Newsletter

Hands holding a flower

Fountain City Frequency |Getting Real About A Complex Diagnosis

Kevin Bryce is a filmmaker from Kansas City, Missouri. His 2012 documentary “We Are Superman” (produced by Re:Dream‘s Christopher Cook) explored the after-effects of hyper-segregation on Troost, and a movement trying to transform it from a dividing line into a gathering place. Bryce’s newest documentary “All These Flowers” investigates bipolar disorder through the stories of six people who been…

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Cary Esser glazes ceramic tiles for a new series of work titled "Veil Tyles"

Cary Esser: A Ceramist for the 21st Century

At age 19, Cary Esser flew alone from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to Kansas City, a place she’d never been. “When I got off the plane,” Esser recalled in a recent interview, “I just walked up to somebody and asked, ‘Can you tell me how to get to the Kansas City Art Institute?’” Esser had…

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A pair of ice cream sandwiches.

Betty Rae’s Ice Cream Gets Ready to Scoop

David Friesen wants to serve all the old standbys — chocolate, vanilla, pineapple with Thai basil — when Betty Rae’s Ice Cream opens in Waldo (7140 Wornall Road) on Thursday, March 24. “Ice cream is a heightener,” said Friesen. “The sun is shining and you want to get out and have ice cream. It just makes your day better.”…

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How KC is the Big 12 Championship Tournament by Brad Austin

How KC is | Big 12 Championship Tournament

We’re asking the question: How “Kansas City” is… for all the good stuff going on in our world. On today? The Big 12 Championship tourney is taking over Power & Light this weekend in Kansas City. But just how well-represented is KC inside the Sprint Center? Check out the video above, and if you know of something that didn’t make the cut send…

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Teens take part in Youth Ambassador's "Youth Speak" event where they shared original poetry about teen life in Kansas City. (Photo: Daniel Boothe | Flatland)

Lifting Their Voices

It is not easy being a teenager in Kansas City. As inner-city teens enrolled in the Youth Ambassadors program took turns reading each other’s original poetry, their works gave insight into the sometimes harsh realities and struggles facing our community’s younger demographic. Teen pregnancy, life on the streets, drug addiction, violence towards women, and incarcerated parents…

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A man walking in a field

Fountain City Frequency | Charlie Mylie’s Big Inhale

Kansas City is a lot bigger than we tend to realize. The majority of the population is concentrated into just 58 square miles that make up less than a fifth of the city’s overall size. That leaves a lot of mileage to discover. Here’s a story by Esther Honig, from audio producers Fountain City Frequency, about one Kansas…

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‘Darby O’Still,’ the focal point of North Kansas City's Restless Spirits distillery, is a 500-gallon, onion-shaped, copper pot still specifically designed to produce Irish whiskey. (Photo: Jonathan Bender | Flatland)

That’s the Spirit

Benay Shannon hops down from a forklift, her bright pink galoshes padding across the concrete floor of the Restless Spirits Distillery. She maneuvers clear plastic tubing to the open hole in the top of a 10-gallon oak barrel. It’s Tuesday afternoon and Kansas City’s only female head distiller is making whiskey. “This is about making…

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Cars in showroom for auto show

The Weekend Starts Today

Another unseasonably warm, dry weekend is on the way. While you’re waiting for some badly needed rain, you might as well get out and enjoy our city’s fine nightlife. And, for that matter, its daylife. First Fridays are back. Actually, of course, they never went away. You just might have forgotten about them while the…

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George Diaz holds a bilingual Bible as he attends services in Louisville, Ky. Services at the chapel are delivered in both English and Spanish. (Photo: Ed Reinke |AP)

Commentary | Let Common Sense Prevail In Battle Over Religious Liberty

The very day in late February that five Republican candidates for president participated in a smash-mouth debate in Texas with much moaning and gnashing of teeth about the erosion of religious freedom in the United States, these things also happened: I gathered with Episcopalians, Catholics, and mainline Protestants for a Bible study I help to…

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Hashtags for the month of FEBRUARY (Illustration).

Hashtags For The Month Of FEBRUARY

At the end of each month we share four hashtags that trended locally, nationally, or simply caught our eye. February was full of announcements, conversations, and events on social media and it was hard to decide which to include. But there can only be four and here they are! What four would you pick? Let…

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