This week, a new roleplaying game gives folks in the workplace a chance to be a mythical Appalachian monster. Also, southeast Ohio’s Nelsonville Music Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary in June. We talk with the founder about what keeps people coming back. And, members of a Ukrainian Catholic church in Wheeling, West Virginia, make pierogies for their community every week. What makes them so good?
‘Muddling Through’ 2020: A Year of Challenge and Adaptation
Kevin Koran, Ed Gabriels & Trey Kay after a cold open-water swim.Richard Appleman
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2020 has required a lot from us all. It’s been a year of challenge and adaptation.
Us & Them host Trey Kay recalls the line in a holiday classic “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” that says, “we’ll have to muddle through somehow.” None of us had any idea how much muddling 2020 would demand. We’ve faced the pandemic and its consequences and a contentious national election that highlight the divisions in our nation. The year presented a series of choices with a clear outcome: sink or swim.
Moving ahead, Trey looks at the adaptations he’s made and which he might adopt long term.
Oh, and spoiler alert: he’s learning to like swimming outside in ice water!
This episode of Us & Them is presented with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council and the CRC Foundation.
Subscribe to Us & Them on Apple Podcasts, NPR One, RadioPublic, Spotify, Stitcher and beyond. You also can listen to Us & Them on WVPB Radio — tune in on the fourth Thursday of every month at 8 p.m., with an encore presentation on the following Saturday at 3 p.m.
Ed Gabriels
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Trey Kay before swimming in the Hudson River on Christmas Eve 2020. The water temperature was 33.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
Ed Gabriels
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Trey Kay breaking a sheet of ice before swimming in North Lake in Elizaville, NY.
Trey Kay & David Temple on Christmas Eve 2019 performing "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas"
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This week, a new roleplaying game gives folks in the workplace a chance to be a mythical Appalachian monster. Also, southeast Ohio’s Nelsonville Music Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary in June. We talk with the founder about what keeps people coming back. And, members of a Ukrainian Catholic church in Wheeling, West Virginia, make pierogies for their community every week. What makes them so good?
Monsters in the workplace? Maybe. Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh is developing a team building game using Appalachian cryptids like Bigfoot and the Flatwoods Monster. Inside Appalachia’s Mason Adams spoke with Jessica Hammer, associate professor and director of the university’s Center for Transformational Play, to learn more.
Across the nation, more than 390,000 children rely on foster care, while a shortage of licensed foster homes is creating a growing crisis. As May marks National Foster Care Month, this encore episode of Us & Them explores the lives of children, foster parents, and families navigating a system under strain.
