Author: Trevor Harris

I got involved in community radio back in 1990 and later worked in public radio. I enjoy listening to people's stories. Collecting them seemed like a logical marriage of my love of audio gathering and preserving the stories of those around me.

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Field Notes

Field Notes: ‘Look at the stars and you’re looking back through time’

Looking up at the night skies in late fall and winter requires a special devotion. One needs tenacity – plus coat and gloves at the ready – to leave the warmth of inside and go find a dark place outside. It is there that you can best (re)discover the stars and planets that have dotted our skies since before time began.

In this Field Notes segment, astronomy educator Melanie Knocke – pronounced kuh-KNOW-kee – discusses how our winter sky viewing in the United States differs from summer observing. She also shares her simple remedy for preserving the night dark skies that are required for successful stargazing.

For ongoing night sky education, EarthSky news provides “updates on your cosmos and your world.” I find it to be a useful regular e-mail in my inbox.

Thanks to Melanie Knocke for the interview. And until next time, remember, your neighbors are more interesting than you think.

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Mo-Curious

Mo’ Curious: Memories From the Left End of the Dial

Back in 1972, radio station KOPN was founded to serve the Columbia, Missouri area. The station was licensed for broadcast early the next year and now – over 50 years later – the community radio station that wasn’t expected to survive is still going strong.

In 2022, the KOPN Oral History Project captured memories from the station’s founders, former staff and long-time programmers. This podcast episode draws from those oral histories to tell a history of the station.

An history about the life and times of Columbia, Missouri’s community radio station, KOPN.

Radio station KOPN is real and can be streamed here.

Thanks for listening to this podcast about the history of the 24th state. Catch more podcast episodes at MoCurious.com.

Stay curious, Missouri.

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Field Notes

Field Notes: Remembering School Integration

There is a time within memory when schools in America were segregated by race. Before 1954, the law of the land dictated that white children went to public schools and black children attended their own local and regional schools. Starting in 1955, public schools began the often painful process of bringing together black and white students in classrooms for the first time. Each community had its own story to tell. This is one of them.

In early 2022, students in Courtney Taylor’s Charleston, Missouri civics and history classes interviewed area residents with memories of this era.

As a new school year begins, it is worthwhile to listen to the recollections of these Missourians. Now community leaders and respected elders, these white and black men and women reflected on what it was like to experience segregation then integration in one small Missouri community.

These oral histories also make up a recent two-part episode of the podcast Mo’ Curious. Here are parts 1 and part 2 of that podcast.

If you are interested in histories of integration, you might also want to see this video about Chariton, County, Missouri’s former Dalton Vocational School.

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Mo-Curious

Mo’ Curious: A Recent History of Bosnians in St. Louis

Center for Bosnian Studies Director Dr. Adna Karemhic-Oates at Fontbonne University in February 2023

“We might not have the ocean, but we’ve got plenty.”

St. Louis-based Bosnian refugee Elvir Kulovic on Missouri’s charms

Despite a great cultural disruption and numerous personal traumas, Bosnians living in St. Louis seem to be thriving.

For this podcast episode, I talked to three Bosnians living in the Gateway City about their experiences. Two are refugees and one is an academic. Their diverse perspectives offer an insight into what it means to be Bosnian in America circa 2023.

More stories from some of the 60,000 Bosnians who call St. Louis, Missouri home.

Thanks for listening to Mo’ Curious, a podcast about the history of our 24th state.

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Field Notes

KOPN: The First 50 Years

In 1973, the Doobie, Allman and Isley Brothers all had popular records. Richard Nixon started his second term as America’s president. Also that year, a community radio station in Columbia, Missouri got a license to broadcast at 89.5fm.

In 2022 and 2023 – in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of KOPN, I organized current station volunteers to conduct oral histories with former and long-time station staff and programmers. These full oral histories live here.

For 13 weeks in early 2023, I hosted a live radio show on KOPN that drew from these oral histories, mined the station’s deep and wide archives and queried a live, in-studio guest about the week’s theme. I called the show KOPN: The First 50 Years. That’s a lot of work to put in to a one-hour show, so the shows live on as a predictably title podcast KOPN: The First 50 Years.

My goal with this podcast (and the KOPN Oral History Project broadly) is to preserve the story of our community radio station and give the listener (that’s you!) an idea of what it was like in the early, heady years after KOPN’s 1973 founding.

Episode 9 features excerpts from a 2022 oral history with long-time KOPN programmer Carol Goodnick. Also, featured on the podcast is an in-studio interview with current KOPN programmer and University of Missouri Journalism School student Tadeo Ruiz and music from the KOPN archives. It sounds like the former Columbia band, Swoop…
Episode 8 explores how women have created their own space on KOPN over the past 50 years. The 59 minute episode includes an oral history excerpt from Vic Day’s April 2022 interview with Margie Sable, archival excerpts of Margie’s show, The Brazen Hussy and 1979 Women’s Weekend, and a live interview with station programmers Corri Flaker Fraser and Luna Hawk. Music on the episode is 1976 archival jazz from former St. Louis jazzers Jasmine and madrigrals from Lyn Wolz.
Episode 7 features KOPN archival selections from longtime KOPN volunteer and Columbia community activist Wynna Faye Elbert talking about Columbia’s Black history. Bringing things into the present, the episode also includes a selection from Trevor Harris’ March 2023 interview with Worley Street Roundtable team members Verna Laboy and David Aguayo. The podcast concludes with a second excerpt from the KOPN archives: a selection from Lynn Harris’ 1976 interview with Maya Angelou.
Episode 6 features an oral history with former KOPN program director, Butch Burrell and his son and former children’s programmer, Eli Burrell. The episode also features an interview with former KOPN children’s radio producer, Christine Gardener and music from KOPN-adjacent artists Rhonda Vincent and Taj Mahal.
Episode 5 features oral history form lee Ruth plus poetry from the Chez Coffeehouse and archival recordings from Lee Ruth and Cathy Barton.
Episode 4 is about the ways the folk music found a radio home at KOPN.
Episode 3 features an interview with area fiddler and author Howard Marshall and KOPN programmer Margot McMillan, archival material from the Boone County Fair Fiddle Contest, Dear KOPN letters and more.
Episode 2 features an oral history with former KOPN children’s programmer Christine Gardener and current programmer Jackie Casteel, archival material from Inside Radio featuring Eli Burrell and Brother Blue plus live in-studio guests, including Ann Mehr, Sarah Catlin and Dante Dupuy.
Episode 1 looks at KOPN’s history with prison issues and features oral histories with James Robnett and Jim Austin, an archival feature about Renz Women’s Prison and guests Peggy Placier and December Harmon.
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Mo-Curious

Mo’ Curious: Arriving As Refugees, Bosnians in St. Louis are Rebuilding Their Lost Community

Over 60,000 Bosnian refugees and their children live in St. Louis area. They have a significant influence on the region’s economy, religious life and culture.

In this episode of the Mo’ Curious podcast we meet four Bosnians making sense of their past and mapping out their future as members of two cultures: Bosnian and American.

Here is the story of some of the Bosnians who now call St. Louis, Missouri home.

Music in this episode was from the Bosnian-St. Louis band, Albosy. Here’s a fuller dose of the band:

More episodes of the podcast are available at MoCurious.com.

Thanks for listening and stay curious, Missouri.

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Field Notes

Field Notes: ‘We are a Rock ‘n Roll couple.’

Stacy and Garrett Enloe met over rock n roll. They grew up in St. Louis and attended local schools. They went to rock concerts eventually meeting and bonding over heavy metal bands like Manowar and Judas Priest. One of their favorite venues was the club Mississippi Nights.

The venue was located on Laclede’s Landing and for over 30 plus years hosted everything from jazz to folk, metal to blues.

I remember venturing from my suburban home to the riverfront bar to see folk duo the Indigo Girls, reggae groovers the Roots Radics and political rocker Bruce Cockburn.

In 2007, the club was forced to close and the building demolished for a planned future development.

After a few years of grieving, the couple – by day, he works for UPS and she is a stay-at-home mom – decided to write a book chronicling the place that was Mississippi Nights.

In this Field Notes installment, the Enloes describe the beloved venue, its durable fan base and how the couple came to write a book chronicling the story of a club that seemingly booked everyone before and after they became someone.

You can buy the Enloes’ book here.

You can hear more Field Notes installments, hear my Missouri History podcast, Mo’ Curious and learn more about my oral history business at RecollectionAgency.com.

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Mo-Curious

Mo’ Curious: Saving the Hidden Stories of a Vanishing Rural Lifestyle

In this episode, we listen to the oral histories of Margot McMillen. We hear from a river boat captain, a train engineer and an independent woman. These and several dozen other Missourians were the subjects of Margot’s late 1970s oral history recordings.

At that time, Margot was a young mother of two, a graduate student in English and a budding author. She was also was a listener.

When the Union Electric utility started buying land from farmers in Southern Callaway County for a nuclear power plant, Margot jumped into action. With her recording kit and an abundance of curiosity, she set out to preserve stories of a rural lifestyle that was rapidly disappearing. The stories illuminate what a different world we live in 45 years after they were preserved.

Here’s some of the oral history work of Missouri author and radio host Margot McMillen.

Hear more episodes of the Mo’ Curious podcast at MoCurious.com and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Mo-Curious

Mo’ Curious: The Living Legacy of Missouri’s Dramatic 1939 Sharecroppers’ Strike (part II)

There aren’t many folks alive today who remember what went down in the Bootheel in the winter of 1939. There are remaining, however, longtime residents who know about the sharecroppers’ strike, what it meant then and what it means now.

Click here to listen to part 2 of a two-part episode about Missouri’s 1939 sharecroppers’ strike.

Mo’ Curious is a podcast about the past, present and future of our 24th state.

Special thanks to Matt Schacht and Vidwest Studios for their support.

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Mo-Curious

Mo’ Curious: The living legacy of Missouri’s dramatic 1939 sharecroppers’ strike (part 1)

Back in 1939, the world was a different place. For one thing, there were a lot more people involved in farming. In Missouri’s Bootheel region, this meant bodies were needed to grow cotton. Under the sharecropper model, those Missourians who grew cotton had no guarantees of a wage. They could be evicted anytime from the land on which they lived and worked.

In this episode of Mo’ Curious, we learn about the 1939 sharecroppers strike in Mississippi County, Missouri. It was on January 1 of that Depression year that Bootheel tenant farmers, or sharecroppers, participated in a protest. They camped on the roadside to draw attention to the deplorable economic and housing conditions that kept them impoverished and dependent.

For two months, fifteen hundred Missourians lived their lives on the side of Highway 60 between Sikeston and Charleston.

In order to bring a better understanding of the strike to area youth, we asked Charleston High School students to conduct oral history interviews. These interviews aimed to explain the strike and its legacy on the surrounding communities. Here is some of those exchanges.

Mo’ Curious by Missouri Life is a podcast about the past, present, and future of the 24th state. Hear other episodes at MoCurious.com.