Jennifer A. is the women who is bringing the Russians over later this Summer that I have been fretting over so much because of the part I am playing in the Russians who use wheelchairs for mobility visit. Jennifer has been gone for the past two weeks and I have been using this two week time to focus on my part on the Road to Freedom Tour. But Jennifer is back from S. America and so is her focus on the August visit.
Remember she is trying to sponsor at least two paraplegics to visit the US and more specifically Salt Lake City Utah! One of the travelers for sure is a table tennis champion, Nadezhda Pushpasheva. I don’t know if just for her state or for all of the Russians. The only Russaian crip I know is the one I have been corresponding with off and on and he may also be coming. This guy has not Impressed me too much over the years. He seems to whine a lot.
Jennifer has gotten part of their visit roughed out a couple meetings with various State officials, director of VR. We have a couple of dinner set up and a concert or two. Jennifer has informed me that we have at least thee more days of time o fill up. The Russians have informed Jennifer that what they (the Russians) would like to do is ‘shadow’ a person with a disability who is working, for a day and just see how the American crips do their day. Jennifer even started suggesting they stay with me to really see how a real Utah disabled guy does it. I sort of hoped the Russian in the house issue had passed but I guess not. I still get to grapple with this issue.
I did suggest one idea which , I think, intrigued, Jennifer and that is to take the Russians to one of the Parks where the local paras play tennis. The locals “wheelchair boys of summer” play tennis a couple nights a week all summer long. If I did it right and we could find an outlet to donate a tennis racket to these folks, Russian, they could play too, talk about good will international wheelchair tennis could be huge. I wonder f the local paras could opr wood return the favor—be up for a couple of games of table tennis at least with Nadezhda. I don’t think our boys would play because table tennis sort of looks like one of those things which have been modified to the disability. You know—obviously these blokes cannot play tennis so lets let them play table tennis…it sort of like tennis and you can play the game sitting down. Our paras or US paras or Utah paras would never, never tolerate paternalism. Table tennis would violate their fragile concept of the universe of not really being disabled just sitting down. They grabbed their tennis rackets and played and played the game like anyone else except jumping over the net part. And if I really want to mess the Russians up I ‘ll did up a couple of quads and get a good game or murderball going.
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