Title (as given to the record by the creator): Disability Saves the World with Dr. Fady Shanouda Episode 10 with guest Tracy Tidgwell
Date(s) of creation: December, 2019
Creator / author / publisher: Tracy Tidgwell, Fady Shanouda
Physical description: Audio recording and transcript
Reference #: DisabilitySavesTheWorld-10
Source: Tracy Tidgwell
Links: [ PDF ] [ Disability Saves the World podcast ] [ No Body is Disposable ]
Disability Saves the World with Dr. Fady Shanouda
Episode 10 with guest Tracy Tidgwell
Disability Saves the World with Dr. Fady Shanouda is a podcast that brings insights from disabled scholars, activists, artists, and allies in disability and mad studies from around the world. Each episode is available in audio, captioned video (no visuals), and typed transcript. https://www.fadyshanouda.com/podcast
The podcast is hosted by Fady Shanouda, a self identified disabled, fat, POC, immigrant and settler scholar in the department of Women and Gender Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Episode 10 (December 2019) welcomes disabled fat queer activist and artist Tracy Tidgwell. Tracy is a fat, queer, disabled, white, learner, and facilitator working in the folds of art and activism. Tracy is co-editor of the book The Future is Fat, a collection of scholarly and artistic interventions that reimagine understandings of time to allow for new expressions of fat experience, and a member of Fat Rose, an art and activism incubator for fat liberation. https://www.fadyshanouda.com/podcast/episode/3edde726/tracy-tidgwell
Listen:
Transcript
(Music)
Fady Shanouda (host)
Hi everyone. It’s been a few months since I uploaded an episode but Disability Saves the World is officially back. You can call this season two of the series. The new schedule for the podcast will be one episode every two weeks. Don’t forget to add the podcast to your library so you’ll be notified when new episodes are uploaded. For now, let’s get to today’s episode. This podcast brings you insights from leading experts in disability and mad studies from around the world. You’ll hear about the research and work of disabled scholars, activists, artists, and our allies. You also get some insight into their lives, their favorite non-ds activities, hobbies, and adventures. Most importantly you’ll get to hear how they think disability can save the world. My name again is Fady Shanouda. I use he/him pronouns. I identify as a fat, cis, disabled man of color. On today’s show, I am joined by Tracy Tidgwell, the Research Project Manager for Revision. The Center for Art and Social Justice at Guelph University. Tracy who uses she/they pronouns is a community organizer, researcher, activist, and cultural producer who has been in the folds of Toronto’s queer arts communities over the past many years in performance, video, analog photography, and writing. Tracy is also a fat activist working with Fat Rose and an organization building a more radical fat liberation movement. I got a chance to talk to Tracy in mid-may about her work. (Tracy – even before the pandemic fat people deal with extraordinarily disabling conditions in the medical systems that has become even more concerning when we start talking about survival in some cases) (Fady) Their life outside of academia. (Tracy – she’s like okay thanks, and then she sort of tries to start moving in this sea of people towards that space and I’m just like jaw-dropped) (Fady) And to ask them, how they think disability can save the world.
(Music ends)
Hi Tracy. Thank you for coming on the podcast.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Hi Fady.
Fady Shanouda (host)
It’s so great to have you. I want to jump right into segment one what I like to call inside the project, the research, the work, the art. I want to start by asking how did you get involved in disability studies, in mad studies, in this field, in this discipline.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Oh, yeah. Well, I come to disability studies, in fact through fatness, through my own fat identity. My eventually, my activism, and then eventually through family and community connection, and I came into adulthood in a lesbian feminist community that included the leadership of disabled, and deaf women and trans people, and that really introduced me as a pretty young adult in my very early my, actually at 20 introduced me to disability and deaf culture, accessibility. And this really helped shape how I understand myself, and my own body in relationship, to my fatness, to my ability, to my disability, and then later it became more about academics. I did a MA Studies in Theory, Culture, and Politics that explored the body, and affect, and feeling time, and politics and ecstatic experience as personal political openings, and fat studies, and disability studies really help shape that thinking. And I would say most of all it’s grounded in my own fat identity, and that brought me eventually to some of the work I’m doing now with Fat Rose and the nobody’s disposable coalition. And all of this really is grounded in the value of my life, in the value of fat, and disabled lives in general, and about broadening the way that we think about disability, and with the way we think about fatness to include the ways in which we actually live it.
Fady Shanouda (host)
And so is there a specific kind of topic or project that you did want to talk to us about today one at the intersections of disability and fatness.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
I think I’d really like to talk to you about some of the organizing I’ve been doing, and some of the work that we’ve been doing collectively through Fat Rose, and how that’s connected to the Nobody Is Disposable campaign. This is all really relevant anyway but especially in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic some of the things that we’re working towards become even more relevant, even more poignant.
Fady Shanouda (host)
Of course, So maybe we’ll start with a question about like, how did you get involved in Fat Rose.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Oh wow! Okay. So I have a history a long history of working in fat activism kind of at the intersection with cultural production, performance, and art. And I have never really left that part of my work or ethos behind but when I started seeing calls for interest in a fat collective group. I don’t even know if at the time that message was about organizing or what it was but I think it was a fat study group on fat liberation about a year and a half ago maybe I got really excited, and I joined right away so I was excited to be thinking and learning again with other fat people, and other fat and disabled people. So I jumped on that opportunity and it really has grown into a cross-movement organizing group. So organizing fat people into intersectional fat liberation thinking about how that connects and interlocks with other social movements, and a lot of us having had the experience of being in so-called radical spaces or so-called progressive or liberal spaces, and fatness. Even sometimes in disability centered spaces fatness being sort of left under the mat at the door, you know, like still encountering a lot of fatphobia in our social and political interactions, and so so many of us wanted to kind of bring fatness to the table and talk about how it interacts and how it intersects with many of the other liberation movements we’re involved with around, race around, ability around, disability, class, and so on.
Fady Shanouda (host)
Yeah, I mean as a like a fat identified person myself it’s so exciting to hear, right of this group and to kind of look through the website as I was earlier today, and kind of finding the things that you’re doing. I mean even just the Instagram page to me seems like a radical piece of cultural production, and like all these fat people represented, all these fat ideas, right. Like so presented but the fat body is always under attack, right. And in particularly now when it comes to the pandemic when, you know, I think our bodies can become, you know, considered uh medically inferior and so, therefore, you know, less likely to get the attention of medical professional, and so I wondered if you could tell us a little bit about the organizing that’s happening around, you know, the pandemic, and ensuring that people know their rights.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Well, I’ll just start by saying that even before the pandemic fat people deal with extraordinarily disabling conditions in the medical systems that we encounter and that has become even more concerning when we start talking about crisis care, or triage care or care that sort of begins to make judgment on who deserves care and treatment, and survival in some cases. Fat people are already understood as closer to death having shorter life spans even though that’s not necessarily factual, and even if it were we deserve care, and we deserve survival, and we deserve lives. So Fat Rose is part of the Nobody’s Disposable coalition and you can find that website at nobodyisdisposable.org and I’m sure Fady you’ll.
Fady Shanouda (host)
Yeah, I will link it.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Yeah, link it in this episode notes. You can also search for the Nobody’s Disposable hashtag because it’s actually taken off quite amazingly and is being used very vastly around North America and even in the UK. And Nobody is Disposable coalition is really working hard against discrimination in triage during this pandemic. Right now they have we have an open letter to care providers and hospitals that you can find on the website, Know your Rights Toolkit that outlines the rights of fat and disabled Americans actually although there is a UK document on the site as well, and we’re currently working on adapting this to a Canadian context you and I Fady so that’s really exciting but the Know your Rights Toolkit is not – it is American-centric, US-centric but it also provides tons of strategies for getting the care that you need. Surviving extraordinarily biased medical systems. So it’s not useless to folks who aren’t American it actually has lots of scenarios, case studies phrases that you can practice saying, things you should bring with you to an emergency room. So all kinds of really relevant, and helpful information even if the right sections are really American-focused. And this campaign is also bringing to the forefront how important it is to think about fat bias and racism, and how they work together, and that these weight discriminatory policies and practices especially under triage are disproportionately affecting people of color. In part that’s because of the comorbidity approach. So if you have these coexisting conditions or characteristics, or you live with certain health situations you may be less likely to receive triage care than someone who they perceive will have a better quality of life or better survival, better chances of survival. And we know that people of color, and actually poor people as well people of lower socioeconomic status have higher rates of certain conditions. This is what the social determinants of health has shown us, and so we live with comorbidities more often than other people. Things like high blood pressure, diabetes, or other things, and disabled bodies, in particular, are seen as less deserving of survival as our fat bodies, and so the medical field is rediscriminating based on race basically, and we have a whole history of that in Canada and in the US. And I think we’re seeing too right now that people of color are the people in essential worker jobs. They’re at higher risk of contracting a virus, they do less well once they have it because of all the things I’ve been mentioning, and less likely to get care based on these protocols. So Nobody’s Disposable is really working towards fighting for care that’s not based on comorbidities, and really grounded in this idea that all lives have value, all lives are worth nurturing, and surviving, and caring for. And it also, you know, this hashtag, this concept of Nobody is Disposable links us to all kinds of people, all kinds of bodies, peoples, and people in prisons, people who – without housing, drug users, people whose lives are perceived to be disposable. So I think that’s part of the reason why it has really just exploded because it is so intersectional because it makes these important connections between fat oppression and other forms of oppression. This piece that Fat Rose was trying to address from the get-go, you know, like how do we bring this into an intersectional understanding of how we all experience capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, ableism, and how that, you know, there’s a complex set of things going on when you add in the fat experience.
Fady Shanouda (host)
I wonder if you could tell if you know of how people have taken up with the document or have even just the hashtag, right in compelling. and interesting ways. Do you have any stories that you might be able to share?
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Oh gosh! I don’t have anything in mind but I do know also because I am completely enamored with the Fat Rose Instagram account that there is a lot of activity, there’s lots of other social movement groups, and individuals really taking it up, taking selfies, holding up signs that say, that tell personal versions of not feeling disposable. Also employing the hashtag. So I wish I had a better story for this but I don’t. Sorry, Fady
Fady Shanouda (host)
No but I think that’s actually quite exciting, right. To hear that like, you know, I’ve seen these like people are holding you know just eight and a half by 11 pieces of white paper, right? They’ve, and they’ve taken the time to construct a message on this little piece of paper, this regular piece of paper, right that tries to tell the world that they’re more valuable right than all the dominant discourses out there say they are. And I think that’s a really talk about cultural production or art, or activism. All kind of rolled up into one.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Yeah, and I think it has been a really accessible way for people to get what is happening here like for us to tell our own stories, and to have our faces be shown, and to say like I value my life, and I value your life. And these approaches to understanding me aren’t good enough, and they’re unacceptable, and we aren’t disposable so I think it has been really creative, and connective, and really powerful.
Fady Shanouda (host)
Yay! That’s so exciting.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Another thing we’ve been doing is we’ve started a series of training that are really helpful around advocating for yourself, knowing your rights, knowing practicing how to talk about navigating healthcare. My friend and collaborator Max Airborne pointed out in the first workshop that one of the major strategies fat people use to navigate healthcare is to bring along a buddy, to bring along an advocate, or a friend, or an ally who will help witness, and help keep healthcare providers on track, and just generally support someone who’s navigating this very difficult situation, this very biased experience, and system where fat bodies are pretty much relegated to like worthlessness, and where most of our health conditions are blamed on our size, our weight. And that strategy of bringing a buddy is currently taken away from us because if you enter an emergency room because of having coronavirus or for any reason right now you cannot bring someone with you so this strategy is, you know, not available. And so learning how to talk about, learning how to ask for what you want, how to assert that how to read the room in a way, and figure out what to ask for next is something we’ve been practicing, and that’s been really intense, and very powerful. And we’re developing a second training right now on a kind of like broader sense, a broader approach to advocacy. So we’ll be opening those workshops up really soon as well.
Fady Shanouda (host)
I mean, you know, in trying to come up with the Know your Rights Canada, you know, are one that’s specifically for Canada alongside, you know, we’ve we can come up with scenarios, we can come up with different ways of saying things but there is nothing I think like the act of practicing that can really like hammer home the difficulty sometimes asking for something can be um especially when that thing you’re asking for is your survival, right, or your like continued existence, or for care even. When, you know, I feel like as fat people were often been told to be so small and to take up less room, and now we’re actually asking those same people to no take up as much room as you can, right. Be as loud as you can because that’s maybe the only way that you might be able to survive.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Exactly Fady. And it is a really important thing that we need to learn to do on our own in this context because we don’t, we can’t take people in there with us who might do it for us. We are in the training also talking about how an ally, or a loved one, or someone you trust, or an advocate might do that work from outside the institution of the hospital but, you know, as you pointed out this can be the difference between surviving and not surviving under the current pandemic.
Fady Shanouda (host)
And although we’re, you know, this we’re recording this in the middle of May and a lot of people will think that you know, the pandemic is winding down. We all know that a second wave is coming, and the second wave is going to be stronger than the first wave according to all the historical data on pandemics, and so this is going to be important, these are going to be important documents for people to have access to coming forward, and I’m really glad that like, you know, that you guys started this off, right that Fat Rose began this, and is teaching us how to protect ourselves.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Yeah, and I think this connects back to some of the original, I mean I think lots of fat people know this but some of, and live it, and we embody it, and but I think it comes back to some of Fat Rose’s original intent around having a structural analysis of fat oppression, moving beyond body positivity, looking to liberation movements to help us bring fatness to the table to help understand, help other movements understand that fatness is one of these intersecting points of oppression for so many of us, and is in part being perpetuated by so many of our so-called allies, or allied movements and, you know, I understand body positivity and personal transformation as one important part of fat liberation but we are also extremely aware that it’s important to build alternative realities, alternative truths, alternative pathways into living in fat bodies, and to understand that we have to change oppressive structures and systems. Moving beyond kind of like individualist thinking or individualist responsibility to seeing fatness is something that’s more complex than that.
Fady Shanouda (host)
Hearing you talk about this brings me so much joy. It really does and I’m so glad that this work is being taken up. Okay, so let’s jump into segment two what I like to call the middle or the liminal, and this is when I get to ask you questions about who you’re crushing, on that’s the first one. So do you have a current crush, someone either you can’t stop reading or you can’t stop recommending?
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Well, Fady, I am someone who has endless amounts of crushes, so can I name more than one?
Fady Shanouda (host)
Yes, of course.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
I feel like this is part of being a Libra. I would say that I am completely crushed out on Sondra Solovay who is a fat disabled lawyer based in California who has done so much work over the last decades around legal structural approaches to fatness, and human rights for fat, and disabled people. She always blows my mind every time I hear her speak, and I owe a lot of my understanding of legal, and legal structural perspectives to Sondra. And she’s published many things in academic books and journals. So I think I can’t name anything but we’ll be able to easily link to Sondra. I also am in huge admiration of Da’Shaun Harrison who is a non-binary abolitionist and community organizer, I think they’re based in Atlanta, and I recently read something by Da’Shaun called Fat People Must Become a Priority to the Left which really speaks to so much of what Fat Rose is aiming to get at. And then maybe my biggest academic crush at the moment is Caleb Luna who’s an academic, a Ph.D. candidate. I think at UC Berkeley, I think in Performance Studies. But Caleb does work on, I think on historicizing cultural representations of a fat embodiment with a really anti-colonial lens. Caleb is a fat queer of color also a performer, artist, and poet themself, and their Instagram page brings me so much breath, so much life. I don’t, I don’t even know that I would be the same person without the last several years of Caleb Luna’s Instagram, and their academic writing is also really right on.
Fady Shanouda (host)
Those are three awesome people to introduce to, you know, whoever is listening, including myself. Thank you for that. You are someone who as I said in the intro, you know, the community organizer is an artist, is someone involved in academia. I wonder if you have advice for young people in any of those fields kind of starting out. What would you tell them?
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Gosh. I mean I feel like any advice I give would be so maybe canned sounding really like cliched but I really think following your intuition is really helpful like being yourself, coming to the things you’re working on with your own truth. I think really leads to new pathways, and new under new ways of understanding whatever it is you’re passionate about. And I think the other piece of advice I would say is stay really connected, stay really connected to yourself but to your family, or your friends to your communities, because that’s where all the juice is, that’s the way we stay grounded, that’s the way that we, you know, staying connected. Is how we avoid objectifying people or abstracting from people or communities is by actually, you know, staying in conversation being a part of…yeah that’s what I would say.
Fady Shanouda (host)
That’s good. I mean I think I don’t think that’s canned at all actually. I haven’t heard that one before. I think it really sits with me like as some great advice, right. As someone who has created a chosen family, right but is also very much connected to like the community that I’m part of, the diaspora that I’m part of, and tries to homogenize them, right as much as possible to make things easy but they’re very much very heterogeneous, right they’re like very different this group of people that I try to kind of clump together. So I think that’s actually really excellent advice.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
But yeah, like when you stay connected like you can learn from the pieces that are part of you, and speak to you, and you can learn from the pieces that have helped you change, you know. When I look at some of my family of origin, and some of my communities of origin, and look at how I’ve grown and chosen some of those same things, and some different things it really has helped shape who I’ve become as a thinker and a creator, and how I move through the world.
Fady Shanouda (host)
Okay, let’s move on to segment three what I like to call outside the project, the research, the work, the art. Who is the most famous person you’ve met, and what was that experience like?
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Fady, I’ve met so many famous people!
Fady Shanouda (host)
I’ve never met any! How has everyone met so many famous people working?
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Where do I begin?
Fady Shanouda (host)
That’s unfair like they need to spread the wealth here.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Well, I guess I should – I guess I should say that famous is famous relative, and so… What does it mean? Like are they academically famous, are they gaymous or queer famous, as we like to say. But I will tell you one story that I love which is going to Carnegie Hall to see a Christmas concert in the mid-2000s. I went to see the Wainwright Family Christmas concert. I’d been living in Brooklyn with my girlfriend for one short year and I was really excited that I might have the possibility to see the Wainwright family play together, and I’m like such a long-time fan of so many of them. Of the McGarrigles and then Martha and Rufus Wainwright. And so I saw they were having like this family concert… So I’m enamored by the fact that I’m seeing this concert. I’m enamored by the space itself because it’s Carnegie Hall, and I was a really musical kid and I also really loved Alvin and the Chipmunks, and they were obsessed with playing Carnegie Hall. So it’s like this iconic space and I’m in the foyer, I’ve just arrived, I’m with my girlfriend, we’re in the foyer it’s packed like 3000 people are, you know, filing into the foyer and someone standing really close to me says do you know where the ticket booth is, and I turn around and it’s Parker Posey. It’s Parker Posey.
Fady Shanouda (host)
Oh my god!
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
And I tried to, I’m such a fan person, I’m such a gushy fan person that I’m like, I really try to pull it together, and play it cool, and I just with like a flat face say, yeah I think it’s over there. She’s like, okay thanks, and then she sort of tries to start moving in this sea of people towards that space, and I’m just jaw-dropped, and staring at Parker Posey feeling like Parker Posey just spoke to me.
Fady Shanouda (host)
I love Parker Posey. She’s so great!
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
She’s so cool!
Fady Shanouda (host)
The only good part of that superman returns movie.
I love that story. I fully thought you were gonna run into the Wainwrights.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
I know.
Fady Shanouda (host)
I love that.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
No, I didn’t, Parker Posey.
Fady Shanouda (host)
Okay, so what is an obscure fact you carry around, and when kind of when do you pull it out when there’s a lull in the conversation?
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
I don’t think I pull out obscure facts when there’s a lull in the conversation but I do know a few obscure facts.
Fady Shanouda (host)
Do share!
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
I wanted to share one but I don’t really know how to pronounce the language so I’m a little embarrassed to actually share this with you, Fady but one obscure fact that I know is that chickens drop their eggs, their feces, and their urine all from the same hole. They use one hole for everything, and there’s this mechanism it’s inside that sort of turns off the other functions so it can do what it needs to do.
Fady Shanouda (host)
So amazing.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
I can’t say it’s cochlea. I want to say cochlea but I know that’s the part of the ear, I can’t say the word.
Fady Shanouda (host)
That’s okay.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Okay but another really amazing weird fact that I know is that I’m from Nova Scotia which is traditionally Mi’kmaq territory, and has a very vast I mean culturally vast Mi’kmaq community now. Anyway, when you’re in Nova Scotia you’re never more than something like 50 kilometers from the ocean ever so it’s a very small province and it’s almost surrounded by water. It’s a peninsula, and so you never really more than like a 20 to 30-minute drive from the ocean no matter where you are. And even more cool is that you’re even closer to a freshwater source so there’s like over 3000 lakes in this tiny province, so everywhere you go is water, and I really love that about Nova Scotia.
Fady Shanouda (host)
I love Nova Scotia. I’ve only been there once but I got to drive there quite a bit because I had a rental car, and I remember that I thought that I was driving through a jungle of Christmas trees. I had never seen so many Christmas trees in one space before, and like you’re driving on a highway, you’re the only car there, and it’s just you know fields, and fields, and fields of Christmas trees, and I thought it was so magical, and I thought if I was here during the snow I would just think I wasn’t like transported to like a magical Christmas movie set or something.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
I think Nova Scotia produces a lot of Christmas trees actually.
Fady Shanouda (host)
Okay, that makes sense.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
There’s also still a lot of trees in Nova Scotia. Whenever I fly into Nova Scotia my girlfriend Jamie is often just completely amazed by only seeing trees and water like that’s all you see. You don’t see development, you don’t see hotels, you don’t even on the coast you don’t see that stuff, and she who’s American is always amazed that Nova Scotia is just so still so unpopulated.
Fady Shanouda (host)
Yeah.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Where did you go in Nova Scotia?
Fady Shanouda (host)
I actually went to Halifax but I was there to actually interview Catherine Frazee who is a very famous disability scholar, and rights activist, and I got to be with her for three days in her house interviewing her for a project that I was a part of. It was the coolest.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Oh, Fady.
Fady Shanouda (host)
Yeah, it was very very cool it’s like so exciting. That’s my famous person’s story.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Seriously, and I was gonna say academic crush.
Fady Shanouda (host)
Number four.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Total a root. Doesn’t Catherine Frazee live in the valley in the Annapolis Valley?
Fady Shanouda (host)
I think now they’ve moved to yeah like somewhere very warm in the US.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Oh okay, okay, okay. That makes sense, yeah.
Fady Shanouda (host)
All right. I want to know, what are you reading now, what is the book that’s on your bedside table?
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Oh, I’m having a really hard time focusing on reading during the pandemic.
Fady Shanouda (host)
Yes.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
So like extremely distracted all of the time but a book I keep coming back to, and sort of picking up and reading sections of is Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha who’s a queer disabled femme writer. She’s also an organizer, artist, and educator, and it really is – it is the kind of book you can pick up and read a section of and just, kind of feel punched in the gut each time. She’s always saying the most poignant incredible things, and it’s really grounded in life experience, and community experience, and in disability justice.
Fady Shanouda (host)
All right. And what hobby do you enjoy or um what activity do you do that brings you joy?
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Gosh. Well, right now one of the things that’s bringing me joy is having a backyard. I feel like I live in a very busy neighborhood, and the first month of the pandemic my neighborhood was quite quiet but I have to say as spring approaches and is here and it’s becoming more, and more beautiful out. My neighborhood is almost as if nothing is going on and it’s busy. It’s really busy you can’t really walk down the street without being next to people at all times, and so I have found – I’ve always found my back, I rent an apartment but I have a backyard. I’m very lucky. It’s just become increasingly more important to me to be back there, and we’ve been gardening back there a little bit seeds and working with the garden that was here and overgrown before we came which was mostly set up by this woman Irene who lived in this house decades ago. We learned about Irene through our neighbors. So I have to say like being in my yard, being with the plants, being with the fruit trees. Yeah, it’s been really, really a beautiful thing.
Fady Shanouda (host)
Yeah, I mean as someone who’s living in the suburbs like the privilege of a backyard is something that I’m very very aware of, and I have to admit that if, yeah it’s just a wonderful wonderful thing to have especially during this time I think the first thing that they should open if they’re gonna open anything is public parks because I think everyone should have access to nature.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
I know and I keep well we live quite near High Park and we walk there quite a bit, and I’ve just been finding that even it becomes so busy that it’s hard to not be really close up on people’s face all the time so I keep having visions of ordering like a kiddie pool from the home hardware down the street or something and having like a kiddie pool in my backyard because I can’t imagine being stuck in my apartment, and yard for the whole Toronto summer.
Fady Shanouda (host)
No, I mean I miss swimming so much it’s like the thing that brings me joy, and all the pools are closed, and so maybe I will order myself a kiddie pool but that’s not really swimming, that’s more like just sitting in your own filth.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Oh! I’m glad you love swimming we should do a fat swim sometime
Fady Shanouda (host)
I would love that. I would love that. All right. And I’ll end as I always do by asking you how do you think disability can save the world?
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Gosh. I think disability is saving the world by reminding us to nurture our interdependence, by putting the voices and leadership of people with lived experience at the center, and by showing us that slowness, that pacing… that timing is important, and sometimes that means it’s unimportant. Yeah, I think those are real gifts that I’ve received from disability community and disability studies.
Fady Shanouda (host)
That’s wonderful.
(Music)
Thank you Tracy for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.
Tracy Tidgwell (guest)
Thank you Fady, it’s been really fun.
Fady Shanouda (host)
All right, talk to you later.
Thanks again to Tracy for coming on the show. Get in touch by sending me an email at disabilitysavestheworld@gmail.com. If you’re interested in learning more about me check out my website FadyShanouda.com. This podcast is hosted, produced, and edited by me, Fady Shanouda. Thank you for listening and see you next time on Disability Saves the World.
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