Parisian Phoenix Publishing

July 22, 2023: Lehigh Valley Disability Pride— in May, my optimistic self looked into buying a vendor space at Lehigh Valley Disability Pride at Penn State Lehigh Valley Campus, 2809 Saucon Valley Rd, Center Valley, Pa. 18034. It’s a short day, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. But the prices were outside of my budget.

This publishing company makes between $5 and $150 each month, and we put those profits into future books. I saw they had an open call for performing artists, so I asked the authors who participated in the anthology, Not an Able-Bodied White Man with Money to consider a performance/reading of their work.

The organizers emailed to express their regrets that the call was intended for musical acts to fill the main stage, but that several of us had applied with ideas outside the norm, so they wanted to offer us a free space in the performance area to connect with others and share our work. So, we’re going to Pride.

Interestingly, I received this email while stuck in traffic on the highway on the way home from my physiatrist/neurologist. When you live with a disability, and if you’re like me and have a recent series of episodes that required medical attention, you spend months after the incident checking in with a cadre of specialists.

And while it is off topic— but will be discussed in my upcoming medical advocacy memoir Gravity is a Harsh Mistress (thank you to our clever poet-in-residence Darrell Parry for the title)—please let me remind everyone of this important fact: doctors are not gods, and they are not family. You are not stuck with them. If your doctor does not listen or just feels wrong somehow, you need a new doctor. Both my primary care physician and my physiatrist (who is a neurologist also, but I also have a “plain” neurologist and a neurosurgeon on deck) trust my input as much as I value theirs.