Tag: oral history

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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: ‘There is a better way’

Whereas much of modern, industrial, late stage capitalism is based around competition for scarce material resources, there are a few among us who choose to work together to achieve a standard of living that’s good enough. In an intentional community, or commune, people organize themselves around cooperative activities.

In the first part of this two-part episode, we explored what 19th and 20th century Missouri utopias were like. In this episode, we head to Northeast Missouri’s Scotland County to meet some contemporary communards and hear what draws them to the land in search of a more intentional and low-impact life.

Part one of this two part series on Missouri utopias can be heard here.

Thanks for listening. Let me know what you think and share ideas for future episodes.

Contact me at Trevor@RecollectionAgency.com.

Kyle Yoder lovin’ on his cat at Dancing Rabbit near Rutledge, Missouri.

The Mo’ Curious podcast is generously sponsored by Missouri Life.

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Field Notes

Field Notes: ‘If they want me to give them two, I give them four.’

'Everything I do reflects my upbringing': Scott Lunceford lives and works in Buckner, Missouri.

In each installment of my Field Notes from the Recollection Agency, I talk to someone with an interesting backstory. Here, Scott Lunceford* talks about government cheese, how re-enacting 1855 can be a family activity and why it pays to bring your harmonica to church.

Listen to other Field Notes and learn more about the Recollection Agency at RecollectionAgency.com and on social media.

*Scott says we “are always family”, but our official status is that of ex-step-cousins. -Trevor

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Field Notes

Field Notes: ‘Why would I be looking for you?’

Carmaletta Williams, English Professor Credit: Carmaletta Williams | Williams Publishing

This Field Notes post looks at the personal impacts of the coronavirus. Dr. Carmaleta Williams, the director of the Black Archives of Mid-America discusses holding picture parties, interviewing the elders and being the art teacher for a pair of her instantly home-schooled grandsons.

This audio is taken from a phone conversation of April 21, 2020.

Check out more Kansas City Black history by viewing the Beacon Hill oral history project here.