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After church last Sunday, the congregation of Rock Bridge Christian Church passed around a white construction hat at the groundbreaking for their new sanctuary. Instead of going toward the building project, the money filling the hat was used to buy a mattress and box springs.

The furnishings were the finishing touches in an apartment that will be home to a family of six refugees from Liberia who arrived in Columbia late Monday night.

In anticipation of Oct. 11, the date a new concealed-gun law will go into effect, county and city governments are enacting policies to ban concealed weapons.

When the Boone County Commission meets tonight, it is scheduled to vote on an order that would ban concealed weapons on county property. An existing order bans weapons on county property but does not specifically apply to concealed weapons.

WASHINGTON — While court fights continued, President Bush on Monday signed legislation to ratify the Federal Trade Commission’s authority to set up a national do-not-call list that could lead to fines for telemarketers.

“The public is understandably losing patience with these unwanted phone calls, unwanted intrusions,” Bush said. “Given a choice, Americans prefer not to receive random sales pitches at all hours of the day. The American people should be free to restrict these calls.”

Black smoke pours from a gristmill, grinding corn, wheat and rye that will be fed into a nearby whiskey distillery. In the distance men cut down trees that will burn and create enough steam power to run the mill. A blacksmith pounds metal into horseshoes. Hogs squeal from their pens, crying for a morning meal of leftover grain.

This scene from 1850 characterized mid-Missouri’s first industrial center that once stood on the same land as Rock Bridge Memorial State Park.

Mirror-lined walls and fitness centers go together like french fries and hamburgers. But are mirrors at the gym any healthier for women than a value meal?

Not if you believe a recent study from Canada.

When Gary and Susan Pfau bought Coffee, Tea & Spice, they were drinking coffee from the can, but one year and a variety of flavors later, they have become coffee experts.

The Pfaus purchased the store in May 2002, when it was located at Chapel Hill Plaza, and reopened it July 22 in Parkade Plaza. When the Pfaus bought the store, there were no coffee beans and few tea bags in stock. However, they still had the coffee roaster, teapots, mugs, cookies, instant cocoa and coffee mixes to move. For the next two months, the Pfaus studied characteristics of different coffees and teas before reopening the business.

One of the most trusted people in a man’s life is his barber. And trust is what keeps customers coming back to Tiger Barber Shop on Ninth Street.

At one time, there were at least six barber shops on Ninth Street. Today, Tiger Barber Shop is one of only two that remain. The shop has been open for 80 years and today serves people who began coming in the 1950s.

Fairview resident Sharon Stevens and her husband, Frank Schmidt, have dreaded completion of Rollins Road for the past 15 years.

“I hoped they’d never get to it,” said Stevens, whose home is at the edge of Fairview Park at Westport Drive and the end of Rollins Road.

Almost every morning at 7 a.m., Leigh Lockhart, owner of The Main Squeeze on Ninth Street, finds the same man passed out in a dirty baseball cap in front of her café.

The problem is more than people sleeping on benches.

Extensive revisions to Boone County’s zoning regulations are beginning to show up on county commission agendas for final approval.

The revisions are the product of a series of public hearings and lengthy discussions by the Boone County Planning and Zoning Commission over the spring and summer. At its Tuesday night meeting, the Boone County Commission is scheduled to approve revisions to the first five sections of the zoning code.

It’s already nearing 90 degrees at 9:30 on a Thursday morning, and Jimmy Ott has found his oasis — a large, red Water and Light van cresting a hill in the Valleyview Garden subdivision.

Perspiration staining his blue work shirt and Cardinals hat, his sleeves rolled up and arms baking in the sun, he fills his paper cup twice from the mud-stained cooler that sits in the van’s back seat. He finally called in on his radio for water after having walked several miles on his meter-reading route, which isn’t completed yet.

This is my favorite season of the year. I’ve tired of summer, especially this past summer when the temperature soared to such heights that I holed up inside for days not wanting to venture out into the heat. I’m sick of my skin sticking to my clothing even indoors with the air conditioner going full blast. I want to see a utility bill under $200.

I’ve become bored with my clothes. I want to exchange the shorts and cotton-knit tops with sweaters and shoes that aren’t flip-flops.

On any weekend, Becky Snider can be found balanced atop scaffolding next to her house, carefully scraping layers of paint off the wood siding and shingles.

  “As a historic preservationist I couldn’t live in a historic house with vinyl siding,” Becky says. “The good thing is the wood is in decent shape, and there are shingles on the house, which add interest.”

The mime talked.

The mime also did the usual mime things: He ran into invisible walls. He acted like a lost baby, looking for his mother. He stomped around like a disgruntled dinosaur.

A proposed merger between the University of Missouri system and Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville will take longer than expected. Thorny issues such as admission standards, educational fees, changing Northwest’s name and workers’ compensation have slowed the merger, officials from both universities said Friday.

This is the second time in five months that the universities have decided to delay seeking approval.

Starting this weekend, the 44th Annual Boone County Art Show includes paintings, drawings, sculpture, ceramics and more. The show, cosponsored by Boone County National Bank and the Columbia Art League, features 275 works of art by 182 artists.

The popular choice award and the bank’s purchase award will be announced at 4:30 p.m. today in the lobby of Boone County National Bank on the corner of Eighth Street and Broadway. All of the entries will be on display in the lobby and selected works of art will remain on display through October.

Children with painted faces licked powdered sugar from their fingers, their tummies full of funnel cake. Nearby, parents browsed among craft booths, greeted neighbors and hoped the rain would hold off. As dark storm clouds rumbled into Ashland on Saturday afternoon, threatening to soak the town’s annual Fall Festival, a gray tower stood alone against the skyline. Colorful footholds jutted out from the wall’s surface; however, any adventurer hoping to reach its craggy summit was out of luck.

When Julie Burdin envisioned being a doctor, she saw herself practicing rural family medicine and delivering babies in communities like Macon.

“I am from a small town, and this has always been my dream,” said Burdin, a family practitioner and obstetrician at Total Family Health Care, a community clinic associated with Samaritan Hospital in Macon.

As if high school freshmen didn’t have it hard enough: A recent study says only about one in three will graduate with the courses needed to get into the nation’s least-selective four-year colleges.

Nationwide, only 70 percent of all students entering high school will graduate, says a study from the Manhattan Institute, a New York think tank that advocates vouchers and school choice. Fewer than half of those — 32 percent of all students — have transcripts that will get them into four-year programs with what the study defines as the least demanding course requirements.

Hans Bohnert has a vision for MU’s new Life Sciences Center that includes ways to stay on the cutting edge and to involve the community.

Bohnert, professor of plant biology and crop sciences at the University of Illinois, is one of four finalists vying to become the first director of the $60 million Life Sciences Center, scheduled to open sometime next year.