Browse Topics
Disability
The Cripple Liberation Front Marching Band Blues
(Part III)
After leaving Warm Springs, I will have to learn the next steps on my own. I have no compadres about me to give me the benefit of their learning. I will, alone, have to build physical and emotional resources to deal with the real world.
July 1983The Cripple Liberation Front Marching Band Blues
(Part II)
Paradise. Paradise of Meriwether County, Georgia. Warm Springs. Two support personnel for each patient. Campus of the gods. Food of humans — prepared to be eaten at civilized times.
June 1983The Cripple Liberation Front Marching Band Blues
(Part I)
They draw me into an arch so that they can run an eighteen-inch horse-needle in between the plates of my spine for an hour or so to get a copious sample of the cerebrospinal fluid. So the doctors can tell my family. What they know already. That I am very sick. That I might die.
April 1983We Killed Them
We are in a sea of color. Three thousand athletes from all over California are assembled at Drake Field on the UCLA campus for the opening ceremony of the Special Olympics. Jimmy is the shortest player on our team, so I hold his hand as waves of athletic teams move about us. Joey holds my other hand. Michael, Eddie and Audie walk ahead of us, arm in arm, like the Three Musketeers. Pride and friendship are on parade.
September 1980
