WYSO Weekend: Recent Episodes
Jerry Kenney
WYSO Weekend is WYSO's Radio Magazine. Host Jerry Kenney brings you the news of issues, interviews, arts and cultural events from across the Miami Valley.
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the cancellation of a lot of summer events in the Miami Valley - Fraze Pavilion concerts, local water parks, and several 4th of July fireworks shows, just to name a few. Other events around the state are sharing that fate. In early March, when Ohio had yet to see a confirmed case of COVID-19, officials decided to drastically pare back the Arnold Sports Festival, one of Columbus’s premier sports events. Now, through public records and interviews compiled for Ohio Public Radio, WOSU’s Nick Evans reconstructs how officials arrived at what they called a gut-wrenching decision.
Social distancing is here for the foreseeable future. But for people who are blind, contact with others can be essential for many daily life tasks. Community Voices producer Susan Byrnes tells us how one person without sight is managing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As Ohio rolls out plans to reopen its economy, the economic fallout continues. The state is struggling to process the record number of unemployment claims filed during the pandemic. Millions of Americans are still waiting for their federal stimulus checks -- like Dayton 28-year-old single mom Dejanee Coaston, who lives with her daughter on the Westside of Dayton. When the coronavirus shutdown took effect, she lost most of her hours at her restaurant job and quickly fell behind. After weeks of scrambling Coaston finally started a new job at a factory but the damage is already done. Her rent is late and her landlord’s threatening to evict the family from their rented home. Coaston tells WYSO the situation is all the more difficult because she only recently got back on her feet after last year’s tornado outbreak.
If you’re looking for something fun to do while staying at home, Miami Valley museums may have you covered. They’ve been beefing up their virtual products to keep patrons, both new and old, well cultured while quarantined. Community Voices producer Jason Reynolds has been on a lot of online tours lately.
Over the past few weeks, the COVID-19 crisis has completely upended life as we know it. Dayton Daily News investigative reporter Josh Sweigert has been reporting on how the pandemic is affecting the people and businesses here in the Miami Valley, and he joins us today to talk a little bit about what he's found.
Shoes 4 the Shoeless is a local nonprofit that’s usually out there making sure that kids who need shoes get a pair. But now that the coronavirus has changed so many things, they turned their attention to making sure everyone in the community gets enough to eat. WYSO’s Jason Reynolds has our story.
It’s not often that we touch on stories like that of 10-year-old Takoda Collins. The boy, abused both physically and sexually for years, died back in December. Since then, Takoda’s father has been arrested, along with two other women living in the home. And it’s been revealed that, despite numerous complaints from teachers and others over the years, the police, courts and children's services across multiple jurisdictions were not able to connect — at least, not in time to save Takoda’s life. Polly Parks and Karen Bocko are founders of a group called Takoda’s Call. Polly and Karen were so moved by what they heard — so outraged — they’re organizing people together to ask questions about how children are being cared for here in the Miami Valley.
A coalition of organizations formed after the Memorial Day tornado outbreak gathered on Thursday to provide updates on disaster recovery progress. After the meeting we spent some time with Laura Mercer, executive director of The Miami Valley Long Term Recovery Operations Group, to get some of those updates.
Investigations into the death of 10-year-old Takoda Collins are continuing. Despite years of alleged abuse by his father, Al Mclean, and complaints from school officials, Mclean removed the boy from school in order to homeschool him. Now, some people are saying it’s time for Ohio to change its homeschooling laws. They say Takoda’s case is a wake-up call - and changes in state law are necessary in order to protect students who are at risk of child abuse - and who are removed from school. To discover more on the ins and outs of homeschooling, and what protections are in place for children at risk, we spoke with Milton Gaither, a professor at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. Gaither has written extensively on homeschooling in America and is the author of the book “Homeschool: An American History.”