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Guilt doesn't just eat parents of kids with special needs alive -- it disembowels us, especially when we think about taking time for ourselves. How can we go away? What if we're the only ones who can take care of our kids' needs? Or our absence would be a very big change, and any change results in air raid siren-volume tantrums? Or we know so many other parents who never get a break, who have no ability to take a break, who need a break worse than we do? How can we even think of getting away when ours lives are so intertwined with our children's? How can we possibly be so self-indulgent, so cavalier?

The new law, which for the first time creates a national tourism advertising campaign targeted at foreign markets, is a boon for the industry after three years of hard lobbying efforts. The up to $200 million to be spent on the effort each year will come from two sources: Up to $100 million collected in fees from foreign visitors who do not require visas and as much as $100 million in private dollars and in-kind donations from private business.Orlando Sentinel with a hat tip to Gadling

For the Love of Maps

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What's a better fetish for a traveler than maps? I love them -- not just maps of where we're going right now, but maps of other places, maps of imaginary worlds, maps redrawn to show what things are really like. When I first moved to Seattle and learned about the Great Outdoors, I was still a working artist and much of the best work I did at that time was on topographic map -- I'd acquired a great pile of them from a friend who had been unable to throw them away. I've also been picking up old guidebooks here and there, and while the information they include is wildly out of date, the maps of walled cities and mountain elevations are enchanting. We have a handful of atlases, too, states have changed, borders are not in the same place they once were, whole countries are divided and redivided and divided again.

Wow, THAT Was a Bad Hotel!

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 My room faced a street inhabited by feral dogs. At night, feral dogs bark loudly to express alarm, anger, interest, a desire to communicate with other dogs, joy, curiosity, fear ... anything. The dogs were quiet in the morning, which probably emboldened the roosters outside to begin crowing at that time. -- Eurotrash or Eurotreasure

Where Does Lost Luggage Go?

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We’ve all seen it: that one lonely suitcase on the baggage claim track at the airport that goes around and around with no owner in sight. What happens to it if no one shows up? Well, it might end up at the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama. That’s where you can visit a store that takes up an entire city block and find everything from the expected (clothing, toiletries, books) to, well, the unexpected. Here are 10 of the strangest items that have gone unclaimed. -- Mental Floss

It's exciting to discover new blogs about travel -- there are so many different voices, so many styles of travel, so many ways to tell stories. It's always fun to take a spin through the travel blogs on BlogHer, to find new writers and meet new travelers. In case you're wondering what catches my eye, I'm always attracted to photos that capture a place, stories that take me there, and voices that sound real. On the practical side, I like information that's easy to navigate, authoritative, and fun to read.

Kevin Smith and Flying While Fat

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“Hey SouthwestAir: you bring that same row of seats to the ‘Daily Show’ and I’ll sit in ‘em for all to see on TV ... If I don’t fit, I’ll donate $10K to charity of your choice. But when I do (& buckle the belt as well)? 1) You admit you lied. 2) Change your policy, or at least re-train your staff to be a lot more human and a lot less corporate.”-- PopCrunch

I'm fairly confident that US Airways doesn't, as an entity, hate families and kids, contrary to what this post might tell you. I'm also fairly confident that flight attendants would rather not seat your child next to strangers when perfectly related parents are on the same flight.

Apps for Travel

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"Man, that was a difficult labor!" That was the husband, yesterday, after we left the store with my new iPhone. He's right. It took me nearly a year decide what phone to get. Why the hesitation? A bunch of reasons but mostly because I think the cell-phone industrial complex is evil, evil, evil. That's a story for another time.

Living on the Road Together

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With Valentine's Day around the corner, my inbox is a swamp of cliched press releases, each one of them attempting to sell me the idea of romantic travel -- a trip to Paris, perhaps, or exotic chocolates from far away places, or little extras that you can pack to transform the sturdy beige interior of your hotel room into a rose colored tent in the desert. Yeah, okay, maybe.

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Last year I went to Africa for vacation, in the Zulu region of South Africa. When I returned I didn't really have much to say. I feared any word...

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