People & Places
How Kansas City is | Super Bowl 50
We’re asking the question: How “Kansas City” is… for all the good stuff going on in our world. Up today? The big game, of course. The Chiefs may not be taking the field in Santa Clara, but there are lots of local ties. Check out the video, and if you know of one that didn’t make the…
Life, Prison, Then Life Again
The prison population is growing, and growing fast. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the number of incarcerated felons grew by 408 percent between the years of 1978 and 2014. Even more eye-opening: The number of incarcerated women in the United States ballooned 646 percent between the years of 1980 and 2010, according to a study from The Sentencing Project, a…
Bloody, MO | Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd
Welcome to “Bloody, MO,” a Civil War-through-modern day video peek into Kansas City’s bloody past – starring equally notorious and unknown gunslingers, fire-starters, and godfathers. Today: Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd The sharp-dressed gunslinger was wanted in six states at the time of his death. But he steadfastly denied taking any part in the most famous crime he…
Bloody, MO | Silas M. Gordon
Welcome to “Bloody, MO,” a Civil War-through-modern day video peek into Kansas City’s bloody past – starring equally notorious and unknown gunslingers, fire-starters, and godfathers. Today: Silas M. Gordon An anti-Union guerrilla who indirectly caused Platte City, Missouri, to be burned twice by forces during the Civil War, Gordon engaged in various guerrilla actions, including…
Welcome to Bloody, MO
When the Border War was more than a football game, when mafia men used fear and bullets to rule Kansas City, when a woman nicknamed “La Pistolera” held records for local and Federal outstanding arrest warrants. Step into Flatland’s digital series, “Bloody, MO” for a Civil War-through modern day video peek into Kansas City’s bloody…
One on One with Jonathan Butler
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on Jan. 19, and has been updated with video from the event. Click on the play button above to hear excerpts from Jonathan Butler’s speech at Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church Jan. 18. Long before Jonathan Butler held a hunger strike at the University of Missouri, sparking a campus-wide protest…
Focus on ‘Spotlight’ Film Recalls Local Church Crisis
On Dec. 10, 2004, a few months before Robert W. Finn became bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, I interviewed him for The Kansas City Star about the challenges he might face when he replaced the much-loved Bishop Raymond Boland. Finn was coadjutor bishop at the time. Neither Finn nor I, of…
A Healthy (Re)Start for Raytown
Technically, it was a ribbon-cutting for a new health facility, but the christening of a new gym and community center in Raytown was more like removing bandages from an old wound. That’s because the facility, at 10301 E. 350 Highway, is housed in a refurbished building that the YMCA of Greater Kansas City closed three…
Sympathetic Vibrations | RecordBar’s Last Song
Halfway through Making Movies’ farewell set at RecordBar on Saturday, lead singer/guitarist Enrique Chi quipped, “We’re trying to play long because we don’t want to leave this place.” Chi’s joke resonated with the sold-out crowd, and likely the larger Kansas City music community, that reluctantly bid farewell to the space that has housed an institution…
Food-obsessed filmmaker returns to her Napoleon, Missouri origins
Kelly Cox hangs with chefs, hunters, moonshiners and other characters across the country, filming her original web series Original Fare presented by PBS Food. She’s traveled the world searching for stories that cut through the pretty packaging and buzzwords of the foodie movement to make a slice of American authenticity accessible to all. Last November Kelly returned to…