Time Evaporation

Jennifer just called from the Sister City program—that project I am part of trying to better understanding and attitudes between East and West: the Russians. A couple of weeks ago he came up with this idea to bring a bunch of the Russians over to Utah this Summer. When we spoke of the project I said “sure no problem bring them over”. Now, the only son I am part of this group is because I am a person with a disability and Jennifer really wants to bring some Russian folk with disabilities over to expose them to the glories, wonders and pure thoughts of people with disabilities here in hopes of beginning to right things there.

Today Jennifer informs me that the Russians cannot make it in September as we were anticipating and the only other time they can even consider would be the last week in July of this summer. And is that OK with me? Why me? I wonder and as we get deeper into this call I realize that Jennifer expects me to be doing a lot of the leg work for this Russian visit. Housing and Transportation is of course what my responsibilities will include.

Housing: Jennifer is real hot on the idea of putting these people she brings over from Russian in homes with I real Utahans as apposed to having these folks stay at hotels. Jennifer brings over a lot of medical professionals—who usually stay with other docs and nurses in the community. Jennifer’s idea now is to do the same with crips and, of course, it is my job to start finding people with wheelchair accessible homes which will open them us to strangers from another continent. We are thinking we’ll need to find enough room for at least four wheelchair users.
Dianne and I are thinking about it—that would be one place and I’ll check with the independent Living center and I am sure well find a couple of other places with little problem when the press is on.

Transportation: is going to be almost as critical as housing. We are going to need a couple of wheelchair vans to use for our wheelchair people. I gave Jennifer a list of options for these visitors to consider while visiting and this require a significant amount of running round. It dawns on me that Jennifer is looking to me for a lot of direction on this project and now we have a month less time then I was anticipating.

So it’s the last of February I still have four full months to work things out “what me worry?” These are the words of a great visionary that I must take to heart. Still best I had better get ball. Better to get these issues covered now then sweat the stress later.