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Altar Celebrates Life In Day Of The Dead Celebration, How A Bike Trip Grew To Help Orphans In KC

Julie Denesha
/
KCUR

 
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KC Currents 10/28/12
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Altar Celebrates Life In Day Of The Dead Tradition
The Day of the Dead is a Mexican holiday of remembrance and celebration for friends and family members who have died. Traditionally, families build private altars honoring the dead using skulls, flowers, and the favorite food and drink of the departed. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is hosting its second annual Day of the Dead Celebration November 4th. Mexican Artist Betsabeé Romero and area artists have come together to create a special altar installation for the event. 

Lessons Learned Serving Orphans Abroad Being Applied In Urban Core
Adopt KC grew out of an organization called the Global Orphanage Project, and a bunch of professional men who took a life-changing bike trip to Haiti. Hear from Tate Williams, the founder, about how the organization is dealing with the complicated problem of foster care.

Kansas Army Base Hosts Shariah Class
In Kansas, the Islamic code of laws called Shariah has drawn a lot of suspicion and debate during the past year. In May, the state legislature effectively banned consideration of Shariah in court, a move that some critics have called redundant and anti-Islamic. But Kansas is also home to a program that teaches Shariah in an unlikely setting: Army officer training at Fort Leavenworth.

With A New Name The Toy And Miniature Museum Looks Ahead
Thirty years ago, the Toy & Miniature Museum of Kansas City opened its doors, with a display of dollhouses, toys, and miniatures mostly collected by two Kansas City women.  The museum is making plans for the future with a new name and a new look.

Embracing Healthy Food: First Steps
In recent years, there has been a concerted push at the local and national levels to make healthy food more widely available, particularly in low-income areas. This is one focus of Food Day, which food groups and advocates celebrated across the U.S Wednesday. But while programs and systems are gradually putting fresh food front and center, changing eating habits can be even more complicated.

 ‘Irma Vep’ A Show Dependent On Clothes Encounters
The Kansas City Repertory Theatre's latest production, The Mystery of Irma Vep, features eight characters of both sexes, including the Lord and Lady Hillcrest, their maid and butler, and a couple of surprise visitors. Because the license for the show stipulates that it can only be cast with two actors of the same gender, it requires a dizzying amount of split second costume changes that depend on both a skillful designer and dressers with laser focus.

The Art And Business Of Scaring In The West Bottoms
Take a trip down to the West Bottoms to meet some of the people taking seasonal jobs in the city’s big haunted houses. Full Moon Production, which owns the 4 big haunted houses in Kansas City, employs about 150 actors during the season between Labor Day and Halloween. Alex talked to cast members at the Beast to find out what it’s like working in the scaring business.

School Lunch Changes Create Meaty Issue
Schools across the U.S. are putting more fruits and vegetables on lunch trays and less meat and bread. But the changes – part of an effort to fight obesity -- are getting a strong reaction from parents who say their kids are still hungry after they clean their plates. Hear why for some schools and families, the changes have been hard to swallow.

Sylvia Maria Gross is storytelling editor at KCUR 89.3. Reach her on Twitter @pubradiosly.
A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Susan admits that her “first love” was radio, being an avid listener since childhood. However, she spent much of her career in mental health, healthcare administration, and sports psychology (Susan holds a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and an MBA from the Bloch School of Business at UMKC.) In the meantime, Wilson satisfied her journalistic cravings by doing public speaking, providing “expert” interviews for local television, and being a guest commentator/contributor to KPRS’s morning drive time show and the teen talk show “Generation Rap.”
As a health care reporter, I aim to empower my audience to take steps to improve health care and make informed decisions as consumers and voters. I tell human stories augmented with research and data to explain how our health care system works and sometimes fails us. Email me at alexs@kcur.org.
Every part of the present has been shaped by actions that took place in the past, but too often that context is left out. As a podcast producer for KCUR Studios and host of the podcast A People’s History of Kansas City, I aim to provide context, clarity, empathy and deeper, nuanced perspectives on how the events and people in the past have shaped our community today. In that role, and as an occasional announcer and reporter, I want to entertain, inform, make you think, expose something new and cultivate a deeper shared human connection about how the passage of time affects us all. Reach me at hogansm@kcur.org.
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