November 29, 2023

Dear Friends and Family,

Greetings from Rochester, New York! Yes, we moved - and other interesting things, too!  

At the end of 2022, there was a culmination for Marriner of many things: years of involvement in the Deaf community at church, working with and learning from fabulous Deaf interns at work, a lifelong dream to teach, and some ‘not-so-coincidental’ coincidences and nudges from above.  So he reached out to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) to find out if they had any openings for engineering professors. Several months of discussion, interviewing, negotiation, and insufferable uncertainty for the family (whose entire social lives were hanging in the balance!) resulted in Lillian re-writing “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” to “We Don’t Talk About New York” and in Marriner taking a position as an Associate Professor in the Engineering Studies Department of NTID! It’s an exciting position with a balance of teaching and developing research with Deaf students and fellow faculty.  One of his biggest goals is to improve access for deaf students to getting advanced engineering degrees. NTID has been wonderful.  He can’t say enough good about his coworker DJ, his department, the administration, and especially the students!! They are so much fun! And so crazy!  The cherry on top is that NTID is a part of Rochester Institute of Technology, and it’s been fun to be part of the larger campus community, too. Sometimes, cute kids of professors get to join in the free food functions (affectionately known as FFF’s when we were undergrads.)

An interesting part of Marriner’s job is that he’s not actually teaching any classes. Instead, he is the “office hours” for all the Deaf/Hard of Hearing students who are in advanced engineering courses.  At NTID, you can get an Associates Degree (precision machining, manufacturing technology, etc.) all in ASL, but to get the BS or MS degrees, you go to the Engineering and Technology Colleges over in RIT.  Students can have ASL interpreters or captionists and lots of support regardless of their preferred communication (ASL, oral, etc.), but it turns out that engineering courses are just hard!  So he supports them in an environment with no language barrier. It’s been simultaneously stressful and exciting to be teaching everything from Thermodynamics to Strengths of Materials all at the same time, and he loves it.  Apparently, you haven’t lived until you’ve explained ‘glass transition temperature of polymers’ in ASL (this is the main chain, and my fingers are the side chains, and they’re all moving thermally…)!

Rochester is beautiful. We had an indulgent fall full of apples, camping, exploring, and amazing sunsets. The schools are great, and many of the kids have found their home in the expansive music programs and in biking!  They all bike to school every chance they get. 

In the middle of all the drama of moving, Lige finished high school (with many awards) and applied to serve 2 years as a missionary for our church. He was called to serve in Orlando, Florida, working with the Haitian community. Wow, what a big change from ASL! He is doing his missionary training now, and will arrive in Orlando right before Christmas. He’s doing a great job learning Haitian Creole, and we’re proud of the dedication he is giving to his work.

Also in the middle of the drama of moving, we had a Turner family reunion. Christine’s parents took the whole extended family on a trip to Israel. Given the current war, we feel so grateful that we were able to visit when we did! We also got an impromptu vacation in DC, when an airline meltdown led to a 3 day flight delay for us and several of our nieces and nephews! One of the funniest stories of the reunion was when Lige forgot where he parked the car during a museum visit in DC and we spent 4 hours walking and driving around DC trying to find it. Turns out there are literally tens of thousands of cars within a 1.5 mile radius of the Smithsonians.  Once we got to Israel, one of the most fun things was throwing around the frisbee while standing on pillars from ancient Decapolis. “We have so many ancient ruins here, we don’t care if tourists climb all over them….” It still boggles our minds, the things they let us climb on!

Leaving our church family and neighbors in DC was definitely the hardest part of moving, but we’ve met wonderful people at church here in Rochester. Our congregation is a hearing group and a deaf group that meet together. Because we have a lot of experience working in an ASL congregation, we’ve been able to jump right in. It’s been amazing to see the kids accept the challenge of church in two languages. When we first arrived, some of them were relieved to be able to learn at church with their eyes shut. But as we’ve met people and gotten to know them more, attitudes changed, and now Jane prays every night, “Please bless that my sign language can improve.” And she signs “improve” by bouncing her hand all the way up her arm and over her head. She wants to REALLY improve!

Just a quick update on individuals not yet mentioned:

Christine: we bought a house from a 95-yr old couple, so Christine has been doing LOTS of house projects. And she’s now serving as the interpreter coordinator at church.  Which she has learned means she can jump into anything at church that involves ASL or English.  

Ellis: decided she wants to major in mechanical engineering in college. She really likes her calculus class. She also took up jazz band and is becoming a really good trumpet player!

Lillian: really enjoys having a good school orchestra, and hit it off like magic with her new violin teacher. She’s leading the music in church in ASL (again - she was so happy!)

Sam: is in the chorus, band (flute, this year), math olympiad and student government. He asked me if he could join a club, and I said, “I think you have enough going on already…” He had a stressful move, but is really starting to bloom! He was also the only one of us to ride a camel in Israel.

Martha: decided to apply to be a school ambassador, despite having just moved in. She wrote a really great application essay and was accepted! Now she wears a special sash and represents the school at assemblies, etc. She also had a lot of anxiety because of the move, but she’s developing a lot of confidence now.

Jane: did a lot of reading while big people were packing boxes and loading trucks, and now she’s such a good reader, her teacher doesn’t know what to do with her! She’s the most consistently cheerful person I know, and I don’t know how we’d survive without her keeping us happy!

We send our love to each of you, and hope your season is full of peace and love. We miss you!

Love, Marriner, Christine, Lige, Ellis, Lillian, Sam, Martha and Jane