Known as a child of deaf family (CODA), Jodee shared her experience as the only hearing in her family.

from Guardian Unlimited interview:

Jodee Mundy is the only person in her immediate family who can hear. Her mother and father are both deaf. Her two elder brothers, Shane and Gavin, are deaf. So too are her two sisters-in-law (one of who comes from a family with three generations of deafness) and her her two nieces and nephew (one other nephew, Oskar, can hear). Cast the net wider and Jodee’s family includes a deaf aunt, uncle, two great-great-aunts and a succession of deaf cats.

“The fact that most people think talking is the only way to communicate is so narrow-minded because hearing people are the ones who can’t communicate when they are on a bus and there is someone outside waving goodbye. They are the ones who can’t communicate under water if they are scuba diving. They are the ones that can’t communicate across the street or in a loud nightclub. It’s deaf people who can. I wish people would see the richness and the wealth of the deaf world.”

I was looking at my daily statistics and noticed the huge jump in the number of unique visitors from the average of 110 to 328. That’s more than double the numbers! Evidently, Tara McAvoy is the reason for that quantum leap, so I typed “Tara McAvoy” in the Google search and to my own amazement, I came out third on the list, besting the websites like About.com, Fox7.com, and news8austin.com. Never in my wildest dream that my website would be ranked better than these news sites. A while ago, the New York Times Co. bought About.com from Primedia Inc. for about $410 million dollars. Heh, I feel like David versus Golitah.

However, nothing is to last forever, so I’ll probably lose my rank soon thereafter. One of the golden rules in news reporting or journalism is to report as soon as you can. Why? I received an “anonymous tip” from someone who’s also competing for the Miss Deaf America and learned that the culprit laid in Tara’s hands—her sidekick.

Here’s the screenshot below. :-)