She’s just a girl and she’s on fire

She’s living in a world and it’s on fire.

—Alicia Keys

It’s a slow burn summer, burn as in the wildfires ravaging communities and landscapes across Canada while 18-year-old Canadian competitive swimmer Summer McIntosh is on fire, winning multiple medals at the World Championships, and this is another mixed bag episode in mid summer on the August long weekend as we’re recording it. And one of us is getting over a summer cold as we acknowledge July’s Pride celebrations as the anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act (35 years) arrived this summer season.

This week on Outlook we’re starting off sharing what brother/co-host Brian learned when he researched what exactly the August 1st holiday is here in Canada are represented by, either British Columbia Day, Terry Fox Day in Manitoba (the province he was born in), Heritage Day for one province while ours (Ontario) has municipality celebrations for places like Ottawa or Guelph.

After this one, we won’t be live for a few weeks with an upcoming Monday where sister/co-host Kerry has a specialist appointment at a connective tissue clinic with a rheumatologist to see if there’s anything new they might be able to offer to manage her changing symptoms and Brian will be recording with his band at London’s local Sugar Shack Studio. We then briefly mention the serious and controversial subject matter (content warning worthy) we’ve got coming up on an Outlook show planned for later in the month, current scarcity mindsets with Alberta’s continuing going ahead with clawbacks for anyone there applying for the new Canadian Disability Benefit, and how that compares to the province we’re in, speaking of different provinces on this August Long Weekend edition of our show.

Our mixed bag of topics for this Mid Summer Mixed Bag also includes our friendly sibling competitions even when it comes to why Brian doesn’t get as many colds as Kerry (even though we’re both immunosuppressed as transplant patients) or why Kerry’s creatinine has always remained safely below 100 while Brian’s has steadily remained dozens of points above it.

Speaking of clinic, with Brian’s recent transplant clinic visit and dispatches from the waiting room we’re considering a story from CBC about piping in calming bird song sounds into hospital and clinic waiting rooms rather than the less relaxing news television programs.

Then, (speaking of content warnings) we recently viewed the first episode of Season 27 of South Park “Sermon On The Mount,” and we’re discussing what we miss without audio description which led us to use a Wiki Fandom site and AI chatbot for more information, the design of the characters Kerry has seen at one time and now must imagine, and the type of satire its creators harness for trolling (passing the sensors by putting little eyes on 45/47’s penis and comparing him to a certain deceased Iraqi so-called “leader” South Park featured in one of Brian’s most favourite earlier season episodes.

Reflecting on seeing the value of spending more time with family now that he’s older, (shoutout to Nefertiti Matos Olivares for gifting our family with game Herd Mentality) making for a wonderfully entertaining and enlightening family game afternoon last month - Brian also shares about a sweet and special moment recently where our niece wanted to include him by writing her name tactilely so he could feel it, by writing it on the device we have called the BrailleDoodle (a teaching tool for educators and new braille learners).

And speaking of the BrailleDoodle, we’re still looking for somewhere to donate one and Kerry shares about introducing our educational assistant/braille transcriber from our school days to BF Barry and guide dog Oyster a few weeks back.

BTW: If you hear this episode and know of anyone/anywhere that could use it, please do reach out by emailing us - [email protected]

You can learn more about the Braille Doodle here:

https://www.touchpadprofoundation.org

Girl On Fire by Alicia Keys:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J91ti_MpdHA