Emancipation Station

After visiting the Emancipation Station, a shelter for women, I thought about it a long time afterwards. I was in awe of Pastor Alice Pigee-Wallack who runs the center. Her strength for dealing with the difficult and hard stories of these women. Sometimes it is a story of mental illness, sometimes drugs, abuse, or just hard luck. Just recently "Pastor Alice" as they call her, told me that the story we did helped them earn a $5000 grant. It motivates me to go out and do more photography like this.

Link to article

If you or someone you know would like to help the Emancipation Station, contact the Janet Brown Moss at janetbridgeworks@sbcglobal.net or call 816.531.6577. To contact the True Light Family Resource Center, please call 816.561.1700 or emailtruelightfrc@hotmail.com.

A Teacher of Note

I just finished my work at the MPW. We had our exhibition at the local library with a great turnout. Below is a quick summary of my story. It was a wonderful experience to work directly with some of the most talented people in the industry, Dennis Dimick and George Olson, and to see the end reaction of the town to our work.

©Rachael Jane

more here

Scott Taylor is a music-loving school teacher and softball coach at St. Pius X, a local Catholic high school in Crystal City.

Taylor, as his students call him, often uses music to motivate his students to be more engaged in learning, such as paralleling Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales with “The Battle of Evermore” by Led Zeppelin. He uses many musical euphemisms in class to make things fun, such as a weekly vocabulary list he calls the “greatest hits.” His walls and bookshelves at home and in his classroom are replete with music and sports paraphernalia.

Taylor is responsible for writing many of the songs by The Bottle Rockets, a rock band considered to be the godfathers of the '90s alt/country-roots rock revival originally from Festus and Crystal City. Some members of the band were his students at St. Pius X.