Holiday Giving With a Travel Theme
In the coming year I intend to take time to give something back. There is a theme in my New Year’s resolutions – generosity directed toward the disabled community at large.
• I will complete the survey for people with disabilities about their experiences in using different types of telecommunications products.
• When I set up an independent web site with my Web Log I will treat visitors to the timely news summaries I have been enjoying from Inclusion Daily Express. Their editor, David Reynolds, collects, reviews, and provides original writing on the current news affecting people with disabilities.
• I will participate in RERC Survey on the Use of Medical Equipment.
• In this column over the coming year I will introduce readers to several travelers with disabilities through a series of interviews.
Be kind to yourself, too
With the chilly weather I’m likely to settle in for vacation planning fantasies from the comfort of home. Wheelchair travel fades to armchair travel for the time being.
The classic magazine for active wheelchair users is Sports ‘n Spokes. It doesn’t include travel articles per se but you can still get a great rush imagining yourself water-skiing on the international circuit, playing professional wheelchair basketball, mastering wheelchair hockey, quad rugby, snow skiing or fencing. I like National Geographic’s Adventure magazine for generating travel ideas but it doesn’t quite let me “be there”. It lacks the information on accessibility that I expect from a quality travel magazine. So, for those with Multiple Sclerosis I recommend the quarterly magazine InsideMS, written entirely by people with MS. InsideMS has a format that is easy to read and has a regular travel section. For those with spinal cord injuries I recommend the monthly magazine New Mobility. New Mobility is the flagship publication when it comes to portraying people with mobility disabilities as actively engaged in living. Its occasional travel features bring me to places I never would have thought of visiting.
Music too can transport me back to places I’ve been – or feed my imagination about places I’m going to explore. CDs from places I’ve visited or plan to visit make up a whole subsection of my CD collection. But there’s one song in particular that has been playing in my imagination throughout this article. It evokes some of the themes that appeal to us travelers: freedom, memories, stories, and encounters that open define
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