In the spring of 2017, shortly after my book No One Cares About Crazy People was published, I was invited to appear on Terry Gross’s “Fresh Air.”
This was one of the first interviews, if not the first, that I did for the book. From my perspective, it was an ordeal: not because of any deficiencies on Ms. Gross’s part, but because I found myself almost disablingly tongue-tied. At least that was how I sounded to myself as I sat in a studio at Vermont Public Radio and spoke to her at her studio in Philadelphia.
It took two hours for Ms. Gross to extract from me the material that she and her editors stitched together for the 35-minute version that aired on March 20 of that year; it is linked below. I was so bummed by what I thought I must have sounded like that I avoided listening to it–until today, as I write.
I listened today because my good friend CJ Hanson placed this rebroadcast on her Facebook thread and alerted me. CJ, as followers of this blog know, is a sister of the brain-damaged, blind, schizophrenic and homeless Mark Rippee of Vacaville, California.
Because CJ found the time and the largeness of spirit to repost the interview, I figured that it was time for me to listen. Judge the result for yourself. And thank you, C.J.
