By LivAbility Creative Team
Welcome to another edition of LivAbility! Spoiler alert: Yet again our writers have created some great stories about people doing the things they’re passionate about from all over the Southwest. As you peruse the stories, one common theme is clear: that the time for people with disabilities to get off the proverbial sofa and make a mark in this world is now.
With every edition, we map our direction and new stories to chase. As we go chasing one story, we uncover more and more stories of people with disabilities following their passions.
Passion is exactly what you will find when you read this edition’s cover story about Christine Hà. The “MasterChef” season 3 winner opens up to Yvette Mallari about food; her restaurant, The Blind Goat; representation and authenticity.
It’s passion that drives world travelers Cory Lee Woodard and Kirk Williams. Visiting Ability360 from his native state of Georgia, Cory explores Bearizona and the Grand Canyon. Kirk, meanwhile, takes us through the first steps of a six-month-long trip to South America in a van custom-made for a quadriplegic.
In both cases, their adventures require persistence. It isn’t an easy road, but it’s the one fueled by passion.
Fall (hopefully) brings us rich yellows, oranges and reds, something that you will find when you read what Chef Steve has us cooking up for this edition. Steve’s recipe of pumpkin-spiced curry will have your entire neighborhood knocking at your door, asking what’s for dinner.
October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM). This year, the NDEAM theme is “The Right Talent, Right Now.” If this edition of LivAbility is any indication, there is plenty of talent in this labor pool.
One such talent who we are ecstatic to introduce you to is Marieke Davis, a visual artist who we hope contributes satirical comic strips to us for many editions to come. Her first comic brings light to an issue that LivAbility readers and members of the disability community are all too familiar with: scooter clutter.
This edition also takes you behind the scenes as one MLB team partnered with an Oakland nonprofit to introduce a sensory room at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. These are the types of stories that get our team fired up, the ones that push the boundaries of what is accessible and inclusive in order for everyone to enjoy a baseball game.
Wow, we are just 10 months away from the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo. Over the next four editions we’ll be featuring a few of the many athletes in the Southwest with their sights set on the pinnacle of adaptive sports, the Summer Paralympic Games.