This is a rare moment when I am (briefly) at a loss for words. Am I a history “buff” or a history “nerd?” Is there a difference?  

I know a great deal about the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery, the fall of the Roman Empire (spoiler alert: it was malaria), and the stories behind obscure places and everyday but hardly famous people in Missouri. I see the dots of one generation connecting with another generation, from event to place to date to … well, the history. That, to me, is a history buff.  

But my personal home library has as much or more reference material as it has fiction and non-fiction tomes. Perhaps my favorite title is Panati’s Extraordinary Endings of Practically Everything and Everybody. And I have way too many hundred-year-old medical textbooks and a plethora of information on the 1918 flu pandemic. (I refuse to call it the “Spanish” flu, because it started in March 1918 at Fort Riley, Kansas. In the U.S. of A. At that’s an important footnote because it’s part of the systemic mindset that began centuries earlier when our non-Spanish European ancestors began characterizing Spaniards and Latinos as, well, less than us. Look around. It’s still happening. Right now.)  

There I go, probably exposing myself as a history nerd — a step up (or down?) from history buff — and a bleeding heart something or other. But context matters. And if we don’t learn from history, well, you know the rest.  

As our February “Passion Projects” issue has come together, I’ve done a personal inventory of my passions — the things that take up my time now and what I’ve devoted my time to in the past. So a quick note to self: You love playing the guitar and creating origami magic. Get back to that passion.  

What is your passion project? What activity makes you feel alive, connected to something bigger than yourself, and deepens your curiosity about the lives and backgrounds of others? And if that passion leads to the realization that you play a vital role in life on planet Earth — but our globe does not revolve around you — then it is an incalculable investment.  

I’ve had the historian’s spark of curiosity and discovery as long as I can remember. In high school, Coach Collier called me “scribe.” That term still rings with somewhat somber reverence because, as a journalist, I am not just living history, but I am writing it. Maybe someday someone will dig into the past and find dots connected to something I wrote.  

Also in preparation for this issue, I spent valuable time with Gary Kremer, the executive director of the State Historical Society of Missouri. Gary is in a league of his own as a Missouri historian and author. He’s retiring this October. The Rapport Storytelling team of Jeff Branscom and C.J. Levy have invested considerable time shooting video to show COMO Business Times and COMO Magazine readers everything that goes into making a magazine. They followed along for my interviews with Gary and, later, with Rebecca Roesslet, the still-new director of the Columbia/Boone County Department of Public Health and Human Services.  

I can’t wait to see that production. And I can’t wait for you to read and relish the stories we have for you in this month’s issue. 

Photo caption: State Historical Society of Missouri Executive Director Gary Kremer, left, and the Rapport Storytelling team, Jeff Branscom and C.J. Levy.