Travel Updates

Hi folks,

I made some alterations and confirmations to this fall's schedule. I finalized the dates for October by buying the necessary plane tickets, and I switched Portland for Atlanta. Why the switch? Well, both cities have interesting opportunities related to women and disability, but I wanted to try to get a little more diverse regional converage and I don't have any cities lined up in the South for this fall (Texas doesn't count).

Atlanta has, for example, Project South www.projectsouth.org, the Charis Circle www.chariscircle.org and through the youth activism grapevine I'm hearing some good things about some feminist activists who happen to have a disability there. Atlanta also has, of course, Mark Johnson of the Shepherd Center, who brought the Charis Circle to my attention. Thank you Mark! If you, readers, don't know who Mark is, please check out http://www.shepherd.org/news/media/press/22.asp.

Also, Atlanta is the home of Eleanor Smith, whose cause is visitability, which means designing or modifying homes and buildings so that people with disabilities can at least visit. See http://www.visitability.org/. Ohhh, a woman with a disability, huh? Cool. ;)

And last but not least, Georgia is the state of Olmstead v. L.C.and E.W., the landmark Supreme Court case that determined it is a violationof people's civil rights to keep them in institutions when they do not want to be there. It's worth nothing that Lois Curtis and Elaine Wilson, the people named in the suit, are/were both WOMEN. Yeah! They are heroes to our movement. See http://www.atlantalegalaid.org/impact.htm to learn more about them.

My last tweak to the itinerary at this point involves possibly switching Melbourne for Canberra, Australia. I've been told Canberra is perceived as a government town full of bureaucrats etc, but those government towns are where policy gets made, so it'd be good to take a look around if possible. Will update on that down the road...