NPR: Jazz on Thursday Night 542m6y

Almost half a million Coloradans have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. While that number indicates a promising start on the road to the state’s pandemic recovery, advocates say vaccine distribution has been marred by inequity.

One way to take care of yourself during the coronavirus pandemic is to stay connected to your loved ones, but what happens when you have a disagreement or a falling out with the people you’re supposed to feel most connected to, and how does that affect your mental health?

Doc Eason has been a Snowmass staple for visitors and locals for over four decades. His card tricks and sleight of hand magic delighted audiences at the Tower Restaurant’s bar until it closed in 2004, and he took his act to the StoneBridge Inn, where he performed right up until the pandemic shutdowns last March. He’s performed at venues and parties around the world, and has been named the Magician of the Year by Hollywood’s Magic Castle five times. According to Eason, the magic behind his act is connecting with audiences throughout the course of his career.

In a normal year, local musician Shea Freedom can be found tearing up the stage at Belly Up in Aspen or performing for ersby on main street in Carbondale, but when the pandemic hit, his gigs were cancelled. As protests and social justice movements spread across the country, that forced free time gave Freedom a moment to reflect on what he was seeing and he used his creativity as a way to process everything.

It may be a new year, but the stresses and challenges from 2020 seem to be trickling into 2021. At the national level, the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol by right-wing extremists. Locally, people continue to navigate the financial difficulties that have come along with the ongoing pandemic. It has been widely reported that alcohol has become one of the nation’s key coping mechanisms, with consumption rising sharply among adults.

Traditionally on Martin Luther King Day, the Aspen Chapel invites locals to cook a special dinner for people who visit the Aspen Homeless Shelter . Last year, nearly a hundred adults and children gathered for the annual meal at the chapel. “It’s always a lovely experience of doing everything together, but this year with COVID-19, we obviously couldn’t have a hundred people in a room together,” said Nicholas Vesey, the minister at the Aspen Chapel.

Back in 2019, licensed clinical social worker and therapist Kathleen Callahan was approached by Lindze Letherman and Quinn Gallagher about starting a mental health group for hospitality and restaurant workers. Letherman and Gallagher both work at Hooch, in downtown Aspen, and offered the space as a meeting place for local service industry workers to talk about their unique challenges and each other. Since the pandemic hit, the group “Hospitality Matters,” hasn’t been meeting in-person, but they’ve continued their meet-ups virtually .

On a recent morning, local naturalist Rebecca Weiss led a small group of amatuer birders through the frozen cattails near the John Denver Sanctuary in Aspen. Dawning binoculars and masks, they stood at the edge of the Roaring Fork River to get a closer look at an American Dipper bobbing in and out of the frigid water as it foraged. “We heard this gorgeous singing and we were all looking and listening as hard as we could to try to pinpoint the sound and who was making it,” Weiss said. “And finally, we got a line of sight on the dipper.”

Before COVID-19 hit, arts and cultural events and institutions made up 12 percent of the Pitkin County economy, according to a 2019 study recently released by the Aspen Chamber Resort Association . That equals nearly half a billion dollars in economic output, and it’s higher than the statewide average. The monetary value ripples up and down the valley, and data from 2018 point to over 3,000 jobs within the Roaring Fork Valley coming from the creative economy. That industry continues to be hit by the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, but there’s hope that historically strong for the arts will give local arts organizations the financial boost they need as they navigate the road ahead.

For many of us, the ongoing pandemic has impacted our mental health in surprising ways, and this includes young people. In the latest conversation from our “High Risk At High Altitude" series, Aspen Public Radio talked with local mental health expert Sonja Linman about what she’s learned from her work with local kids and their families.

Karen Koenemann, Pitkin County public health director, will spend her last day in the position on Friday, Dec. 4. She has held the position since the department's inception in early 2017. Koenemann spoke with Aspen Public Radio about the ups and downs of guiding the department through the pandemic. What has been the greatest challenge of your time here? What has been the hardest obstacle to overcome? Obviously the COVID-19 pandemic is the greatest challenge of the globe. On a personal level for many people, it’s one of the biggest challenges that they might be facing. As well as on a professional level for me, it’s certainly has been a huge challenge. It's a global pandemic. It has touched every single person on this planet in some form or fashion, and to be able to be on the forefront of that work – we in public are the first responders to this pandemic and it has brought with it challenges and successes. I certainly can't imagine anything more challenging in my career. Has it been

Many people feel like the last several months have completely turned their world upside down. From shutdowns, to civil unrest, to new rules popping up all the time, to a seemingly unending presidential election, people are run down.

The ski mountains are open and Christmas is less than a month away. In Aspen, many businesses reliant on tourists and the dollars they bring during the snowier months will face a bevy of new challenges in a mid-pandemic winter.

With no end in sight for the pandemic and cases surging in the Roaring Fork Valley, many nonprofits have had to shift online and rethink the way they operate. And for some, that’s had an unexpected silver lining. That’s the case for the local English tutoring and cultural exchange organization, English In Action. They help match adult immigrants with trained volunteer tutors in the Roaring Fork Valley. The program is so popular there’s about 170 people on the waitlist and some participants wait up to a year or more.

Even before the pandemic effectively scuttled human interaction, city officials in Rifle say they noticed that neighbors just weren’t being that neighborly anymore. People were looking at their phones instead of saying hello to each other on the street; COVID-19 only made things worse. “Many people are even scared to look at you like you’re gonna get the cooties if your eyes meet, and I can’t stand it. I don’t want to live in that kind of world,” said Rifle City Manager Scott Hahn.

As COVID-19 cases continue to rise in the valley, local schools are having to rethink their plans for the winter months. As of last week, nearly 250 students were quarantined in the Roaring Fork School District and the entire Roaring Fork High School moved to online learning for the week after several staff were exposed to the virus. “It’s very disruptive, the pivoting back and forth between distance learning and in-person learning,” said the district’s superintendent Rob Stein.

All three counties in the Roaring Fork Valley are experiencing their highest rates of new COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began about nine months ago. Area hospitals are worried that increasing spread of the virus could bring an overwhelming burden in the coming months and bracing for a grim road ahead.

Do you believe in ghosts? That’s one question historians with the Glenwood Springs Historical Society say they hear a lot—especially around Halloween. The organization’s executive director Bill Kight says that’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. “If it takes a ghost story to create an interest in history, then I’m all for it,” he said. Kight says that the mystery surrounding Doc Holliday’s death in 1887 at the Hotel Glenwood, which burned down years later, has continued to fascinate Glenwood Springs locals and visitors, and developed its own spooky folklore. He spoke to Aspen Public Radio about some of the city’s more haunted history—and shared his own ghost story—ahead of this year’s Halloween weekend.

Do you believe in ghosts? That’s one question historians with the Glenwood Springs Historical Society say they hear a lot—especially around Halloween. The organization’s executive director Bill Kight says that’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. “If it takes a ghost story to create an interest in history, then I’m all for it,” he said. Kight says that the mystery surrounding Doc Holliday’s death in 1887 at the Hotel Glenwood, which burned down years later, has continued to fascinate Glenwood Springs locals and visitors, and developed its own spooky folklore. He spoke to Aspen Public Radio about some of the city’s more haunted history—and shared his own ghost story—ahead of this year’s Halloween weekend.

English in Action hosted their annual Immigrant Voices event from the Third Street Center in Carbondale on Sunday, Oct. 25. With just family in the audience, five different speakers shared their stories this year. Aspen Public Radio will broadcast the full event on Sunday, November 8th at 7:00 p.m, or you can listen to the individual stories right now using the links below. Follow along as host Alya Howe introduces each speaker before they share their unique journey to the Roaring Fork Valley.