Welcome to Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature’s SPACE issue. From the very small to the enormity of our imaginations, essays grow from the furtive earth-bed of mushroom forests to the stars. Granville Carroll’s afro-futuristic cover artwork “Becoming” places us in space. John Angerson provides the obligatory rocket-propelled photos. Matilde Gattoni reminds us that one’s freedom to explore space can suddenly be taken away. The connection with space doesn’t stop there. Melissa Tuckman’s aptly titled poem “Space Junk” connects space debris to modern living. A new section on New Nature Writing probes the world beyond our urban confines. In the second outing for Decolonising Travel, there are excruciating, painful stories, sexual imaginings in the steam room, and personal reflections on historical ties to oppression; all whilst giving writers who have come through VONA/Faith Adiele’s writing programme space to share their work. We finish the issue with a stroll through London — the most ethnically diverse world capital — through the lens of Books Editor Nicolas D. Sampson.
...Taking your eighty-something parents on an Alaskan cruise may not be as demanding as climbing Denali or crossing the Yukon by dogsled, yet my sister Kari and I still hesitate when Dad announces he wants to visit Alaska. We’re not sure we have the physical endurance to help him and push Mom in a wheelchair on, off, and around the mega-ship that will become our home for a week, but we don’t want to disappoint Dad, especially after watching him survive lymphoma two years ago. Cruising Alaska’s Inner Passage seems, too, like a special way to celebrate my parents’ 60th anniversary, their farthest trip from home since their honeymoon in Canada all those years ago.
...