It is just great to be here. Thanks to Minnesota Public Radio for helping sponsor this event the I believe it's the the world's most famous cult east of Idaho in north of Waco, Texas. And if that's correct, and it's great to be back in the Twin Cities. I did some local media here and I don't know if any of you know, when I do work on television, which we like to think I best radio for the hearing impaired and some of its like to think that and if you have any New York City and going down by Rockefeller Center you may or may not know that the Today Show is broadcasting the studio that has one of these blast in compartments where people on the street can come up and wave at Bryan and Katie and I noticed it WCCO they were down there. Yeah, and they wereThey were installing their own Studio that does some of the same business here and there were a couple of a couple of fellows who were fixing the door molding on the entrance way. They had something to do with the studio. Just so you know, they were doing some doing some caulking or something and I normally in New York today show is on the other is an enormous crowd of people watching The Today Show today. There was a fairly large crowd watching the door molding caulking going on. Haha and I was thinking it what is the deal here? And they say this is a place where you get a reality check about television in the media when you come out here to the Twin Cities, so it's really quite refreshing.what's What I thought we do tonight is go through a little bit of the somatic massage that says it's booked moving violations was for me in terms of crafting and thinking and which I hope will be for you in in reading and what I like to do since we got a great crowd and it's down in the side. I thought we have a little a little fun and maybe I'll even try some material out that I'm working on for four possible show next year in New York. And the idea is to work some of these themes in to Performance and onto the page and it was very very interesting process. What I really try to achieve with the book was in some of you may have heard this in some of my endless interviews on various programs either in this area or nationally, so I'll try not to repeat too much but what I really tried to achieve in this book is to weave together first of all. The sum of the crazy stories that happened to me in the last 19 years as a paraplegic in America and more recently as a paraplegic in the media and and I resisted doing the book if it was only going to be that the last thing I really wanted was a PJ O'Rourke does Afghanistan in a wheelchair book and we love them. But he's there he's doing that and I just didn't want to do that sort of thing and it was important to me that there be more meaning to it all quite important to me because you because you help me to explain why the heck I was doing some of these things and and so I wanted to work another thing actually quite rarely gets talked about and that is just very lyrical quality that I think many disabled people here tonight might understand very very well and many of you may understand for four reasons that represent you were very different experiences in that trauma. Enormous events. I'm not like most mothers, like this even advanced. Cast you into lives in the sense that for me becoming a paraplegic was was an opportunity to live one lifetime in two bodies and that has had all kinds of profound unexpected consequences for me that are really quite excited. And I mean of your wheelchair issues are disability issues or the kind of inspirational stuff you find on the Jerry Lewis Telethon, which is file a television for the pity impaired you can watch it. I mean if you're having if you're really having trouble with your ability to pity. Even even inanimate street signs, you know a couple of minutes watching the telephone watching the van no compass on and you know, you'll get right back up there to the Topeka meters, but that really doesn't get into this thing that that kind of element doesn't really reflect this this lyrical quality of living two lives in a single body me. What what disability represent it for me was I got to liking it to going back to third grade as an adult with the mind of an adult and the inclination to tell all of your teachers what it is, you're really wanted to say to them when they grounded you for one reason or another. I mean when you're when you're physically disabled especially in a car accident and car accident disabled wheelchair types are not the only disabled people on the planet. Let let me just say but in what is very unique and Central that experience is that you begin to revisit physically? Frances that you haven't visited since toddlerhood. I mean quite frankly sitting up in bed with something. I thought I had down I did it I did when I was to work through that moved onto was stealing cookies out to be shortly after that and I really thought that was a settled issue for me until after my car accident and you go from lying in bed to sitting up to learning how to move here to transfer into another chair into a car go to the grocery store you move through these but now event and take authorship of them in begin to reinvent them in fact and to create human life in a way that that those of you on fortunate enough to have to walk around normally don't have the opportunity to do and that's because it's partly a cultural thing. It's partly the nature of our relationship with our bodies, which of course is fun too many fine Industries. country prints of the Cosmetic industry in the fashion industry and But I think that that authorship gives you a sense of confidence about your own experience. That is almost impossible to achieve. Elsewhere. So in a sense I offer that notion in this book up as a bit of crip culture such as it is and and I think it goes on the the granules in the Ant Hill Boulevard. Seuss and I think it is something that everyone can get something from so that was a thing in the book The other thing the final being in the book relates to a discovery in my own family that the issue is disability was not quite as remote as I thought it was it was something that I presumed. I've been living with only since my accident in 1976 when I was 19 years old, but what I discovered on reflection was that I actually been living it for virtually all my life. I asked the question. I was writing some of these stories down and playwrights can relate to this. The character was doing some rather bizarre things as you read if you check out the book at all and in the pages cried out for so why is this character who seems to be yuge on doing these bizarre things? What is it about him? What? What is it that motivates and what is it in his background? Perhaps his family that makes him do some of these things until the question arose. Who is there any other disabled people in my family and initially cuz I think all paraplegics. Anyway think of the only disabled people on Earth may be a quadriplegic May relate to that but the initial answer was well, I don't think so. It's kind of just me hear of Performing and then know I had a grandfather on my father's side was in the dedication of this who had an industrial accident in his teens and lost it and One of the fond memories I have of my youth which probably makes him roll over in his grave is they would drive from Ohio to visit us in Upstate New York and and they would sit on the couch. They come in after a long drive and sit on the couch and be so relaxing and decompressing from a long drive and it should be in the early middle 60s and I had three brothers and we live in a neighborhood a Suburban neighborhood lots of little kids and ended up in a bit of a marketing scheme in advance of their arrival my brothers and I would go around and kind of canvas the neighborhood with questions like so my grandpa has one arm Yeah. Yeah, what do you mean it was cut off? Cut off how somebody cut it off. Really was he awake? He was definitely WIC. What's there now? You really want to see? He's coming to visit, you know. and for a nickel I'll show you. His stop my grandpa sitting on the couch. And these little boys would appear off in the corner of the living room. Any kind of the point, you know, and my mother, you know, this individual could come out and warned us that perhaps this wasn't the the thing to to be doing just as my grandpa arrived. NRS but I was always mom we can clear 60 70 cents on a good day here. The proud boys had a good sport about it. He would always perform his one-handed shoe tie. For the for the neighbors and innocence. My grandfather was the seed of a lot of the kind of affirming pushing forwards or being public. Although if you read the book, is it a little more complicated than that is his relationship to his being at the tea, but he was part of a certain affirming quality that I found very familiar when I was adjusting to the fact that I wouldn't be moving from the chest down, but then it was another individual in my family. My uncle Peter was how I had heard his first his real name is Charles Peter Sagal and I'd known for a picture in a drawer that he existed and I had asked probably on a half a dozen occasions, maybe less in the course of my growing up. So you know, who's that Mom is that you know, that's my brother brother. That means he's my uncle kind of thing and you what happened to him. Where is he? Will he had to go away was the Was the answer and what happened is he was institutionalized is a young child and in the course of actually went to my mother and said as are coming to answer some of these questions are referred to earlier about the main character in this book. I was writing, you know, when did Uncle Peter died what was what was the day cuz I might need to know that in the course of writing. This book is going to report a group home for the developmentally disabled and Millie retarded severely mentally retarded in Upstate, New York and and it stopped. Absolutely stop me because the institutionalization the decisions that my grandparents made what you'll read about in this book and they're very complicated but I think everyone can relate to them the decisions which cut me off from him which allowed in my mind only have two details about him. He existed he had to go away. I have no connection with him. I my mind kill him off sexually. And so it was this that really motivated me to move away or if it was something I was scared. I was chasing me. It was this idea that somebody somewhere based on some little bit of information about you. Would decide your life would decide what that was going to be in it. And of course my uncle's case. The decision was made to institutionalize him. But in all our cases there is the potential for people to judge you or to conclude a whole lot about you and to place you in a box of category of extensive, you know, you're poor or you're black or you're a welfare mother. Are you are a victim or you or whatever we're looking for short hand in America to describing the difference is that are the richest for us all in the details not in the headlines and and so it is that fear of that categorization and it being thrown into a box. Way Beyond somebody looking at me wrong and there's plenty of stories of that in here that really began to reveal to me what this character was all about what this person was who burst from rehabilitation in 1976 and decided to go off to see if you believe it and so part of this book is the weaving of that family story I investigated a classic sort of oral history way what what happened. I already did my mother and my grandmother I interviewed my my aunt and I went to visit Charlie and and he's you know, the healthy part of our family today and the challenge was to leave it all together and I'll leave it to you to determine whether that was successful myself fairly good about it when it was done. I should say that when I proposed to my publisher and my editor in my agent that by the way, I want to Is family story in here as well? Maya my agent said Well, well that that's it. That's an another book, isn't it? Right? Immediately to calendar in her mind. Oh my God, you're self-destructing. Oh, no, he's writing a new a cul-de-sac and actually said okay fine just be sure you write up the part about meeting him and I wrote a whole convoluted set of things that eventually and making it to the manuscript but but what did make it in? What is this particular story? And I think it works pretty well. Do I need to read a few things to you that maybe illustrate some of these themes and I'll start with the second thing is kind of lyrical quality of Living two lives in a body and discovering one's body again by having a suddenly very very different set of physical conditions to deal with remember. My family is kind of a talent show. I hope that's okay. So we're not the Von trapps, but the bank here in, Minnesota. They're big draw. This is about well, it's pretty self-explanatory. Loss of control is a dark fear particularly in America why we should so fear losing control in the world that we have no control over anymore. As one of the essential questions of American culture the Notions of control and power are themes of American policy going with the flow and becoming a tenant for the subtleties of ones, me or politics are not themes of American policy anywhere in the world the frustrations in a superpower identity aspirations of homelessness bankruptcy and incontinence are all facets of the same fear people who lose control are deviants or failures people who have control Hero's role modelz Victor's over adversity people with their act together. It is the keenest inside gain from a loss of sensation to discover that the icons of control over the body or actually Illusions for all it's urgent tangibility sensation is only the illusion of control over the body rather than the mechanism for that control sensation in the body is more accurate than a window. It hides more about the body that it supports the reveal the nerves in the skin and muscles give you the sense that your limbs are extensions of the brain, which they most assuredly are not Phantoms of pain and pleasure determine our actions while the body's processes inexorably continue sensation is life's ultimate mask at life's ultimate custom party consciousness. And demanding simple names for complex experience is our society loses. The precious to Tails a person asked to define the word paraplegic will undoubtedly remark that it is someone who has lost the use of his or her legs the handicap the disable the confined to a wheelchair the mobile in a wheelchair the physically challenged the mobility impaired the broken in half the chronically stared at the person with disability the about to wet his pants the intestine Lee challenged the nun from the nipples down the shrapnel e challenge the amputee the confined to a car wreck. All of these names could also accurately describes something describe someone in a wheelchair on a wheelchair or with the wheelchair. What's the obsession with finding the right name that leads us away from the unique. The whole is diminished By ignoring its parts. My seven-year-old niece. Sarah was one sitting on my lap having long ago gotten used to Uncle John never walking as a child whose Notions of normal had not solidified in concrete. She was free to think far and wide about the implications of my physical condition much farther and wider than even I She grabbed my spy and looked into my eyes with a questioning probing gaze one time that only a child can give. Can you feel that Uncle John? She asked no, I told her incredulous shaking head. She moves her hands up on my legs and pounded with a force that she was convinced would have caused her own leg pain. The look in her eyes was exhilarating as though she were on the edge of some experimental breakthrough. in anthropology Can you feel that Uncle John she tried a fist on her own five and winced. Wow, she thought for a moment and then pinched a loose bit of skin above my left knee. You feel nothing Uncle John really nothing. She was deep in thought now examining the implications of such a truth. She was satisfied that I had no sensation, but she still needed further elaboration. She suddenly burst out with the last question. So if a bee stung you right here Uncle John she pointed to a place on MiFi where One Summer she had been stung. It was her ultimate test her ultimate definition of pain. I shook my head nothing Sarah nothing in these could sting me there. She turned around in my lap. Mommy Uncle John can't even feel a bee stinging him on his leg. Her mom was occupied with making sandwiches or having a rare conversation with an adult. She had noted with some alarm Sarah's blows to my legs. Wondering if her persistent daughter might continue the investigation with a fork or other sharp objects. That's right. Sarah Uncle John can't feel anything on his legs, but it's not alright to hit him. Sarah continued lost in thought until or eyes brightened and she said triumphantly then you aren't afraid of bees. So in a future world where the thoughts of little girls can matter as much as those of presidents and Generals the fear of bees as a metaphor for spinal cord injury might even be an appropriate topic for the topic for the Oprah show. It would truly be an indication of the Millennium if in Supermarket parking lots in the 21st century the signs on the parking spaces in the front said reserved for people unafraid of bees. If you need a name for me call me John. If you want to know if I can do it for apps that can be discreetly arranged if you want to say one thing more about me. You may comfortably note that I am a person not afraid of bees. So now I'm instructed to report almost immediately to Sarah that indeed the line. You're not afraid of bees got another Applause. She follows bee sting. She's a teenager now. Let's try something a little a little different. This is actually more of an extension of some of the voice and the Quality Inn in the manuscript that it's been an experiment tonight. So well, bear with me here. Part of the book allows me to talk about medical details physiological the tales that and it just don't come up and normal dinner table conversation and I probably shouldn't come up even after you read the book, but but I think it's good that people know that people know certain details about me for example know that it's new from the chest down. The legs down and cabbage in New York. I mean that's what happened to your legs and I go home at thing happened to my legs, you know, and they look at me as though obviously something happened to your legs. So, you know, I'm not an idiot here. So it's going to get people throw up to speed on some of the details. I'm going to tell you a little bit about paralysis and spasticity. And as I do that I'm going to do something. I do repeatedly in the book and that is some have called a marginally severe mental illness and that is projecting one's own life and experiences a grand metaphor for the solar system if not the Earth itself. Have you listen to National Public Radio may know what I'm talking about. Show me to talk about the issue of spasticity and paralysis a many of you who have spinal cord injuries know what's best. Is it is I presume most of you know, what paralysis is, but I'm going to give you a bit of a metaphor for thinking about it in the future. Let me fill in a few details here. I can't walk you know that but my legs actually can still walk. They are spastic. I am paralyzed. They are spastic. I can't feel anything in my like they can feel everything. I'm abstract. They are concrete. I am a method actor. They are character actors. Let me explain what spasticity is and what paralysis is they are important Concepts to understand before we go on here. I can't walk my legs can't they know how right now and more than anything else they are confused as to why for the past nineteen years. I haven't been doing anything but sitting down but have no idea. They are inside me screaming down a bad phone line hate to go over there talk to us we can get you chase after that thing right that girl the dog the ball reach for the can of tomato paste on the top shelf. We can get it just stand up. I say something up there. My mind is trying to figure out how I'm going to get my butt up. To the shelf and I do it with my arms, but my legs are saying all the time dude, just use us. Okay, we can do it. Come on. Just let us get you up there. Go for it to pick up the phone dude gets on your leg. No, I never I never hear them. I mean never it's something like calling a big famous. Dude. Let's say like calling sting on the phone. Okay, you call stay in this great idea for staying and you call it when you say hey, I just like to speak to staying. Okay. I just talked to him. I just want to tell him something. I want to tell him to do this one thing just this one thing differently than he doesn't want his albums. Okay. I know you understand what I want to tell him. This one thing that I want to do differently. Okay at this great idea first thing you call up your charm. You could Joel you talk you scream. I just want to speak to sting. Okay, I want to share something with them put them on the phone. Please forget it knows no good idea. No benefit. No improving the world no sharing you even say to the person on the phone at the outer Fringe office screening company whose only job is it is to hang up on people like you you say. Look, I just want to give Sting the idea. I don't want any money. Just let me talk to him, but no, no talking. No nothing. Dial, this is paralysis paralysis. Mount for spasticity, sometimes you seen the paper these incidents that happened when someone goes nuts or rent a Ryder truck and start shooting at McDonald's or something. And after the place is full of dead bodies in the police get the lunatic in custody if he doesn't blow his brains out first that is police got to him and they talked to him and what does he say? He always said something like look. I just wanted to talk to steering. Okay. I just wanted I just I just wanted to tell him this deal about how we can use a different Court change in Message in a Bottle or something or maybe he could get more movie parts and Kevin Costner. I wanted I wanted to share with thing and nobody would let me talk to him. Nobody nobody so I had to do it. Now the shooting stuff in the McDonald's and a Ryder Truck business, right? That's spasticity. It just happens. You can't predict it because of too many dead phone lines in this country too many people shouting down too many dead phone lines the dead phone line stuff that's paralysis the guy with the AK-47 and the dead bodies stuff and the Ryder truck stuff. That's spasticity in America today all of us live between paralysis and spasticity. Thank you. So are we all feeling a little disabled yet? Huh? The next thing I'd like to refuse actually the story I've read the most on his trip and it's just it's about to just dear friends of mine who I pretty much lost touch up, but I used to work with they were clients kind of like my uncle although in the clinical terms higher-functioning. Shall we say then my uncle but they lived at a Care Center out on the Oregon coast and It is about a Audi that we went on together in. This is from about the middle of the book and I would say this this describe this illustrates. The first thing that I talked about at the opening remark the great adventure story that I think moving violations can be but shortly after coming to the Care Center. I traded in my big bulky Blue Van for a little orange Toyota pickup with only a bench seat in the cab. There was no place to store the wheelchair except the pickup bed. Well beyond my reach my solution was to bolt a bike rack on the side of the truck bed and to hang the chair off the two hooks strapping it in place with a bungee cord. I like the solution allows. The chair was out there making the statement. I had to pick up instead of a hospital Ironsides lift ambulance van. It was a form of Liberation for me. I love my orange truck have a client's did to what I saw is ratical in liberating in the truck. They grasp and celebrated along with me. They fought taking turns to wash it sit in it or if they were able to go for long rides along the nearby Pacific Coast. It was hard for most of the clients to accumulate enough good behavior tokens from Alice the boss in this facility to be able to go on outings. Free in particular Jeff Genie and David saved up all their tokens and spent them each weekend on pick up rides Jenny and Jeff both used wheelchairs. Jeff pushed with the only armed he could use his chair was Heavy with a bulky drive that allowed him to move both Wheels with his single good arm, Jean you can move both of her arms, but she was weak and a grown so fat in the hospital that you can a crack in the sidewalk brought her wheelchair twin abrupt halt. Jeff was the more profoundly retarded of the two while Genie was capable of thinking through a variety of simple problems. The two were inseparable having been in the same institutions since they were very young children together. They were a well-rehearsed comedy sketch as well as some concrete evidence of how men apparently could get by In This World With far less upstairs than women. I just couldn't tell you whether the sun was up or down but because he could act cool and talk sports scores with the guys. He was one of the Care Centers model citizens. Genie on the other hand was considered more of a behavior problem. She was shy and terrified always apologizing for being stupid but she could calculate basketball shooting percentages and tell you the exact birth dates of every US president. They both shriek with joy the first time I drove up in the orange truck. Jeff said it was the coolest truck. He had ever seen Jeannie look at my wheelchair hanging on the bike rack and after a moment's thought noted that it was going to get covered with mud when it rained ojini. Don't be stupid. Jeff Yelp people with trucks like the mud. Now I had to admit it was the first time I had thought about my chair being out in the mud. And I would think of Genie every time I had to hose the chair down after a long trip. You're pretty smart Genie. I wonder what you are doing at the Care Center. Anyway, no John, she would always reply laughing. I'm stupid. I'm too stupid even stupider than me. John. Jeff would always say. One weekend. I piled both Genia Jeff into the front seat of the pickup and off. We went down Route 101 South for the City of Coos Bay. Jeff could haul his little body into the truck without a problem. But Cheney was more of a challenge. Oh, no, I'm going to fall and go to phone and going to fall. She squealed with a half-hearted conviction. It said she knew one way or another I was going to get her planted in the seat G. You're so fat. You're going to kill John Jeff cave. Genie laugh. Well, I push and pull some of the other clients gathered around to watch the two Down syndrome adults from the floor came outside and stared at us. They smiled and pointed in shrug as if they were wondering why we didn't just stand up and climb into the truck like they cry. Finally Jeff Genie and all Genie stuff. We're in the cab after sweeping the breakfast crumbs out of her chair. I folded first one then the other wheelchair and threw them both into the bed of the truck the Down Syndrome clients love the loud noise of the chairs Landing in the back. They seem puzzled as to why Jenny and Jeff ward in them started with first, they jump back then Smiles returning they clap and wave. Goodbye on the road with the windows down Genie screamed and Jeff Turn up the radio very loud and I watched everyone who passed by there were three of us. There were three chairs. Passing motorists Scott genius Blotto face and noticed Jeff's undersized head next to her. They could only speculate about me the driveway. I widen my eyes and delivered a searing semi crazed expression with the Precision of a fisherman casting a trout fly. The car is quickly passed us by while I Spy the eyes watching us in the rearview mirrors. Sometimes it was just as much fun to play for Pure shock value like trolling with a bloody fish head or something. Genie I said at a stoplight I dare you to ask that guy over there where in North America is Genie with lean her head out of the window with her eyes focused on two different points in space. Neither of them the face of the person she was speaking to and ask mr. Where is North America? Windows with roll up and will be left at the intersection. Was that all right, John Chaney asked she was always worried. That dummy didn't even know where North America was. Jeff said this with his cool Superior voice. Well Jeff, I would ask. Where is North America? He never knew. She would answer after a long pause. It's hear John. It's all around us. If you didn't tell Jeanne she was correct right away. She would always take back whatever. She had said so I told her she was right and Genies on some more and said Why did we ask that guy where North America was John? Nevermind Genie I was just being silly. She laughed down the Pacific Coast Highway Genie and Jeff watch the ocean in the distance while I watch to see who might be watching us. We drink beachfront Park the Blustery chill of the Sunday spring morning assured that there would be no tourists or local beachcombers. The parking lot was empty it was high tide and the distance to the beach was manageable. I was determined to get both Jane and Jeff down to the tide line where the sand was wet and hard and they would be able to roll along the water. Are we going to go there John? Jenny said I didn't anticipate how difficult this was going to be. I can manage this and only with difficulty. So I expected the genie and Jeff. We need help rolling across the dry patch to the tideline. I am both of them toward the water and took turns pushing them from behind a half turn at a time. We pushed our way toward the water Jeff pushed and grunted with his one arm drive. And each inch of motion came with a cry of I'm doing it. I'm doing it he would get ahead of Jeannie and each time. She said she was being left behind beneath the great chisel marble Oregon's Coastal Sky the three wheelchairs in the orange pick up we're alone on this and the wind caught Genie shrieks like a kite in a tornado the infuriating little trinket she hung from her chair danced and I alone among the three of us was conscious of what we might look like Through the Windows of the beachfront apartments and boxy little tourist hotels that surrounded this public beach on either side at Close Quarters. I pushed Jenny and Jeff with my own share like a switch engine guiding freight car and slowly we made progress toward the water. Across the beach in one of the apartments. I notice two people standing in their wide open Windows watching and pointing Jenny and Jeff will be getting to pick up momentum Their Eyes Were focused on the sketchy moving chalkmark of white phone as each successive wave Define the tideline the increasingly moist Saint was accepting their wheels, like crumbly pavement the wind and Surf made it difficult to hear the words. But Jeff and Jenny were trading their one-liners old way down the beach they sat together on the sand is the water streamed underneath their chairs. She needs squeal while Jeff Roll his chair around in front like a Sentry the flapping hair on his small head like a Cub Scouts flag. They were oblivious of the skeptical World outside. The Care Center. I was a part of it. It seemed that I was trained to look for anticipator even provoke the very people who would get the wrong idea from what we were doing. I was defending Jenny and Jeff from the world. They weren't afraid of they were mentally retarded Wards of a state institution and they seemed more free than I my arms ached from pushing. And so I sat back to rest for a moment staring out of the ocean and of course, it was me who noticed the red twirling Lights of the police squad car driving slowly up to my pick up. A resident of the beachfront property had called in our presents with the suspicion that we were carrying out a suicide pact. The officer approached us with the assumption that we were on an unscheduled unchaperoned out it earlier that summer a group of pilot whales Head Beach themselves on the sand in an apparent death. Wish we were no better at negotiating the sand and Beach whales but I was not prepared for the alarm tripped by our presents. The officer was prepared only to pack us all up and was not expecting to find a HealthCare Employee let alone a licensed driver with him to discuss the matter. Where do you think your kids are going? He spoke in a condescending voice that felt to me like a shower of warm fragrant battery acid. She saw the officer before I could say anything. Hi officer were watching the ocean in the sand dollars notices holster. Is that a real gun? The officer gestured toward me it sure is a real gun and I'll show it to you if you and your little friends come here with me to the parking lot. We won't be needing your assistance this morning officer. Don't you have something else to take care of right about now? I'm sure I bristled with loathing for the officer was taken aback. First that there was a sentient being among the three of us then at the force with which I was attempting to dispatch him on his way to other matters his tone change completely. The residents are worried about what you are doing here. We received a number of calls. Well, maybe you could just call them all back and tell them everything is fine here. You see on the planet where I dreamed of living one day the site of three people in wheelchairs stuck in beach sand rolling toward the ocean at high tide was just no big deal. Where are you from? He has been pulled out a notebook. It went downhill from there. When I told him we were from the Care Center up the road in Florence. He had to ask who are doctor was Jeanne began to howl with laughter. And of course, Jeff had to continue looking at the officer's gun. It's real, isn't it? The officer had to tell me about how the people living to the beach all thought we were going to throw ourselves into the water. Of course, I had to say at that moment. Why do you find something important to do with your badge officer like a resting some of the drunken rednecks everywhere around here? And of course the officer got really mad then and had to tell me that it was his business when 3 crippled people showed up unexpectedly on one of his speeches. He offered to push us all back to the truck. And before I could decline Genie just had to say you can push me officer. We roll back to the truck. I was fuming. He was the enemy we have made it to the tideline. We had seen the ocean rushing underneath our chairs to the officer. This was Prelude to a mass suicide and I was Jim Jones. He reverted a terrible tragedy to Jenny and Jeff. It was only Adventure. They had something to talk about for weeks. I alone was humiliated when we got back to the Care Center Genie and Jeff eagerly told the other clients about the policeman for them. It was the most exciting part. He had a real gun Jeff told Alice Alice saw this and all over the Wheelchairs and wanted to know where I had taken them. We went for a stroll on the beach and that a cop I said she knew there was more to it and she said she was glad she hadn't been with us. Thank you. Thank you. So we got a little time left. a little time we had such fun. I thought I might dumb. I might just do something it to conclude. You're not going to book one other thing not going to book tell leave a sign maybe a slightly more reflective. No, then we can you lock it up when I do the signing a butt. But it's 50 years. Since the end of World War II and their many issues and that that evokes for certainly some of you who are alive at the time and I think those themes have maintained themselves throughout the post where you're at and we will experience them again. And again, I think in The Next Century and there's one anniversary is coming up that that is Meaningful to me and and I think it's a bit of a stretch to extend in this. Aesthetic of stretching one's own physical reality is a metaphor for vast Universal cultural advance for this for you. For your judgment and see what you may think. This is actually something I really did on that program that Chris talked about earlier heat, but it's been a little bit revised and I think it's pretty self-explanatory, but it I think Is about something that I would like to leave you all with and that is that are banal life experiences or all representative are all a bit of culture and it's hurting us and we are all responsible to preserving them to preserving those individual stories of ourselves and passing them imbuing them with meaning and passing them to our children and to the people who will inherit this Earth from us is more important than the issue of the deficit and it's more important than the issue of of you know, we have a free market or whether we trade with Japan or a trade deficit. I think it's more important than all the issues that that are constantly talk about on CNN. We're losing our connections in this society and part of what I think makes moving violations powerful if it is. Is unfortunately the fact that we have so few connections and that leaping those connections are what stories are about leaving the lack of connections structions between us all become stories become Adventures become an excitement. But in some ways one yearns in some of the stories do not have that we all can know each other a little more. It's kind of like the experience of stories for National Public Radio where you know that the audience is hanging up every word of what your last piece was and is going to hear this peace and may be here the next piece active sense that we are all experiencing a narrative unlike intellivision where I think mostly or often audiences are netted like fish. And and sometimes the programs are are interesting for fish. But I think we need not be afraid to imbue the banal little details of our life with meaning grandly. Otherwise, whether it be a fear of bees as a metaphor for disability or or what you're about to hear. It's been fifty years now since Hiroshima. 50 years of unlock RH the people of Hiroshima can be said to have tasted that fear, but knowledge. I don't know if that is possible. We cannot know the taste of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but we now and again can Glimpse what those people bathed in since that day, August 6th 1945 when a moment of unknowable fear announced its arrival in from that moment. All else had no meaning August 6th 1945 at such a moment, of course towering in human history the explosion of the first atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima the product of civilizations most cherished and intensive sophisticated intellectual inquiry produced a blitz of high-speed neutrons a furnace of fire and energy not seen on the planet ever before the technology advanced state-of-the-art the forces Unleashed pure and primitive unmindful of any Thing Called Life Elemental beyond the fangs of a wolf the Tremors of any possible earthquake. Tron slice through living tissue more cruelly than a baseball bat pure neutrons have no connection to us. They were unaware of the Earth in any sense when they stream through the citizens of Hiroshi 50 years ago missing them with the power of a distant star. Once again Evolutions upward climb brings us face-to-face with the forces so crude that they have no room for US forces, which unlike the wolf don't even have the common courtesy to use us for food when they kill they just leave us to die. There have been glimpses of this unknowable fear of our age. I think the Challenger explosion 1986 launch of a room full of little people turn 90 seconds after liftoff into a cloud of fire and debris falling to Earth in a shape never before seen on earth a shape having nothing to do with us yet. We had built it martial forces which in the end squash Those whom we had intended to be in control of those forces one could just stare at the three-pronged cloud on television a moment before it was the Space Shuttle the Supreme achievement of an A in announced its arrival only at that moment the age did and at that moment everything changed and that moment was unknowable. I know nothing of such Fierce except. Once in a car on a road when it's hired girl Veer too close to a guardrail in the car lost control and I was worried that we would crash and that I would bleed and that there would be pain and I wanted to escape because I was scared but then we and that car entered the moment when the machine became the pure force of matter in space and we were part of the matter and the car was a bang forces in comparably primitive described by Isaac Newton, but certainly not needing him to hartel through space and down an embankment that day pure kinetic energy, but did not care that I was in the advanced reading group in elementary school. Did I have one stolen a sugar daddy from the A&P that I was really really? Sorry about it the force didn't care about me and I could feel it and I could not know it and it changed everything that moment. Unknowable fear towering above the deaths in the car that day towering above the fact that I would never walk again that there was blood everywhere. It was the moment the moment that pure primitive moment unknowable that has marked my life ever since I'm sure it is arrogant and obscene almost to think like this 50 years after the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. I can't know what happened there when they're moment arrived Our Moment. But then they didn't know what happened to either and it changed them and us forever. Thank you.