Where’s Ep 1? aka Rolling Hills of the Osage

Missouri River near Rocheport, MO just west of Columbia

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Episode 1 is ready and will debut this Sunday. I chose to wait till the end of the weekend, so I can assemble the show notes and the full-length rough cut interviews. It’ll be worth the wait.

Ever wonder why Jefferson City is the capital of Missouri? Just pull out a map and see that it sits about middle of the state on the Missouri River. This stretch of the Missouri has rolling hills and joins with the Osage River just to the east. River travel was the fastest choice before the railroad era.

Like many of the place names in America, the Osage River is named after the indigenous people who were here when the European settlers arrives. You’ll also find a healthy number of French place names thanks to this once being under the French Empire’s influence.

Paying Homage

I made a stop on my way from Kansas City to St. Louis in Columbia, home of the University of Missouri. It gave me a chance to catch up with a college fraternity brother, Jay Thelen PhD, who is a research professor there. But the deeper reason revealed to me was to pay homage to William Least Heat Moon, author of Blue Highways, which was part of the inspiration for this trip.

He had just lost a teaching position and his marriage had been in trouble. Taking off in his van, which he named Ghost Dancing, he spent the better part of year in the 1980s traveling almost exclusively on state highways documenting his interactions with people in every region. His van is preserved and held at the Anthropology Museum on campus.

Overcoming

My arrival in St. Louis gave me the chance to interview Sandra Eidel, a pre-school teacher at a nonprofit bilingual center, and Mayor Ella Jones, who is 37 days into her term as mayor of Ferguson, MO. Both women have suffered loss during the pandemic (but not due to COVID), Sandra her father and Mayor Jones her sister.

Their stories are filled with insights and encouragement for how to stay resilient no matter the challenges. I then spent the evening in the guest suite of the parents of producer and friend, Shane Reiser. What a fun, hospitable couple.

How do you keep moving forward even in the face of challenges?