Outlook on Radio Western

On January 4, 2023 something new was revealed; the World Blind Herald went live, choosing that date because that is Louis Braille’s birthday. This week on Outlook we speak with its founder, publisher, and editor in chief Chris Hofstader.

We begin with Chris sharing about his life including the early days when he was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) as a child, sharing all the things he was into just like all the other boys. He also shares his time as the vocalist in a punk rock band, lining up stories of his youth with the early, unknown years of the AIDS crisis in New York. From punk to computer sciences, the first half of this week’s Outlook Chris leads us through the years when his RP continued, he searched to find his place in the working and blindness world, seeing adaptive technology evolved from its earliest days.

With his background in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics) , writing was a natural next step for Chris who, on the second half of the show, tells us about some of the topics and articles published on WBH since its inception and prototype days through to its publication at the beginning of the year. On the World Blind Herald’s site, find weekly Blindness Briefs with news stories about what blind people are up too all over, featured stories and other resources provided by blind people of all types, and a list of impressive bios of all those advisors and contributing writers on the team and involved in the project in some way.

And we can’t complete this conversation without hearing from our guest about the policy of WBH on politics, specifically blindness politics which is something we’ve experienced ourselves since getting involved in advocacy in our thirties. Editor in chief Chris Hofstader is with us, sharing the publication’s mission, which is to include as many diverse perspectives from blind people globally; this being Outlook’s main mission as well.

Things like sports, advocacy, business, and crime are just some of the topics you can find. So go here to check out the World Blind Herald and give them a read because they want to support the space for other blind creators and entrepreneurers as they’re just getting started publishing the perspectives of as many blind people as possible:

https://www.worldblindherald.com/

And, if you’re blind, consider advertising with them or writing for them.

REMEMBER THIs, Jan Karski: “Humans have infinite capacity to ignore things that are not convenient”.

We’re back for our final week of Women’s History Month, with another mixed bag show.

We wrap up March with a bit of a look back for co-host Kerry’s recent discussion of feeling the stigma of finishing her education late and feeling behind everyone. And reviewing the guests (Rebecca Singh and Daniella Mestyanek Young) who joined us in the first half of the month.

But while the quote above was said by a Polish-Catholic man, who found himself in an extreme circumstance and who worked in the underground to warn the world about what the Nazis were doing to the Jews of Europe/specifically in Poland, discrimination anywhere, of any kind can grow if enough people look the other way.

the local headline in London, Ontario when advocates and riders are pushing City Counsel to do more to improve paratransit:

“Paratransit fails to get some disabled Londoners to meeting about fixing dysfunctional system”, Daryl Newcombe, CTV News, March 6

Isn’t that just horribly hysterical?

We discuss what paratransit is and a little about our own experiences using it in the past and about some of the resistance the counsel has been showing during the process, but there’s got to be a way and we will share more updates on that in the weeks ahead.

We also hear from Kerry’s new phone. Listen to see if you can catch it, along with some signature sibling bickering thrown in there. Also, talk co-host Brian’s early instrument practice on the trumpet comes up plus Kerry’s clarinet too. And about Brian’s draft night/season of fantasy baseball starting on his birthday here, he shares about the strangeness of being into a hubby others are not; though the earlier quote was from World War II, this draft is about sports, not war.

So check out our mixed bag of topical goodies here, last but not least ending the show with a tribute to disability activist Judy Heumann (rest in peace), as we wave goodbye to March.

Find the documentary Crip Camp featuring Heumann with audio description here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFS8SpwioZ4

Listen to our past Outlook episode to hear our thoughts on the doc:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2020-04-20-crip-camp/id1527876739?i=1000488226660

Our episode reviewing Heumann’s book:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2020-07-13-being-heumann-book-review/id1527876739?i=1000488226662

And the article about paratransit mentioned above can be read in full here:

https://london.ctvnews.ca/paratransit-fails-to-get-some-disabled-londoners-to-meeting-about-fixing-dysfunctional-system-1.6301807

In our present world, of capitalism and productivity so valued, this week’s Outlook is about Kerry’s journey. While it’s still Women’s History Month for one more week, this time Brian interviews Kerry on some big changes in her life. It is time to share the incredibly winding path which led her here.

From talk of Kerry’s rather ordinary early education to the onset of her kidney failure years in the midst of puberty, this time Kerry wants to explain some things like why high school was so isolating for her and the twenty year journey to get to the end of it, to catch up with herself.

Many people have not finished their education including those in our own family we love, and so why is it so hard, has it been this hard for Kerry to talk about the education she didn’t get? Why do we put such immense pressure on ourselves to be everything and to finish what we start and to keep doing more more more?

Disability and illness are only a few of the things that make up Kerry’s story and yet she’s been afraid to openly discuss her perceived failures until this moment and she’s not alone in fearing the stigma of being without a diploma.

Outlook is about perspective, with what got us all ours, no matter how long it took to get there.

“As Kerry’s brother Brian, I’ve been there over the years during her ups and downs and couldn’t be more proud of who she is today. Her brand new website is an example of her many achievements and you can find it here”:

https://kayconsulting.ca

And check out this guest blog post Kerry wrote back in 2015, with a slightly different perspective of the times, which also provided inspiration for the title of this episode:

https://hastywords.com/2015/08/27/bereal-kerry-kijewski/

We decided to call this special International Women’s Day/Women’s History Month episode of Outlook “Us and Them”, a slight altering from the term us vs them, relating to a chapter in the memoir we’re featuring with this interview Kerry did for a gender studies course she recently took.

“Uncultured” is a book by Daniella Mestyanek Young, a writer and scholar who’s studied organizational psychology and group dynamics, specializing in extreme groups. We wanted to put out this show to show that Outlook is about disability, but that it’s bigger than this one single intersectionality we share about and how systems are held together to serve the majority, leaving out the needs and rights of the minority.

The book is about the cult Daniella was born into, the most notorious religious sex cult in the world called The Children of God, but in this discussion she speaks mostly about how she then fled that and joined the US military and the extreme sexism she found waiting for her in the army.

Mestyanek Young explains the things she expected when joining the military and the things which surprised her. She talks to Kerry about a particular vest that was designed to stop bullets but of which was not designed to save the lives of all its wearers equally, and about her meeting with President Obama and the biases he himself held upon their meeting.

Identity. Toxicity. Trauma. This “agent of change” did her part to improve the experience of women in the army, in regulation and in culture, in a place where structure is key and rigid systems harm those who don’t fit the mold. And now her book is making a difference in how we stand up against harmful institutions where change is badly needed. Humans have always needed each other, safety in numbers with a group being protection, but Daniella wasn’t only under threat in war on the battle field. She was under threat every day from the harmful sexism rampant in the male dominated military world she was in, hearing from the very beginning that she should expect to get raped at some point by a fellow soldier because that’s just how it was in the army.

This scholar of extreme group behaviours tells us why there’s no us without a them and vice versa. Kerry read Uncultured and highly recommends it. You don’t have to have been in the military or in a religious cult for that matter to see yourself in its pages. Buy the memoir at this link:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/uncultured-a-memoir-daniella-mestyanek-young/17856062

And for more on Daniella and the book:

https://www.uncultureyourself.com

Our International Women’s Day episode of Outlook, first in the month of March and all throughout Women’s History Month, we’re talking with and honouring the intersectionalities of women and race and disability, to name a few.

We start the show this week with the unfortunate announcement of the passing of Judith Heumann, so named as the Mother of the Disability Movement. (A fuller tribute to Judy will be included in our next Mixed Bag themed show.)

Today for IWD though, we speak with founder and CEO of Superior Description Services, Rebecca Singh, who tells us why she decided to call her company Superior Description and why she works hard to promote and provide the best quality product; in producing audio and image description for blind and low vision users. Of all things possible to describe, for the blind and low vision community. Our guest this week is responsible for setting a high bar for all levels of audio description as paid work with standards for quality in her business and across the expanding Canadian AD landscape.

Rebecca has a background in the arts, performing from an early age, going on to act with such parts as one of the aunts in The Handmaid’s Tale, Season Four. Singh’s experience as a performer brings first-hand knowledge and integrity in the work done through SDS, in developing procedures and best practice suggested guidelines.

As a mixed race woman, Singh’s known racism firsthand in the entertainment and media industry, and actively works to break down barriers for people of all intersectionalities. This, of course, includes disability and by taking steps to foster an anti-racist environment and incorporating an Indigenous led program, collaborating with arts organizations of all kinds, (institutions such as universities and galleries and Stratford Festival to name a few), this is where companies like Singh’s are moving away from white being the default in all things.

Along with our guest’s sharing as a professional in the industry, Kerry always advocating for quality audio description, Brian rounds out the conversation by sharing his own personal experience with a recent movie night with his friends and their young children, illustrating the point that AD is becoming more common and popular, sparking conversations and the normalization of this aspect of inclusive access to the arts.

Check out more on Superior Description Services and the on-the-job work Rebecca’s done on media projects of all kinds at the official website:

https://superiordescription.com

For even more on Singh’s own storytelling and performance work:

https://rebeccasingh.com

Rest in peace Judy Heumann:

https://judithheumann.com/the-world-mourns-the-passing-of-judy-heumann-disability-rights-activist/

Back on the mics again at last with our second Mixed Bag show of February 2023, to finish off the shortest month of the year.

In the first half, Kerry shares more about her recently revealed consulting website, Kay Consulting, which ties in to the recent announcement, by Puffin Books in the UK, regarding updates made to the language in many of Roald Dahl’s children’s stories, in order to make them more inclusive for these times. So we discuss the authenticity consulting services on Kerry’s KC and how the work relates with the questions some have with changing a book’s language vs doing better in the current moment when writing new stories and how authors like Dahl was then and the responsibility of writers now. How does Kerry handle these matters on her new site?

Also, she’s working on the earliest concept and draft of a book idea all about living with a prosthetic eye since age twelve. During some reading lately for a feminist horror literature and creative writing class, one of the books on the syllabus was Beloved by Toni Morrison. During Black History Month, she began doing research on the ways in which people have lost eyes, specifically when black people have lost eyes or their vision (both eyes or one or the other) do to systemic violence through the years. This includes civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and a decorated World War II veteran in the 1940s.

And in the second half of the show, Brian shares details of his latest local London music scene night out, along with some audio from a 2017 trip to Iceland with an old friend, in order to illustrate the point of an article Kerry came across.

It’s an article by writer Jennifer Stavros about the benefits of recording sound, instead of the more common act of taking photos when traveling. They talk over the existing impact Covid has had, when lockdowns were keeping us all at home and how we (as blind people and sighted alike) can come to experience the joys of life once more and learn to step back out into the world again (shaking hands again), all things opening wider as the virus slips more and more into the background of our lives with every passing day, week, and month.

How to foster greater inclusion and how far to go, going beyond the “culture wars” as war of any kind becomes destructive, and wrapping up this Mixed Bag discussion with the merits of “echoic memory” which you can find more on in this BBC article, “Why We Should Record Travel Moments” referenced in our second half:

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20230209-why-we-should-record-travel-moments

As a kid, he wanted to be a race car driver.

This week on Outlook we speak with returning guest Ben Fulton about the work he’s now doing as a lawyer focusing on human rights. Ben gives a summary of the events he first came to us about, his experience being arrested when he was standing at a gas station counter, with his guide dog, just trying to get himself a cup of coffee.

“Why don’t we go outside and talk about this.” This is what the cop said to Ben after the gas station employee said he couldn’t be there with a dog and Ben explained that she wasn’t a pet. This one has an ending Ben is happy with, which is that those involved in this unfortunate situation have been properly educated on the subject of service dogs and their human’s rights in Canada.

Ben is returning to our show to update us on what he shared with us last year, the upcoming May court date in his housing discrimination case, after his experience during law school trying to find shared accommodation student housing and being rejected, more than once, simply because landlords didn’t want to rent to someone who was blind. Fulton shares with us the many experiences he's had in showing up to check out a room for rent, only to be told it’s no longer available, after showing up with his white cane in hand. He has texts to prove discrimination and he’s in court this spring to shore up a loophole in the Ontario Human Rights Code allowing this discrimination to go unchecked.

We also hear more about Ben’s law practice, some of the barriers he worked around to get through law school successfully like he did, and his role and goals, as it says on his website: “A Blind Crime-Fighting Advocate Promoting Justice Fairness and Equality”. We’re glad to speak with Ben again on Outlook and wish him the best this May.

If you believe you’ve experienced discrimination while looking for housing in shared accommodations, help strengthen Ben’s case by filling out this survey:

https://www.cfb.ca/discrimination-in-shared-housing

Check out Ben’s previous appearance on the show from last year for more about his experience with housing discrimination in shared accommodations:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2022-01-17-discrimination-in-shared-accommodations/id1527876739?i=1000548263642

And for more on Ben and his work and legal services, go to his website:

https://www.benlaw.ca

UNESCo: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Kerry (February birthday girl) just took a course, a geography/tourism course, which covered this organization so should know what this acronym stands for, but can’t remember as we mark a favourite day around here.

This week and year, the theme for the 12th edition of the World Radio Day, to be celebrated on the 13th of February 2023, is " Radio and Peace.

We are approaching our 200th episode of Outlook some time in the coming weeks, and we’re celebrating here because radio deserves recognition and we’re thankful )on this day and every day) to air first on Radio Western each Monday morning. We are grateful for the platform and being able to reach a widely diverse audience through this supportive university/community station out of London, Ontario Canada and we certainly work, on this show, to promote peace to be the ultimate goal we all strive for.

Also, first week in February is White Cane Week and we’re wrapping it up for 2023 with discussion to highlight the appreciated effort of companies who work for greater inclusion like the one our brother works for, Global Furniture Group, the Toronto company who have shared about this important week to inform the wider public about the white cane and its essential use as a mobility tool for blind people. We want to encourage all companies to do the same by way of educational material, a big step toward creating more inclusive workplaces everywhere.

This week on Outlook we also discuss how Kerry spent her birthday weekend and how Brian ventured out to support an old friend’s music locally at Aeolian Hall in London (Now designated a World musical Heritage City by UNESCO), and how accessible his travel experience was. We also mention a resource out of London, “Everyone Can Play: for children with disabilities to have the same access to physical activity all children do and we’re sharing the research out of Western University in this area, not to mention the news that Bill C-22 (proposed Canada Disability Benefit) has now passed its third reading in the senate. We’ve recently heard from someone in Communications at Disability Without Poverty with an update on the status of this bill and this week we happily share their latest press release on its progress moving through the Canadian House of Commons:

https://www.disabilitywithoutpoverty.ca/press-release-disability-without-poverty-remains-hopeful-about-bill-c-22/

All important ongoing topics to discuss to be sure and which we’ll definitely revisit in future shows, however Kerry tries to move this mixed bag episode along (possibly becoming more and more impatient as she gets older); she must just be eager to announce she has a new website and to reveal it to the world.

Kay Consulting is her new business and an old friend of hers generously offered to create this website for her writing, podcast, artivist, and consultant of lived experience work and services:

https://kayconsulting.ca/

Find out more on the work of Kerry’s friend and website designer here:

https://thesidehustle.ca

And all other links referenced in this episode can be found below:

https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/world-radio-day-we-are-diversity

https://news.westernu.ca/2023/02/western-researchers-create-online-resource-to-support-physical-activity-for-children-with-disabilities/

https://cyneveryonecanplay.my.canva.site

https://www.globalfurnituregroup.com/ca

In January and February of 2022, Kim Kilpatrick was in Ottawa, the place she’d lived most of her life, when the trucks rolled into town. Canada’s capitol city and the “Freedom Convoy” were all over the news, but what was it like to be there during those tense weeks, to be right in the thick of it?

This week on Outlook we speak with Kim about what the impacts were on her, being a person with a disability, just trying to go about her life and the specific impediments to simply getting around in her own hometown.

We also hear about Kilpatrick’s lifelong love of a good story well told and how she became a traveling storyteller herself, currently in Alberta performing “Raising Stanley/Life with Tulia”, a show about guide dog/human handler stories so people can understand the role of the dog and the role of its human better. So not actually in Ottawa when we speak with her.

Check out Kim Kilpatrick, her polished storytelling talents, and even go see her if you’re in Calgary, Alberta, one year after the events in the capitol and there in Alberta too, as she is telling stories at The Lunchbox Theatre from February 1 to the 19th.

Purchase tickets for Raising Stanley/Life with Tulia:

https://www.lunchboxtheatre.com/raising-stanley/life-with-tulia

And find Kilpatrick’s Ottawa Storytellers profile along with her contact info here:

https://www.ottawastorytellers.ca/kim-kilpatrick

April 2022 - broadcast on over 20 Internet radio stations - 11.5 hours - over USD$100,000 raised

A few months after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Jonathan Mosen hosted “We’re with U, ” an online benefit concert featuring blind performers on his Internet station: Mushroom FM to help blind people in the war-torn country.

Radio. Advocacy. Assistive tech. Jonathan Mosen has worked in all three areas in his career and this week on Outlook we speak with Jonathan about it all, though we could have done an entire episode for any one of these three things.

Mosen tells us about Norrie disease, the condition he’s always lived with which had him living blind since birth and experiencing increased deafness over time. He talks about his pride in his disability, answering how he personally would react if he could see tomorrow vs get his hearing back, a different answer for each one of us.

Broadcaster and podcaster extraordinaire, Jonathan hosts “Mosen At Large” with his knowledge from working at such assistive technology companies as HumanWare and Freedom Scientific, along with his lifetime in radio which began as a young child and young person at the school for the blind in New Zealand.

He shares with us about the work he’s done bringing attention to the trauma he worked through from abuses at the school for the blind, tells us more about how Mushroom FM was started and how it’s grown, and about his love of iconic rock group The Beatles.

For an even deeper dive into Jonathan’s life and his body of work, check out “In The Arena, the Jonathan Mosen Story” (a 9-part audio documentary), along with his podcast and an article he references on the show with us which he wrote about being blind and the pride he has in that by visiting his website here:

https://mosen.org