(Graphic by Lyvian Sieg)
Welcome to Speak Easy, the Alexandria Times’ first podcast. Each month, our reporters will sit down with noteworthy residents, business owners, artists and community leaders to chat about all things Alexandria. Don’t worry about missing an episode; Speak Easy is available on the Apple Podcast app, Google Play and Spotify, and all episodes will be archived on the Times website.
Episode 17: Joe Cerutti
In 2020, the Alexandria Times launched its first podcast, Speak Easy, and over the last year reporter-turned-managing-editor Cody Mello-Klein has spoken with the people who make Alexandria tick.
From Del Ray living legend Pat Miller and City Councilor John Chapman to director of the Alexandria Health Department Dr. Stephen Haering and George Mason Elementary School music teacher Heather Rosner, Speak Easy captured the city’s voices in a new way. The show, by virtue of when it debuted, also helped chronicle the ways that residents were adapting to life in the pandemic, as they found new ways of working, eating and connecting.
Teaching music and making holiday magic over Zoom Hannah Natanson In the warm, sunny days of August, Heather Rosner’s principal turned to her (on Zoom, of course) and asked, “Are you going to do a winter concert?” “Are you kidding me?” Rosner, a music teacher in Northern Virginia, remembers thinking. “There’s no way. How could I?” But in a world reshaped by the coronavirus a world in which so much about school and the way she teaches children to play instruments had changed or been lost Rosner found she was unwilling to give up yet another thing. So, four months later she donned a tan bathrobe, grabbed a container of popcorn and pranced into view of her computer camera.