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Mid-Missouri mourns Arris John Pardalos, founder of Arris Pizza | Mid-Missouri News | komu.com
https://www.komu.com/news/midmissourinews/mid-missouri-mourns-arris-john-pardalos-founder-of-arris-pizza/article\_158e4cfe-ea3c-4fde-b273-c8d3374fccf5.html

https://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/higher\_education/new-mizzou-students-welcomed-with-tradition-filled-fun/article\_ce2690bb-e368-496f-a688-fdfb44e20007.html#tncms-source=topstory

https://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/local/unusual-guest-flies-over-eagle-bluffs-conservation-area/article\_12c86e77-f59a-4299-8df5-bbc1af3587ee.html#tncms-source=featured

The Missouri Department of Conservation is buying seeds from the public during select dates this fall, according to a news release from the department.
These will be grown into bare root seedlings at the George O. White Tree Nursery in Licking. They're then used for conservation work and available for purchase by the public, according to the release.
In central Missouri, specific seeds may be dropped off at the conservation department's Central Regional Office, at 3500 E. Gans Road in Columbia, from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the following dates: 

Aug. 21
Aug. 28
Sept. 4
Sept. 11
Sept. 18
Sept. 25
Oct. 2
Oct. 9
Oct. 16
Oct. 23
Oct. 30
The nursery will start accepting certain seeds on specific days and will stop accepting seeds once the quota is reached for that species. 

Sellers are encouraged to call ahead to ensure the conservation department is still collecting a specific species.
The nursery has the right to reject seed once needs are met or if it is poor quality, not mature, or mixed with refuse like leaves and twigs, according to the release.
Sellers should note that a special permit is required to collect fruit and seeds on conservation areas.
Starting Aug. 21
Serviceberry is $7 per pound. Fruit must be ripe, meaning purple to black in color.
Black cherries will go for $6 per pound. Fruit must be ripe and black in color.
Wild plums will sell for $1.95 per fruit and must be ripe with a skin color completely red, yellow or orange.
Starting Aug. 28
Hazelnuts will fetch $4.75 per pound. Fruit must be mature with the seed being light brown and easily pulled from the husk.

No green or partially green fruit will be accepted, and the conservation department advised letting fruit mature on the plant.

Growing all of these species requires the nursery to collect or buy tens of thousands of pounds of seeds each summer and fall. 
For example, about 2,000 bushels of walnuts, 6,000 pounds of white oak acorns, 500 pounds of hazelnuts and 500 pounds of plum seed are needed just to establish seedlings for these four species.

Starting Sept. 8
Mixed hickory will go for $0.75, and shellbark hickory is priced at $0.90. 
Persimmons are priced at $0.75 per pound of fruit, which must be ripe and soft, not partially green. 
Paw paws are $1.50 per pound and must be soft. Fruit that is too firm will not be accepted.
Starting Sept. 21
White oak will sell for $0.95, post oak is priced at $1.50 and chinkapin oak is $2.50.
Ohio buckeyes and red buckeyes will both go for $0.95 per pound of seed, which must be clean and have the hull removed.
Butternuts go for $3. 
Starting Oct. 1
Pin oak may be sold for $1.25.
Starting Oct. 22
Deciduous holly can be sold for $4.50. 
Each year, the State Forest Nursery processes more than 10,000 orders and ships around 2 million seedlings.

Sharon Geuea Jones rose from her seat in the audience after Monday night’s Columbia City Council meeting began, and walked over to the podium in the front of the room.
With her right hand raised slightly above her shoulder, Jones swore to faithfully discharge the duties of her new role — Fourth Ward council member — and support the charter and ordinances of the city of Columbia.

“This is a great community, and I am so pleased and privileged and honored to be able to represent it,” Jones said once she sat down with the other council members.
After Jones was sworn in, Mayor Barbara Buffaloe acknowledged the historic moment.

“You’ll notice this is the first time the Columbia City Council is an all-female council,” Buffaloe said.
Jones won a special election Aug. 4 to fill the vacancy after Nick Foster, the previous Fourth Ward representative, resigned to relocate to Georgia.
Columbia now joins a small group of American cities, including St. Paul, Minnesota, and Gulfport, Florida, that have an all-female City Council.

In Missouri, only 29.8% of local elected officials are women, according to data from the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
That percentage is similar to data from the rest of the country. The center’s researchers found that women hold 32.7% of municipal positions for American cities with more than 10,000 people.
Director of Data Chelsea Hill said researchers have found that women tend to be very involved in their community, so local government is a “natural fit.”

“Women will see an issue in their community and want to fix it, so the municipal level is a really good entry point into that,” Hill said.

Buffaloe also acknowledged the women who had previously held public office in Columbia. She specifically mentioned Betty McCaskill, Columbia’s first female council member, and Mary Anne McCollum, Columbia’s first female mayor.
“It’s not always easy being a female elected official, and so I just want to thank those who continue to serve, including the ladies up here with me right now,” Buffaloe said.
Overcoming obstacles
Third Ward council member Jacque Sample said she is “proud” to be part of Columbia’s first all-female City Council, and Buffaloe echoed Sample’s sentiment.
“I was really, really kind of awe-inspired by having an all-female council, especially because I’m only the second female mayor in Columbia,” Buffaloe said.

In a Facebook video posted on Friday, Buffaloe said that in her experience, women often “lead with empathy and collaboration.” She said they also tend to prioritize transparency and community engagement.
Although she believes the milestone is significant, Buffaloe said she and Mary Anne McCollum, Columbia’s first female mayor, have talked about hoping to get past the point of being labeled as a “female” mayor rather than just a mayor. McCollum was mayor from 1989 to 1995.

For Columbia politicians, being a female mayor or a female council member sometimes comes with obstacles that extend beyond the label.
Sample said she and other female council members have dealt with sexism and harassment on social media.
“I’ve seen people very blatantly rate the appearance of the female council members,” Sample said. “This was back when we had two males on council, and they didn’t care about what the men looked like, but they were rating us women on our appearance.”

Sample also said she has faced concerns over the physical safety of herself and her family.
She said she had an instance where someone would follow her in public, take pictures and post about it on social media. Sample said it was a “really unnerving experience” and something other women on the council have also encountered.

Sample reached out to the Columbia Police Department to intervene. She said she also completed a self-audit of her home and spent over $3,000 to install a new security system.
“When this position pays $6,000 and I have to spend over $3,000 for my own personal safety and the safety of my family, that’s ridiculous,” Sample said. “I don’t know of any male person who has served in this position who’s had the same type of problem.”
City Council members previously received an annual stipend of around $6,000, which increased to about $7,000 in May.

When Sample was elected to the position, she knew she would face people who were unhappy with decisions she made on the council. But she said she was not prepared for the harassment.
“I would really like to be meeting with the director about the zoning regulation, or meeting about the sidewalk that’s interrupted, or meeting about affordable housing, or meeting about the utilities changes that are coming,” Sample said. “Those are things I want to be talking about. I don’t want to have to be worried that somebody’s following me in public or gonna come to my home, or worried about what I’m wearing.”
Buffaloe also said people have made physical threats against her family, and she has installed security cameras at her house. She said her family has sometimes changed their routines and kept in touch with the police chief if she is going somewhere.

“Talking to my male peers in other cities, as well as counterparts within Columbia, they have not faced the same level of harassment that I have and that I’ve seen my other female elects face,” Buffaloe said.
Support from Missouri and beyond
Throughout Missouri, some organizations seek to support women as they face gender-specific obstacles in their political careers and leadership roles.
In Columbia, Buffaloe has worked with the nonprofit United Women’s Empowerment to promote the organization’s Appointments Project Journey Groups.
United Women’s Empowerment is based in Kansas City and strives to break down barriers to women’s economic growth and leadership through research, policy solutions and civic engagement. One of their initiatives, the Appointments Project, brings groups of women together to learn about civic leadership opportunities and navigate the appointment process in their communities.

Wendy Doyle, president and CEO, said the intended outcome is for women to join boards and commissions in their community, which may lead to future campaigns for public office.
In the Facebook video Buffaloe posted Friday, she noted that most of the current City Council members previously served on city boards or commissions.
“That experience and opportunity to get to know how local government works is instrumental to being successful in the role,” Buffaloe said in the video.
Doyle said Buffaloe has been a “great supporter” of the project.
“At the end of last year, when we had the celebration for an Appointments Project Journey Group, she came and was really a part of the celebration to encourage women to get engaged in the city of Columbia,” Doyle said.

While they and other groups offer organized support, Doyle said something much simpler can benefit women who are on the fence about running for office: endorsements from the people around them.

Teona McGhaw said women are sometimes hesitant to run for office, but if they are repeatedly asked to run for a certain position, it is more likely they will go for it.
McGhaw is the vice president of membership for the east region of the National Women’s Political Caucus, and she is also the former president of the its Missouri branch. It is a grassroots organization that trains and supports female candidates running for elected and appointed offices.
McGhaw said that for female candidates, speaking with other women who have already run for office or are in elected positions can be helpful.
“We try to put women in a room with other women who have done it,” McGhaw said.

For Jones, support came from the people who encouraged her to run for office after former council member Foster’s resignation and the people who dedicated themselves to her campaign through canvassing and other means. She said she received an “outpouring of support” as a candidate.

After her win on election night, Jones said the all-female council is “definitely historic,” and she emphasized the seven members will bring a variety of opinions to the City Council.
“We are seven very different people with very different backgrounds,” Jones said. “We’ve got a lot of different perspectives, and I think that people who think we’re a monolith are going to be very disappointed.”

Many people know A-listers like Sam Walton, Annie Fisher, Carl Edwards, Claire McCaskill, Blind Boone, Stan Kronkee, etc. but who are some of your favorites who are obscure or lost to time? These categories on Wikipedia have hundreds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_people\_from\_Columbia,\_Missouri

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People\_from\_Columbia,\_Missouri

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People\_from\_Columbia,\_Missouri,\_by\_occupation

Jefferson City Olive Garden opens after years of anticipation https://abc17news.com/news/2026/08/17/jefferson-city-olive-garden-opens-after-years-of-anticipation/

https://www.si.com/college/missouri/football/mizzou-football-makes-the-ap-preseason-top-25-poll-here-s-what-that-means-for-the-tigers-schedule

Over the course of 46 years with the city, Ray Beck helped lead Columbia's transition from a small college town to the vibrant mid-sized city it is today.
Now, you can read all about it in “Fingerprints & Footprints: Ray Beck’s Columbia,” a new memoir about his influence and his legacy.
A crowd of around 150 people gathered Sunday around the Riechmann Indoor Pavilion at Stephens Lake Park to celebrate the release of the book, which chronicles the development of roads, sewer systems, trails and more through the lens of the longtime civic leader.

Jodie Jackson Jr., co-author of the memoir, helped develop the book with the help of the stories Beck shared with him. He also relied on news clippings stored in bins around Beck's house that were collected and organized by Beck's late wife, Dee, and his daughter, Lisa.

Jackson, editor-in-chief of COMO Magazine and COMO Business Times, said he’s grateful Beck trusted him to write the story.
“We meshed,” Jackson said. “We have kind of a real love for history — not the stories of history, but why they matter now."
"He would talk about solid waste, or stormwater, or any of these other things that really are kind of eye-glazing topics right?" he said. "And one thing I have prided myself in, in my career, is being able to tell these stories to readers without making their eyes glaze over.”
Jackson and Beck spoke to the crowd Sunday about the book, and they took questions from the audience before chatting with guests, who were able to buy signed copies. 
Beck hired Jackson to help write the memoir in 2022. It was initially to take 10 months to finish, but it was delayed because of "health predicaments, shifting schedules and all manner of life situations," Jackson wrote in the introduction.

For the next few years, the length of the project continued to grow. While talking to the audience, Jackson said the project could have expanded even more. 
"This could easily have been a 26-volume set, and that would have been Part 1, right?" Jackson said. "I think every chapter in this book could even stand alone as its own book." 
Now 93, Beck worked for the city from 1960 until he retired in 2006. He filled a number of positions during his career, including stints as a sanitary engineer, director of the Public Works Department and city manager, a role he began in 1985 and held until his retirement. 
In council-manager municipal governments like Columbia, the city manager is the highest-ranking non-elected official. The city manager oversees daily municipal operations, implements policies from the City Council, manages the city’s assorted departments and directs preparations for the annual operating budget.

During his decades-long tenure, Beck attended more than 1,000 City Council meetings and more than 600 planning and zoning meetings. 
As Jackson puts it in the book’s introduction: “If you’re in Columbia and reading this book, when you flip on a light switch, turn on a faucet, or, ahem, flush a toilet, you are using a service that, in some significant ways, bears Ray Beck's fingerprints.”
He added: “If you’ve driven a car on Keene Street, Stadium Boulevard or any of the other scores of streets and roads, you’ve driven on Ray Beck’s footprints.”
Some projects Beck spearheaded include developing Columbia Regional Airport, upgrading the city’s wastewater treatment system, expanding Columbia through various land acquisitions, and helping establish the MKT trailhead, Stephens Lake Park and other public spaces.

About finishing the book, Beck said he felt like he "finally succeeded in doing something that took me longer than it did to build a high school."

"I really feel good that we got as much as we did together for this book," he added. "It does show to a great degree how the city functions down in the depths of it, and that was part of my goal.”
Jackson said one challenge was pushing Beck to include more personal details in the book — his relationship with his late wife, Dee, for example, his time in the military and his love for a farm near Hallsville.
Beck said he envisioned the book to be simply about Columbia, a historical text about the growth of the city. Jackson urged him gently to add character and personality to the text.
“We had this conversation for four years during this project,” Jackson said. “He would say, ‘This isn’t about me,’ and I would say, ‘Without you, streets and sewers are boring.’”

“I think he was intrigued by, maybe, my approach to storytelling,” Jackson later said. “He needed that guidance to turn those piles of boxes of information into something that the public could consume and read.”
As guests piled into the pavilion Sunday, many stopped first to chat with one another as old friends. The crowd seemed very familiar with Beck's era of Columbia, laughing when he recounted a funny story and unafraid to chip in with more details here and there. 
Among the crowd were many of Beck's family, some who had come to Columbia from Jefferson City and St. Elizabeth, where Beck grew up, to attend the event. 
Janice DeLong, Beck's daughter, said she remembers much of what is recounted in the book as dinner-table conversation.
"Everywhere you turn around, he's been a part of it," she said. "I mean, the city buses are blue because that's his favorite color." 

DeLong said she wishes her mother, Dee, were here to celebrate the release of the book. Delilah "Dee" Beck died in 2020. 
"She was a huge part of it," she said. "She was always, you know, the woman behind the man. I hate that she's not here. She would have been like, 'Phew! I'm glad this is finished!'"
Larry Schuster, former First Ward councilman, recounted a time when he and Beck disagreed at a Chamber meeting. He said that later, Beck talked to him in the hallway "like a drill sergeant, and he was setting me straight."
He told Beck that he hadn't considered the public perception of the situation, causing Beck to reconsider his opinion.
"We've been excellent friends and collaborators ever since," Schuster said. "The moral of the story is, if you want Ray Beck to change his mind, you better rinse him something that he hadn't considered before, because he makes his mind up very slowly, and when he does, it's very hard to move him."

As the book signing neared its end, decorations were slowly packed up, and chairs were stacked. A large cardboard cutout of the book's cover in hand, Beck approached Jackson to say goodbye.
Jackson offered to take some decorations out of Beck's hands, but he waved him off and walked out of the pavilion.
"That is an incredible human being," Jackson said. 
The book is available to purchase through the Boone County History & Culture Center. For the first 90 days of its launch, all proceeds made from the book will be donated to the center. The book will eventually become available to purchase through other vendors, but details are still being determined, Jackson said.

Mid-Missouri model train groups connect generations at open house | Mid-Missouri News | komu.com
https://www.komu.com/news/midmissourinews/mid-missouri-model-train-groups-connect-generations-at-open-house-saturday/article\_008560fd-bee9-4ab6-9709-78213ab74431.html

Jefferson City council to consider public safety sales tax | Mid-Missouri News | komu.com
https://www.komu.com/news/midmissourinews/public-safety-tax-third-ward-appointment-top-jefferson-city-council-meeting-agenda/article\_22920aa7-599b-4810-9b36-8d2412a90b2b.html

As the end of summer nears, thousands of sunflowers are soaking up the sunlight on the south side of town.
The field of sunflowers at the University of Missouri’s South Farm will be blooming in waves through the end of September.

The annual tradition draws visitors from mid-August to late September every summer, and the public has free access during the bloom.

Read full story:

https://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/local/sunflowers-are-back-in-bloom-in-south-columbia/article\_c5d552df-56ed-40ca-ab99-6d9470691119.html#tncms-source=featured