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Article Excerpt
Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

"A fool says `I can't.' A wise man says `I'll try'" - quote on Catherine Southward's wall

C-a-t-h-e-r-u-

She hits the backspace key with her right index finger and begins again.

C-a-t-h-e-r-i-n-e E-l-e-a-n-o-r S-o-u-t-h-w-a-r-d i-s a w-r-i-t-e-r. S-h-e i-s g-o-i-n-g o-n a t-r-i-p a-r-o-u-n-d t-h-b-h-w-o-r-l-d

Backspace.

t-h-e w-o-r-l-d.

It's true. That's where she's going. By herself. Nevermind being born with cerebral palsy. Nevermind the artificial right hip and the chronic pain that afflicts the left.

"I'm getting very excited," says the 59-year-old Eugene woman, sitting in one of her two wheelchairs in her Skinner Butte-area apartment. The words are not easy to understand. She pushes them out like bellows blowing on a fire. Like someone or something is clenching her lungs. Her arms flail around and her eyes are all over the place.

Welcome to her world, a place that mostly revolves around this small space, watching movies, reading books or slowly typing one-handed on one of her two laptops.

It's a world that's about to merge with the rest of the...

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