I just found out why I hadn’t heard back from Chris Kuell, Breath & Shadow’s Editor in Chief, on an article I sent him in January. Chris has seen more of my work than any other editor, and he always responded within a month. He told me once that it should never take him more than a month to get back to me on a submission.
We’ve exchanged many messages over the years and found out a lot about each other. We both loved sports and music, and that was what we talked about most. I finally broke into Breath & Shadow last year with my article about Sean Forbes and Warren Snipe and the Super Bowl halftime show. Shortly after that article was published, I sold another article to them, “Walking With Cerebral Palsy”.
On my birthday last year, he sent me a fiction story he’d written that had to do Stevie Ray Vaughan, and a few months back, he was telling me about his book “Morris” that just came out. I think it’s a collection of stories about Rock n Roll. It’s next on my to-read list. I thought I would have read it while he was still well and alive.
I’m seeing comments from people claiming to be deaf or very knowledgeable about deaf culture, and they seem to have issues with videos of people signing songs. I think signing songs is a great and fun way to improve your ASL skills. Besides, the belief that deaf people don’t care for music is just not true.
This is Steve Longo, Gallaudet University alumni and the guitar player in Beethoven’s Nightmare: