Mandy Harvey Earns Golden Buzzer from Simon Cowell (VIDEO)

My sister shared this with me on Facebook.

I don't blog about it a lot, but I'm partially deaf. I lost my hearing after a head injury while seeing Charged GBH in Pasadena in 1983. Some hearing returned to my left ear. I read lips, although I never learned how to sign. I was always self-conscious of deafness, about how this somehow made me less than I was. It was an enormous personal, emotional, physical, and psychological blow. I imagine I've overcompensated for it since the injury, which is my entire life now.

So you can imagine how this moment from "America's Got Talent" makes me cry. And you can understand why my baby sister wanted me to see it.

And this woman Ms. Mandy is astounding. She's a monument to human perseverance and goodness in the world. Everyone feels at some point that they want to give up. The hardiest among us resist, but not everyone's got the strength. God gave me strength. I didn't know it at the time, but I prayed. Now I now it. I know Ms. Mandy's got God as well. She beautiful.

At the Seattle Times, "Watch: Deaf singer wows Simon Cowell, earns Golden Buzzer on ‘America’s Got Talent’."

Deaf Baby Boy Hears Mom's Voice for the First Time (VIDEO)

I wasn't born deaf, but I have a hearing impairment from a head injury when I was 21.

I wear a hearing aid. Most people don't realize I have an impairment when I'm talking to them. I read lips. My voice is a bit muffled, creating something of a Mr. Magoo effect, but most people never remark on it.

But because if this, I always see these "baby hears" videos with a special joy. Sometimes I used to think I'd rather be blind than deaf. You never really know how cherished are your senses until you've lost one of them, or more.

In any case, seen on Twitter just now (and this isn't the first clip like this I've posted):

This is pure joy and my favorite share: a priceless reaction of deaf baby boy hearing his mom's voice for first time pic.twitter.com/RIRkf14ypN

— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) December 30, 2016

What People Look Like When People Truly Hear for the First Time (VIDEO)

God works in wonderful ways.

Science too. They're being fitted for cochlear implants. It's wonderful.

The facial expressions, and tears of happiness, are priceless.

At Huffington Post.

The Science of Sound and Language

From Gavin Francis, at the New York Review of Books, "The Mysterious World of the Deaf":

The origins of our inner ear lie hundreds of millions of years back in evolution, when primitive fish began to develop hollows in the skin that were sensitive to waves of pressure from water around them, as well as to water’s movement as they pitched and rolled. With time the nerves became more refined, the hollows became tubes of seawater, and those tubes eventually closed off and buried themselves in the head. Further on in evolution, bones that were originally related to the jaw migrated and miniaturized, becoming the amplifying bones of the ear. The tubes dedicated to sensing rotational movement became our semicircular canals (balance), and it’s theorized that parts involved in sensing the pressure waves became our cochleas (hearing). In the composition of their salts, the fluids of our inner ear still carry the memory of that primordial ocean.

Within the human cochlea is a thin sensitive membrane, around thirty to thirty-five millimeters long, wound into a spiral and bathed in this salty fluid. This membrane resonates with sound, sensing from high to low frequency along its length, while associated nerve cells convey that resonance to the brain. To describe it simplistically, a cochlear implant is a series of very fine electrodes that lie along the length of the membrane. Sound is coded in a receiver behind the ear (often held on by magnets) and transmitted to electrodes, which then stimulate the nerve cells along the membrane in a way broadly analogous to sound. After William House’s first device in the early 1960s, during the next three decades groups in California, Melbourne, Vienna, and Utah worked almost independently on the research problem of how to optimize this ostensibly simple, but devilishly complicated, idea.

A wonderful essay.

Keep reading.

And at Amazon, I Can Hear You Whisper: An Intimate Journey Through the Science of Sound and Language.