Iconoclast of Things John Evans

Before he ever saw the ICE Warrant ordering his removal from the United State, Victor Herrera describes this one point in his life as an immigrant in the United States like this, "I feel like I’m in a bucket full of shit, and I’m drowning in it. His story is the messy reality of immigration and deportation. It begs us to have a grown-up discussion about these immigration stories. It asks us all kinds of questions. The biggest? Can we - or even should we - summon compassion for someone once we see them completely; once we know their whole story? And how does the answer to that affect every question we have afterwards?

When I was in fourth grade, there was this box in the back of our classroom. It was filled with multi-colored tabs with stories and questions printed on each. Our teacher was Ms. Evans, yes, she was my mom  — and that box was the SRA reading lab. Dr. Don Parker created the SRA reading lab in 1950 for 32 seventh graders in a cash-strapped rural Florida school. Parker wrote that he created the SRA lab to overcome what he called, “the normal curve of individual differences.” Last Summer Mayor Sly James told me about Turn The Page KC, a nonprofit organization working to increase the number of Kansas City students reading at grade level by 3rd grade. When I started this story, I thought I’d learn why schools fail kids and how a small group of people are filling the gap.  I learned something many of our policy makers haven’t — that literacy has so much to do with what happens outside the school building; what infants and toddlers hear from their parents, their proximity to stress and trauma, their attendance, and something called the Thirty Million Word Gap.  This’s important because literacy is about a lot more than a school building or a talking point. It’s a function of what the SRA’s creator, Dr. Parker, found almost 70 years ago; meet kids where they are, help families lay out a series of stepping stones and help kids move along as they get closer and closer to the developmental milestone of third grade. Today’s thing, is the SRA Reading Box. And this episode is “The Book I Read: fixing third grade literacy.

This is the story of how Unbound, one of the midwest's largest non-profits, was formed from the vision of a man with a very different take on charity and giving. In November of 1981, Kansas City Missouri, Bob Hentzen and 3 of his 14 siblings, along with their friend Jerry Tolle, founded an organization known today as Unbound. Bob and his friend Jerry were former missionaries. They used the family Christmas card list to connect families in America with families in Latin America to connect someone who wanted to give help with someone who needed it. Fifteen years later, the 60-year-old Hentzen walked four thousand miles from Kansas City to San Lucas Toliman Guatemala. Then, in 2009, at age 73, he walked eight thousand miles from Guatemala to Chile, traversing the Atacama desert. The boots he wore. These brown, Nike, nylon and leather. The toes have been cut away, giant hole near the heel on one side. Today’s thing is this pair of once hiking boots and today’s episode is “looking through windows; a 4000 mile walk to say I love you. Then 8000 miles more.”

On September 23rd Father Stan Rother will be the first American born martyr beatified by the Catholic church. Though it’s the story of Father Stan Rother, this one doesn’t end in death. Stan Rother was one casualty of the decades long Guatemalan Civil War. A war sparked in the halls of the US congress; fueled in part by our fear of communism and antipathy for any threat to American capitalism abroad. While the killers were Guatemalan, the deaths of Stan Rother and thousands more flicked blood on to American hands. But this is not a murder story. Or even a political story. It’s . . . kind of a love story. The love this Oklahoman had for the people of Santiago Atitlan, and the love they returned. Today’s thing, is this Church at Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala. And this episode is “Washington Bullets: The Martyrdom of Father Stanley Rother”

This is the first time I’ve uttered out loud these words: my lady has cancer.

In 1917 a german man named Charles Huffman was making fabric dye in five gallon enamel pots in a vacant store in Chicago. He named his product RIT dye in honor of his friend, Louis Rittenhouse, a vice president his Sunbeam Chemical Company. Their slogan was, “Never say Dye, say RIT.” When he was a kid, RIT dye fascinated 25 year old Phillip. This is the story of of Phillip and Paul, a 25 year old with autism and the father he lives with. After a childhood of having his world shaped and controlled by others, Phillip was allowed to take risks — big, unsettling risks — and make mistakes. This is the story of how those mistakes transformed him and helped define his way of being in the world. To the point of finding even a little success from the stuff he’s obsessed over since he was a little kid. Today’s thing, is RIT dye. And this episode is, “I’ll be You.”