... and the Mouth opened wide...

1990-1992

cover of an early Mouth where the subject is "How to promote your client... to customer."
"I kind of remember the blocks cracking, like a rifle shot, right next to my head, and then the mobile home falling on me, all 27 tons of it. I took 60 pints of blood (you have 6-8 in your whole body) in the 18 hours after the accident."
-- Mark Simon

"Did you ever watch the dorks talking to somebody in a wheelchair? They talk l-o-u-d-er and clear-er. It's like the gringo talking to the natives."
-- Billy Golfus

"The difference between this place and a jail was the color of the uniforms. In jails they'll be tan or gray or something. In nursing homes, they'll be white. In jails, the guards have guns. In nursing homes, the guards have meds."
-- Mike Auberger

"The message was: they're less than human. They don't count. Fifteen thousand people -- real, live people -- lived in these institutions in our state."
-- Dohn Hoyle

page from an old Mouth with a photo of Ed Roberts in his iron lung with his attendant Johnathan Gold laughing at one of Ed's jokes. "Nobody grasped the idea that somebody with a significant disability could live independently."
-- Max Starkloff
"Whenever we start by believing that people can't do it, we set up all these systems to do it for them. Charities do that. Government does that. Independent Living is something else. IL is independent.
"People expected us to fail. That didn't happen."
-- Ed Roberts

"Thou shalt not be known as service organizations."
-- Steve Brown in "The Ten Commandments of Independent Living"

cover of a Mouth which asks the question, "If being disabled isn't a crime, why are more than three million of us locked up?"
cover of the Crime Issue of Mouth, its eleventh
catalog illustration of a strange hand-held device named here as a Stall Widener. The catalog copy says, "Tiny portable hydraulic jack applies 6,000 pounds of pressure to widen those cramped bathroom stalls. Special reverse feature compresses them back up."
from "The Whole Future Catalog" by John Woodward
in Mouth #10 (Comedy Issue, 1991)

illustration of Jesus in a suit with outstretched arms and a radiating, bleeding heart. The caption says, "I am a human services professional. God helps those who help themselves. I help the rest." "Most of us start out in training
really wanting to help. We may eventually notice that some of what we're trained to do doesn't help. If we still care, we get angry and frustrated. Then we decide we don't just really want to help these poor, misguided people who frustrate our desire to help. We want to really help for a change.
"And that means something scary: a radical change from the stuff that got trained into us. You either face that fact and make that change or you don't."
-- Vikki Stefans, rehab M.D. and founder of Professionals Anonymous

"The professionals are always sitting around saying, 'Now how can we motivate Ms. Client to do XYZ?' The simple answer is to ask Ms. Client if she wants to do XYZ. If she says 'No, I don't want to do that,' then you don't have to worry about motivating her."
-- Peg Englebert

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					1990-1992
					"I kind of remember the blocks cracking, like a rifle shot, right next to my head, and then the mobile home falling on me, all 27 tons of it. I took 60 pints of blood (you have 6-8 in your whole body) in the 18 hours after the accident." -- Mark Simon "Did you ever watch the dorks talking to somebody in a wheelchair? They talk l-o-u-d-er and clear-er. It's like the gringo talking to the natives." -- Billy Golfus "The difference between this place and a jail was the color of the uniforms. In jails they'll be tan or gray or something. In nursing homes, they'll be white. In jails, the guards have guns. In nursing homes, the guards have meds." -- Mike Auberger "The message was: they're less than human. They don't count. Fifteen thousand people -- real, live people -- lived in these institutions in our state." -- Dohn Hoyle





					"Nobody grasped the idea that somebody with a significant disability could live independently." -- Max Starkloff "Whenever we start by believing that people can't do it, we set up all these systems to do it for them. Charities do that. Government does that. Independent Living is something else. IL is independent. "People expected us to fail. That didn't happen." -- Ed Roberts "Thou shalt not be known as service organizations." -- Steve Brown in "The Ten Commandments of Independent Living"
	cover of the Crime Issue of Mouth, its eleventh from "The Whole Future Catalog" by John Woodward in Mouth #10 (Comedy Issue, 1991)

					"Most of us start out in training really wanting to help. We may eventually notice that some of what we're trained to do doesn't help. If we still care, we get angry and frustrated. Then we decide we don't just really want to help these poor, misguided people who frustrate our desire to help. We want to really help for a change. "And that means something scary: a radical change from the stuff that got trained into us. You either face that fact and make that change or you don't." -- Vikki Stefans, rehab M.D. and founder of Professionals Anonymous "The professionals are always sitting around saying, 'Now how can we motivate Ms. Client to do XYZ?' The simple answer is to ask Ms. Client if she wants to do XYZ. If she says 'No, I don't want to do that,' then you don't have to worry about motivating her." -- Peg Englebert
	onward, ever onward to more juicy quotes from the Mouth \| HOMEPAGE \| ABOUT MOUTH \| SUBSCRIBE \| back to the Mouth Chronicles index page