Off the Clock

One in five Americans now report having no religious affiliation. This number is increasing rapidly. And church attendance in America and Europe is increasing.

But our communities are filled with instances of people finding meaning outside of religion. The Boone County Veterans of Foreign Wars post, for example, offers veterans a place to unite around their experiences of serving in war. While people find meaning in all sorts of places, the VFW in many ways resembles a church.

Author Gennifer Albin is a self-described “recovering academic” – she got her Master’s in English from MU in 2006, then she and her husband settled down back near family in Kansas, where she was a stay- at home mom with young children. But after an unexpected lay-off she and her husband found themselves struggling to make ends meet.

Albin’s answer? Write a novel, of course. Albin went from bankruptcy filing, to living the writer’s dream … complete with agents and publishers competing  for her first novel, Crewel.

So, you know your Missouri and CoMo history, and you think you know all about “ragtime” musician Blind Boone, yeah? Think again. If you think he was all ragtime, and he was blind, you still might have a lot to learn.

It turns out John William “Blind” Boone was one of the first musical composers to blend European classical styles with folk music. He took African-American and Afro-Caribbean folk styles such as plantation melodies and minstrel tunes, and put them in classical forms, then performed the pieces in concert halls. 

This week: A volunteer in Columbia is using video games as an opportunity to teach kids about math, science and technology. Plus, the fourth installment of My Farm Roots, a series from Harvest Public Media in which we hear Americans’ stories and memories of rural life.

When author Pamay Bassey suffered the loss of two family members and the end of  a relationship she embarked on a unique journey – she visited a different place of worship, every week, for a year, in search of guidance.

That experience became a book called My 52 Weeks of Worship, Lessons from a Global, Spiritual, Interfaith Journey.

Kristin Torres, reporting for KBIA and the Columbia Faith and Values desk, spoke to Bassey, before her appearance in St. Louis this weekend.

Sometimes farm roots don’t blossom into a farm life.

But those memories can still have a huge influence, perhaps even determining a career choice.

That’s the case for Tom Karst, a soft-spoken, well-respected journalist who’s been covering the fruit and vegetable industry for more than 25 years.

It’s not every day that a trip to the drug store can change your destiny.

For 20-year-old Nan Arnold, it was a day in 1956 in Ashland, a small, dusty dot on the open range of western Kansas near the Oklahoma border.

Nan had landed her first job as a music teacher at the Ashland school just a year before. She lived with the store’s owner because her parents thought she was too young to live alone.