Community
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Pop Culture Happenings: May (5/4/24)Pop culture in the month of May 50, 40 and 25 years ago saw Steely Dan give Rikki his number, Molly Ringwald have the worst Sweet 16 and George Lucas give the world Jar-Jar. 1974 50 years ago On May 11, 1974, rock-jazz band Steely Dan released their single “Rikki Don't Lose That Number,” the opening track from the album “Pretzel Logic,” which peaked at No. ...
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Spirituality Column: Salty Life (5/4/24)I don’t remember where I first saw one, 15 years ago or more. No reason to recall; some impressions have to add up before they draw interest. By the hundredth or so, I wondered what the scrawly decals on rear windows said. So, I walked up to an SUV for a squint...
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Staying Safe Online in the Age of AI (5/4/24)Generative artificial intelligence (AI) refers to computer algorithms that can create realistic text, images and videos from scratch. There are plenty of fun and practical reasons for people to use AI. In fact, you’ve probably bumped into it before — customer service chat boxes that pop up on websites are based on AI, as are voice assistants like Siri and Alexa...
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The Best Books Club: "Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff" (5/4/24)You’ve probably seen the meme showing a beaming parent standing in front of an open garage filled to the brim with stuff, exclaiming to his or her obviously-dismayed offspring, “Just think — someday all of this will be yours!” Some prime-timers chuckle ruefully, thinking of the Herculean task they have already faced with their own parents; others become concerned about what is awaiting them...
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Faces of Southeast Missouri: Amy Loomis-McDonald (5/4/24)Amy Loomis-McDonald, program director of Thrive Birth to Five, says her children are the reason she does what she does. She has been a foster parent since 1996 and has four adopted children, guardianship of two children and a current long-term foster placement. Because she “loves meeting people [whose] vision of family is so open,” she is also a foster parent trainer...
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A Mother's Ingenuity: Day of the Diaper (5/4/24)Believe it or not, there was a time not so long ago when there was no such thing as a disposable diaper. In those days, parents relied on safety pins and cotton cloth to contain the dirty doings of young children. That, of course, made changing from one such cloth to the next rather onerous...
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Community Cookbook: Fried Chicken Wings by Leni Santoro from Brooklyn, New York (5/4/24)Fried chicken wings remind Leni Santoro of childhood and the three years her family spent living in a barn in upstate New York. She says the house they planned to live in burned down six months after they moved to the remote part of Madison County in New York, where not even the roads and nearby towns were printed on maps. Santoro was 8 years old at the time, and to make their barn livable, she says her family put rugs on the floor and placed cardboard around the walls as insulation...
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Column: Looking Beyond the Headlines (5/4/24)If you were to hear someone talk about your hometown, what would they say about it? Would they talk about the attractions around town? Or maybe the food and nightlife that fuels the place? Whether or not you thought of something like this, your mind most likely filled with all of the positive things about where you grew up. ...
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Poem: Poem For A Good Mother (5/4/24)For it is from your dear womb from which I came Your dear sweet love became the best breath of life Through your courage I could be somebody now I would be a known. If your love for me had gone away and hid I would not have lived to see this very day...
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Rennie Phillips: The little things (5/4/24)I was awake early the other morning and was kind of turning and tossing in bed. Restless! BB, our indoor cat, decided that I needed some company, so she left the foot of the bed, where she normally sleeps, and came up between Marge’s pillow and mine. She found a comfortable position, so she settled in. Totally out of character for her. I wear a C-PAP, machine and normally she doesn’t want any part of it. But she chose to lie down by my pillow, so of course I petted her. And of course she enjoyed it. But what it did was allow me to relax and go back to sleep. It was such a little thing, but it seemed like a big deal to me at that moment.
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Ellen Shuck: Being poor without feeling poor (5/4/24)As I sat, gazing out my family room window, I reminisced, somewhat, about my childhood and adolescent years. I am not one that looks back on, or lives in the past, but I meditate on people’s attitudes — and, mine — to see the connections between what happens in in those lives, ultimately.
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Adopt Axel 5-4-24 (5/4/24)
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Senior Center Menus for May 6-10 (5/4/24)Cape Girardeau/Scott City Monday: Chicken Parmesan with pasta and sauce or cabbage casserole with mashed potatoes, Italian-blend veggies, garden salad, garlic bread and chilled pears or fresh baked cookies
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Aaron Horrell: Is this a trumpet vine? (5/4/24)The quick answer is “no”. Shown is the flower of a vine called crossvine. This plant is native to Missouri and places south and east in southeastern United States.
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Marybeth Niederkorn: Cards from the wall (5/4/24)One of my favorite aspects of my job as director of the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center in Jackson is what I call the “show and tell” of it. So often, we’ll get a phone call or visit from someone who found “some neat old thing”, and they want us to see it. We love this. We can’t always take it as a donation, but we can usually suggest a more appropriate facility for it.
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Column: Exercise is Medicine (5/4/24)My goal and passion as the fitness and wellness specialist for the City of Cape Girardeau is to help people improve their health and quality of life. Although we all have different goals and are at different stages in life, we still have the same end goal: To be able to enjoy the life we have, because let’s be honest, our time on Earth isn’t promised for tomorrow. ...
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Mary Ann Castillo: Welcome to the neighborhood, URBAN Kitchen & Bar! (5/2/24)3In mid-March, the location formally occupied by Bella Italia in downtown Cape Girardeau welcomed a new resident: URBAN Kitchen & Bar. The hip sounding name piqued my interest while social media posts lauding their soft opening mid-March had me juggling my calendar to squeeze in a visit before a work trip. ..
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Susan McClanahan: Try these slider recipes for Derby day or other spring party (5/2/24)In planning for recipes for this week, I thought about the Kentucky Derby, wedding shower season, graduation parties and Mother’s Day, among just a few of the events coming up. I was thinking about making Kentucky Hot Browns for Derby Day, but then I came across a recipe for a slider hot browns. I will plan to have these for the afternoon of the Derby and might add a thin slice of ham to the slider recipe. ...
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Aaron Horrell: Not your average butterfly (4/27/24)The butterfly in this photo has a wingspan of about 1 inch. The wildflower it is sitting on is a daisy fleabane, which has several small flowers when it blooms. This little butterfly is called a red-banded hairstreak. It is easy to see the red or orange diagonal streak on the underside of its wings. Many kinds of butterflies have fake eyes on the underside of their wings. The red-banded hairstreak goes one better and shows off a fake head. It even has small fake antennas on the back end of its wings. When the butterfly dips its head to sip nectar it may appear to a bird that the butterfly’s tail is its head. The bird gets a mouthful of nothing and the red-banded hairstreak gets to live another day. You may find the red-banded hairstreak in southern Missouri near wet or muddy areas. I found this one Sunday, April 21, in a grassy field near a pond. Once you spot this butterfly, it may be difficult to get close enough to get a good photo. Approach it very slowly. Horrell is an artist and outdoorsman. He lives in Chaffee. He owns Painted Wren Art Gallery in Cape Girardeau.
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Robert Hurtgen: An ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ moment (4/27/24)I have had an "It’s A Wonderful Life" moment. If you are unfamiliar with the movie, let me briefly recap it. George Bailey dreams of traveling the world and building majestic structures. However, after his father’s sudden death, he reluctantly embraces his family and community responsibilities by remaining in his hometown of Bedford Falls, managing the family business, the Baily Brothers Building & Loan.
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Shawn Wasson: Confusing correction (4/27/24)If you follow social media, you may have heard about a Christian men’s conference that had a shirtless male sword swallower entertain the audience by climbing a stripper pole on center stage. Yes, that is correct, a homoerotic performance at a Christian men’s conference.
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Rennie Phillips: Old timer’s coffee (4/27/24)We had a get together at Church the other day celebrating a couple events in the lives of some who attend and the ladies had made coffee in one of those 50 or 60 cup aluminum percolators. I wouldn’t have a clue how much coffee to add to make a decent cup of coffee. Most of the time I make my coffee a cup at a time. When I drink that one cup I have to make another cup. But there is also a 12 cup coffee brewer at church which heats the water a squirt at a time which drips down on the coffee grounds and as it filters through the grounds it makes coffee. Slow is the name of this coffee pot. Maybe even “Really Slow”.
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Senior Center menus for April 29 through May 3 (4/27/24)Cape Girardeau/Scott City Monday: Sweet and sour meatballs with rice or pineapple chicken, seasoned carrots, almond broccoli, whole-grate hot roll and chilled pineapple or berry crisp. Tuesday: Chicken salad with whole-grain crackers or sub sandwich on bun, spinach salad, sweet and sour beets and Mandarin oranges or lemonade cake.
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Adopt Rayla 4-27-24 (4/27/24)Rayla is a female guessed to be 2 years old and not great with cats and dogs. She would be better to be an only pet. If you have room in your heart and home for Rayla or any other pet, visit us at 359 Cree Lane near Jackson any weekday or weekend from 8 a.m. to noon. Visitors are always welcome to play with our pets...
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David Dickey: A tragedy in Jackson (4/27/24)5In 1963, tragedy struck the town of Jackson, its high school, a teacher and a family. Richard Burton Partridge was born June 20, 1925, in Evanston, Illinois, and married Martha Weaver in 1954. Partridge received a master’s degree from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. He and his wife, along with their five children, moved to Jackson in 1960, when he become the director of music at the Jackson School District. He passed away Friday, June 9, 1989, just nine months after his wife, Martha.
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Beverly Hahs: A lady of noble lineage (4/27/24)Of the many people I’ve read about, there are many ladies I would have loved to have known. Zerilda Byrnes is one of those ladies. The tales she could have shared about her life as a young girl growing up near the Neely’s Landing area among the Shawnee and Delaware tribes would have been fascinating.
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Rebecca LaClair: Victoria’s Creamery has ice cream worth leaving the house for (4/25/24)2I categorize soft-serve ice cream in my head as a treat, a sweet I can’t make at home that I must deliberately travel into the world to attain. Some folks may own an ice cream machine that creates a version of this cold sweet, but not me. Two weeks ago, I waxed poetic about soft serve, but this time, I’m going the other direction. Hand-dipped ice cream, or hard ice cream, is premade, put into a container, and is then scooped out into a formed ball, if you’re good at it. This is the kind of ice cream I can buy at the grocery store and keep in my freezer. But sometimes, hand-dipped ice cream is worth leaving the house for. ...
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Tom Harte: Einstein in the kitchen (4/25/24)1“Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” So said the great American inventor Thomas Edison. Having tried nearly 3,000 filaments before landing on a successful one for his light bulb, he obviously knew what he was talking about. Similarly, when it comes to inventing recipes, trial and error is usually involved. ...
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Susan McClanahan: Rhubarb season has begun (4/25/24)One of the many special gifts of spring is new-crop rhubarb. Early in the season it is still young and tender, sweet yet slightly tart and so very delicious. There are so many different ways to use rhubarb, I had a hard time narrowing down the many recipes I found to use it. But I managed to select a few that I think you’ll enjoy. ...
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Ramblewood Garden Club celebrates Arbor Day (4/25/24)Ramblewood Garden Club celebrated Arbor Day with the Fourth Grade students at Franklin Elementary School on Friday, April 5, Missouriâs Arbor Day. Students learned about the founder of Arbor Day, J. Sterling Morton, who began planting trees on the first Arbor Day in 1872, and gave responses on the importance of trees. Six of the students read poems about trees. The students also learned how to plant a seedling tree from the Missouri Conservation Department which was given out to each of the students and teachers. The selected Willow Oak (Quercus phellos) tree, a native to Missouri, will be planted in the fall for better watering opportunities. The garden club also gifted the school two books on trees for their library.
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Rennie PhillipsThe little things
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Ellen ShuckBeing poor without feeling poor
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Aaron HorrellIs this a trumpet vine?
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Susan McClanahanTry these slider recipes for Derby day or other spring party
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Aaron HorrellNot your average butterfly
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Robert HurtgenAn ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ moment
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Shawn WassonConfusing correction
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In mid-March, the location formally occupied by Bella Italia in downtown Cape Girardeau welcomed a...
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I categorize soft-serve ice cream in my head as a treat, a sweet I can’t make at home that I must...
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Just when I thought I’d run out of new restaurants to try, a friend with good judgment suggested I...