V O X M A G A Z I N E / / 0 3 . 1 9 . 1 5 / / F R E E E V E RY T H U R S D AY
Where
dead go? do the
One writer’s search for answers takes her to a crematorium and a closet of unclaimed ashes
WEDNESDAYS ON PROVIDENCE
COOKIE COCKTAIL
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Discover the drive behind these peaceful demonstrators and their street-corner antics
The Roof’s newest drink brings a crumbled sugar rush to your happy hour
This week
Online
MARCH 19, 2015 VOLUME 17 ISSUE 10 | PUBLISHED BY THE COLUMBIA MISSOURIAN
SPRING CLEANING Stop fishing sundresses out of that oversized bin and find out how to successfully swing to spring.
320 LEE HILLS HALL COLUMBIA MO 65211 573-884-6423 VOX@MISSOURI.EDU ADVERTISING: 573-882-5714
FALLING FAR FROM THE TREE
V O X M A G A Z I N E / / 0 3 . 1 9 . 1 5 / / F R E E E V E RY T H U R S D AY
Ten thousand McDoubles or one iWatch? The Internet reacts to the unveiling of Apple’s pricey new product.
Feature Writer Taylor Kasper is fascinated with what happens to dead people — not metaphorically but literally. Brian Gardner, funeral home director and embalmer, helps give her answers. PAGE 8
BLOOM OUT OF THE BASIC From Tim Gunn to Victoria Beckham, five fashion gurus will help you refresh your style for the upcoming season.
We’re social.
Where
dead go? do the
One writer’s search for answers takes her to a crematorium and a closet of unclaimed ashes
WEDNESDAYS ON PROVIDENCE
COOKIE COCKTAIL
Discover the drive behind these peaceful demonstrators and their street-corner antics
The Roof’s newest drink brings a crumbled sugar rush to your happy hour
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NEWS & INSIGHT After enduring 13 years of angry drivers and middle fingers, these peaceful, street-corner demonstrators still have hope for a less violent future. PAGE 4
THE SCENE
CAN’T GET ENOUGH VOX? DOWNLOAD THE FREE IPAD APP FROM THE EDITOR
One part RumChata, one part Skyy citrus vodka, one part chocolate chip cookie: The Roof’s half-baked cocktail seeks to satisfy your sweet tooth. PAGE 6
MUSIC After a 10-year touring hiatus, hip-hop group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony brings a real throwback Thursday to The Blue Note. PAGE 7
Q&A
Corrections: Kurt Mirtsching is the manager at
Shakespeare’s Pizza. In the March 12 issue, an article on page 9 incorrectly identified his title. The date of the Don’t Mind Dying and Black Daniels and the Bears send-off show at The Bridge was March 17. In the March 12 issue, an article on page 13 incorrectly listed the date of the show.
COVER PHOTO: SHANNON ELLIOTT COVER DESIGN: ABBY HOLMAN
BETH CASTLE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
VOX STAFF Editor: Beth Castle Deputy Editor: Laura Heck Managing Editor: Anna Seaman Creative Director: Tracee Tibbitts Digital Managing Editor: Bryan Bumgardner Art Directors: Alex Jacobi, Allison Lewis Photo Editor: Shannon Elliott iPad Art Director: Roselyn Adams VoxTalk Editor: Rachel Rowsey Multimedia Editor: Adam Harris Calendar Editor: Sean Morrison News & Insight Editors: Alaina Lancaster, Danielle Renton, Aditi Shrikant The Scene Editors: Miles Dobis, Nicole Eno, Lauren Rutherford Music Editors: Stephanie Bray, Tess Catlett Arts/Books Editors: Cecilia Meis, Ashley Szatala Contributing Writers: Elizabeth Brown, Reid Foster, Christine Jackson, Abby Kass, Sarah Kloepple, Makenzie Koch, Carson Kohler, Carolin Lehmann, Kara Quill Editorial Director: Heather Lamb Executive Editor: Jennifer Rowe Reporting Beat Leader: Joy Jenkins Digital Director: Sara Shipley Hiles Writing Coach: John Fennell Office Manager: Kim Townlain
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PHOTOS BY OR COURTESY OF LOREN ELLIOTT; FLICKR/EDEN, JANINE AND JIM
Dietician Melinda Hemmelgarn dishes about eating healthy and buying organic on her radio show, “Food Sleuth Radio.” PAGE 19
There are two ways to sum up this week’s feature: The first is the straightforward, SparkNotes interpretation. Writer Taylor Kasper has harbored a half-fear, half-fascination of death since she was little, but instead of continuing to live in semi-terror of the unknown, she decides to investigate a seemingly unanswerable question: Where do the dead go? The short answer is to graveyards, potter’s fields, funeral homes and cremation centers, but that’s, pardon the pun, a surface response. As Kasper explains, death means much more than a physical end, so bones and ashes aren’t just remains. They’re people. Or, at least, they were. That’s where interpretation number two comes in, but to really get it, you need to think personal. Human. Throughout the story, Kasper confronts her own experiences with the dead and dying — heart attacks, suicides, cancer, everything. She thinks back to every time she’s been reminded that death is not just something that happens, but something that happens to people. People she knows. Then, in her own, irreverent way, she admits how scary that reality is. Gutsy, right? And a pretty important premise of the story, too. The way Kasper negotiates her relationship with death, and how she acknowledges its existence in her own life, speaks to how we all learn to cope with that end-of-the-line certainty. Some do it through distance; they use euphemisms and statistics as emotional buffers amid death notices and obituaries. But others, like Kasper, ask questions. Unknowable, interminable questions. Personally, I like the second approach, and not just because I enjoy a good cliffhanger. I think it’s brave to answer fear with curiosity. And I think it’s human.
Radar
Vox’s take on the talk of the week
THE BRACKETS ARE BACK
Yes, March Madness tips off this week. No, we don’t want to be in your bracket pool.* We’ve got plenty of Columbia madness right here. Getting a flat tire from all those spring potholes.
Scoring the last maple bacon doughnut at Harold’s.
SPRING BREAK BASKETBALL BINGING. Shakespeare’s getting your name wrong. Again.
Waiting outside Roxy’s sans Midwestern frostbite.
*But seriously, you should pick Kentucky and thank us later. VERY WARM HUGS
DANCING FOR DOLLARS
Disney gave Frozen 2 the green light, which makes us wonder what Elsa and the gang could possibly sing about in the sequel. Did someone say global warming?
This past weekend at the seventh annual MizzouThon ...
900 people
PHOTOS BY OR COURTESY OF FLICKR: JOSE MOUNTINO; FLICKR: MEZCLACONFUSA; DISNEY; WIKIMEDIA COMMONS: KENDRICK LAMAR
shook their booties for
13.1 hours
JUST DROPPING IN
ALL HAIL KING KENDRICK!
and raised
17. N 9TH STREET // COLUMBIA, MO www.THEBLUENOTE.com
MAR. 19 - BONE THUGS-N-HARMONY MAR. 20- MIDWEST FUNK & SOUL REVUE II MAR. 21- 80s VS 90s ROUND 3 MAR. 27- THE DISCO BALL: 70s DISCO & FUNK PARTY MAR. 28- THE MASQUERADE BALL! APR. 1 - C I R C A S U R V I V E APR. 2 - BUCKCHERRY APR. 7 - YELLOWCARD APR. 9 - L I L D I C K Y APR. 10 - INTERSTELLAR OVERDRIVE APR. 11 - DREW HALCOMB & THE NEIGHBORS APR. 16 - ELI YOUNG BAND + BRETT ELDREDGE APR. 17 - DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS APR. 21 - 50 SHADES OF MEN APR. 24 - IRON & WINE
$201,322.68 for MU’s Children’s Hospital. KILLER FINALE
HBO’s The Jinx got a jolt of reality on Saturday when its subject, suspected serial killer Robert Durst, was arrested. Perhaps the FBI saw the documentary when it played at True/False Film Fest? This show joins Serial on our list of “hip crime shows we love when Game of Thrones isn’t on” category. Speaking of which ... TV UNPLUGGED
GAME OF STREAMING Cable companies just got another slap in the face in the form of new streaming service HBO Now, which will no longer require a cable package for users to stream HBO’s shows. Is it just us, or are you also excited about the possibility of one day giving Mediacom the boot without having to sacrifice your favorite melodrama?
1013 PARK AVE // COLUMBIA MO www.ROSEMUSICHALL.com
3/18 RACHEL MALLIN + MERRY ELLEN KIRK + COURTNEY YASMINEH 3/19 BASS KITCHEN 3/20 SUMMERCAMP ON THE ROAD TOUR: 2015 3/21 DEAD SARA 3/25 SWEET ASCENT 3/26 JUSTIN ADAMS 3/27 THE HOOTEN HALLERS 3/28 WILLIE WATSON 3/28 THE DOCK ELLIS BAND 4/2 DOPAPOD 4/3 NORA JANE STRUTHERS 4/4 SPRING DUBTACULAR! 4/5 THE WYLDZ 4/7 RECKLESS KELLY 4/8 JON WAYNE & THE PAIN 4/9 TIDAL VOLUME+RAY WILD+DANGERFIELD 4/10 MONOPHONICS 4/11 JOHN GALBRAITH 4/11 GOOD VIBES 4 4/15 BUFFALO KING + AFTER NATIONS + KOVUSARI 4/16 MOUNTAIN SPROUT 4/18 THE GREAT AMERICAN FOXTROT FEAT. WILLIAM ELLIOTT WHITMORE
Written by: Stephanie Bray, Miles Dobis, Danielle Renton, Lauren Rutherford 03.19.15 | VOXMAGAZINE.COM
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NEWS & INSIGHT
Honk for harmony
Peaceniks convene weekly on a busy corner to stand against military action BY SHAWN SHINNEMAN PHOTOS BY SHELBY BASELER
Wednesday afternoons are a rare exception to Mark Haim’s life by bicycle, and on a Wednesday late last month, for somewhere around the 650th time, he pulled up with a full trunk to the corner of Providence and Broadway. As usual, Haim parks his 9-year-old silver Scion hatchback in the first roadside slot west of Providence. In the back are several banners rolled around PVC pipe. Most stay put as backups for an unexpected rush of demonstrators. He reaches for one painted with three phrases. They read: “NO TO WAR IN SYRIA.” And: “WAR NO MORE!” And: “STOP THE BOMBS.” Not a lowercase letter to be found. “Are you a general peacenik or a specific peacenik?” a woman asks while waiting to cross the street. It’s a few minutes past 4:30 p.m., and Haim, who has a bushy gray goatee and jeans tucked into black rubber boots, has just secured his banner. Some might interpret that question as, “Do you actually know what you’re talking about, or are you out here with two fingers in the air and your head in the clouds?” That is not Haim’s interpretation, who feels encouraged by the woman’s curiosity. He explains that the small group he heads has been at this corner since October 2001, after the U.S. launched an aerial attack against Afghanistan. They opposed the war in Iraq then, and as the U.S. continued what Haim sees as a corporate-influenced cycle of interventions, they’ve protested every U.S. military action abroad. Right now, garnering their attention is President Barack Obama’s decision to take action in Syria against the Islamic State, for which Obama has sought retroactive approval from Congress. “So, just in general?” the woman says, eyes glazed. She allows a walk signal to come and go as Haim explains. The man she’s with has stepped aside to read the banner, mumbling support for the war. “No,” Haim says. “All those specifics.” For Haim, whose full-time job is directing Mid-Missouri Peaceworks, a Columbia organization that promotes a violencefree community, there is no simple answer to the question, why are you here? The one constant in a rotating cast of peaceful demonstrators, Haim prefers deeper conversations about the factors that lead the U.S. to intervene. Often, he says, it’s to support one regime over another for geo-political reasons, not
In opposition of the conflict in Syria, Jeff Frey waves his self-made flag and sports a peace sign on a busy corner. During Wednesday rush hour, Frey joins other peaceniks to promote nonviolence in Columbia.
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Peace activists and members of Mid-Missouri Peaceworks oppose U.S. involvement in Syria on the corner of Broadway and Providence.
Mark Haim has been the director of Mid-Missouri Peaceworks since 1985. He dedicates time every week to promote peace, justice and sustainability in the community.
the lofty, democracy-building end goal the federal government sells. Of course, that summary doesn’t scratch the surface of Haim’s full views. When asked about Syria, he brings up a handful of other U.S. military actions he says were fueled by falsified intentions, connecting one to the other to the next. As the overcast sky dims, the three people who joined Haim, the closest thing to a group of regulars, give simpler answers for the motivations behind their involvement in the weekly protests. Each quickly references in some way the military-industrial complex, the term for the money-driven relationships between the military, arms producers and Congress. Their main goal in coming out, they say separately, is to oppose it. Across the intersection from Haim stands Joan Wilcox, a retiree who has dedicated her free time to participating in the peace movement. She has a thinstrapped purse splitting her bright-yellow hooded sweatshirt. Jeff Frey, another demonstrator, crosses the
Among colored signs is a plea for drivers to show support and “honk for peace.” Although the signs elicit friendly honks, the occasional middle finger also makes an appearance.
streets frequently with a flag in one hand and a peace sign in the other. Frey’s muttonchops spill from the sides of his winter hat, and he answers, “Woo!” to car horns with unbreakable consistency. A large man who goes by Bear –– real name, Nestor MacKno –– stands quietly near the banner, opposite Haim. The two talk periodically. Haim is wearing bluetinted sunglasses, and he rotates his body every so often, on cadence with the stoplight, so the flowing traffic can see his sign. Like that of Wilcox, it solicits honks for peace. Many oblige. In a timed three-minute period, 25 honks blare on the corner of Broadway and Providence. In the first minute, 13 different drivers honk their horns. In the next, 10 — all in the first 40 seconds. Just two horns sound in the final minute. “Very variable,” Haim says before the pseudo-experiment. “There are initiators, and there are followers.” It’s impossible to measure how many eye rolls and
middle fingers go unseen. There was at least one, from a man in a white pickup (“Some people haven’t learned to give two fingers for the peace sign,” Haim says). But the honks reassure Haim that his modest strategy is, to some degree, working. Although some might disagree, Haim says when war is fought so quietly with many people numb to its consequences, providing persistent reminders is worth the time. “I’m not Pollyanna,” he later says. “I don’t have delusions that just by going out and standing on the corner for a few Wednesdays, I change the world dramatically. On the other hand, it’s just one hour a week.” As 5:30 p.m. approaches, the group convenes shortly for announcements, with Wilcox and Frey joining Bear and Haim at the northwest corner of the intersection. They roll up the banner and march with the signs a few steps uphill toward Haim’s Scion. One of his three bumper stickers reads, “Humankind. Be both.”
THE ROLE OF PRESIDENTIAL AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE If it weren’t for this law, Mark Haim might not be demonstrating on Columbia street corners What is AUMF?
Three days after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush signed into law the Authorization for Use of Military Force. The law gives presidents the power to bypass Congress and mobilize military forces without its approval. The statute grants the president power “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2011 …” President Barack Obama wants to reinterpret that wording to justify the airstrikes against the Islamic State, a decision that is currently under debate in Congress because al-Qaida formally parted ways with the extremist group. AUMF was created specifically to fight the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
However, the word “aided” in the language of the official bill has been interpreted broadly to mean associated forces.
When and how have presidents used the AUMF card?
In 2002, Bush used AUMF to justify targeting alQaida and invading Iraq. AUMF, which legalizes drone strikes and kill-and-capture missions, allowed Obama to strike against the Taliban in Afghanistan and affiliated terrorists in Yemen.
How has Obama expanded this law?
The Islamic State, a terrorist group in Iraq and Syria that al-Qaida has denounced for being too extreme, now controls an area in Iraq the size of the United Kingdom. The group seeks to create an Islamic state ruled by Sharia law. Obama has asked Congress to refine and apply the vague
AUMF law to the Islamic State. The U.S. began airstrikes against the Islamic State targets in August 2014, yet the president is only now consulting with Congress.
What are the concerns regarding AUMF?
According to New York Magazine, at a Senate committee hearing regarding military action against the Islamic State, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said: “I trust the military. The thing is, there may be another president whom I may or may not trust.” Another member of the committee, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., said: “It’s language that is of concern to me in that it seems oddly openended. As the generation who remembers the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, the lesson learned there is you want tight language when you’re authorizing military intervention.”
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THE SCENE
DRINK THIS: DOUBLETREE COOKIE COCKTAIL The Roof’s delectable new concoction BY CARSON KOHLER
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PHOTO BY AMBER GARRETT
VOXMAGAZINE.COM | 03.19.15
Doubletree hotels across the world serve about 77,000 classic chocolate chip walnut cookies daily, which is about 28 million a year. But, there’s only one Doubletree Cookie Cocktail, and it’s right here at The Roof in Columbia. This cookie creation is the newest, sweetest addition to The Roof’s spring drink menu. It’s an alcoholic twist on the hotel’s classic check-in treat. “The cookies are popular already because everyone gets them, so we might as well add alcohol to it,” says Jackie Smith, a bartender at The Roof and the drink’s creator. After nearly four years of experience, Smith has the creative touch of a mixologist and can make a drink out of anything. Extensive experimentation helped her come up with the cookie cocktail. Although the mixed drink is mostly liquor — Smith says the martini glass couldn’t fit much more — it tastes like a chocolate milkshake. The drink’s base is RumChata and Skyy citrus vodka. Yes, citrus.
The slight zest keeps the creation from tipping into the realm of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. However, there’s a subtle taste of chocolate that comes from the syrup, and the amaretto gives the drink its walnut flavor. Crushed cookies line the rim adding a crumbly texture. The cocktail is an ideal nightcap with a delicious bonus. It’ll satisfy a sweet tooth’s love of chocolate and leave a balanced taste of each flavor on the tongue. Not too rich but not too strong. Just be sure to avoid a milk mustache. That’s so ’90s. Craving your own cookie-inspired treat? Find this cocktail recipe and more at VoxMagazine.com DOUBLETREE COOKIE COCKTAIL, $9 The Roof, 1111 E. Broadway, (The Broadway) Mon.–Fri., 4 p.m. to 12:30 a.m.; Sat.–Sun., 11 a.m. to 12:30 a.m., 875-7000, thebroadwaycolumbia.com
MUSIC
Rap resurrection Bone Thugs-N-Harmony performs E. 1999 Eternal in its entirety BY CHEYENNE ROUNDTREE
PHOTOS COURTESY OF BONE THUGS-N-HARMONY
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s second album, E. 1999 Eternal, has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. The group is known for its harmonizing vocals.
For the members of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, the close bond they formed during their childhood in Ohio remains intact. Although several members took a break from the group at one point, their friendship made the decision to reunite after a 10-year touring hiatus easy. Debuting in the ’90s, Bone Thugs influenced the hip-hop scene by changing the way rappers delivered their music. Despite this, many members took a break to pursue other projects. In 2011, Krayzie Bone and Wi$h Bone left the group to work with their independent E. 1999 Eternal, 1995 label, ThugLine Records, though they say that they never officially left Bone Thugs. The Grammy Awardwinning group performs tonight at The Blue Note to celebrate E. 1999 Eternal’s 20th anniversary. E. 1999 Eternal, which had gone multi-platinum four times by 1996, was not just important in terms of popularity, but it also holds sentimental value to Bone Thugs. The album and song “Tha Crossroads” is a tribute to the group’s mentor and producer Eazy-E, who died four months prior to its release in 1995. When Eazy-E died, the group vowed to carry on his legacy through their music, says band member Flesh-N-Bone. Since then, the group has worked with rap powerhouses such as Notorious B.I.G. and 2Pac. “You can hear Bone Thugs in a lot of artists,” Flesh-N-Bone says. Recently, Bone Thugs collaborated with Akon, Mariah Carey and Timbaland. And in an interview with Complex magazine, A$AP Rocky credited Bone Thugs as a musical influence. Known for his song “Wild for the Night,” the rapper says Bone Thugs is the only group that would make him cry if they met. The first Bone Thugs album local fan Hunter Wente, 27, bought was E. 1999 Eternal. He says the concert will be nostalgic. “They were a big part of me growing up,” Wente says. “It is going to take me back to when I was a kid.” Bone Thugs plans to release another album in the future but hasn’t worked out the details quite yet. The group hopes to collaborate with Lil Wayne, Drake, A$AP Rocky and Kendrick Lamar. FleshN-Bone says he doubts this next BONE THUGS-N-HARMONY album will be the last time fans hear The Blue Note, 9 p.m., tonight, of them. The group simply loves $25, 874-1944, making music too much to stop thebluenote.com what they are doing now.
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Ashes andDust by taylor kasper photos by loren elliott
I was expecting something a little more theatrical when I set out on my mission for dead people. I wasn’t in graveyards tracing carbon copies of headstones or lurking around morgues in the middle of the night. I couldn’t because the bodies I was looking for aren’t buried in cemeteries. They’re stored in boxes right across the street from Faurot Field. About a year ago, a professor turned me onto the search for potter’s fields. I had no clue what they were, until Google told me they were burial grounds for unidentifiable, impoverished or unclaimed bodies. Hart Island, a small island off of New York near the Bronx, is the burial ground to almost one million adults, children and infants, making it the most heavily populated potter’s field in the United States. Not that there are many to choose from. Most of the potter’s fields in the country have been turned into traditional cemeteries, the kind that cause lines of traffic when there’s a funeral procession. But the world hasn’t stopped having unidentified bodies or people who can’t afford burial costs.
So where do they go? In Boone County, they sit among office supplies in a storage closet in the Medical Examiner’s Office. But before they can be shelved, they have to be cremated. And in the majority of cases, Columbia Cremation Care Center is the first stop on their journey to the closet shelf. I didn’t know anything about dead bodies, so that was my first stop too. I also didn’t know what to wear. I had never been to a funeral, but I watched enough melodramas to figure black was a safe color. It probably wasn’t the best decision for early September, at least not in Missouri. Mother Nature has the same tendencies I did when I was 13 years old; what started off as a cool, breezy morning had gone through an unexpected mood swing and turned up the heat to a high of 77 degrees. By the time I got out of class and started driving down Providence Road, I was drenched. My black ensemble was suffocating me with my own sweat and body odor. First impressions could be worse, I guess.
Brian Gardner (right) wheels a corpse into the Columbia Cremation Care Center. He handles standard burial preparations and cremations as well as unidentified, impoverished or unclaimed bodies.
My car wound around the side street, past the Arby’s and through the parking lot of a car wash that looked like a lame imitation of Dover Castle. The cremation center was modest — just a small blue stucco box with a more intense shade of blue trimming the gutters and posts. The parking spot lines on the side of the building were faded to the point of nonexistence, so I parked parallel to the only other car in the lot, a red SUV. I couldn’t see any lights shining through the windows of the entrance, and the first door I tried to pry open was locked. Someone must’ve heard me because I saw a light illuminate the lobby. Fifty-four-year-old Brian Gardner is the owner and one-man cremation wonder at Columbia Cremation Care Center. He greeted me in a hushed voice, like he was catching up after a church service. He has a wellgroomed mustache that defies all laws of physics when he talks — no matter how much he purses his lips, puffs his cheeks or scrunches his nose, that black mustache does not move. Ever. His eyes are dark and beady behind rimless glasses and his button-up shirts — often some variance of small or large checkered squares — hang off his lean frame. He has a habit of going on tangents about his daughter, a college sophomore triple majoring in spanish, history and international studies at Graceland University in Iowa; his son, who wrote a play based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Rapucinni’s Daughter and is now working on a book; and his wife, who Brian says “is the brains his kids take after.” Brian is a certified funeral home director and licensed embalmer. If there’s anyone who’s informed on the process of death, it’s him. His part-time job at DavisPlayle Funeral Home in Kirksville, Missouri, allowed him to live in his college apartment rent-free. Brian earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration,
marketing and personnel management from Truman State University in 1984. That part-time job in college became a career. He attended Kansas City Kansas Community College in 1985, where he earned an associate in applied science degree in mortuary science. Brian received his funeral directors license in 1986, and his embalmers license in 1987.
“
I actually have a couple in the back right now.” — Brian Gardner
He’s worked at five funeral homes all over Missouri. He purchased two in New Franklin and Fayette that he used to manage, but took a brief hiatus between May 2000 and March 2001 because of a conflict with an employer. The Texas-based corporate funeral home he was working for was pressuring him to “rip-off grieving clients for more money.” He wanted to do his job in the most affordable way possible. He took another three years off after selling his funeral home in New Franklin and on March 23, 2009, he opened Columbia Cremation Care Center. I waited in the conference room where he normally meets with clients. It shares an eerie similarity to the duplex of my friend’s grandma. The room is neat but musty. Pastel paintings of flowers and lakes and forests
Top: Brian uses a dry erase board to keep track of his daily cremations. He only receives two or three infants per year, and he says those days are the most difficult.
Brian Gardner is the owner and sole employee of the cremation center. He handles the entire process from scheduling to cremation or burial. 10
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Bottom: Columbia Cremation Care Center offers a selection of over 38 urn designs that range from $30-$300. Some families customize the urns with initials, a birth and death date or a military emblem.
After Brian picks up a body from the medical examiner’s office or the site of death, he either cremates the body or embalms it for burial. Unclaimed, indigent or unidentified bodies are usually cremated. If a deceased’s family is opposed to cremation but can’t afford burial costs, the county commissioner foots the bill.
the unclaimed bodies in mid-Missouri, but he’s one of the least-expensive options for a county on a tight budget. The county commission budgets $250 per body to cremate or $500 to bury. Even though burials for unclaimed bodies are an option, they’re almost never done. Columbia Cremation Care Center is able to offer lower prices because Taylor Kasper the cremation is handled on-site, and Brian is the only employee manning the facility. On-site. The bodies are cremated on-site. The detail hadn’t really stuck with me until Brian said it. I thought if he was sitting here talking with me, then the only people in this building right now are alive. And then my throat closed up. “I actually have a couple in the back right now.” I knew someone was coming soon to restock the death fridge, but it never occurred to me that the occupants and me were in the same building at the same time. I let him finish his sentence, shook his hand and gulped down the clean air from outside before he could offer to show me the crematorium in the back. Air
never tasted so fresh. Not after breathing in the oxygen another human couldn’t.
Grim Curiosity
I think I was the only third grader in Chicago planning my funeral during the half-hour allotted for silent reading. I paged through a hardcover copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which I perpetually kept checked out of the library but never actually read. I was slumped back in the beanbag chair under the window. It was the first time I was quick enough to claim the beanbag seat. But it was hard to focus on a supplemental Harry Potter book when I couldn’t decide whether people would want to eat shrimp or ribs during my wake. My parents didn’t appreciate the obsession I had with death, and I’m pretty sure if I’d kept waking them up at 3 a.m. asking questions about what happens, they would have killed me. At least then I’d have some satisfying answers. “You just keep sleeping,” they said. That’s a raw deal; I already hate sleeping while I’m alive, and now I’m condemned to doing that full time? “You go to heaven.” But we’re Jewish and Catholic, and Lucas Kratz just got confirmed, and he said that you only go to heaven if you’re Catholic. “The coffin keeps things from eating your body.” I doubt that. You guys don’t know this, but I found the VHS of Cujo, and I know for a fact that it wouldn’t take 03.19.15 | VOXMAGAZINE.COM
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PHOTO BY SHELBY KARDELL/MISSOURIAN
hang in impartial solidarity. The drawers lining the wall closest to the door look like they should be filled with muumuus or doilies instead of cremation pamphlets. “Sorry, had to confirm a drop-off for today,” Brian says evenly, as if he was confirming a delivery of snacks to restock a vending machine. The cremation center doesn’t have a vending machine. I didn’t ask, but my guess was the delivery would be traveling in the back of a hearse. I set down my phone, switched on the recorder, and tugged on the collar of my black v-neck — nervous habit. We gossiped over the weather, how he got into the business, what his kids were up to and what kind of people get left behind in the death industry. Unlike counties and cities that use potter’s fields, plots of land reserved for cheap burials, Boone County cremates those that slip through the cracks of the system, the unclaimed. Brian sees about two or three people go unclaimed every year. They are sent to him from all over central and northern Missouri. More often than not, they’re either homeless or they’re left behind by families who can’t afford the cost of cremation or burial. The Missouri State Licensing Board requires medical examiners to hold the bodies for at least 30 days to provide family members a chance to claim them. After that, a licensed physician and Brian sign the death certificate in the place of a family member, and the cremation process begins. Brian is not the only one in Columbia who handles
Brian Gardner cleans the crematory. He cremates about 475 bodies per year, including around 80 cadavers from the MU medical school.
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PHOTOS BY OR COURTESY OF
The state requires the minimum crematory temperature be 1500 F, but some objects, like this glass eye, withstand the heat.
Top: Brian says a 100-pound body usually takes around two hours to complete a full cremation process, but a heavier body takes a minimum of three hours. Below left: After the bodies are cremated, Brian removes metal joints from the bones. The bones are then ground into ashes, and the joints are sent to a metal recycling company in Detroit.
PHOTOS BY OR COURTESY OF
Below right: Brian’s contract with MU’s medical school requires him to cremate cadaver parts. The sealed boxes, which are marked “do not save,” have to be watched carefully during cremation so the remains don’t burn too quickly.
Above: After the bones are removed from the crematory, they are further processed and placed in a temporary black plastic urn. Then, the ashes are sent to the family or delivered to the Boone County Medical Examiner’s office for storage.
03.19.15 | VOXMAGAZINE.COM
13
breaking down the numbers
30
The minimum amount of days unclaimed bodies are held
$250
The county commission’s budget to cremate each body
$500
The county commission’s budget to bury each body
475
bodies that go to Columbia Cremation Care Center each year
2 or 3
unclaimed bodies at Columbia Cremation Care Center per year
30 to 40
boxes of unclaimed ashes sitting on the Boone County Medical Examiner’s shelves
1994
The year that the oldest box was added to the shelf
A bin of hip joints, knee joints and spinal rods wait to be shipped to Detroit. Brian Gardner says these parts are the creepiest aspect of his profession.
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much for that dog to dig me up and rip me out. In the third grade, my parents signed me up for a lunchtime meeting group called Rainbows, where kids ate their brown-bag lunches and cried about the loss of a grandparent or an aunt. My teacher from the previous year, Ms. Rio, was the leader of the group. We would sit in a circle on a carpet with street and stop signs drawn into the felt. The group members carried on with their Deathoholics Anonymous meeting, talking about how sad they were because their grandma died of cancer. Meanwhile, I traced the red octagons with a paper clip. I wasn’t sad. I still had all my grandparents. When it was my turn to talk, Ms. Rio gave the same vague answers my parents supplied: it’s just like sleeping, you go to heaven, rabid dogs will not dig up your body and eat your remains. I was sick of asking questions that didn’t have the answers I needed, so I played my part and let my parents sleep. And then when I was 15, I saw my first dead body. I was late to my softball game that day. I worked as a lifeguard at the local pool in a northwest suburb of Chicago. Our meeting ran overtime that day. The mandatory CPR training was taking awhile because someone in the group kept forgetting the proper compression-ventilation ratios. I still had my Fox 40 whistle hanging around my neck when I arrived at the field. Vince was the umpire, so it was going to be a good game — the guy had the most consistent strike zone a house league softball team could hope for. We exchanged small talk at random points throughout the season because we shared the space behind home plate for half the game. As the catcher, my job was to charm the umpire. I was clipping on my shin protectors when he reminded me to take off my whistle before the game started. I waddled back to the dugout in hand-medown catcher’s gear that was a size too big, and I slipped the whistle through the chain link fence
separating the dugout from the parent section. The cloud of dust behind home plate kicked up and all I could think was, “Man, he’s really going to town on shining up our diamond.” But Vince was on the ground. Everyone froze, but I kept walking toward the settling dust. The adults organized into their own version of an emergency action plan. My dad, who spent a large portion of his teenage years as a lifeguard, and a woman who daylighted as a school nurse were pumping his chest. The rhythm of compressions was not in sync with the recommended 100 beats per minute. In lifeguard training, we were taught to sing “Another One Bites the Dust,” or “Staying Alive,” in our heads to stay consistent. Vince didn’t bite the dust; he crashed into it. He had fractured his nose from the impact. When the adults turned him on his back, his broken glasses slid off his face and split into two separate monocles. I stood agape as Vince choked on the blood pooling in his mouth. His skin began to turn blue and it looked as if he’d been in the morgue for at least a week already. The agonal wheezes were a harsh reminder that he wasn’t dead yet. The commissioner of the Mt. Prospect softball league would later tell us that the 57-year-old umpire had suffered a major heart attack. He fumbled through at least 18 euphemisms before he finally gave up and called it what it was — dead. I didn’t approach the casket at the umpire’s wake. My final image of him was already keeping me from a full night’s sleep; I didn’t need to see what the aftermath looked like. The second, third and fourth bodies came in rapid high school succession, filing into Friedrich’s Funeral Home as quietly as they used to walk into my math class and science lab when they were alive. Drunk driver, suicide, cancer. At this point, I was 18. I could vote. I had a driver’s license. I had memorized my social security number.
Brian says he wouldn’t mind hiring a part-time assistant at the crematorium, but he says many people are conflicted about working in the death and burial industry.
The duration, rather than temperature, is the most important part of the cremation process. Brian says bone density indicates how long the cremation will take and can be telling of the deceased’s profession. A farmer, for example, might weigh less than a businessman, but typically has denser bones that results in a longer cremation.
I was an adult. And I was still plagued by the same questions that kept me up at night 10 years earlier, only this time I had faces to pair with those questions.
Nameless Faces
Brian has plenty of faces to pair with my questions — an average of 475 a year — but he’s careful not to get sucked in. “I have to remove myself from the grief; otherwise, I won’t be able to do my job.” No case is the same when it comes to death. The cremation center might be the only place where a prisoner, a father and a John Doe share something in common — space in the crematorium. In October 2014, Marion County referred a death to Brian. A tree cutter had either been crushed by a tree or had a heart attack. Brian’s hand swats at empty space while he recalls the memory. He said the report was unclear. The man’s family was referred to Brian from another funeral home because they weren’t able to pay the funeral home costs, and because the body was already in Columbia for an autopsy, it made more sense for Brian to take him. He contacted the dead man’s sister-in-law and son. They told him they’d scrape together the money. After sending over the paperwork, he heard nothing. A few emails later, the son said he
hadn’t had the time to make the trip to the library to print out the forms needed for the death certificate. Then nothing. The tree cutter wasn’t just abandoned by his family
“
I have to remove myself from the grief; otherwise, I won’t be able to do my job.” — Brian Gardner
who couldn’t afford the cremation. He was abandoned by the Marion County coroner who wasn’t filing the paperwork or returning phone calls. For a routine cremation case with the family actively involved, the process only takes between two and five days. It takes much longer for someone who goes unclaimed. The tree cutter was in the morgue for three
months. “If it’s a Boone County case, the Medical Examiner’s Office will wait about 45 days until they (decide) to do something about it, get them out of there, but since this was a Marion County case, we didn’t have the go-ahead for cremation,” Brian says. If the death is in their coverage area, the medical examiner has to take care of signing the death certificate in place of a family member, and the body is cremated by default. No memorial, no casket, no goodbyes. The body is considered a county case and sent to Chief Forensic Investigator Dori Burke. It took me months to get in touch with her. It wasn’t because she was trying to blow me off. The Medical Examiner’s Office is always busy. They cover all the cases in mid-Missouri, including the smaller counties that aren’t as populated as Boone or Callaway. Dori is the only forensic investigator on the job. Her office is closet-sized, stuffed with stacks of autopsy reports, death certificates and clear CD cases. Two desks are against opposite walls, one for Dori and one for her part-time office assistant. It was hard to pick out distinguishable items with all the clutter. If not for the magnet of Dori’s granddaughter, the only pop of color in the office, I wouldn’t have seen the grey urn sitting on her desk like a somber paperweight. 03.19.15 | VOXMAGAZINE.COM
15
a look back at the history buried in hart island
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Uniform white boxes are stacked unceremoniously on a small closet shelf in the Boone County Medical Examiner’s office. Dori Burke, chief forensic investigator and operations manager, says she holds out hope that family members will come looking for their loved ones.
“This is Patricia, just got dropped off.” The bottom of the urn is marked with her date of birth, date of death and date of cremation, along with some numbers identifying the remains. No way were 30 to 40 unclaimed boxes of remains stored in her office — there was just no space. Dori is the most methodical person I’ve ever met. She has to be. She’s on call 24-hours a day. So when she stopped me mid-question and told me to follow her, I did. She led me around the corner of the MU Sinclair School of Nursing wing and into a locked room. It’s also closet-sized, maybe a foot narrower and a few feet deeper than her own office. I wasn’t really sure why I was looking at a shelf of white boxes. It looks just like all the other office supply closets that I’d had to restock with paper clips when I was an intern. The back wall had unfinished caulk converge with pale green paint, and it smelled like the inside of an old history book that hadn’t been opened for 35 years. The ceiling was unnaturally high but the stacks of manila folders and plastic tubs nearly touched it. One clumsy bump into the edge of a shelf would spark an avalanche. She pointed to the white boxes at the top, separated and organized by an unfinished wooden shelf. Years of unclaimed people were collecting dust next to a Nikon D3000 box and an old projector — a graveyard hidden among office supplies.
“Here’s all my people,” she says casually, pointing to neat black marker strokes. “I had to handwrite most of those. A few of them have been here before I got here, and I’ve been here for 19 years.” Not everyone stays on the shelf forever. Dori keeps the bodies around on the off-chance that someone comes by to reclaim one. Between eight and ten years ago, a man was left at the local cremation center. The man had a young daughter and an ex-wife who wasn’t willing to help with any of the arrangements. Years later, that little girl came back asking for her dad’s autopsy report to figure out what happened. She ended up finding her dad, too. “She was bawling like it happened yesterday,” Dori says. But this is an exception. Most of those white boxes will never be picked up. Dusty reminders of a forgotten life. On my final visit to Columbia Cremation Care Center, I asked Brian the question I had been putting off; one that no one seemed to have a satisfying answer for. “The logical part of me thinks when we die we’re either cremated and become part of the earth, but the other part of me thinks ‘yeah, there probably is something else.’” The third grader in me prayed he wouldn’t say heaven, sleeping or a carcass-eating-dog. “So what happens? I’ll find out when my time comes I guess.”
PHOTOS COURTESY OF MELINDA HUNT/THE HART ISLAND PROJECT; JOE STERNFELD/THE HART ISLAND PROJECT
Hart Island, the potter’s field on an island near New York City, is the final resting place to almost one million unclaimed bodies dating back to the Civil War era. The city bought the 101-acre island in 1868 to use as a burial ground for unclaimed dead and Civil War veterans. The island is still used for cadaver, unclaimed and indigent burials. In Columbia, bodies are stored in the Boone/ Callaway County Medical Examiners Office, but the fate is often the same in both cases — the bodies rest in anonymity. The Hart Island Project works to find the families of those buried in mass graves on the island. In an attempt to ensure no one is kept from history, a group called the Hart Island Project created The Traveling Cloud Museum, a digital museum of photos, anecdotes and articles about the forgotten people buried in Hart Island. The Traveling Cloud Museum has records from 1980 to present day for 62,324 bodies. The interactive online map identifies burial plots for family members because the island is closed off to visitors except those with special permission. Photography is no longer allowed either. Hart Island is managed by the Department of Corrections and the juvenile inmates of Rikers island are on the burial detail. The website hosts a satellite map of the burials and a database of names, dates of birth, dates of death and other relevant information that make claiming a body more accessible. The families can either contact the Hart Island Project coordinators for more information about the burial plots or go through the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
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V O X M A G A Z I N E / / 0 3 . 0 5 . 1 5 / / F R E E E V E RY T H U R S D AY
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VO k out o XM ur live AG cove AZ rage o IN f Tru E.C e/Fa OM lse
LIFE IN PLASTIC
Columbia’s most durable tradition stacks up decades of souvenirs PAGE 6
V O X M A G A Z I N E / / 2 . 2 6 . 1 5 / / F R E E E V E RY T H U R S D AY
THE NEW CLASSIC
Strange Donuts is here, and its hometown recipe bucks custom from the doughy inside, out PAGE 5
Now showing: Columbia’s quirkiest weekend
MIXING IT UP
Food presentation is only one of Teller’s chefs’ creative talents PAGE 14
EAT ON THE GO
Film previews Director cameos
DON’T BELIEVE HIM JUST
PAGE 5
CO-CONSPIRATOR Q&A PAGE 10
Meet the buskers
Roxy’s owner Jesse Garcia is at it again, and his newest ice-cold club is a family matter PAGE 8
HOMEBREWED HOPS
Whether it’s an IPA or wheat, these beer buffs are sweeping the local craft scene PAGE 4
BRINGING WENDY BACK
Fly to a modern-day Neverland with Paula Rhodes in this storybook twist PAGE 15
IT’S VOX WITHOUT THE NEWSPRINT Same Vox vibe. Tasty new format. MUSIC. DINING. NEWS. MOVIES. EVENTS.
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THIS WEEK IN COLUMBIA
University ConCert series Good People. Great Performances.
The to-do list ARTS & CULTURE James Johann
This Kansas City area performer has been on Comedy Central’s Premium Blend and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. His self-deprecating style and hilarious anecdotes about Midwest-living make him a crowd-drawing act. Friday and Saturday, 9 p.m., Déjà Vu, $9, 443-3216
Upcoming Events
Willie nelson Monday, March 30, 2015, 7PM
Potted Potter: the UnaUthorized harry exPerienCe Tuesday, March 31, 2015, 7PM singin’ in the rain (FeatUre Film) Sunday, April 5, 2015, 2PM a hard day’s night (FeatUre Film) Monday, April 6, 2015, 7PM sing-along the soUnd oF mUsiC (FeatUre Film) Tuesday, April 7, 2015, 7PM the ChanCellor’s art shoWCase Monday, April 13, 2015, 7:30PM Cherry PoPPin’ daddies Thursday, April 16, 2015, 7PM mU Choral Union: oUr tradition and FUtUre: a ProPhet oF light
Thursday, April 23, 2015, 7PM Battle High School @UConcertSeries
Tickets
www.concertseries.org Missouri Theatre Ticket Office 203 South 9th Street, Downtown Columbia (573) 882-3781
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VOXMAGAZINE.COM | 03.19.15
Annual Train Show
Come explore the history of transportation through displays, photographs and videos of early trains and travel. You’ll get a chance to look back on what life was like when coal was king. Saturday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Paquin Tower, Free, 874-7460
‘80s vs. ‘90s Round Three: Music Video Battle of the Decades The ’80s and ’90s are tied with one win a piece. Time for round three. DJ Jen HA! and Requiem play the hottest tunes from each era. Come dressed as your favorite decade, and be ready to dance. Saturday, 8:30 p.m., The Blue Note, Free; $5 cover after 11 p.m., 874-1944
SPORTS Missouri Baseball vs. South Carolina
Enjoy America’s favorite pastime and help cheer the Tigers to victory against No. 6 South Carolina Gamecocks. Friday, 6:05 p.m., Taylor Stadium, $5 adult; $3, youth and senior, 884-7292
CIVIC
SCREEN
SUPB Pool Tournament
The Babadook (NR)
Put this event in your corner pocket. The Student Unions Programming Board hosts its monthly pool tournament. Winners take home a Mizzou-themed prize. Thursday, 6 p.m., The Shack, MU Student Center, Free, 882-6310
FOOD & DRINK
Six years after the death of her husband, Amelia struggles to raise her two children, especially 6-year-old Samuel, who is terrorized by his fear of monsters. Amelia’s nightmares are realized when she finds the monster is not a figment of her son’s imagination. F, R RUNTIME = 1:46
Columbia Green Drinks
Do You Believe (R)
Environmentalists, unite. Those interested in all things green gather to network and chat in a low-pressure environment. Attendees get $1 off all drafts. Thursday, 6 p.m., Café Berlin, Free, 514-4714
Featuring Sean Astin and Mira Sorvino, this film follows a pastor who is shaken by seeing the visible faith of a street-corner preacher. He responds with a journey that impacts every life it touches. F, R RUNTIME = 1:44
Logboat Tap Takeover
Insurgent (PG-13)
Addison’s and Logboat Brewing team up for another tap takeover, pouring a limited amount of Logboat’s Blood Orange Shiphead. Arrive at 8:06 p.m. for the tapping, and enjoy $2 drafts after 9 p.m. Thursday, 8–10 p.m., Addison’s, Free, 256-1995
Chews Your Wellness at Lucky’s Market
Amanda Garrison-Lucas of Chews Your Health, LLC, puts on a live spring cooking demonstration, “Eating Outside the Box,” to the theme of spring cleansing. Feel free to spectate, snack and even participate. Friday, 5:30–7:30 p.m., Lucky’s Market, Free, 442-2128
MUSIC MU Graduate Concert Jazz
Join the members of the MU Graduate Concert Jazz as they serenade you with their smooth rhythms. Thursday, 7–9 p.m., The Bridge, $5; Free with student ID, 442-9645
FORUM 8 SHOWTIMES @
GoodrichQualityTheaters.com
and 573-445-7469 and Fandango.com
Picking up where Divergent left off, Tris (Shailene Woodley) and Four (Theo James) are on the run from Jeanie (Kate Winslet) and the rest of the power-hungry Erudites. They must discover what Tris’ family died to protect and why the Erudites want to eliminate all divergents. F, R RUNTIME = 2:02
Still playing
American Sniper (R) R Chappie (R) F, R Cinderella (PG) F, R The DUFF (PG-13) R Focus (R) F, R Hot Tub Time Machine 2 (R) R Jupiter Ascending (PG-13) R Kingsman: The Secret Service (PG-13) F, R The Lazarus Effect (PG-13) R McFarland, USA (PG) R Run All Night (R) F, R The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (PG) F, RT The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (PG) R Unfinished Business (R) F, R
Theaters vox F = Forum RT = Ragtag R = Regal
THURSDAY
MARCH 5, 12, 19, 26 1 col.Check x 1out movie reviews on VoxMagazine.com.
Q&A
A CONVERSATION WITH MELINDA HEMMELGARN
Nationally recognized dietitian is promoting healthy eating in Columbia BY REID FOSTER
PHOTO BY JENNY JUSTUS
Melinda Hemmelgarn can’t stop talking about food. Whether in conversation or on her nationally syndicated radio show, the Food Sleuth is always spreading the word about her latest dietary discovery. Hemmelgarn, 58, has been a dietician for over 30 years. After getting her master’s degree at MU, she worked at the Truman Memorial Veterans’ Hospital studying malnutrition among military personnel returning from war. Eventually, her focus turned to childhood obesity, and when she realized people got their nutritional information from media, not dieticians, she discovered her nutritional niche. She began writing her popular “Food Sleuth” column for the Columbia Daily Tribune in 1989. After it was dropped from the paper in 2009, she ran into KOPN General Manager David Owens in a swimming pool parking lot. Owens was a fan of her column and asked Hemmelgarn to do a radio program. Now she teams up with her husband, Dan, for “Food Sleuth Radio,” which is syndicated on 20 stations across the U.S., from Ithaca, New York, to Bend, Oregon. “There’s so much misinformation, so much propaganda, and the mission of the program is to connect the dots between food and agriculture and help consumers find food truth,” she says. Explain the process behind getting guests for your show. I’ll meet them, I’ll like them, and I’ll want to interview them. If I want to know more about them,
then I want them to tell their story. I interviewed a woman who was at a farming conference I just got back from who experiences pesticide drift. Can you imagine raising three small children and having to bring them inside and close all your windows and feel like you’re living in a place that’s going to harm them because of the sprays from GMO (genetically modified organism) crops and the chemicals that are associated with them? Whoa! That’s a story that needs to be told about our food system that we might not know. What might shock consumers about the food they buy at the supermarket? I think the fact that so much of our food is genetically modified. Most people don’t know what genetic modification means. There’s a lot of propaganda about genetic modification. Most people don’t know that the majority of our genetically engineered crops are engineered to withstand being sprayed with herbicides. How can consumers find all-natural food at their local grocery store? You want to look for the organic label. That tells us, by law, genetically engineered components cannot be used within an organic system. So no genetically modified seeds. You will not find genetically modified ingredients within an organic product. If you’re not buying a processed food, then you want to look for the organic seal.
What changes can Columbians make to their food consumption that could benefit the environment? Choosing organic food is really important because a lot of the toxic pesticides, the chemical fertilizers, are things that people really wouldn’t want to have in their food if they knew they were present. You’ll avoid those with the organic system. Describe what your daily plate might look like. I eat a largely plant-based diet. I grow a lot of vegetables in my garden. I go to the farmers’ market, and I buy from organic farmers. What obstacles do communities face when trying to embrace a healthy lifestyle? Access. People not having the money to purchase good food or not having access to it. Those of us who live in Columbia, we might take for granted that we have any number of supermarkets. Maybe we have a vehicle so we can get there. And if we have a living wage, we can afford that food. Is there a business in Columbia that does a particularly good job of selling food that is healthy and/or environmentally friendly? I think Lee Lockhart is a standout at Main Squeeze. She composts her food waste. She has organic food. She buys from organic farmers. Main Squeeze has been my favorite place for years. 03.19.15 | VOXMAGAZINE.COM
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t o H Spot
the Name & Location thursday
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9 pm until midnight • Sunday through Thursday Features $2 Pints and $5 Nachos
709 Cherry St. • 256-1995
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Happy Hour 10pm to Midnight
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23 S. 8th St • Columbia MO • 573.875.8888 HOURS: 6:30 am - 10:00 pm (7 days a week)
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