Categories
Mo-Curious

Mo’ Curious: Building a Modern Homesteader Community

Photo credit Ozark Area Community Congress

Starting back in the 1960s, growing numbers of young people in these United States of America starting dropping out. Turned off by mainstream society, they turned their backs on career advancement, corner offices and getting ahead. Instead, many of these back-to-the-landers opted for buying land, building cabins and growing food. Many set up shop here in Missouri and started homesteading in the heartland.

In this episode of Mo’ Curious, we meet four homesteaders whose lives overlapped around a shared purpose, making music and forest protection. An earlier episode focused on a homesteader family who now have multiple generations living on that land.

Thanks to Denise Vaughn, Hank and Katy Dorst and David Haenke for sharing their stories.
Categories
Mo-Curious

Mo’ Curious: A Fifty-Year Homesteading Journey

Barbara and Tom Johnson have been homesteading the Ozark hills of Dent County for nearly 50 years
Barbara and Tom Johnson have been homesteading the Ozark hills of Dent County for nearly 50 years

In 1976, Barbara and Tom Johnson moved from California to Missouri. In the past nearly 50 years, they built a home and had a family. As the Johnson kids grew up they realized there really was something to this homesteading thing.

This episode of the Mo’ Curious podcast happens in two-parts. This first half of the story explores Missouri’s recent history with those back-to-the-landers who raised kids while making a living off the land. In the second part of this episode, we’ll meet some other Missouri back-to-the-landers who created community with like-minded souls.

Past episodes of the Mo’ Curious podcast are available at www.MoCurious.com and wherever you get your podcasts.

Categories
Field Notes

Field Notes: River Town heads to Weston, Missouri

Pageturner attendees toured a tobacco barn near Weston, Mo. Credit Jim Pascoe

In Autumn 2024, The New Territory regional magazine put on an event called ‘Hearing Place’. That day of sound brought together academics, the audio obsessed, journalists and friends of the publication.

Held in Weston, Missouri, the event was recorded and produced into a podcast. Here is the audio postcard we created from sounds heard at the day-long exploration called ‘Hearing Place’.

https://www.kbia.org/podcast/river-town/2025-02-28/bonus-episode-hearing-place-river-town-heads-to-weston-missouri

Thanks to Kiana Fernandes, Tina Cassagrand Foss and Janet Saidi for their assistance with this podcast.

Categories
Mo-Curious

Mo’ Curious: Restoring Missouri’s Mined Landscapes

Missouri Master Naturalist Lisa Morin gazes across the Cardinal Valley Restoration Project in search of birds who call the nearly 1,000 acre site home.

For 100 years, the minerals lead and zinc were extracted from the ground in the Tri-State District. This area in Southwest Missouri, Southeast Kansas and Northwest Oklahoma initially produced wealth for small-scale operators. With time, mines consolidated then ceased operations. The final local mining operation in Webb City, Missouri closed up shop in 1957. The community was left with no more mine jobs and vast swaths of the area’s land covered in piles of mine waste, or chat.

In this episode of Mo’ Curious, you’ll meet some people who are using compost and native plantings to build soil. In the process, these Missourians are creating habitat attractive to humans, birds and other living things.

For more information on the Tri-State mining district, check out the dated, but instructive Wilderness Bonanza: The Tri-State District of Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma.

For more information about ongoing restoration work on formerly mined lands in the Spring Creek watershed, see the Missouri Department of Natural Resource’s project list here.

Finally, progress on Meredith Ludwig’s Cardinal Valley documentary can be found here.

Thanks for listening. Stay curious, Missouri.

Categories
Mo-Curious

Mo’ Curious: Tracing the Underground Railroad in Missouri

Harriet Robinson Scott’s story is part of the National Park Service’s Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. She is buried in St. Louis’ Greenwood Cemetery. Courtesy: Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3a08392/

Before the Civil War, Missouri was territory where it was legal to own slaves. People could be bought and owned and sold. Amidst the horrors of enslavement, blacks and their allies in the region found ways to fight against the system that kept them in bondage.

On this episode of Mo’ Curious, we meet a group of historians and archivists who are researching the backstories of formerly enslaved people and are working to educate others about the lives they lived.

…and here’s more information about the National Park Service’s Underground Railroad Network to Freedom and St. Louis’ Greenwood Cemetery.

Categories
Mo-Curious

Mo’ Curious: Black Stories Matter

Lucille H. Douglass (at left) and Oralee McKinzy at the Parkville, Missouri Public Library in March 2023

Missouri history happened here. Right here. On this same ground on which we live today. That includes the history of slavery and racial segregation. When we tell the story of our state’s history, often the narrative is that of white and male Missourians. The family and personal stories of women and people of color are too often neglected when the narrative is told about the making of Missouri.

In this episode of Mo’ Curious meet two Kansas City women who are teaching themselves and others about local black history, which is, of course, Missouri history.

This episode’s guests are Oralee McKinzy who traces her family back to enslaved Missourians in Platte County, Missouri, and Lucille Douglass who recalls attending Parkville’s Missouri’s segregated black school as a girl in the 1950s.

As heard in this episode of the podcast:

Agriculture and Slavery in Missouri’s Little Dixie by R. Douglas Hurt

On Slavery’s Border by Diane Mutti Burke

Banneker School Foundation and Historic Site

Life 360 on Facebook

Dr. Jimmy Johnson in ‘History of Kansas City International Airport Land and Its People’ produced by the Kansas City Museum

Thanks for listening to Mo’ Curious. Stay curious, Missouri.

Categories
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.

Categories
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.

Categories
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.

Categories
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.