Article: Living from word to word Columnist Brian Dickinson refuses to let Lou Gehrig's disease rob him of his work

WARWICK, R.I. -- "Hello! How are you? I feel more independent."

The baritone greeting slices sharply through the silence of the bright and comfortable suburban living room. It is unmistakably a machine's voice, but it is also Brian Dickinson's voice, computer and man linked together out of illness and necessity. Seated in his wheelchair in a corner, silently facing his Compaq Presario 486 as the afternoon sun splashes over him through a nearby window, Dickinson is doing what he knows and does best: writing.

"i'm lucky i am able to keep at it," he types noiselessly, the white sentence ever so slowly materializing on the black screen. (He has, for the moment, shut down the voice synthesizer ...

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