Tornado: Mike Pound

Joplin City Council to move forward on $130 million recovery proposal; curbside recycling election resurrected

Residents kept the house packed to the end of a 2 1/2-hour meeting of the Joplin City Council on Monday night to encourage the panel to resurrect some kind of curbside recycling proposal and to hear the details or support a $130 million recovery plan.

Tornado: Mike Pound

Mike Pound: 9-year-old’s small gesture stands tall
Sometimes it’s the little things that have the most impact. A lot of big things have happened in the past week or so. Many of those big things have been bad. Unbelievably bad. Beyond description bad. Death and destruction bad.

May 30, 2011
Mike Pound: When push comes to shove
People packed into the Taylor Performing Arts Center on Sunday at Missouri Southern State University to pay tribute. They packed into the building to pay tribute to those who lost their lives, were injured or lost their homes in the May 22 tornado.

May 29, 2011
Mike Pound: Laughing in face of disaster signals we’re not giving up
I have been writing a Sunday humor column in this paper for some time now. When my first Sunday column appeared in this paper, my 13-year-old daughter, Emma, was 3.

May 28, 2011
Mike Pound: Helping hands help restore hope
Late Thursday afternoon, I was about to take back what I wrote earlier in the week about that whole “hope” thing. Bad news seemed to be everywhere on Thursday. Making matters worse, Jeff Lehr, our crime reporter, received some police reports about folks who had been arrested for alleged looting.

May 27, 2011
Mike Pound: Heroic deeds, and now basic needs
Lynn Johnson says her friend Michele Maxson is a hero.
“She saved a lot of people’s lives,” Lynn said.
Lynn and Michele worked at Dillons for 23 years. I say “worked” because the Dillons store at 1402 E. 20th St. doesn’t exist anymore.

May 27, 2011
Mike Pound: Finding a hero among the rubble
Lynn Johnson says her friend Michele Maxson is a hero. “She saved a lot of people’s lives,” Lynn said. Lynn and Michele worked at Dillons for 23 years. I say “worked” because the Dillons store at 1402 E. 20th St. doesn’t exist anymore.

May 26, 2011
Mike Pound: People will keep parish from perishing
For some reason, the juxtaposition of seven or eight kickballs scattered near the demolished St. Mary’s Catholic Elementary School, 505 W. 25th St., where Judy Clarkson was searching through her third-grade classroom for her “nun collection,” made me think of Ames, Iowa.

May 26, 2011
Mike Pound: Searching necessary for recovery
They found another one Tuesday morning. It sucks when doing your job well results in bad news. But that’s the life of search and rescue team members: trained to look for something that, sometimes, they don’t want to find.

May 24, 2011
Mike Pound: Hope shows up just in time
It shows up when there is no earthly reason it should. It shows up when all the evidence points not to hope, but to despair. It shows up in rubble that used to be whole lives. It shows up in the kindness of a neighbor. Or a stranger.

May 23, 2011