While sure there are big things, big horrible things happening in Washington, D.C. - on a freezing day in January, we are on air for another Mixed Bag, lurgy filled episode.

This week on Outlook On Radio Western we’re finally all back, in-person, together at Radio Western after holidays and illness and continuing the celebration of Braille Literacy Month (Braille200) by sharing an unboxing of a new low-tech braille product.

The BrailleDoodle from the TouchPadProFoundation has arrived and we explore its design and uses, live in studio. It is a laptop-sized product with magnetic braille dots and the letters teaching the braille code while on the other side, a tactile grid with holes and magnetic dots pop up with the help of the attached pen or stylus.

We discuss the uses of the BrailleDoodle vs the electronic braille displays we use, along with other braille teaching methods. We share about places braille is appearing, on hard cover books, clothing, and Lego, all sorts of novelty braille as well. Kerry and Barry give an update on braille lessons/learning while Brian updates us a bit on his lessons which are of the swimming kind.

Who says our Monday must be Blue? While there’s so much nonsense happening in the world, here on Outlook we’re playing with The Doodle and having fun.

For more information on the Braille Doodle, teaching device for students and learners using both braille and tactile graphics, check out more here:

https://www.touchpadprofoundation.org

And purchase one here:

https://atguys.com/products/brailledoodle-braille-stem-and-art-for-everyone

Broadcasting live from both Kerry’s office/house and the Radio Western studio, the year and our first show of 2025 begins with the sound of guide dog Oyster’s nails and paws on the floor with our first episode being partially from home as a result of snowy Canadian winter.

It’s our first Outlook of a new year and, instead of being all together in studio like we’d planned, two of us are joining from home with co-host Brian there in person.

We talk about the previous year of Outlook (Kerry taking her Barbie white cane wherever she goes/regular Outlook listener shoutouts/Others Like Me) including guest totals and new episode numbers, all things Brian loves while talking the holidays and the interdependence a nasty virus or two can highlight between Kerry, Barry, and Brian who avoided the illness for the most part.

Kerry shares about being cursed with technology, a fact Barry has arrived at from witnessing it up close as we discuss inaccessibility of modern appliances such as a new air frier, troubles with Kerry’s cell phone and a mysterious lack of data, and more as the love/hate relationship between accessible tech continues in 2025.

We discuss how grief isn’t at all linear, Kerry’s recent experience visiting the emergency department on her own and the excellent care she received at her town’s hospital, and about venturing out in the winter terrain as a blind person as Kerry and Barry recently did to go to retrieve their new couple’s Tim Hortons pyjamas from the community mailbox.

It’s our first mixed Bag show of the year and on this one we mostly dedicate things to Braille, braille, and the literacy that system/code of communication has in the lives of blind people and this will be our overall theme for the rest of the month on Outlook.

“So after I was injured, all of a sudden I was discovering - Oh, there’s a whole other possibility of how I can use these artistic disciplines I’m really passionate about, but with now this whole new lens on it of being somebody with a disability, somebody who’s part of a community that has largely been marginalised and devoiced and that I think, by putting on stage, putting in the stories, suddenly there’s a transformative element there. So I think it’s something that I rediscovered, post disability, and rediscovered with new purpose,” says our new friend (made in 2024), Regan Linton.

Barry’s back, and guide dog Oyster too, joining us on our final episode of the year to speak with Linton to finish 2024 off with a bang.

This week we’re speaking with theatre and VoiceOver artist, performer, writer, and educator/advocate Regan Linton about finding one’s voice and using it optimally as she has had to before and since the accident she experienced around her college years. Linton is one of our new pals from the disabled artist’s retreat in Mount Vernon, Maine over the previous summer and together we’re looking back over our time together at Drama Club Camp.

We talk cross-disability solidarity, along with intersecting access needs, as Linton shares about her experience living as a wheelchair user. She shares with us about how theatre became a part of her life (both pre and post accident that caused paralysis from the chest down. She tells us about the road trip she took through southern states immediately after this year’s election on her way to Warm Springs, Georgia, a special spot for her study of disabled president Franklin D. Roosevelt, a part adapted/and being played by Regan on stage as we discuss staying locked in our own bubbles vs being more open to other people’s lived experiences which helps us better understand our own overall.

We’re looking back at the week we spent together getting to know each other, including the road trip we went on in Linton’s wheelchair accessible van, an adventure from Maine to Boston, Mass, interdependence being key with our friend Regan and a key theme for this show.

We’re talking the umbrella of disability and disability experience with social change agent and artist and expert Regan Linton, as she shares about her own internal revolution, on Outlook on the final show of 2024.

To check out more about our guest this week, her VoiceOver and educational work plus so much more, visit:

https://www.reganlinton.com

Q: What do Lego and musical theatre have in common?

A: Our guest for this second last show of 2024 that’s what.

This week on Outlook we’re speaking with our new friend Matthew Shifrin, someone we met with the rest of the gang at the drama camp/artist’s retreat we attended in Mount Vernon, Maine over the summer.

We spend the first half of this episode talking all things accessible Lego as Matthew shares about how the world-wide children’s activity was finally made accessible for him on his 13th birthday, about his visit to LEGO HQ in Denmark, and how he’s created Bricks For The Blind, a non-profit organisation bringing sighted allies and blind testers/users together to adapt 220 complex sets in its first year in operation, not to mention unthought-of uses for the famous stackable blocks.

In the second half of this second last show of ours for 2024, we hear about how Matt’s love of musical theatre began, including learning to play accordion in a week to attend an Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and his work at one time with a gesture coach, Matt being kind enough to share with us and the listeners a bit of his immense musical talents with a few songs from his various performances such as the musical he wrote about his Jewish grandmother.

Bonus Material: we’ve included a second song (two-for-one) for this episode of the podcast which wasn’t included for the live airing on Radio Western originally. And, whether sighted or blind/young or simply young-at-heart, go check out Bricks For The Blind to learn more about how LEGO’s being made accessible, one brick at a time, by Matthew Shifrin and friends:

https://bricksfortheblind.org

From dusk till dawn. It’s always darkest before the dawn, but what’s wrong with dusk? Where’s the beauty in it?

It’s December and nearly are we arriving at the shortest, longest, darkest day/night of the year.. On our International Day of Persons With Disabilities 2024 episode, we are discussing disability within a larger framework of discussion, expanding into age and the changes it brings, including experience with illness and disabilities as we all, inevitably, get older.

Through a sudden scare with the sight in his right eye, Frank Bruni goes ahead, in his book, to explore a shifting perspective on themes of vulnerability, ageing, and the perspectives that come from a life turned into life lessons well earned. This week on Outlook we discuss New York Times columnist Frank Bruni’s medical memoir The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found which came out a few years back.

We examine themes from the book such as light and dark from the images held in the book’s title referring to beauty found in the dusk and the influence of language and using such words as “affliction” and the negative weight such a word holds for the imagination.

We need more thoughtfully written books like Frank’s to normalise disability as a part of all our lives. Co-host Kerry stumbled upon this one and, upon reading, wanted to review it on the show, to explore how those who gain valuable lived experience of disability suddenly, or later in life, can still write about these things from a thoughtful and careful place with sensitivity and wisdom.

Find the book available in various formats here:

https://www.amazon.ca/Beauty-Dusk-Vision-Lost-Found/dp/1982108576

Co-host Kerry’s back!

Sister/co-host Kerry returns and is live in studio after being away for a month. It’s a month away from Christmas on this late November, mixed bag show.

This week we discuss what was and what has been, with a badly sprained ankle, Kerry luckily got all her Dublin exploring out of the way, mostly. And Brian has been taking action regarding his mental and physical health. We talk about Others Like Me: The Lives of Women Without Children book release and the unfortunate lack of access in audiobook versions available for those, like some blind people, who would prefer or are best able to read any book in its audible format. Also, Kerry shares about her recent literary and media wins with The Toronto Star and CBC Radio.

Kerry is wearing her Poets For Harris t-shirt in protest, while accepting results while Brian broke the pool, referring back and ahead to the 2003 Elf film which is over 20 years old this December. This upcoming Christmas. We’re looking forward but we are also looking back, on Kerry’s time in Ireland this last time, as well as the holidays and traditions of the season, along with recent guests.

It was a big deal, having/seeing her writing in newsprint - check out a link to Kerry’s Toronto Star travel essay here:

https://www.thestar.com/life/travel/i-m-blind-but-i-still-wanted-to-experience-my-beloved-ireland-through-my-other/article_84ee3c60-983e-11ef-9c6e-ef822316d85c.html

And listen to Kerry on CBC radio’s Fresh Air:

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/audio/9.6567168

In preschool, her teachers noticed she wasn’t hearing and she soon got hearing aids, but it wasn’t until she was in her teens that our guest on Outlook this week had to face that she was losing vision as well.

Natalie Shearer is with us, for one of our final interviews of 2024, to discuss her position as an advocate, with her diagnosis of Usher syndrome. She’s telling us about what eventually caught her attention and made her sit up straight, seriously thinking about the necessity of learning to use a white cane, facing blindness head on.

From Two Canes Consulting, job as Head of Accessibility and Operations at Lotus (wearable assistive tech), to her position as Usher Syndrome Canadian Coalition’s Ambassador. So with her lifelong experiences with both disability and chronic illness, Natalie Shearer is eager to get back to accessibility and community.

And community is built through connections, one of which led to Natalie coming on our show in the first place. Thanks to Anne Mok (Purpose In View) for the intro.

Check out the wearable ring Lotus Natalie speaks about in this episode:

https://getlotus.com

Words like “childless” and “blindness” are both too harsh for some ears, often diluted by using other words or terms. These are conversations we on Outlook seek to take on and not hide from every day because we’re living it.

November 5th is the official North American release of Others Like Me: The Lives of Women Without Children by writer and translator Nicole Louie and this week sister/co-host Kerry is taking a deeply personal dive into the book’s themes.

Kerry and Nicole met online six years ago when Louie Was on the end of a years-long search for others like her, in the sense that they were not mothers, could not be, chose not to be in her pursuit to write a book about a subject often shied away from.

There are plenty of misconceptions around “childlessness” in society and how we’re less vital to the world because we’re not reproducing for the next generation, but Nicole has pushed back on that message in OLM and in the work she does surrounding the topic. On this episode we hear from Nicole Louie about her first book and why she wanted to have the conversation to begin with, the over-decade long road to publication, and her and Kerry share about the growth of their friendship and collaboration during the writing process, including the book club discussion Kerry was lucky to get to join, at a special spot in Dublin, as one of the featured women appearing within its pages.

Nicole shares about things like the research process, her on-the-ground time when she visited Kerry in Canada and when Kerry then visited her in Ireland, and the audiobook narration experience she had in studio, as she comes into Kerry’s virtual Outlook studio for a chat.

This is not an anti-natalist position book, but rather the further opening of a discussion on the rights and freedoms of women and a dialogue between women and their partners, families, and communities on a choice for a life, a path different from what we’re taught, as girls, about our sole job being to grow up, get pregnant, and become mothers.

Kerry is very glad this book is out, after so long, and she wanted to use her platform with this show to talk about this intersectionality, of the lives of many others, that’s not always easy or painless or certain, but just that her friendship with Nicole and her own search to find community have brought her to where she is and she wants girls and women to know they have options for different paths in life.

It’s a book, by one woman, interspersed with the stories of fourteen more including Kerry’s story. To check out more about Others Like Me: The Lives of Women Without Children go to the North American publisher’s website for more information:

https://houseofanansi.com/products/others-like-me

While Kerry is still in Ireland and away from the mic, this week there’s a special spot filler in her seat. We’re talking magic and monsters on what we’ve coined our Monster Mixed Bag show.

This week on Outlook, the Fab Four return, including sister/co-host Kerry and boyfriend Barry in Northern Ireland and brother Brian and friend Nefertiti Matos Olivares, visiting from New York City, in studio after her first appearance as our guest back in July and the show where we visited Perkins School for The Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts as a group.

Nef is visiting Ontario and Brian has been showing her around its capital, around London, and even Kerry’s house (without Kerry herself being present). The four of us discuss the adventures Brian and Nef have been having, including tours of Toronto and its Islands, an accessible art gallery experience at Tangled Art + Disability, and a proper Kijewski immersion around the Woodstock area.

While Kerry and Barry share about watching two wildly different retellings of Dracula (both audio described) and tell tales of a spooky ghost bus excursion, in Dublin, along with their awesome hotel find at an historic spot included on said spooky tour during their pre-Halloween visit to Bram Stoker’s Dublin.

Sharp and stabby, flaming hot like the fiery depths of hell, this is Halloween on Outlook as Kerry experiences the holiday, Irish style (including trying monster themed snacks) and tells all on the show on this final episode of October.

Learn more about Tangled Art + Disability:

https://tangledarts.org

Listen to the four of us back in July on Nef’s first Outlook appearance:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2024-07-15-scars-the-oscars-the-voice/id1527876739?i=1000664231625

And us four exploring Perkins School for the Blind:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2024-09-23-our-field-trip-to-perkins-school/id1527876739?i=1000671209448

Frogs and toads, rubber ducks, and loons - oh my!

It’s time for Part Two - this week on Outlook we share the second half of our audio scrapbook of our week in Mount Vernon, Maine this summer for Drama Club Camp.

Last week we heard from several of the others in attendance and this week we continue hearing from those from our "cast of characters,” as our host called it.

Host Scott spoke with us last time about his philosophy of “one step, two step, three” and this week we further explore the bonds of friendship and collaboration in working toward a theatre piece featuring the blind aesthetic, along with loons on a lake and six blind people jumping in to swim with them.

We hear from Scott’s partner, in work and in life, Shannen about his hopes for their inn and artist retreat, plus we hear from Chef Jeanelle and cross-disability friend and collaborator Regan. It’s a fun-filled dive into the week that was.

This episode features interviews with Regan Linton, Jeanelle Krawchuk, and Shannon Morrison.

It is dedicated to Brian’s longtime friend and drummer Andrew McIntyre (1978-2024). RIP.

The clip from “Frog and Toad Aren't Friends” found in this episode is taken from Meaning No Harm by Fowler featuring drums by Andrew. Find it here:

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

And learn more about Scott and Shannon at:

https://www.dramaclubproductions.com