For weeks I've been fascinated by a man who has been on tv at the same time for almost a month. He is Michael Albert and he's a Chicago sign language interpreter. You might recognize him from interpreting all of Governor Pritzker's COVID-19 related media briefings. I randomly came across information about Mike. (That's how I'm referring to him now as if we're a couple of bros.) There isn't a whole lots of info about Mike floating around the internet but I did find two interesting facts.

1. It turns out Mike told The News-Gazette he never planned on sign language as the basis of his career.

At the time, I thought the sign language class would be just an amusing lark which gave me three elective credits I needed toward graduation. Little did I know then that it would lead me on a path with an intricate constellation of events which guided me toward my current career as an interpreter.

Another bit of information is how many consecutive days he's been signing about coronavirus and the current pandemic.

He’s become one of Illinois’ most-watched TV stars, standing a socially distant-safe six feet to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s right from 2:30 to 3:30 for the past 52 afternoons, interpreting terms like “coronavirus” and “pandemic” for the deaf.

Yes, he has officially become one of the news tv stars from Illinois. You can learn more about Mike here.


JB Love is ½ of  Q98.5's Lil Zim & JB In The Morning, weekday mornings from 5:00 a.m. to 10 a.m. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram.

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