Before he ever saw the ICE Warrant ordering his removal from the United State, Victor Herrera describes this one point in his life as an immigrant in the United States like this, "I feel like I’m in a bucket full of shit, and I’m drowning in it. His story is the messy reality of immigration and deportation. It begs us to have a grown-up discussion …

When I was in fourth grade, there was this box in the back of our classroom. It was filled with multi-colored tabs with stories and questions printed on each. Our teacher was Ms. Evans, yes, she was my mom — and that box was the SRA reading lab. Dr. Don Parker created the SRA reading lab in 1950 for 32 seventh graders in a cash-strapped rural Flori…

This is the story of how Unbound, one of the midwest's largest non-profits, was formed from the vision of a man with a very different take on charity and giving. In November of 1981, Kansas City Missouri, Bob Hentzen and 3 of his 14 siblings, along with their friend Jerry Tolle, founded an organization known today as Unbound. Bob and his friend Jer…

On September 23rd Father Stan Rother will be the first American born martyr beatified by the Catholic church. Though it’s the story of Father Stan Rother, this one doesn’t end in death. Stan Rother was one casualty of the decades long Guatemalan Civil War. A war sparked in the halls of the US congress; fueled in part by our fear of communism and an…

This is the first time I’ve uttered out loud these words: my lady has cancer.

In 1917 a german man named Charles Huffman was making fabric dye in five gallon enamel pots in a vacant store in Chicago. He named his product RIT dye in honor of his friend, Louis Rittenhouse, a vice president his Sunbeam Chemical Company. Their slogan was, “Never say Dye, say RIT.” When he was a kid, RIT dye fascinated 25 year old Phillip. This i…

If you want to know what it’s like to sit behind Mayor Sly James’ desk, best not ask him; he’d have to find about 20 minutes in his schedule to clear the space to sit there. There’s two-feet of work stacked on the chair and another couple feet stacked on the desk. Then there’s work strewn across the meeting desk in the middle of his office on the 2…

To look at the future of Harrison Street DIY Skatepark, I need to be explicit about a few things: First, they did build on land they have permission to build on, but no real agreement. They choose a little strip of abandoned land with all kinds of forces tugging at it from different directions. Governing everything is a court order. Second, the Har…

For 30 months, a crew of volunteers have been building the Harrison Street DIY skate park in an abandoned cul de sac in Kansas City’s Columbus Park Neighborhood, at 4th and Harrison. ?What started out as a few bags of Quickcrete, mixed with shovels and formed into ramps on a few jersey barriers turned into yard after yard of truck-delivered commerc…

Since 2011 I've run a few thousand miles along the Indian Creek and Blue River Trail. I run this trail because it's safer here than running on the surrounding roads. As much as I think about my own safety when I run, the threats for me aren't as bad as they are for the female runners around here. A few months ago Runners World Magazine released a s…

The first Chapter of Lipstick traces is called "The Last Sex Pistols Concert." That show was on January 14th, 1978 at the Winterland in San Francisco. The opening band was this San Francisco punk rock group called The Nuns. In that chapter and his book, Marcus explains how people and events crashed together to tell the secret history of the 20th ce…

Throughout human history, structures like the Lighthouse of Alexandria served as a welcoming beacon for the traveller, eaching out to guide them through the perils of a place they may have never seen, or one they may not recognize. In America - home of more lighthouses than any other country - though lighthouses aren’t used much anymore, they still…

This second episode looking at refugee musicians in the US is the story of a Kurdish family. A musician father, his wife children and the story they share with one another — whether they realize it or not. They left Syria as refugees and continue the Kurdish tradition to define a home in the United States. Today’s thing is Kurdistan and this episod…

This is the first episode telling the stories of some musicians who’ve come to America as refugees. It’s a creation odyssey. The creation of Kuomba Ministries. Like any odyssey, this one involves death, new life, near-death, and some inexplicable, supernatural forces inserting themselves in human events from one side of the planet to another. Today…

If you’ve never had your heart broken and want to see what it’s like, get a dog. Picco and I have run over 5,000 miles together. We’ve touched two oceans. He’s been with me at shows in bars across the midwest, down the Eastern seaboard and Southeast. We’ve fought bigger dogs together - he won. Through all of it I’ve wondered; who rescued who? What …

Over the past month, we’ve had a lot of activity around immigration and refugees and I've been thinking a lot about Presidents. So I started reading what past American presidents have said about it. What guidance is there for us in the past? While this episode is told through the words of some of the Presidents of our history, it’s really a story a…

What can electric guitars teach us about the American economy? Big Box retail may have spurred some innovative manufacturing techniques. Automation, robotics, CNC carving; all of it means we can make guitars — or anything — to tighter tolerances and faster and cheaper than a human can. But automation and robotics at the big Guitar Makers mean fewer…

Our first Thing is Blue Dawn Manor, the neighborhood I grew up in. I used to play baseball in the Healys’ back yard. It was the infield which made my back yard dead center field and the Smith’s pool in Left Field the water spectacular. I knew all the neighbors, the Johnson’s. the Belfontees, the Smalls, Hutchisons, Hupps, Cernich’s, the Saladinos, …