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ONE MINUTE WITH ...

Dana Gellis

Name: Dana Gellis

Occupation: Learning Consultant / Teacher of the Deaf

Address: Wanaque, NJ

Age: “Forty-six and a half” - When are we supposed to stop adding the half
year? 6? 10?   Never?

Family: 1 husband, 2 daughters, 4 cats, 1 black-toed albino African frog, and
assorted fish

Hobbies: Yoga, Poetry, Gardening, Baseball (Go Mets!), Catching up on old movies
that I missed when they first came out in the days before closed captioning

Self-Portrait: Hmmm… motivated, reflective, and a little edgy… This runs the risk of
sounding like a bad personal ad. I’m feeling the urge to wax poetic about sunsets
and long walks on the beach and my love of all things chocolate

Motto: Let the beauty we love be what we do. --Rumi

Greatest accomplishment: Raising my girls, Kyra and Jamie; and finding the love of
my life, Dave. The academic stuff pales by comparison.

Bad habits: Switching sides in the middle of an argument

Best childhood memory: I would have to say either summers at the Jersey Shore
(Lavalette and later LBI) or playing board games with my family especially when
extended family visited around the holidays. Balderdash, Family Feud, and Taboo
were always favorites. Sitting around the dining room table was always pretty
conducive to speech reading or hearing everyone, and of course the things that I
misheard were often better than the real response anyway and helped fuel the
laughter and silliness that made these times so much fun.

Another event comes to mind but it may better qualify as a “Best Childish
Memory.”   I was in my late teens and my sister and I stopped in a supermarket late
at night to get stuff for a camping trip. There were two employees stocking shelves
and I thought I overheard one of the men say, “We’re closing.” Ignoring the
cardinal rule that if you are hard of hearing you absolutely do not respond to what
you think you overheard someone say, I stopped and asked, “Can I just run down
this aisle and get some hamburger rolls?” He looked at me incredulously and finally
said, “Do whatever you want. I don’t care what you buy.” My sister looked at me
like I had two heads and asked, “Why the #$%@ did you ask that man if you could
buy hamburger rolls?!” I told her what I thought I heard. If my off-topic question
didn’t convince these men that I was out of my mind, my sister’s and my resulting
hysterical laughter surely did. To this day, I have no idea what the two men were
talking about but I do know that it had absolutely nothing to do with the store
closing!

Favorite TV show: Now that Six Feet Under is finished, I’d have to say The Sopranos
or Curb Your Enthusiasm. It boils down to closing the weekend with Sunday night
HBO.

People don’t know that I: (Well if I wrote it here, they would know, wouldn’t they?)

Last Book I Read: The last book that I read was actually a book on CD. I listened to
Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress in its ten-CD entirety through an iPod plugged directly
into my cochlear implant.   Because of the direct iPod-to-processor connection, I
couldn’t attribute my hearing to lip reading or “help” from my other ear. This was
the “ah ha” moment that validated for me just how amazing this little piece of
technology actually is.

The biggest asset in the local deaf and hard of hearing communities: The enormous
advances and continuing progress in technology.

The biggest problem in the local deaf and hard of hearing communities: The lack of
widespread educational support and services for children who are helped by
these technologies, and the lack of training of professionals to ensure that
educational practices meet the needs of today’s students

If I had more time I would… be torn between trying to solve the above and
spending my days on a beach with a yoga mat, a good book (or CD), and a glass
of iced tea

NJ Chapter of Alexander
Graham Bell Association for
the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
PO. Box 551
Piscataway, NJ 08855-0551
president@agbellnj.org