Reflecting on his life and memoir
Conducted by Emily Bond
Michael Long was born with an intellectual disability and cerebral palsy. He’s an education advocate for people with disabilities and recently his memoir, A Life Like Anybody Else: How a Man with an Intellectual Disability Fulfilled His American Dream, was re-edited and re-released. I spoke with Michael about the anniversary of the Americans with Disability Act, his book, and his life right now.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) marks its 31st anniversary this July 27th. The act officially became law in 1990. In 1992, Governor Pete Wilson hired disability awareness activist and speaker Michael Long in the role of a Consumer Coordinator at the Department of Developmental Services (DDS), making Michael the first person to be officially hired by the State of California with an intellectual disability.…
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My house holds a place
on a hill. To my left,
terraces retain the earth.
Blocks interlock
above the lower alleyways.
To my right, the hill
slopes gently to the chain
links below. Between
these extremes, I wrangle
a push mower. Along
my left half I carve vertical
lines, letting gravity
pull my sputtering green
engine toward the hedgerow
where I swivel and drag
the handle behind me.
Along the right I go
horizontal. Nearest the gnarly
roots of the old maple,
where the chopper wants most
to flip in my arms, I leave
the tall grass to heighten.
– Cameron Morse…
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The stone floor is cold against her legs. Her thin dress, worn the entire summer, can’t keep the damp out. It sponges moisture out of the stones. For the first month, this bothered her, now she only notices at night when she stares at the small patch of moonlight on the floor, trying to sleep. No one visits. Her cell door is opened at mealtimes, a metal plate shoved in, the stone floor scratching against the bottom. She’s long stopped listening to the prison’s noises: doors slamming, boots stomping, rats scurrying in the walls. They’ve faded into the background.
She is alone in the stone room; everyone was too afraid to share a cell with her. The guards finally found a cell in the old, unused part of the prison.…
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This morning I want my grandmother, who died two decades ago, to boil rice and cook eggplant curry for me. I have visited my parents’ home in the village many times since her passing, and she is missed every time. But this time, it feels different. The sun has risen as it always does, but it seems to have acted anachronistically. I haven’t had my meal prepared by my grandmother yet, and I’m about to leave for my high school. It does not matter that I’m not a fourteen-year-old schoolboy anymore, nor that I’m visiting my school as a guest, not as a student.
“It’s easy to go to school these days,” my mother says, handing me a stainless steel tumbler, carefully, with both hands.
“That’s good, Aama,” I say. …
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I guess wherever a man stands becomes the moral high ground, less about altitude, more conviction, boots on ground, the cool rational marble of thought, they hate gossiping too, or at least what we call that way of living in the world when women do it, which of course makes it wrong, you get it, they don’t understand the need for it, emotionally of course, but also biologically, survival skill, instinct, I need to know what’s happening to the fifty or so people in my world, hunt love, gather grief, I want to know and I want the privilege of being told, secrets whispered under low lights, over popcorn and wet nails, shifting alliances, not always mean, no, but sometimes, sure, but we know where our lines are, we’ve been tip-toeing around lines in the sand our whole lives, were trained in it, our lives are lived exclusively on the knife thin line between victimhood and power, Madonna and Whore, all of them, the big ones, the little ones thin as thread, frail as uncooked spaghetti, and we’re towing some lines and smudging others, and you can’t see it yet because you’re not a part of it.…
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There. There it is. I see it. There’s the mist, blowing left to right. It drifts over the ground near the huts. The four soldiers emerge from the mist like ghosts, their rifles ready. The villagers stay inside their huts even though they’re on the same side. They’re scared. No, why? Why are they scared? The wind blows. A soldier whistles. An old man and woman come out of a hut. A spooked and nervous soldier shoots them. No, why? Other villagers come outside. The soldiers shoot all of them except for the children. The soldiers set the huts on fire and take the children into the bushes. No. Another patrol comes along, sees what the soldiers are doing and shoots them. No, that’s not right.…
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Just after noon,
at the intersection of Mission and High streets, I saw her at
the wheel of a tan SUV. The red light held us both, each
vehicle facing the other.
With an Oregon gray-winter-solstice-zombie stare, her eyes
looked ahead at Nothing.
I knew her in the ’90s. She was a Mormon . . .
probably still is. Four kids and a utilitarian marriage—
functional, its passion drained years back
by an exhausting commitment to full immersion in
a religious lifestyle.
I recalled how, this time of year, the church service,
volunteer obligations, family management, and
holiday expectations always left her brittle.
Fifteen years ago, to distract herself, she began
joining multilevel marketing companies that
promised honest products, sales opportunity, wealth,
and vacations in the islands.…
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