Taking a big bite out of life, brother/co-host Brian has returned from a birthday celebration trip to New York City and he’s back and telling us all about it.

He shares about his accessible travel and airport experiences at Toronto Pierson, JFK, and LaGuardia, the music show “An Evening With Ida and Tsunami” at Bowery Ballroom he attended with friend/Outlook guest Nefertiti Matos Olivares on Birthday Eve, and another round (after his experience in London, England) and again he set up an exploration of a city with greeter organisation Big Apple Greeters to be shown around by a local along with meeting up with friends from around the state, including sushi with an upcoming Outlook guest.

His snapshot of NYC and most of its boroughs includes a tour of NYC transport including a tactile map of the subway system and its history (one puzzle pieced put together at a time) found Brian checking out the tactile further with an exhibit of subway station turnstyles through the years and an accessible touch tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. For us at Outlook though, it wouldn’t be the same without audio to tell a fuller tale along with hearing about a few wild New York City encounters with security guards, allowing Brian to get a broader, more personalized feel of the place he’s in. Check out audio from the live show he attended, his latest subway and other NYC transport and being live at Grand Central Terminal, and his special time spent on Roosevelt Island and The East River. And time in New York wouldn’t be the same, especially a first visit, without stopping in Central Park to listen to some live saxophone music. Brian shares both audio and Be My AI image descriptions of some of the photos he took for sighted family and friends to see what he did, it’s a full multi-sensory glimpse of the landmark New York City as we meet Brian beneath the big clock.

At one point, he stands with his NYC local guide at FDR’s statue there on Roosevelt Island, with The United Nations right there and the words of Roosevelt clearly underscoring some of the dangerous changes sweeping the States these days. Plus, also on The Island, they make a brief stop at the Accessibility Services booth to find out if they have any information for that spot available in braille. Stay tuned for the answer.

Along with a sharing of some comforting cuisine prepared by a dear friend, plenty of King of the Hill watched, and a homestay at a Manhattan apartment, with the added benefit of getting to explore NYC with the blind leading the blind, he won’t ever forget his first Big Apple experience shown to him by its locals.

Book your own personalized tour with Big Apple Greeters:

https://bigapplegreeters.net/visitor/register

Check out a segment from Ida’s Bowery Ballroom set:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUTcW325GT4

We’re running to keep up with the train of time, yet through slivers of memory, on this yearly audio diary looking back on the year that was. It’s our original podcast, Ketchup On Pancakes, and we’re recapping 2024 as 2025 rushes forward in a blur. On this one, we’re joined by friend/boyfriend Barry Toner from Ireland, someone who’s joined us in the past, down in the basement where it all took place. We’re looking back, on this annual By The Fireside with a tribute episode, dedicated to our dear friend Andrew. As we sit, beers in hand, by the crackling fire, Andrew’s very own drums nearby. We share a few songs featuring or in tribute to Andrew, as well as looking back on travel to Maine (for a drama club camp arts residency) and Ottawa (Kerry and Barry joining the parents on a road trip), and to the things we’re proud we tackled, in fitness and in mental health for instance. We keep up the silly and imaginative with feature Cassette Clip of the Week and new feature Word of the Year, while lamenting the loss of a once-in-a-lifetime sort of fellow, a friendship lost. So farewell, 2024 (with your last taste of security in the wider world), and to friends gone along the way in the march of time. That’s how that was. That’s how it was. That’s how it is.

Find Fowler’s Meaning No Harm on streaming services and Bandcamp:

https://fowlercanada.bandcamp.com/album/meaning-no-harm

Check out Barry’s first appearance, down in the basement, on Ketchup On Pancakes from 2018:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/ketchup-on-pancakes-episode-14-orange-so-it-is-feat/id1527876739?i=1000633134110

And take a listen to our two-parter Outlook show where we visit our new friends in Mount Vernon, Maine, for Drama Club Camp:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2024-10-14-our-week-in-maine-well-figure-it-out-pt-1/id1527876739?i=1000673780980

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2024-10-21-our-week-in-maine-well-figure-it-out-pt-2/id1527876739?i=1000675516532

Records sound better than t-shirts. Today we’re talking literature and CanLit, sports, and music around the theme of accessibility as we continue to promote women in the arts for the remainder of Women’s History Month.

Well this week on Outlook we’re discussing wearing our message on our clothing as The Festival of Literary Diversity’s (FOLD) schedule of events and festival sign-up has gone live on their website which we’ll share at the end of this episode’s description. It’s an eight day long event (first, half virtual and the second four days in person) as we discuss the importance of both options for events and gatherings, workshops, and festivals of all kinds, for people with disabilities which make in-person attendance more difficult, something we’ve sadly moved away from since coming out of the worst of the pandemic.

A friend told sister/co-host Kerry about a recent online author talk, put on by the FOLD, from their FOLD Academy, with Amanda Leduc called “Building a Life as a Disabled Writer” which included topics such as managing energy for writing when living with disability or chronic illness and information on applying for arts grants which are geared to creators with disabilities. (The next FOLD Academy takes place on April 19th at noon Eastern.)

Spring has sprung )or is trying to) and that means baseball so brother/co-host Brian is ready, with his fantasy league and with the real thing, as we highlight the usefulness of listening to games on the radio for those of us who can’t see the visuals of the live thing. It’s like audiobooks or podcasts, an audio method of listening. He’s traveling to New York City shortly, but only time will tell if he ends up attending a New York team’s live game, as Kerry remembers the experience of attending a Bluejays game in the Sky Dome, as we forever refer to it.

We talk the creative projects we’ve worked on together and the factors which make them more or less possible, about the need for diversity in literature and art, and even about the ignorance of certain authors who don’t understand the value of authenticity reading or even what it is. Proud to be woke on Outlook, it’s part II of a March Mixed Bag pile of topics, including the FOLD, and sister/co-host Kerry will be attending the online portion next month and sharing more come May.

So many books, so little time, but check out more info on The Festival of Literary Diversity, from April 27th to May 4th, by going to their website here:

https://thefoldcanada.org

“When I was a little girl, I used to dream as a man, because I wanted to do things that women didn’t do back then such as traveling to Africa, living with wild animals and writing books," said Dr. Jane Goodall. "I didn’t have any female explorers or scientists to look up to but I was inspired by Dr. Dolittle, Tarzan and Mowgli in The Jungle Book — all male characters. It was only my mother who supported my dream: 'You’ll have to work hard, take advantage of opportunities and never give up,' she’d tell me. I’ve shared that message with young people around the world, and so many have thanked me, and said, 'You taught me that because you did it, I can do it too.'"

(Jane's quote is excerpted from a 2018 op-ed with Time magazine.)

March - It’s a lot of things really. It’s another Mixed Bag, a Mid March Mixed Bag, along with it being a St. Patrick’s Day Monday special when we aired live and we on Outlook are also still celebrating Women’s History Month.

We’re looking back and reflecting on what was the five year anniversary of the start of the “stay at home” orders and lockdown and the start of Covid. Speaking of medical things, and spring, sister/co-host Kerry shares facts about the lotus flower and its symbolism of rebirth in nature and science, which leads to celebrating March being Kidney Health Month as she and her dad recall the rebirth and fresh start of the kidney transplant Kerry received from him, a rebirth of sorts. Kerry shares a health update with her kidney and levels being as stable as ever.

Kerry in blue and our International Women’s Day edition guest Jane Piper in red, like the Radio Western sign in the background, brother/ally/co-host Brian starts the second half of the show reading the Be My AI image of the two ladies posing in the lobby of the studio after, as we like to take photos with our live and in-studio guests when we are lucky enough to get them, as we look back on the previous week’s episode and the discussion with restorative justice activist Jane. We’ve managed to post the actual photos even with the accessibility issues that come along with social media these days.

The second half is dedicated to what’s going on in politics, both provincially and nationally as we share concerns about our premier receiving a third win last month, even with his silence and lack of action on matters concerning the disability community. Last week’s guest Jane spoke a lot about accountability and the lack of it in our society, these actions or lack of that politicians often are modelling and still being voted in by those who don’t consider marginalized populations.

Also, we finish up talking about the Canadian Disability Benefit set to come into effect this summer and a federal election on the horizon, we share more about the CDB and provinces like Ontario which has not yet promised not to put in clawbacks and Alberta which has put in the barrier of clawbacks to the already set provincial benefits. Organisation Disability Without Poverty is working to pressure politicians to live up to the promises to combat disability plus poverty across the country.

“Green alligators, long neck geese, chimpanzees..

We begin the show with a song about these animals, including the ones Jane Goodall worked with, the featured woman in history for the month of March and finish off talking the spring promise of an upcoming baseball season.

Today though, we’re unfortunately celebrating St. Patrick’s Day without our Irish co-host Barry and Oyster the guide dog with us live, but they’ll be back, but so we’ve started off the show with a silly song from our childhood - The Unicorn Song, The Irish Rovers version proving that spring is on it’s way to green things up in honour of our Irish connection. We love all things Ireland, but we at Outlook are Canadian and proud to be so.

https://www.disabilitywithoutpoverty.ca

“You don’t know what you’re doing, you’re basically recreating your life, and there’s no map for it. I just went through the motions for a long time, I was just a shell of who I once was, but by talking about my experience I realised I could help other people and I began to share my story in front of audiences.”

Power, control, empowerment. Rebirth, trauma, healing, and even forgiveness and on finding the places, the spaces to talk about hard things, in life changing communication and accountability terms with our fellow human beings.

As spring once more approaches during March is Women’s History Month, with March 8th being known as International Women’s Day, it’s time for another one of sister/co-host Kerry’s annual IWD featured spotlights on a woman she knows who is doing important work in intersectionality and gender equity spaces.

This guest can be an ally, but does not necessarily need to be blind or even disabled, but rather a woman that’s making an effort to foster human connection…with conviction for a more equitable world, as it meets the themes of diversity, intersectionality, and interdependence that make up the crux of this show.. This week on Outlook for International Women’s Day 2025, the guest is Jane Piper, (performer, artist, and restorative justice lived experience advocate) local and live in studio.

Kerry and Jane look back on how they met in the autumn of 2018, how they very nearly attended a Bernie Sanders rally together, and Piper shares more about what sharing her own story means and does for her each time she tells it. She shares openly about the brutal attack she faced in 2003 and about how she handled the trauma and life afterward, leading her to take on surrigate victim/offender dialogue. Piper runs storytelling workshops with both women in abuse shelters and with the men who’ve been incarcerated for violent acts against women and she talks to Kerry about cultivating empathy for others, even those who have committed unspeakable acts, and on what it means to offer/find forgiveness in a world more divided than is good for any of us.

Women’s History Month/International Women’s Day this year’s theme is “The Strength In Every Story” and Jane Piper has both worked to facilitate that in others (like she did when Kerry took her storytelling workshop locally in London) alongside showcasing the same in her sharing of her own, in the work Jane’s done on herself and with/for others such as her work with abused women (as a peer support worker) and inside correctional facilities doing accountability workshops with men imprisoned for violent crimes against women. Jane shares with us what it was like the first time she stepped foot into just such a facility for one of these accountability workshops, what restorative justice has meant in her life, and what it’s like working with these offenders.

To find out more about the public speaking she does, as she’s progressing on the book she’s written (Coming Out of The Fog) about her rape survivor experience, check out her website here in the meantime:

http://janepiper.com

Heading toward International Women’s Day on March 8th, our guest this week says:

“Listening to live music for me is just such an incredible experience because I’m not someone… I don’t personally enjoy the nightclub spaces, that stuff overwhelms me, but when it comes to listening to music, I could do that for hours. That’s good audio stimulus.”

This week on Outlook we’re speaking with Amanda Shekarchi, a musician and someone who works in media, about music, perfect pitch and its multi-sensory elements, and community/campus radio stations like the ones all three of us broadcast out of.

We talk family and sighted siblings, about working collaboratively with community whether sighted or not, and how collaboration involves everyone, including the essential role a mentor can play.

Amanda tells us about her radio experience, including working with Met Radio. (Her university station at Toronto Metropolitan), then onto the CBC with her work on shows like Day 6 and the doc she both produced and hosted “Playing By Ear”, and also her work as a monthly on air contributor and host for AMI (Accessible Media Inc.).

It was Family Day, just last month, when both us siblings happened to be listening to the CBC when Amanda’s “Playing By Ear” came on and speaking of family, we’re talking Amanda’s experience growing up in Toronto with hers and so much more on this first of multiple International Women’s Day episodes. So check out her radio show on Met Radio (12 80 AM) on Monday, March 10th at noon in Toronto for a Met 30 Special IWD Show.

`listen to Amanda’s CBC documentary “Playing `by Ear” here:

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/audio/1.7110160

Find her interviews with musicians on Met Radio’s YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx_HD2TZjQc&list=PL0t7bx4aRZ25qxBBq1rWly3scN5gl4S6S

And follow her on social media:

https://www.instagram.com/amandarayaofficial/

“For twenty-four years of my blindness journey I wandered around this world pretending I was sighted. I wouldn’t use a cane, I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, I didn’t want to identify as somebody with a disability,” but then Gina Martin says, “In 2015 I met two women who were both confident and blind and it actually blew my mind”.

This week on Outlook we’re speaking with Gina with an emphasis on out-of-the-box thinking and the shift” which leads to action which leads to change, leading the disability awareness charge with her company: Diverse Abilities. It’s a disability awareness education program she offers, with everyone from children to seniors, in schools, workplaces, and retirement communities and community centres where she teaches about the diversity to be found in disabilities and the people living life with them.

From power tools to axe/dagger throwing, this Canadian is up for it all. This advocate, teacher, and our guest states: Rather than saying “I’m losing my sight,” I refrained it as “I’m gaining my blindness.” She does this by focusing on exploring the other, non visual senses with her audiences, but by also doing it with her partner, friends, and others in her personal life.

With some tough words from our guest for Canadian society, it’s a truly international discussion as we learn more about Gina’s months-long blindness skills training in Louisiana and what that felt like and how it has prepared Martin for living her best blind life ever since. We’re, all three, the rest of us curious about how those centres work and we pose the question as to why our guest thinks Canada does not offer structure discovery in the same way.

And we hear from Barry, who’s Irish, about the language we use in North America, specifically the word “handicapped” in terms of things like a parking pass or public bathroom, that this word is no longer acceptable or common over there. Gina shares about the language she prefers in her own life and in the work that she does teaching kindness, given and received.

Our guest says: It’s IDEAL - Inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, and language.

So check out Gina Martin and more about her programs by going to Diverse Abilities:

https://diverseabilities.ca

And follow her on Facebook for such excellent informative posts:

https://www.facebook.com/DisabilityAwarenessConsultant/

“It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.”

February is birthday month in the family and this episode happens to fall on co-host Kerry’s forty-first exactly so we’re celebrating all things Sister/Co-host with this one.

This week on Outlook we’re talking Kerry’s favourite movie (unavailable with audio description), about the trick of FaceTime “Share Content”, along with the boys discussing fantasy baseball and Brian’s continuing work with his swimming lessons. Also, the first week of the month of February was White Cane Week, live on air (clean-up on isle three), and find out why the birthday girl is “troubled,” her words.

Nine years till fifty … or halfway till eighty-two as brother Brian likes to say.

Check out Kerry’s official website:

https://kayconsulting.ca

“I can’t just sit there and watch life pass me by - I wasn’t built for that,” says Keisha Robinson, a Brian Connection with this one.

They first met when she ushered him to a seat at an AODA (Accessibility For Ontarians With Disabilities Act) round table event at King’s University College, at Western for International Day For Persons With Disabilities. When, in fact, we have a more personal family/community connection to our first 2025 guest.

Our first guest of the year and of February, Keisha Robinson describes herself as a social butterfly, now, but what was it that made her come out of her shell? She grew up with pain, was labeled “drama queen,” and with a diagnosis realised it all finally made sense.

Keisha shares about her life lived (before and after) the progressively deteriorating muscular disease diagnosis she received as a teenager, about the umbrella of various symptoms and deterioration predictions and timelines of Muscular Dystrophy (MD, and the philosophy she has gained with her plans with work giving back to sick children in hospital and her study of disability.

Robinson is working towards a double major in Childhood and youth studies and Thanatology—which is the study of death, dying, grief, and loss including all sorts of non-death losses. This week on Outlook we’re learning more about her studies and discussing how to demystify loss and grief and normalise the open dialogue on these parts of life we all share.

We explore the inaccessibility to be found out there (IE housing design) and hear about how it is to get around Western and King’s University College as a wheelchair user, not to mention around the city she lives in, along with some of her tools for doing that.

So while one host says he doesn’t miss a friend he’s never met, the guest might miss ice skating or swimming, while the other two hosts might miss seeing colours or video games and that’s the cross-disability perspective in an example of a non-death loss we’ve been navigating grief over. It’s one really important part of the “Outlook” umbrella we’re showcasing on this show and with guests here, both past and present.

BRAILLE … IS … NOT … A … LANGUAGE!!!

Welcome to our final 2025 Braille Literacy Month episode - kicking things off with a poem from a child who loves braille for (Braille200) an initiative by The European Blind Union.

Meanwhile, for this week’s Mixed Bag on Outlook, we continue to speak about our new low tech device The BrailleDoodle and its role in making braille more accessible, such as for students and for Barry. (Learn more on this item and hear the unboxing we did on the previous show. It’s like a white erase board for blind message writers and note leavers.)

We discuss Braille Literacy and Braille Literacy Canada getting a shoutout on a CBC Radio Morning show (even if they incorrectly referred to braille as a language), about the practical uses for braille, and we dive deeper into the lived experience (what’s known about it) of the code’s inventor: Louis Braille.

So airing originally on International Holocaust Awareness Day, we’re talking the realities of DEI (diversity/equity/inclusion) and what disregarding them can point and lead to, along with Ontario’s upcoming provincial election at the end of February and what it might mean for blind voters like us, with braille still being our primary topic on this one: Braille, then and now and in the lives of all of us who need and read it.

And so, we say again, for those way far in the back:

Braille is a code!

Learn more about Braille Literacy Canada:

https://www.brailleliteracycanada.ca/en