It’s been a few months since our last purely Mixed Bag Monday episode of Outlook, but we’re back, in the middle of August, as summer begins to wind down with a mixture of topics we’re discussing.

Kerry’s been writing and taking classes in writing and the natural world and then reading her words, in community with others. Brian’s been having a rather creatively productive month, practicing with other likeminded musical friends he’s known and performed with for years. Sometimes, it’s nice to work on our creative interests, outlets in a tough world where there’s always something serious happening in the news and around the world, and art helps us be able to let loose a little.

Whether it’s the stress on the healthcare system in this province and across the nation, abortion rights for women and other pregnant people being at risk and how this issue in the States finally gets us to study up about the issue in our own country, or August 15th being exactly one year since western countries pulled out of Afghanistan which leaves Afghan people and especially women behind to face oppression and other dangers, human rights of all kinds are threatened and this impacts everyone around the world. It’s important we talk about all this on our show, hosted by two disabled siblings in Ontario, Canada.

From saying farewell to a friend or opening beans when you meant to open lentils, it’s truly a mixed bag of topics. We are spending the week with family, celebrating our nephews and their birthdays in August, and talking Blue Jays baseball, a super summery subject.

And last but certainly not least, to round off the show this week, we’re sharing promotional material sent to us by Cheryl Green, on behalf of Green and project partner Thomas Reid on the survey they’re launching. With support from the Disability Visibility Project, they’re putting out a survey collecting information from Deaf and disabled podcasters and consumers of podcasts on building a network or community of Deaf and disabled content creators and consumers of said content. We’ll let them explain all this further, but we then go on to discuss an article Reid wrote for DVP on the discussion around whether giving an image description of oneself is necessary, in meetings and in workshops for example, and if there’s equity or discrimination in the practice or in the resistance to it since the pandemic and Zoom made us all faces, in little boxes, on a screen.

Fill out the survey for Project Project or Podaccess as it’s being known as here:

https://bit.ly/PODAccess

Find Thomas Reid’s article (Making a Case for Self-Description: It’s Not About Eye Candy) on the Disability Visibility Project’s website:

https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2022/04/12/making-a-case-for-self-description-its-not-about-eye-candy/

And for more background on Green and Reid, give a listen to this captivating discussion on the podcast Down to the Struts on the episode Disabled Podcasters Unite!:

https://www.downtothestruts.com/episodes/season-4-episode-6-cheryl-green-thomas-reid