Rich Brooks

Reprise Rich Brooks

The dictionary defines reprise as a "repetition of a song or part of a song... To take again." And that's what this book is. A reprise of the columns I've written since, 1997, roughly two years after I was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. I started writing the columns as a way to continue contributing to the daily newspaper, a business that I've been affiliated with since carrying the Citizen-Journal as a boy growing up in Columbus, Ohio. More than words though, these columns are a chronicle of a life with ALS. There's the column I wrote in 1997, lamenting the things I can no longer do. I also tackle some controversial topics, such as potty training, visits from relatives and cutting the lawn. In another way, the columns also chronicle my encounters with technology designed to help me write. In the ten years I've written this column I've gone from typing, to using a voice recognition software to dictating it to a health aid. I now use a laptop computer equipped with text to voice software that speaks for me. It also has in infrared switch that allows me to write. Not surprisingly, many columns deal with family life and struggling to adapt to a degenerative and often terminal disease. What does a war correspondent write about? About the topic that consumes him and is part of his being. I also write about the topics that consume me. Think of me as a correspondent writing from the front of life.