Read Online The Miniature Wife: and Other Stories by Manuel Gonzales - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Manuel Gonzales
Ads: Link
floor, he kept the same colors and the same pattern, the same tile, the same everything. One year, the owner—this was after her husband died—came back to visit her family, and she stopped by the restaurant to see what my father had done to it, and when she saw that it was almost exactly the same, she started to cry. She didn’t sob or gush or anything like that, but there were tears in her eyes that sometimes slipped down her cheek and made her face wet. She didn’t know what to say. She ordered a cup of coffee and a piece of pecan pie, and when my father wouldn’t let her pay for either, she just stood up from the counter and left. That was the last we saw of her.”
Just before their son’s eighth birthday, Abbasonov’s parents sold the Olympia, and the three of them moved to Dallas, Texas, where they used the money from the sale of the restaurant and the money that Fabia had saved to buy a house, a piano, and to pay for piano lessons for Karl, who had been begging his parents for music lessons since the age of four.
III.
The 1693 edition of Blancard’s
Physical Dictionary
contained the first written record or mention of tinnitus aurium, defining it as “a certain Buzzing or tingling in the Ears.” The American Tinnitus Association (founded in 1971) further defines tinnitus as “the perception of ringing, hissing, or other sound in the ears or head when no external sound is present.” According to statistics collected by the ATA, an estimated 50 million Americans suffer from some varying degree of tinnitus, and over 16 million Americans suffer from tinnitus to such a degree that normal, day-to-day living becomes impossible.
The human ear is divided into three main regions: the sound-collecting outer ear, the sound-transmitting middle ear, and the sensory inner ear. The outer ear is separated from the middle ear by the tympanic membrane, and the middle ear is, in turn, separated from the inner ear by membranous fenestrae. The sound-collecting compartment of the outer ear is conical and called the pinna. This cone functions poorly for most people, which is why the elderly may cup their hands to their ears when they want to improve their hearing. The middle ear specializes in transmitting the sound from the outer ear to the oval window opening of the inner ear through the vibration of movable bones called ossicles. The inner ear then conducts this information to the receptor neurons.
The inner ear serves a second function (through the intricate vestibular system), which is to tell the rest of your body where your head is and what it is doing at all times. The vestibular system satisfies this function through two main processes: angular acceleration, necessary for shaking or nodding your head, and linear acceleration, necessary for detecting motion along a line, such as when an elevator drops beneath you.
The auditory and vestibular systems are intimately connected; the receptors for both are located in the temporal bone in the inner ear, in a convoluted chamber called the bony labyrinth. A continuous membrane is suspended within the bony labyrinth, which creates a second chamber within the first, called the membranous labyrinth. The inner ear has two membrane-covered outlets into the middle ear—the oval window and the round window. The inner ear and the middle ear are connected through the oval window by a small bone, the stapes, which vibrates in response to vibrations of the eardrum, and which then sets the fluid of the inner ear, called perilymph, sloshing back and forth, which in turn causes the round window to vibrate in a complementary rhythm. The membranous labyrinth, caught between the oval window and the round window, bounces up and down in all the sloshing.
Located within this sloshing mess is the organ of Corti, which rests on the part of the membranous labyrinth called the basilar membrane, and it is here, finally, where the transduction of sound into neural signals occurs. Auditory hair
Just before their son’s eighth birthday, Abbasonov’s parents sold the Olympia, and the three of them moved to Dallas, Texas, where they used the money from the sale of the restaurant and the money that Fabia had saved to buy a house, a piano, and to pay for piano lessons for Karl, who had been begging his parents for music lessons since the age of four.
III.
The 1693 edition of Blancard’s
Physical Dictionary
contained the first written record or mention of tinnitus aurium, defining it as “a certain Buzzing or tingling in the Ears.” The American Tinnitus Association (founded in 1971) further defines tinnitus as “the perception of ringing, hissing, or other sound in the ears or head when no external sound is present.” According to statistics collected by the ATA, an estimated 50 million Americans suffer from some varying degree of tinnitus, and over 16 million Americans suffer from tinnitus to such a degree that normal, day-to-day living becomes impossible.
The human ear is divided into three main regions: the sound-collecting outer ear, the sound-transmitting middle ear, and the sensory inner ear. The outer ear is separated from the middle ear by the tympanic membrane, and the middle ear is, in turn, separated from the inner ear by membranous fenestrae. The sound-collecting compartment of the outer ear is conical and called the pinna. This cone functions poorly for most people, which is why the elderly may cup their hands to their ears when they want to improve their hearing. The middle ear specializes in transmitting the sound from the outer ear to the oval window opening of the inner ear through the vibration of movable bones called ossicles. The inner ear then conducts this information to the receptor neurons.
The inner ear serves a second function (through the intricate vestibular system), which is to tell the rest of your body where your head is and what it is doing at all times. The vestibular system satisfies this function through two main processes: angular acceleration, necessary for shaking or nodding your head, and linear acceleration, necessary for detecting motion along a line, such as when an elevator drops beneath you.
The auditory and vestibular systems are intimately connected; the receptors for both are located in the temporal bone in the inner ear, in a convoluted chamber called the bony labyrinth. A continuous membrane is suspended within the bony labyrinth, which creates a second chamber within the first, called the membranous labyrinth. The inner ear has two membrane-covered outlets into the middle ear—the oval window and the round window. The inner ear and the middle ear are connected through the oval window by a small bone, the stapes, which vibrates in response to vibrations of the eardrum, and which then sets the fluid of the inner ear, called perilymph, sloshing back and forth, which in turn causes the round window to vibrate in a complementary rhythm. The membranous labyrinth, caught between the oval window and the round window, bounces up and down in all the sloshing.
Located within this sloshing mess is the organ of Corti, which rests on the part of the membranous labyrinth called the basilar membrane, and it is here, finally, where the transduction of sound into neural signals occurs. Auditory hair
Similar Books
