Wesley Hamilton (Disabled But Not Really)
Jan 12, 2018
Show notes
"Laying on that ground, bleeding out. So many people around holding my chest. People I didn't know. I come from Kansas City so death is kind of hard out here, so I thought I was dying. I didn’t think of myself as surviving."
One hundred and twenty-six. That’s the number of people killed in Kansas City in 2016. Four years earlier in 2012, that number wasn’t much different. There were one hundred and eight homicides. In the beginning of that year, Wesley Hamilton was in danger of becoming lost in that massive statistic after he was unexpectedly shot outside his former girlfriend's apartment.
How We Got Here #2: Hector And The Duck
Jul 27, 2017
Show notes
How did we get here? I mean, physically, here in Kansas City. Some of us were born here, others moved from different cities, but some of us traveled here from a different country all together.
This is the second episode of an on-going series here at Paris of the Plains we’re calling How We Got Here: Stories of Immigration. Each episode features someone telling their story of immigration or a story about how immigration has changed their life. These narratives show how the people that call this place home came to be in the Paris of the Plains.
How did we get here? I mean, physically, here in Kansas City. Some of us were born here, others moved from different cities, but some of us traveled here from a different country all together.
This is the first episode of an on-going series here at Paris of the Plains we’re calling How We Got Here: Stories of Immigration. Each episode will feature someone telling their story of immigration or a story about how immigration has changed their life. These narratives show how the people that call this place home came to be in the Paris of the Plains. We start with Rodolfo and the Westside.
On this episode of Paris of the Plains, we hear a story produced by another Fountain City Frequency podcast, Iconoclast of Things. That story details how a Syrian refugee family positively changed a small neighborhood here in the Kansas City area. Subscribe to that podcast here.
One of my favorite authors, Colum McCann, wrote in his novel Transatlantic that, “We return to the lives of those who have gone before us, a perplexing mobius strip, until we come home, eventually, to ourselves.”
That’s certainly true of City Councilman Quinton Lucas, who says his story was shaped by the decisions of the two most important women in his life. This is a story about how the actions of people in our past, even people we may have never met, can make us who we are today.
There’s a common phrase, “it takes a village to raise a child”, but sometimes it takes a child to bring a village together. This is a story about a family helping each other to save one of their own, and a mother going through to hell to make a better life for her kids. This is Velonder, sacrificing for her family.
After years of eating at Wendy's almost every morning Mo Dickens managed to give up fast food after artist Adriane Herman convinced him to throw away some junk food during a photography shoot where she took pictures of people throwing things away. This inspired them both to start the Freeing Throwers art project through the Charlotte Street Rocket Grant program.
A few days ago, a post was up-voted to the top of the Pokemon Go reddit about how the new video game was working against racial discrimination for a black man here in Kansas City. This is a story about that reddit post. This is Marcellus King, playing Pokemon Go.
Gary Jenkins was a KCMO police officer during one of the largest mob busts in history. He retells that story and other greatest hits of historical mafia stories on his KC based podcast, Gangland Wire. For this episode of Paris of the Plains, we decided to team up and produce a joint show about Jenkin’s time covering the mafia here in Kansas city.
Kansas City jazz artist, Hermon Mehari, was in Paris that night on a trip to perform a series of shows and film a music video for his band, The Buhs.
Mehari remembers being disoriented by an unordinary amount of sirens as he and some friends walked to a bar. He says when they arrived, everyone’s eyes were glued to the television, and he tried to figure what was happening with what little French he could speak.
“At that time, the information was just coming out, and it couldn’t come out fast enough,” says Mehari.
After things had settled down, Mehari walked back to his apartment in a daze. He says he was overcome the next morning with a feeling of pride for Paris, a city that he’s fallen in love with over the years.
“This is a great city, and no-one can take that away from it,” says Mehari.
Credit: Alison Claire Peck
For days after the attacks, Mehari says he experienced deserted streets, and an intense sense of melancholy. The performances he had planned had all been canceled, but he felt as though some people in the city needed a moment of musical mirth.
“We wanted to kind of lift spirits,” says Mehari.
Mehari was close with a neighborhood club owner, and they agreed to let him and a few other musicians organize a jam session. They got the word out, and people showed up.
“Some people needed something, you know what I mean. And also there’s this idea of like, don’t let them defeat us,” says Mehari. “It was soft of in defiance, but also out of necessity.”
After the show, Mehari remembers a polish couple thanking him for performing. He thinks that everyone responds to tragedy differently, and some people were thankful for the moment of positivity that Mehari provided.
“Music can do a lot of things, it can even just make things feel normal,” says Mehari.
Above is a video of the impromptu performance and below you can watch The Buhs music video filmed Paris during the days following the attacks. Both videos were shot by Alison Claire Peck.
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