March 28, 2014

Here Is a Wonderful Video of a 40-Year-Old Deaf Woman Hearing for the First Time


Joanne Milne was born deaf and began to go blind in her 20s due to a rare genetic disorder called Usher Syndrome. Last month, at the age of 40, she underwent surgery to have cochlear implants installed. This video of her hearing for the first time in her entire life is the reason I can’t get any work done this morning.

“It might be a bit overwhelming at first,” the doctor warns before turning them on. That’s an understatement.

“Hearing things for the first time is so emotional from the ping of a light switch to running water. I can’t stop crying and I can already foresee how it’s going to be life changing,” Joanne says.

Her friends made her a playlist with one song for every year of her life. The first one she heard was John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

Anyway, this is beautiful and amazing and, to be honest, I don’t even like that stupid John Lennon song but I want to listen to it right now on repeat for an hour.

Happy Friday.

(via Gawker )

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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