Vox Magazine 9.14.17

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ALTRUISTIC EFFORTS

Whether you want to help animals or the environment, there are plenty of ways to volunteer in Columbia PAGE 4

NOVEL IDEAS

A guide to CoMo’s bookshops for bookworms and literary novices alike PAGE 17

Rooted in Word

Speer Morgan reflects on how he grew The Missouri Review over a span of 37 years PAGE 6

IN THIS ISSUE

ONLINE

September 14, 2017 VOLUME 19 ISSUE 22 | PUBLISHED BY THE COLUMBIA MISSOURIAN

FEATURE Speer Morgan has been editor of The Missouri Review for 37 years. Find out how the award-winning novelist became interested in creative fiction writing and how he built TMR into one of the nation’s premiere literary journals. PAGE 6 NEWS & INSIGHT Whether you want to help a furry friend or provide food and supplies to the homeless, there’s a way to contribute in CoMo. PAGE 4 THE SCENE For mixologists, making drinks isn’t a chore; it’s an art. Columbia’s best mixers break down how you can be your own cocktail connoisseur with this helpful guide. PAGE 15 ARTS & BOOKS Let us steer you toward the perfect theater experience with our comprehensive flowchart. PAGE 16

BREATHE IN, BREATHE OUT Get your zen on any time, anywhere. Vox tries three different meditation apps to dissect what works best to relieve the stress.

WHAT’S NEW AT ROOTS N BLUES N BBQ Take a sneak peek of what you can expect at this year’s Roots N Blues N BBQ Festival.

(Hint: there will be snazzy lockers with unlimited cellphone charging and a switch to cashless spending.)

VIDEO: WHAT DACA MEANS FOR MU This video takes an emotional look at the recent decision from DACA students’ perspective. We spoke with two students and political science professors to break down what the decision means.

EDITOR’S LETTER

Q&A: BOBBY QUIGLEY At 68, the Vietnam War vet and former POW discusses music, finding religion and starting a local band with other veterans. PAGE 18 COVER DESIGN: KEEGAN POPE COVER PHOTO: HUONG TRUONG CORRECTIONS: From the Aug. 31 issue, Gennie Pfannenstiel donated an art piece to the Artists for Social Justice of Columbia, which donated proceeds from its sale to Planned Parenthood. In the Sept. 7 issue, Leslie Swaim’s time-lapse video of her Prince portrait is currently available online, and her most recently published painting is a portrait of Jackie Chan.

MADISON FLECK EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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A great thing about the journalism field, especially editing, is that you’re always learning something new. In the past year at Vox, I’ve learned how unused fiber-optic cables run through Columbia, how bone marrow donors can connect with recipients across the country and how a descendant of William Clark carves his own dugout canoes right here in mid-Missouri.

I’ve absorbed countless other random facts and tidbits — some inspiring and some mundane — during my four years as an editor. I can’t imagine what all I’ll learn from a lifetime of reading for a living.

On the pages of this week’s feature (Page 6), you’ll find a profile of a man who’s done just that. Speer Morgan has been reading and editing The Missouri Review for the past 37 years. He’s been a lover of literature even longer. As a prospective graduate student, he hitchhiked from Arkansas to California to prove he was serious about his application to the Stanford English program.

Morgan is glued to his desk at TMR, but in a way that I aspire to. He loves his work, a fact that’s echoed across this eight-page profile. Ultimately, he loves to learn, which is something he gets to do every day.

Editing isn’t an easy field. It’s a lot of late nights surrounded by books and dictionaries and having too many browser tabs open. It’s thriving on caffeine and grammar debates. But it’s a labor of love and dedication, and it’s a labor befitting only the lifelong student.

VOX STAFF

Editor: Madison Fleck Deputy Editor: Sten Spinella Managing Editor: Kelsie Schrader Digital Managing Editor: Lea Konczal Multimedia Editor: Meg Vatterott Online Editor: Brooke Vaughan Art Directors: Keegan Pope, Alexandra Wozniczka Photo Editor: Erin Bormett News & Insight Editors: Lauren Puckett, Rachel Treece The Scene Editors: Brea Cubit, Brooke Kottmann, Lily Zhao Music Editors: Lis Joyce, Amanda Lundgren Arts & Books Editors: Karlee Renkoski, Mary Salatino, Micki Wagner Contributing Writers: Taylor Banks, Emma Beyer, Kristin Blake, Alex Edwards, Jasmine-Kay Johnson, Kaylin Jones, Caroline Kealy, Meghan Lally, Rick Morgan, Rachel Phillips, Bianca Rodriguez, John Sadler, Samantha Stokes, Caroline Watkins, Meghan Weinewuth, Catherine Wendlandt, Chloe Wilt Editorial Director: Heather Lamb Executive Editor: Jennifer Rowe Digital Director: Sara Shipley Hiles Office Manager: Kim Townlain

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PHOTOS BY OR COURTESY OF HUONG TRUONG AND PIXABAY

RADAR

Vox’s take on the talk of the week

NOW YOU CASSINI, NOW YOU DON’T

FENTY SHADES OF BEAUTY

NASA’s unmanned spacecraft Cassini is about to burn up as it plunges into Saturn’s atmosphere Friday, which will end its 20-year mission orbiting the planet and its 60 moons.

Cassini discovered that two of them, Titan and Enceladus, have potential to sustain life.

Here is what else the spacecraft has been up to for the past two decades.

2

oceans discovered on Titan and Enceladus

We found foundation in a shadeless place. Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty line, sold at Sephora locations for $34, takes a step toward inclusivity and diversity by offering 40 foundation shades. Let’s see how Fenty compares with other makeup brands.

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million commands executed

4.9

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billion miles traveled since its launch

full orbits around Saturn

HELP FROM THE HEARTLAND

After Harvey hit, Missouri volunteers traveled south to pick up Houston’s broken pieces and help rebuild the city. With Hurricane Irma breaking records for being the most catastrophic Atlantic hurricane, Missouri is once again sending relief — ­ this time to Florida.

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Anheuser-Busch donated over 300,000 cans of drinking water.

Missouri Department of Transportation deployed for road cleanups.

Columbia Water and Light, Ameren Missouri and Boone Electric Cooperative sent crews to restore electricity.

Five Missouri Task Force One members who went to Florida are from mid-Missouri.

HACKED

A security breach at Equifax has potentially compromised as many as 143 million Equifax users’ social security numbers and other private information. Vox gathered three tips from the experts about what to do.

CHECK your credit report and bank statements.

SET UP

a fraud alert on your credit. You will be notified whenever a new line of credit is opened in your name.

FREEZE

your credit, which Equifax will temporarily do for free. To open a new line of credit or take out a loan, you will have to contact your reporting agency to lift the freeze.

GET THE OFFICAL BXR APP

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Written by: Brea Cubit, Brooke Kottmann, Lauren Puckett, Rachel Treece PHOTOS COURTESY OF PIXABAY, FLICKR

09.14.17

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NEWS & INSIGHT

Paying it forward Volunteering for a cause you’re passionate about has never been easier BY SAMANTHA STOKES Columbia has a vast array of philanthropic opportunities for residents, so Vox is here to help you find your niche. These five volunteer organizations allow you to give back locally while doing what you love.

IF YOU LOVE THE GREAT OUTDOORS Do a good deed for Columbia parks and trails by joining Park Patrol. You’ll serve as a “goodwill ambassador” and be a friendly face for other parkgoers, says neighborhood services manager Leigh Kottwitz.

What you’ll do: Kottwitz says members of Park Patrol are self-directed individuals with approachable attitudes.

“We really appreciate somebody that is able to interact and engage with people and have discussions with people using parks and trails,” she says. “Folks that are already out using our parks and trails and care about the well-being of our facilities make the best volunteers.”

IF YOU’RE INTO SPORTS Bring your energy to Special Olympics Missouri. This organization “gives people with intellectual disabilities the chance to participate in sports,” volunteer coordinator Harrison McLean says.

What you’ll do: At sporting events, volunteers help keep score and time, or they pair up with athletes as buddies. “If you’re into sports, it’s a really fun way to get to know someone you might not get to know in your daily life,” McLean says.

IF YOU’RE PASSIONATE ABOUT HELPING LOCAL KIDS Day Dreams Foundation was created to eliminate financial barriers for local kids who want to participate in extracurricular activities, says Joe Bradley, founder and president.

What you’ll do: Volunteers flex their event planning, marketing and organizational skills by joining committees that raise money and awareness to provide scholarships. “We don’t care about talent level, but we just want to make sure that no matter what, if a kid wants to do something, they can,” Bradley says.

IF YOU’RE INTERESTED IN HELPING THE HOMELESS Lend your hand to Give a Box, a nonprofit organization that packages food and basic supplies for local homeless people.

Founder Ashley Yong says Maslow’s hierarchy of needs drives the mission of the organization: “Safety and security are the most essential. If people don’t have that, they can’t care about other things.”

What you’ll do: Volunteers can help with photography, marketing and outreach, as well as assemble care packages and deliver them to people in the community.

IF YOU WANT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE FOR ANIMALS Unchained Melodies is an anti-chaining and anti-penning organization that focuses on helping chained, penned, abused and neglected dogs.

What you’ll do: Volunteers can foster dogs, take them on walks, update and create social media posts and help with administrative work. “There’s really something for everyone of all ages,” says Melody Whitworth, founder of Unchained Melodies. “The perfect person is someone who is somewhat flexible with their schedule and that has the passion for wanting to make a difference in the lives of dogs that live at the end of the chain, in a pen or in an abusive situation.”

Whitworth also looks for volunteers who want to help make changes on a legal level. “We do a lot of advocacy work for writing ordinances and pushing for laws to get changed,” she says.

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ILLUSTRATIONS COURTESY OF PIXABAY

Turning Labor into Love Award-winning author Speer Morgan ushers The Missouri Review into its 40th year of publication with his hardworking temperament

By Brooks Holton Photos by Huong Truong

S

peer Morgan never leaves The Missouri Review. A portrait of the award-winning author and 37-year editor of the nationally known, Columbia-based literary journal sits next to the bookshelves and black leather sofa in the back-right corner of 350 McReynolds Hall. From the doorway leading into the conference room and lounge hybrid that serves as the TMR office, it looks like your standard portrait photograph: His white-gray hair a bit windswept across the black background, Morgan smiles in a dark suit jacket layered over a black polo shirt. But when you approach the portrait — when you’re close enough to feel as if Morgan’s about to reach out from the canvas for a friendly grab of your shoulder and ask how you’re doing in his unmistakable Arkansas drawl — you notice something: The entire portrait is made up of various TMR covers.

Morgan spearheads the literary journal. In return, it has made him.

“This is his life’s work,” says Peggy Poe, a retired teacher and 30-year member of TMR’s board of trustees. “This is a testament to his perseverance, cleverness, ability to coalesce groups and resources and build this thing to where it is.”

Morgan sits quietly, head tilted in attention, at

the head of the conference table for the weekly TMR staff meeting. He’s the same man who hitchhiked from Arkansas to California because he felt it accurately conveyed to a Stanford English department representative how much he wanted to be accepted into its graduate program. The same man who was chased down a San Francisco alleyway by police on horseback in the ’70s and the same man who has taught at the Paris Writers Workshop. You’d think an American Book Award winner and the longest-serving editor in TMR history would be an imposing presence at the weekly staff meeting, but the 71-year-old editor does more listening than talking. Jim Steck, Morgan’s friend from his graduate studies at Stanford, compares him to fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton in that when you’re talking to Morgan, it seems as if he’s interested only in you.

For the thousands of students who have worked at TMR — which is nearing its 40th anniversary this spring — that sort of undivided attention has proved invaluable in shaping careers of all sorts: writers, poets, editors, literary agents, book publishers and even technology-driven corporate gigs. Morgan’s innovative thinking and sheer dedication has been a trademark of TMR from the beginning.

“Speer is fearless,” says Thomas Zigal, a writer

based in Austin, Texas, and another one of Morgan’s friends from his time at Stanford. “He has more energy than 95 percent of the writers I know.”

A young bookhead

Morgan says he developed his hardworking, intellectually curious temperament as a child. By the time he was 8 years old, he was helping his mother and father tend to the 10-bedroom motel they owned off of Highway 22 in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

He watched them learn how to get creative in the management of their successful businesses. By 16, he learned how to build steel door and window frames for his parents’ building supply business, Morgan Supply Company.

As a sort of escape from the hard labor he did for his family, Morgan started to read classics such as Don Quixote and the works of Rene Descartes and William Faulkner. He would stay up late at night poring over the dictionary attempting to memorize words. When he was a junior in high school, Morgan attended Boys State, a civics education program that has young Arkansans constructing a mock government. He ran against Mack McLarty, who would become former President Clinton’s chief of staff, for president of the program. With Clinton as his campaign manager

A portrait of Speer Morgan, composed entirely of The Missouri Review covers, rests in the corner of McReynolds Hall. “He’s helped along the careers of hundreds, maybe thousands,” says Steve Weinberg, a Columbia-based writer and former MU professor.

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for their election, McLarty ran away with the victory.

Morgan wasn’t hung up on it, though. He was already a self-described “bookhead” and felt the early tugs toward a life of writing.

“There were certain things about my life that I didn’t like,” Morgan says. “I didn’t like working all the time; I already knew I didn’t want to be commercial in my life and in what I did when I grew up ... Then I just got interested in books.”

When it came time for college in 1964, he followed in the footsteps of his brother and uncle to Sewanee, Tennessee, and The University of the South.

He filled notebooks trying to write stories and wrote pieces for The Sewanee Purple, a student newspaper.

After a few cherished years spent at Sewanee and its scenic 13,000-acre campus in the mountains on the Cumberland Plateau, Morgan decided to head back home to continue his undergraduate education at the University of Arkansas and its English department. He would learn under famous novelist William Harrison, who was just years away from making his big break in Hollywood with his short story “Roller Ball Murder.”

The year before Morgan’s graduation from

University of Arkansas in 1968, he decided to hitchhike from Fayetteville to Palo Alto, California, with a fraternity brother — an eye-opening experience.

“

I already knew I didn’t want to be commercial in my life and in what I did when I grew up ... Then I just got interested in books.

-Speer Morgan

It ended with Morgan walking into the Stanford English Department and apologizing for coming all this way. He asked if he could get into their graduate program and if there were any questions they might have about the application he had already submitted.

“Do you know how many applicants we have?” a

department representative asked.

“OK, but I just wanted to convey to you that I genuinely want to come here, and I want to come here so much that I hitchhiked out to just show up and say that I do,” Morgan answered. “You can look at my record.”

During the four years he spent working on his doctorate at Stanford, Morgan smoked a single cigarette every night before sitting down to write and would finish off a bowl of Cheerios before bed.

He studied under famous poet, essayist and activist Wendell Berry, and he worked as a contributing writer at Rolling Stone, where he often reviewed books, around the same time Tom Wolfe published The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

With Zigal, his Stanford classmate, he protested the Vietnam War outside of Stanford’s School of Engineering and in the middle of a tear-gassed Union Square in San Francisco. Morgan wasn’t a rabid revolutionary but “a thoughtful guy who hated the war like the majority of the Stanford English Department,” Zigal says. To help make sense of everything, Morgan turned to writing. The first novel

Morgan’s must-reads Speer Morgan talks about five favorite stories that have been published in The Missouri Review. Check them out below, along with the covers of the issues they appeared in. Find them online at Project MUSE.

“Titanic Victim Speaks Through Waterbed”

By Robert Olen Butler Vol. 19, No. 2, 1996 “A wonderfully experimental story in which a man who died on the Titanic keeps rediscovering himself in different molecular form.

Butler is another author whom TMR published in early career before he won the Pulitzer Prize.”

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE MISSOURI REVIEW

“Flame”

By Ha Jin Vol. 20, No. 3, 1997 “A Chinese woman — a competent, married, relatively successful nurse — receives a note announcing that her old true love is about to come for a visit. The story is a sly critique of materialism in Chinese culture and expectations conditioned by selected memories of youth.

Ha Jin is a winner of the National Book Award.”

“Those Deep Elm Brown’s Ferry Blues”

By William Gay Vol. 21, No. 2, 1998

“A classic well-made story as well as a tragedy by a writer whom we helped discover and who later went on to wide recognition.”

“Exotic Animal Medicine”

“July Sun”

By Aamina Ahmad Vol. 38, No. 2, 2015

By Fiona McFarlane Vol. 33, No. 1, 2010 “A young Australian woman at university in England undergoes a disturbing set of incidents on the day that she marries her English boyfriend and presumably starts a new life.

McFarlane’s story is edgy and underspoken in ways reminiscent of Katherine Mansfield’s fiction.”

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“A story about how vicious some societies can be toward those who defy convention.

Ahmad’s story highlights the destructiveness of intransigent cultural norms, where breaking certain rules is met with simple extermination and a shared poison lingers among survivors.”

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he ever completed, and almost published, was about a Vietnam veteran working his way through post-war life back home in Arkansas. The thoughtfulness with which he approached the larger issue of the war and the harrowing effects of PTSD reflected similar work happening everywhere around him at Stanford.

“What impressed me was it wasn’t just protesting; it wasn’t just standing up for what we thought was right; it was really carefully thought out,” Morgan says. “There were campus research centers that were totally run by grad students and (undergraduate) students that were doing serious Southeast Asian research, I mean really learning about the reality of what was going on. So, at least in that environment, it was more thoughtful and more introspective than you might imagine.”

Morgan undertook some tenacious research for the foreword of TMR’s spring 2017 issue, dubbed Turbulent and featuring a cover with a young woman turning her back on a looming tornado. After reading Volker Ullrich’s 1,835-page biography of Adolf Hitler — partly because he’s a bookhead, partly because the election of Donald Trump piqued his interest in how authoritative figures have risen to power — Morgan begins the issue with perspective on the past and how the use of fiction’s relationship with history allows the genre to offer guidance toward the future.

“This issue — particularly its fiction — is replete with instances of darkness and turmoil in personal lives, and I wonder if this might be because fiction

so frequently holds a mirror to the world in which it is created: writers are already metabolizing the historical moment,” Morgan wrote in the foreword. “I’ve been thinking a lot lately, too, of past turbulences. It might be useful now to look at the previous century, if only to try to avoid repeating some of the same mistakes. The 1900s opened with a set of presumptions that didn’t work out.

What many assumed was going to be a century of extended peace turned into an almost gothic time of warfare, economic disruption, and darkness: first an unexpected world war, followed a decade afterward by a worldwide depression, and then an even larger world war that stamped and defined the century as the bloodiest in history.”

Zigal, Morgan’s old friend from Stanford, recalls a time he and Morgan attended an anti-war protest.

“Why are we doing this?” Morgan asked.

“So we can tell our children that we resisted this thing,” Zigal answered.

Morgan replied, “OK, that’s good.”

From surviving to thriving

The duo of then-married MU professors Larry Levis and Marcia Southwick founded The Missouri Review in 1977 with the first issue published in 1978. Morgan took his first job out of Stanford as a professor at MU in 1972 and joined Levis and Southwick as a TMR staff member a year later. The magazine, which followed the expected route of publishing well-known

Every Tuesday at 3 p.m., Speer Morgan and the TMR staff gather for a roundtable meeting to trade updates on their departments’ progress. There are five staff members and 25 to 30 interns each semester.

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authors such as Joyce Carol Oates and Raymond Carver in its debut issues, ran primarily on funding from MU and miscellaneous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Missouri Arts Council and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines.

Morgan eventually took over as editor when the couple divorced and left Columbia in the early 1980s.

Morgan says he took the job because nobody else wanted it, but it was around that time he decided to get serious about TMR and make the publication a major literary magazine.

Flash forward almost four decades: TMR has about 5,000 subscribers between both print and digital platforms, is available to more than 2,700 colleges and universities that subscribe to the online database Project MUSE and has become nationally known as a launching pad for four decades’ worth of writers and poets. It receives about 15,000 literary submissions each year. From a scholarly perspective, the journal made headlines in The New York Times for its publication of excerpts from the Dead Sea Scrolls and translated passages from the Book of Jubilees in the journal’s spring 1992 issue. The found-text features have been led by Kristine Somerville, TMR’s marketing coordinator, a professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at Stephens College and Morgan’s wife of 16 years. Somerville has used archival research and a knack for narrative-driven feature writing to spotlight unpublished letters from Jack Kerouac to Beat movement friends Ed White

and Neal Cassady. She has also pushed for previously unpublished work from Tennessee Williams, Mark Twain and F. Scott Fitzgerald and content about broader art movements such as street art or German Dadaism.

“I like to do features that argue that the applied arts are every bit as artful and important as what we characterize as fine art and that the distinction between those two things is really kind of arbitrary,” Somerville says. She met Morgan when she was a graduate student trying to get on TMR’s staff in the early 1990s, and the first thing he asked her was, “How do I know you can write?” The found-text features have proven Somerville is just as important a part of the publication as Morgan, and their offices now sit adjacent to each other on the fourth floor of McReynolds Hall. A romantic relationship between the two developed after years of close friendship working on the literary journal and as colleagues at MU. Some credit Somerville’s arrival at TMR as one of the events that reignited Morgan’s passion for his work as an editor and teacher.

“We talk a lot about work, but because he’s been teaching for almost 40 years, he gives very good counsel,” Somerville says. “Teaching is less about the material and more about class management and a lot of soft skills that you don’t even think about, so I think we support each other in that way. People do wonder, ‘Can you live together and work together?

How does that work?’ and it works out really well because, I think, it just does.”

In its early years, TMR published mainly famous authors, but under Speer Morgan’s guidance, the magazine gravitated toward lesser-known voices. TMR often publishes the work of eventual award-winning writers.

‘Mighty Oak’

On April 19, Morgan walks briskly into Somerville’s office. He doesn’t bother knocking, and she lets out a startled cry. Moments before, Morgan was asked how TMR compares to literary journals on the national level, and he responded bluntly, “We are the national level.” In Somerville’s office, he’s on a mission.

“Do you have that ‘Mighty Oak’ quote?” he asks.

The room is silent as Somerville tries to hide her glare.

“You startled me,” she says.

The quote he’s referring to is from a July 1992 Esquire article titled, “A Down-To-Earth Guide To Where Budding Writers Come From, Trust Us … It’s No Bed Of Roses.” The full-page spread depicts the writing industry as a garden — including “The Cactus League,” “Wild Oates” and “The Acorns.” In the middle sits “The Mighty Oaks,” and six entries down the trunk, there it is: “Missouri Review (Speer Morgan, Greg Michalson, editors).”

Steve Weinberg, a Columbia-based writer and professor emeritus at the MU School of Journalism who profiled TMR in the Columbia Business Times for its 30th anniversary, says the journal is his favorite in the country. It’s not because it’s local or because he knows people on staff, either. “There’s no other literary quarterly that mixes fiction and nonfiction so well,” he says. “I don’t think anybody does it better, has a better mix, than The Missouri Review ... Some of the literary quarterlies have one issue that I might want to read a whole bunch of pieces and another issue I might not want to read any of the pieces, but with The Missouri Review I always find something I want to read.

“From my perspective as a full-time writer, one of the things I like about The Missouri Review is that they pay real money,” he adds. “Not a lot. No one’s

“If you add up all of the hours of all the pieces that had to be read, selected, edited and typeset, it takes a lot of labor,” Speer Morgan says about creating TMR. Every issue, about 12 or 13 stories are selected.

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Speer Morgan has served as editor of TMR for 37 years. He has written five novels and won several awards, including an National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Fiction and the American Book Award. pay no cash at all ... But (TMR) pays real money, and I really admire them for that.”

In terms of the country’s current literary garden, TMR still holds its own as one of the strongest trees.

Morgan wouldn’t let you think any different, and Weinberg agrees that, even with the literary scene’s New York-centric nature, TMR is in the top tier of American literary quarterlies. “In the literary journal world, the location doesn’t matter very much,” Weinberg says. “A lot of (literary journals) are in out-of-the-way places or small university towns such as The Sewanee Review, The Georgia Review and The Virginia Quarterly Review. I don’t know that there’s a big handicap in being (from Columbia), but I do think there are certainly some people, especially on the coast, who probably see the word ‘Missouri’ and think, ‘Oh, that’s flyover country populated by a bunch of hicks. Who cares about that?’”

Well, a roster of 25 Pulitzer Prize-winners and a laundry list of writers who got their start being published in TMR for starters: Robert Olen Butler, Michael Byers, Susan Freeland, Joanna Scott, Daniel Woodrell and Wally Lamb — just to name a few.

Morgan says paying these talented writers, made possible by the money the journal has raised through 12

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donations, is a privilege.

“It’s a formal recompense, like a bow to someone, to pay them for their work,” Morgan says. “I wouldn’t run the magazine if I couldn’t pay the authors.”

The students have come and gone over the years.

Finding donors hasn’t always been as consistent as it is now, and technology has changed drastically over the course of TMR’s lifespan, but after nearly four decades at the helm, Morgan knows how to keep the ship steady: personally invest in the experiences of and relationships with its crew — in this case students and interns. They, like the writers who get published in TMR, can use their experience working for or with the literary journal to springboard their writing, find a paid position with another publication or even start their own business.

“You try to make the experience productive for the students and helpful for them,” Morgan says. “You don’t have any presumptions about who’s going to be good at it and who isn’t because somebody might not be the best writer in the world, but they’re very good at some other aspect of it, or somebody might be a grad student and be half as good as an undergrad. We give them plenty of space to find their niche, and we try to let them find and work on meaningful work that

will be good for their credentials. So they’re being paid credentially.”

Because The Missouri Review is an opensubmission magazine, Morgan estimates TMR receives 3,500 to 4,000 submissions per quarterly issue of the magazine. That stack will need to be trimmed to 12 or 13 items to fill a typical issue.

Guess who gets to read it all?

“What we have tried to do is turn that challenge into a learning opportunity for interns and advisers on the magazine,” Morgan says. “That time is not being wasted because they are learning how to do editorial procedures. What we’ve tried to do is turn the burden of labor into the blessing of learning.”

With all seven TMR editors located on the fourth floor of McReynolds, stories are passed up and down the hall to be devoured. Both Morgan and Somerville say there’s not much debate about which pieces make the final cut over others.

“It’s often pretty clear when a story or an essay is doing something spectacular,” Somerville says. She thinks back to “Through the Glass Clearly,” Brandon R. Schrand’s essay about martinis that appeared in TMR’s winter 2016 issue. “You smile the whole time you read it,” Morgan adds. “It had charm; it had

you read it,” Morgan adds. “It had charm; it had authority; it took a subject that should be boring and made it literary and historical.” These are the things he ultimately looks for in a piece. “And often the element of surprise. An essay about making martinis?

I mean, come on. That’s the surprise there. It’s accurate; it’s historical; it’s fun.”

Almost as unconventional as a literary magazine running a story about how to make martinis is TMR alumnus Mike McClaskey, now-executive vice president and chief human resources officer of Dish Network. McClaskey worked for the journal as a paid intern during the mid-1980s and used his knack for computer-based technology during its earliest stages to develop an online database to track submissions.

When Morgan saw what McClaskey was capable of with a computer, he asked McClaskey to use his knowledge to create a basic menu structure and post TMR files to The Source, a rudimentary internet subscription program. Just like that, TMR became the first online literary journal in the world. With no graphics or complex page design, the text spoke for itself on what would today be considered the internet in its most primitive form and gave the small literary journal its first taste of an audience outside of Columbia. Now, TMR ranks No. 1 among literary journals on Project MUSE — an online database of more than 200 journals from non-profit publishers — in terms of page views.

Morgan’s writing, in a sense, mirrored TMR’s digital development. In 1986, he published “The Assemblers,” a technological thriller set in Dubois, Arkansas, which comments on the dangers of the interconnectedness provided by the internet.

Although he was hesitant toward the potential presented by an all-knowing processing system, Morgan saw that, for a small-town literary journal looking for inventive ways to increase business, the two would have chemistry.

“Speer always had a vision for that publication and for what literary magazines in general could be and the audiences they could reach,” says McClaskey, who credits advice he got from Morgan during his final semester at MU as one of the reasons he is as successful as he is today. At the time, the tech wiz was still planning to become an English professor, but after a graduate writing seminar, Morgan encouraged him to pursue a career in technology and business despite his formal literary education. “You actually know a lot more than you think you do, and there’s a demand for somebody like you in the business world,” McClaskey remembers Morgan saying.

“Honestly, that moment changed my life,” McClaskey says. “The next day, I started thinking about technology jobs I could start applying for. That decision he helped me make changed the scope of my world.” McClaskey and his wife, Janet, now sponsor two internships with TMR each year as a way to give back to the forward-thinking publication and the English professor who made sure McClaskey knew he had something special to offer the world.

“He is that mentor instructor who really cares deeply about the people who work with him and for him,” McClaskey says.

Zigal, Morgan’s peer from Stanford, recalls a time Morgan visited him in Austin, Texas, and the two of them stopped by a get-together for UT Austin MFA students. Morgan didn’t know any of the 20 or so students who were there, but Zigal was mesmerized

Word from the wise Three tips from Speer Morgan for young writers

Concept

“I believe a good story, whether it be a novel or short story, needs to be describable, and in the description, it needs to sound interesting,” Morgan says. “I usually don’t like a story I can’t explain my excitement about.”

Movement

Morgan says movement is “the ability to move between scene and narrative — the ability to compress time. Compression of time is one of the little-known secrets of fiction.” He says you want there to be a natural suspense, and “you can almost add 20 percent excitement through movement.”

Place

“I know it’s old-fashioned to talk about setting,” Morgan says. “You derive a sense of reality, and you derive a sense of belief in a piece if it really knows the place you’re discovering.” ­— Lauren Kelliher with how thoughtful he was in each of his interactions with the students. “The great thing about Speer is that he asks serious and great questions,” Zigal says.

“He’d ask, ‘Oh, what are you working on? That sounds good; send that to me.’ I just sat there and thought, ‘These young writers are really in for a great experience if Speer likes their work and publishes it.’

His magazine is revered in MFA programs around the country.”

Final pages

Around 1980, Morgan came to after a seizure in bed and asked his first wife, Jenny, what he did for a living.

“You’re a writer,” she answered.

“Oh, shit.”

For 35 years, from his time as a graduate student at Stanford through 2006, Morgan suffered from epilepsy. He would have lectures interrupted by seizures that would sideline him for some 36 hours afterward. In the late 1980s, Morgan had a mid-afternoon seizure and collapsed in the middle of Broadway and College Avenue. One of his students at the time, a sophomore, found him in the street and got his unconscious body to Boone Hospital Center.

She thought he might have had too much to drink.

“I can’t believe how much I admired her,” Morgan says. “When I was her age, I wouldn’t have done that.”

Morgan can laugh about the episode now because he tried to never let epilepsy dominate his life and instead decided, “If I was going to die that way, I’d rather die living.” It wouldn’t be fair to what he’s accomplished to make this story centered around his lengthy bout with the neurological disorder, which rarely waits until adulthood to develop. Morgan would rather talk about his love for the outdoors (when he was younger, he made a hobby out of windsurfing), the trips he and Somerville take to New York City, New Orleans, Berlin and Paris — almost

always on TMR business in some shape or form — or the time he and Steck, a friend from Stanford, went night snorkeling and ended up spear hunting poisonous snakes in Jamaica.

Maybe he’s at peace with his epilepsy because he already put those demons to paper in the form of a short story called “The Big Bang,” which won the 2008 Goodheart Prize for best short story and was published in Shenandoah, Washington and Lee University’s literary journal. In the story, the protagonist, Steve, is an epileptic writer on a trip to visit his editor in London. He struggles with his divorce, a failing book idea and the fear that he needs to hide his epilepsy from his editor. Just when Steve’s editor fixes his book problems with a simple suggestion and a new love interest enters the final scene, Steve finds himself — in a chaotically blissful sort of way — falling into a seizure in the middle of a busy sushi restaurant.

“I’m not going to last forever,” Morgan tells a graduate-level fiction workshop he teaches every Wednesday evening during the spring. Students laugh. They know it’s the truth, but the thought of Morgan not being at the helm of the literary journal, not lying on his side on a cushioned bench in his office and reading a manuscript as if he were still a child staying up late at night reading in bed, is too difficult to fathom both from a physical and emotional standpoint. He hasn’t planned a definitive retirement yet — not when he’s 60,000 words deep into a historic novel set in Verdun, France, during World War I. He doesn’t smoke or eat Cheerios anymore. Somerville says he’s a morning writer now. But he works in his basement at a desk he built himself 20 years ago and rebuilt two years ago surrounded by his personal collection of books — as eclectic as Principles of Internal Medicine and a Japanese manga. He’s just now starting to watch television after some 35 years of missed pop culture references. Somerville recalls him walking up from the basement one morning during the early 2000s and asking her, “You ever hear of this show called Seinfeld?”

Morgan wears a ring on his right hand. It’s gold with a black face and a weathered silver “M” in the middle. He bought it from a Fort Smith pawnshop with his father when he was 16 years old, so the “M” is hard to make out from a distance. If you didn’t know the sort of person Morgan is, you’d expect the ring to be something a bit flashier. But the writer/ editor chooses instead to pay homage to his roots.

“It’s an M, for Morgan,” he says. “I put it in a box for about 20 years and didn’t wear it. Then I pulled it out, looked at it and thought, ‘Hey, that’s pretty cool.’ It has an actual diamond in it, but you have to really look hard to see it.” Morgan shows off the ring, but he’s more proud of his gem of a literary journal.

Through fundraising efforts that began in early 2016, he’s raised $1.6 million of his $2 million goal to ensure TMR is able to continue to serve its subscribers and, most importantly, the MU students who experience how a major literary journal operates by working on staff. And though there are 40 more years worth of change around the corner for The Missouri Review, Morgan has made an indelible mark.

He’s the one who tended to the seeds and watched as the little-literary-magazine-that-could bloomed into a mighty oak rooted in word for all of eternity.

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OVIES EVENTS MUSIC DINING NEW ENTSMUSIC DINING NEWS MOVI USIC DINING NEWS MOVIES EVEN NING NEWS MOVIES EVENTS MUS WS MOVIES EVENTS MUSIC DININ

Free Every Thursday

SCENE

A rookie’s guide to mixology Learn what it actually means to take your drink “shaken, not stirred”

BY ERIKA STARK Simple syrup, lemon juice, muddled blueberries, ginger beer and DogMaster Distillery’s white whiskey. Separately, these ingredients might seem like a haphazard grocery list, but once they are mixed together in an absinthe-rinsed glass, the result is The Roof-Top Punch. This Columbia-borne cocktail is a favorite creation of The Roof’s former bartender and mixologist Jack Marlo. Having started as a barback, Marlo, who now works at Teller’s Gallery & Bar, says he has been fortunate in his rise in mixology, which he credits to on-the-job mentorship from former head bartender Damien Cooke. Even if you don’t have a Cooke in your corner, you can work your way to mixology mastery with these bartending classes.

BECOME A LICENSED BARTENDER

Local Bartending School combines video training, online training and hands-on experience to take you from newbie to certified bartender in 40 hours. If you’re just looking to dust off the rust, shorter courses are available for those with previous experience bartending. Students choose to take classes or have the option of one-on-one training from instructors in the comfort of their own homes. Owner Rob Dunfey says the program’s highlight is getting their trainees in real bars for real experience. Dunfey says it’s not uncommon for students to walk away with a job.

LEARN TO MAKE A SPECIALTY DRINK Dunfey says it’s also becoming more commonplace for students to come in to one of their two locations for a quick course on a particular drink, such as mastering the martini or margarita. Taking courses isn’t the only way to enjoy personal training for cocktail creations.

Those looking to spice up their next soirée can have Columbia’s Local Bartending School stop by their home for up to three hours. As many as three bartenders come with everything they’ll need to teach you and your guests how to make a specialty drink. If learning how to juggle bottles is your favorite part of the experience, try a “flair course.”

Columbia’s Local Bartending School, 2nd floor, 303 N. Stadium Blvd.; Friends Room Columbia Public Library, 101 W. Broadway; at-home instruction, 877-447-4745

DISCOVER CLASSES AND SPECIAL EVENTS After 12 years in the bar business, Ben Monsees — one of the owners and founders of downtown Columbia’s latest bar-scene arrival, The Understudy — wanted to open a place that could fit the growing interest he saw in residents to learn how to craft their own drinks in a fun, laid-back environment. Weekly classes, wine tastings, bartending education and special bachelorette and birthday events are just a few of The Understudy’s plans in the works.

The Understudy, 813 Cherry St., 359-8583 PHOTO BY MONIQUE WOO

Develop a knack for mixing, shaking and straining drinks that are served on the rocks or straight up. There are plenty of opportunities in Columbia to learn how to become a bartender from your home or at a bar.

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ARTS & BOOKS

Set your stage Let this chart be your guide to Columbia playhouses BY JARED KAUFMAN CoMo’s theater scene has a variety of performance options to freshen up your life. Find the best theater experience in town, whether it be at an established community theater or an experimental play.

The Rhynsburger Theatre

Donovan Rhynsburger was a tall man — 6-foot-9, to be exact — says Dory Colbert, communications coordinator for MU’s Department of Theatre. So when the building now known as the Rhynsburger Theatre was constructed, designers made sure each row had lots of legroom. “I think our theater has one of the most comfortable seating arrangements in the area,” Colbert says.

Up next: You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, Sept. 27–30, Oct. 1

The Arrow Rock Lyceum Theatre The Lyceum is located in Arrow Rock, about 45 minutes northwest of Columbia. It opened in the 1960s in a former church and has grown to include a sizable theater and cast housing quarters. The theater often puts on well-known shows.

Up next: Beehive: The 60’s Musical, Sept. 16–24

BRING ON THE BIG VENUE

Would you rather stay in CoMo or venture out of town?

I LOVE A LITTLE ROAD TRIP LET’S STICK AROUND HERE

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NATIONAL, ALL THE WAY

Do you want to see local performances or national tours?

I LOVE THE LOCAL SCENE! LET’S TRY A DIFFERENT LOCATION

Which is better: a classic theater venue or an experimental location?

NEW KIDS YOU CAN’T GO WRONG WITH CLASSIC

Talking Horse Productions

An old electrical warehouse in the North Village Arts District was the perfect venue to repurpose into a 70-seat black box theater, which is a simple, square performance space with black walls. Executive and artistic director Ed Hanson says he selects contemporary plays with a smaller cast and social message. In some cases, he’ll bring in the playwright or experts on the theme of the show to have “talkbacks” with audience members afterward. “We’re sort of a hybrid between community theater and professional theater,” Hanson says.

Up next: Memoirs, Sept. 14–17

The Missouri Theatre SMALL AND COZY

GreenHouse Theatre Project

The GreenHouse Theatre Project performs “classical, new works and experimental theater with an emphasis on artistic collaboration; promoting local artists, businesses and spaces,” according to its website. Last season, the company performed Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett at Orr Street Studios and Dark Creation, the Mary Shelley project, co-written by the theater’s director, staged at Muse Clothing.

Up next: Check its website for mystery pop-up shows

START HERE Do you prefer a large, Broadway-esque production or something more intimate?

Students or volunteer cast?

NO, I WALK EVERYWHERE

VOLUNTEER BUCKLE UP

Do you have a car?

The Missouri Theatre, built in 1928, is the only remaining pre-Great Depression theater in mid-Missouri.

The downtown theater’s 1,200-seat auditorium hosts nationally touring shows, such as Annie and The Laramie Project, which ran this past season.

The theater was used as a vaudeville stage and movie theater and is now owned by MU. Up next: Richard Dowling plays Scott Joplin, Sept. 15 and 17

Warehouse Theatre Company

Stephens College’s Warehouse Theatre is a black box theater operated by Stephens College students who direct, act in and promote the shows. The theater puts on four productions per year.

“The student company is often selecting more experimental or edgy work,” says Ruth Ann Burke, business manager for the School of Performing Arts at Stephens.

The Warehouse Theatre is a smaller space located right next to Stephens College’s larger theater, the Macklanburg Playhouse.

Up next: 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche, Sept. 28–30, Oct. 1

Columbia Entertainment Company

CEC is completely volunteer-driven, including its actors, musicians and box office workers. Michele Curry, development director and secretary of the board of directors, says the 160-seat theater is casual and strikes a balance between a small, intimate theater experience and Broadway-style shows. “I’d say the atmosphere is big-show atmosphere, community theater price,” Curry says. A mission of the theater is to expand people’s education in the arts and knowledge of what productions are out there, she says.

Up next: Angry Jurors, Oct. 26–29, Nov. 2–5, Nov. 9–12 ILLUSTRATION BY ALEXANDRA WOZNICZKA

ARTS & BOOKS

Navigating Columbia’s independent bookshops Bookmark these local stores that offer your go-to genres BY CORIN CESARIC Regardless of your literary inclinations, Columbia has a variety of locally owned bookshops that will pique your interest.

Grab your wallet, and head to one of these local book hubs to find some page-turners that fit your reading needs.

Yellow Dog Bookshop: For classics and the unexpected | 8 S. Ninth St. Married owners Joe Chevalier and Kelsey Hammond pride themselves on the quality of their small store. “We’re responsive to the community,” Chevalier says. “When people start asking for a book, I’ll get some in or start looking for those in used form if it’s an older book.”

The small bookstore has around 10,000 books, but he says that’s a low estimate.

Yellow Dog has large fiction and literature sections, as well as science fiction and fantasy sections. Chevalier is most interested in fantasy. “I know those especially well, so I look for things that I know are good and will do well,” he says.

Peace Nook: For sustainability and diverse authors | 804 E. Broadway Books by authors with unique experiences fill the shelves at Peace Nook. Co-founder Mark Haim says many of these texts cannot be found in corporate bookstores.

Peace Nook was created to further the work of Mid-Missouri Peaceworks, a nonprofit organization dedicated to social change. As an educational nonprofit business, the bookstore is also tax exempt.

Peace Nook has more than 4,000 books. Best-sellers and staff picks are always 20 percent off, and there are often

ILLUSTRATION BY MARY HILLEREN

discounts that coincide with holidays and celebratory months. For example, for two weeks, Sept. 18 to Oct. 4, all books are 20 percent off for the bookstore’s anniversary sale.

WIN A NEW HONDA PILOT or $500!

Village Books: For science fiction and fantasy | 2513 Bernadette Drive Village Books is the largest bookshop in comparison to the other local stores. It has somewhere around 40,000 new and used books, co-owner Becky Asher says.

It also has a sizable science fiction section because of its location next to local gaming store Valhalla’s Gate Games. The selection at Village Books varies as much as its customers.

“Our customers are incredibly broad-minded, so they come in looking for a cross section of pretty much everything,” Asher says. “We have people who read science fiction and fantasy who also read mysteries — who read things on World War I and European history at the same time.”

Columbia Books: For Missouri history or children’s books | 1907 Gordon St. Columbia Books has been in business for 40 years and currently stores around 30,000 new and used books on its shelves.

“I’m impressed I made it this long,” owner Annette Kolling-Buckley says.

Mysteries, illustrated books and collectibles are just some of what line the shelves. Kolling-Buckley has training in rare books. She emphasizes the store’s collections of children’s books and publications on Missouri history.

Kolling-Buckley says she didn’t expect her store to become what it has over the years. The store has evolved based on the customers’ wants and needs.

“The community has helped shape the store,” she says.

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Vietnam veteran and aspiring rock star BOBBY QUIGLEY shares his story of perseverance and divine intervention

B

obby Quigley isn’t your average rock ’n’ roller. Through the decades, he has fought in Vietnam, lived in Hollywood as a recording artist, toured with Van Halen and beaten prostate cancer. He also battled drug and alcohol addiction and developed a relationship with God through rehabilitation. Now at 68, he’s retired from his job as an employment specialist at Truman Veterans’ Hospital in Columbia and is in a local band with other veterans called 33. The band, named after the 33 days he was held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, shows music has no age limit.

With a repertoire of his own spiritually influenced lyrics and a solid voice, Quigley put an ad on Craigslist to complete his band. He found bassist Geno Alberico, lead guitarist Greg Wenk and drummer Troy Gochenour. They’re currently working on their first album, out in December, which will encompass a variety of genres including pop, rock and metal.

“Bobby is a straightforward, very strong guy, very assertive, but he’s fun,” Alberico says. “He’s a fun guy to play with. He has made it through a whole mess of crap.

He’s incredibly strong.”

Vox spoke with Quigley about the band, his time in Vietnam and how he wants to be seen playing on stage.

What is a memorable moment you’ve had playing with 33?

I’ll never forget the first time I played at The Bridge. I remember when people came there, they were like, “Look at grandpa up there.” It really was something 18

VOXMAGAZINE.COM | 09.14.17

I had to adjust to because I shouldn’t be up on stage playing music. I look like this ultra-conservative white guy who is running a business or in real estate or a salesman or whatever. It was brutal. Everyone was drinking and pointing and talking, and I knew that was going to happen. I was 67 freaking years old.

Your band name was inspired by your time in Vietnam. What was that experience like?

I was in a battle where they killed every one of my friends. Everybody. There were 47 of us. They kept seven of us alive, and the only reason they kept me alive was because I spoke the language. They spotted me and took me in the jungle, dug a hole and put me in it — ­ 32 days. I had established a rapport with this old man. He was a village chief. In my wallet, he found a picture of Jesus. And he asked me: “Who is this? Your brother?” We got into this discussion about who Christ was and about Buddhism. On the evening of the 33rd night, when they put me in that hole, he says, “They’re going to kill you tomorrow. You said this man here gave his life for you. Would you give your life for him?” It didn’t really dawn on me what he was saying, and I said, “Yes, I would.” But early in the morning when he was sleeping, I got out. To this day, I don’t know if that man let me go, but I have to believe he did.

How did that experience affect you?

It humbled me. People ask, “Why don’t you have PTSD?” and I’m not taking any psychotropic

medication. And I’ll tell you why. I knew how close I’d come to giving my life. A lot of my friends did not get a second chance like I did. It was the reason why I dropped out of college and went to Hollywood.

What do you want people to understand when they see you perform?

You can do anything you want to if you put your mind to it. Yeah, I’m a grandfather. That’s true. But I’m doing this because I love to do it. It’s a gift that I only temporarily have, and I don’t have much longer. I’m the guy who went to Hollywood, didn’t make it to the stars. I’m not the guy who finished first in the race or got an NFL scholarship. I represent 90 percent of people in this world who didn’t get to where they wanted to, but right now, they see me playing in this band, and it’s like I never gave up.

What three words would you use to describe yourself?

I’m the happiest and the luckiest and most grateful man who ever walked the face of the Earth. That’s what I consider myself. I don’t have a lot of money.

I’ve overcome some horrible illnesses. But I have truly found the secret to having success. It’s knowing that I’m doing what I love to do. Where it takes me, I don’t know. But I want to get out on that stage and just do it one more time.

— BY KAYLA MCDOWELL PHOTO BY LUKE BRODARICK

THE TO-DO LIST

this week in Columbia

ARTS & CULTURE Buzz Sutherland

Comedian Buzz Sutherland will deliver a slew of jokes during MU’s Family Weekend.

Sutherland’s shtick is funny-but-clean humor, so don’t worry about whether Mom and Dad will be able to handle his wisecracks.

Friday, 7 p.m., Jesse Auditorium, $5, MU students; $10, general public, 884-9933

40th Annual Heritage Festival and Craft Show Dust off your 19th-century attire for the Annual Heritage Festival and Craft Show. Witness artisans and craftsmen demonstrating their trade, and check out food, music, dancing and storytelling.

Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m., Nifong Park, Free, 874-7460

CIVIC Resume Design Workshop

Is your resume lacking pizazz? Online News Association (ONA) Mizzou hosts a resume workshop to help give you a fresh, professional edge. Today, 7–8 p.m., Reynolds Journalism Institute room 100A, Free, onamizzou@gmail.com

FOOD & DRINK Beer Fest

Few things are better than free beer, live music and food. Grab your friends for a day

at Lucky’s Market, and sample craft beers from local beer vendors such as Logboat Brewing Co. Enter to win free merchandise from the prize wheel. Saturday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Lucky’s Market, Free, 442-2128

MUSIC OHMME with The Royal Furs and Rusted Satellites

Chicago-based band OHMME last played in CoMo during the 2017 True/False Film Fest.

The folk/post-rock group is joined by local outfit The Royal Furs and Rusted Satellites.

Today, 8 p.m. to midnight, Cafe Berlin, $5, 441-0400

Eli Young Band

Put your cowboy boots on, and get ready for a night on your feet. The Texas natives of Eli Young Band are joining country duo LOCASH for a 9th Street Summerfest concert event. Friday, 7 p.m., The Blue Note, $25; $40, two-night package with the Turnpike Troubadours on Saturday, 874-1944

Tech N9ne’s Strange Reign Tour 2017

It’s time to mix up some Caribou Lou: Tech N9ne’s in town. The Kansas City native rapper always puts on a raucous show in CoMo, and tickets tend to sell fast.

Tuesday, 7 p.m., The Blue Note, $27.50 in advance; $30 day of, 874-1944

Get the story on Columbia’s latest showings.

MOVIE REVIEWS VoxMagazine.com

Still playing

SPORTS Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers 5K

This 5K honors Marc Wright, retired Columbia first department division chief, as well as first responders, military personnel, veterans and those who died on 9/11.

Proceeds go toward building smart homes for injured veterans. Saturday, 9 a.m., Missouri State Capitol, $25; $15, children ages 13–17; $10, children ages 12 and younger, 690-3078

SCREEN Ingrid Goes West (R)

This dark comedy follows Ingrid Thorburn (Aubrey Plaza) who, following the death of her mother, moves out West to find — or stalk — and befriend Instagram celebrity Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen). The obsession and budding friendship eventually takes a twisted and hilarious turn.

RT RUNTIME = 1:37

Home Again (PG-13)

This rom-com stars Reese Witherspoon as Alice Kinney, a recently separated woman who moves to Los Angeles with her two daughters to start her life over. On Alice’s birthday, she meets three young filmmakers who move into her guest house.

Things become complicated when her ex unexpectedly comes back into the picture.

F, R RUNTIME = 1:37

All Saints (PG) R American Assassin (R) F, R Annabelle: Creation (R) F, R Baby Driver (R) R The Big Sick (R) R Close Encounters of the Third Kind 40th Anniversary (PG) R The Dark Tower (PG-13) R Dunkirk (2017) (PG-13) R The Emoji Movie (PG) R Girls Trip (R) R The Glass Castle (PG-13) F, RT Good Time (R), RT The Heart of Man (PG-13) F The Hitman’s Bodyguard (R) F, R Home Again (PG-13) F, R Ingrid Goes West (R) RT It (R) R, F Leap! (PG) F, R Logan Lucky (PG-13) F, R Menashe (PG) RT Mother! (R) F, R Patti Cake$ (R) RT Spider-Man: Homecoming (PG) R Step (PG) RT Wind River (R) F, RT Wonder Woman (PG-13) R

Theaters F = Forum R = Regal

RT = Ragtag = available in 3D

KOPN 89.5fm...Where Else?

Monday thru Friday National Programming Line-up...

Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman 8-9am and Noon-1pm

Fresh Air with Terry Gross 11am-Noon

On your radio dial at 89.5 fm or live streaming at kopn.org 09.14.17

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Get tickets at rootsnbluesnbbq.com or at Vinyl Renaissance of Columbia (111 S. 9th Street)