced me with the deaf people when I went to work in Asia. The girls back then called themselves “Charlie’s Angels,” after the then current TV show, and these three are still angels. There were two more of the long term angel volunteers but they have died.
While I was in Asia we would gather for a meal when I came home for a visit, and now that I have returned we still get together and did so today.
When I left the USA four decades ago, containers had become an established dimension of the shipping industry but most were TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) and they weren’t as all-pervasive as they are now. They didn’t appear so much on city streets and in all kinds of commercial settings.
Today I was stopped more than five minutes by a long slow train moving through our neighborhood on one of the main rail lines still serving Louisville. The first thing I noticed is that CSX has replaced our beloved L&N (Louisville and Nashville) railroad.
Next I noticed that the old TEUs which used to ride on standard flatcars have been replaced almost exclusively by the FEUs (forty-foot equivalent units), and in place of the old flatcars new purpose-built carriages convey not one but two stacked FEUs. Things have changed.
In Cambodia I ate by myself and didn’t cook except to microwave what someone else cooked. For a typical supper I had a small bowl of rice, a cup of some mixture of cooked vegetables and meat that I bought, and two small Cambodian bananas.
In the USA and especially at Nazareth Home where I live, the meals I am served are HUGE portions that fill a plate. It’s way too much food and I keep asking for smaller portions but the serving staff keep changing and I still get too much.
