Honey company with a deaf workforce creates a buzz in Point Breeze

Kelly Nolla communicates with sign language to owner Jon Mosholder at Bumbleberry Farms.  Picture credit - Post-Gazette.

Jon Mosholder didn’t set out to be a honey farmer. That was his mom’s dream, when she left her job as a health care consultant to start Bumbleberry Farms 11 years ago.

Though Karen Mosholder had just a couple of hives in her Somerset backyard, she had a knack for concocting artisan honey cream spreads. 

Her son pitched in here and there, packing orders when he was on break from Rochester Institute of Technology, where he studied business administration and also, later, while working in finance for various companies in Pittsburgh. 

But he couldn’t imagine making a career from honeybees and the thick, golden honey liquid they make from nectar. Sweet, but no thanks, he said.

Read on at https://www.post-gazette.com/life/food/2022/12/27/bumbleberry-honey-xfactory-point-breeze/stories/202212210123.

Rose Parade Princess Salia Baligh is the first to represent the deaf community

Salia Baligh (Courtesy of Tournament of Roses)

Flash forward to Jan. 2, 2023: It’s Princess Salia Baligh on the float carrying the 134th Tournament of Roses Royal Court. She is perfectly coiffed and prettily made up, gowned and crowned, a wash of flowers in her arms.

Somebody saw this day coming.

“Growing up in Pasadena, I watched so many Rose Parades,” the 17-year-old said. “My dad would wake me up at 6 a.m. and tell me, ‘That’s going to be you one day.’”

She turns her head, and look: Her position on the right side of the float gives maximum exposure for the cameras to catch the simple headband she wears attached to a small black box.

Read on at https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2022/12/27/rose-parade-princess-salia-baligh-is-the-first-to-represent-the-deaf-community.

World Cup skier hid that he is deaf. Now he wants to break the silence.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Professional skier Robin

Park City • The howling wind and falling snow were the least of Robin “Bino” Gillon’s problems as he stood in the starting gate for a 2014 FIS Freestyle World Cup event at Colorado’s Breckenridge resort. His main problem was the cold. Everyone had their face covered to fend off the frosty bite of the minus-10-degrees air, and Gillon couldn’t read their lips. Plus, the batteries in his hearing aids kept dying.

For most of his career, Gillon, a professional freestyle skier, hid the fact that he was deaf. Not just a little hard of hearing, but truly, severely deaf. Until he was diagnosed at the age of 4 and received his first pair of hearing aids, he had never heard the crunch of gravel under his feet nor the trill of a songbird or the sweet shoosh of his skis on the snow.

In the 20-plus years after, he rarely heard about anyone with a hearing impairment doing anything cool.

Read on at https://www.sltrib.com/sports/2022/12/26/world-cup-skier-hid-that-he-is.