It is a crazy world, and sometimes people just need to laugh it off.

Chad Harris, Springfield resident and founder of Fair City News, hopes his satirical publication provides more than a few chuckles to usurp the insanity.

Fair City News is a tabloid newspaper that pokes fun at local events through fake news articles.

“We take tidbits of truth and spin stories around events that are happening here locally,” Harris said. “Satire is a great way to escape the madness that exists in our society.”

Fair City News started out as a blog in March 2009, but debuted a print product this month, leaving Harris to joke that the publication is “regressing in technology.”

Harris has a background in improvisational comedy, having studied it in college and performed it for the last 12 years. He is associated locally with the Skinny Improv and The Improvadors. He felt blogging was the “next logical step” and found writing fake news stories a great way to “have an alternate source of creativity.”

Harris writes the vast majority of articles appearing in Fair City News and pushes himself to write at least one satire article daily for the website.

“When you’re on stage, you’re on a tight-wire, putting your head in a lions mouth, and you have got to perform on the spot,” Harris said. “Similarly, at Fair City News, I sit down on the computer and look at the news topics of the day. It’s my time to get a little written improvisational humor.”

While the Fair City News blog garnered plenty of readers on its own, Harris believed the time was right for a move to print.

“This was right around the time GO Magazine went out of print, and I wanted to introduce something students would enjoy and graduates would enjoy,” Harris said, adding that advertising support has been solid thus far.

Chad Harris, founder of Fair City News.

Harris believes Fair City News may create an avenue for people to become more informed about local news topics by making it more appealing.

“If readers are interested in reading ‘funny’ articles,” Harris said, “they are more likely to read about the real issues and be more informed about the world around them.

Fair City News produces a print version once a month which is available on campus. Its blog can be found online at faircitynews.com. Fair City News is seeking student contributors.

Photo by Zach Becker. A chipmunk hides in the brush along the trail at the Springfield Nature Center.

For hikers and lovers of the outdoors, the Springfield Conservation and Nature Center can provide a welcome respite from the busy collegiate lifestyle.

With a main central building featuring ever-changing exhibits on wildlife, as well as three miles worth of outdoor wooded hiking trails, volunteers at this free-of-charge Springfield attraction hope to expose people of all ages to the beauty of the Ozarks.

“It’s a really great place to hike,” said Kim Banner, who works as a Naturalist at the Nature Center providing education programs. “Some of (the trails) are a little bit more challenging, a little bit hilly. You see a lot of nature first hand: lots of deer, lots of turkey, reptiles, lizards, turtles, snakes; all kinds of different things.”

Hiking is open to the public year round. However, newcomers to the area may wish to join the Nature Center’s hiking club.

A volunteer naturalist leads this club on hikes through different conservation areas in Missouri’s southwest region.

“If they like hiking and they don’t know where to go and they don’t have a person to hike with, that’s really a good thing for them to do,” Banner said.

The Nature Center hosts a multitude of exhibits and special events each month, exploring everything from insects and venomous snakes to hunter safety and snorkeling.

Located in southeast Springfield, the Springfield Conservation Nature Center is located just west of US-65 off the James River Freeway (US-60). The area is open daily 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.

The main building is open every day from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information or to sign up for its programs, contact the Nature Center at (417) 888-4237 or go to www.mdc.mo.gov/2360.

Contributor

Last Wednesday’s volunteer fair in the Plaster Student Union hosted over 50 different organizations, all looking for motivated college students just wanting to help out.

With opportunities ranging in focus from dog-lovers to multi-lingual tutoring and bikers for a cause, students with a variety of interests can find a position unique to their desires.

One such opportunity exists at Christian County Animal Shelter.

They are looking for volunteers to do “a multitude of things,” said Lisa Haney, a representative from the shelter.

They need student support to run the thrift store that funds the shelter, to feed and walk the animals at the adoption center opening next month and even transporters to drive animals from one location to another.

“It’s like a dog relay,” Haney said. When dogs need to be transported to a shelter in another city, students can take dogs with them.

Haney described it as “ideal” for college students because they take the dogs on their trips home to see family and drop them off when they arrive.

Haney has worked in animal rescue for over 15 years now, and her reasons for it haven’t faltered. “It’s just saving these dogs that have no chance—that’s the amazing thing,” Haney said.

The shelter has already saved numerous animals that would have otherwise been euthanized because of overpopulation, and they look to expand that success with student volunteers. Check out http://www.cc-as.com to find out how to get involved.

The Literacy Center provides another option for volunteers to choose from, placing students in various elementary school settings in order to help kids with their homework and play games with them during recreation periods.

“These kids will fall in love with you,” W Roy Roworth said. “A lot of these kids, when they go home at night, don’t have anyone to nurture them. . . .Our focus is to get them through school.”

As a friend and a role model for these children, the student volunteers “give them a different perspective,” Roworth said—a different perspective on what they can become. He emphasized how the volunteers, by doing so, become “all the difference in these kids’ lives.”

For students with an interest in multi-lingual volunteer opportunities, many programs need help with their children from backgrounds where parents speak very little English.

The Literacy Center places volunteers in these after-school programs that focus on English as a second language. Roworth can be reached at wroyroworth@missouristate.edu.

Other groups, such as the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, provide short-term volunteer opportunities for students looking to participate in sporadic events. The group hosts various fundraisers throughout the year, two of which are Walk MS and Bike MS.

Walk MS takes place in downtown Springfield with three, six, and nine mile walks. The routes remain completely accessible for wheelchairs and scooters, so all kinds of participants can join. Afterwards comes lunch at Outback Steakhouse, so Heather Hodges, Development Coordinator, encourages all to “come out for a 4-hour shift and have fun.”

Bike MS involves a little more endurance. A two-day ride of 150 miles, the event starts in Springfield as bikers move to Joplin on day one and then ends at the same place when bikers return on day two.

“It’s so much fun,” Hodges said. “It’s a big, big machine once it starts.”

Hodges’ favorite story to tell involves a client with MS who, although he can’t physically walk or ride during the events, never misses his chance to participate.

He makes signs to thank all the volunteers for supporting him, then goes down the line “high-fiving all of them,” Hodges explained. Excitement lit up her face as she recalled the energy he brought to the cause.

Students paraded the different booths during the volunteer fair, scouting out various possibilities that would fit their focus.

As a therapeutic recreation major, junior Carly Scott utilizes volunteer work as a key element in her field.

In the past, she has participated in Champion Athletes and Habitat for Humanity, among various other organizations, but she doesn’t want to stop there. “I’m always trying to look for new places,” she said.

For Mindy Towe, a senior Psychology major at Missouri State, she’s “just now getting started.” Although she’s worked with various agencies in the past, she needs ideas of what to do because of her soon approaching graduation.

She enjoyed the idea of joining the Down Syndrome Group of the Ozarks. “I’m really going to try to get involved with that,” she said.

Contributor

For over a decade, the GLO Center (Gay and Lesbian Community Center of the Ozarks) has been working to provide support services and a sense of community for the homosexual population of Springfield.

Located on the corner of Washington Avenue and Commercial Street, the GLO Center is hard to miss, with a large rainbow painted on the side of its building designed to welcome any and all.

Opened in 1997, the GLO Center is an all-purpose center for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer (GLBTQ) community.

Whether one is a an openly gay individual, a person coming to grips with their sexuality, or someone who is still trying to come out as a gay individual, the Center welcomes all with open arms.

“We’re really trying to work on publicizing the Center,” said GLO Center President Rebecca Clark. “So many people don’t even know that we have a Center. I find that very sad, since this is our twelfth anniversary.”

Although the Center is still working hard at getting the word out about its existence, it serves about 80 to 100 people a week, according to Clark.

The GLO Center sponsors activities on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. These range from movie nights held on the first and third Friday of every month to weekly Uno games. The Center also has support groups for all imaginable individuals, be they gay, lesbian, transgender or anywhere in between. The GLO Center even offers free counseling through the Forest Institute.

Of course, in order to keep the Center thriving, Clark says that volunteers are urgently needed.

“Our goal is to create a volunteer staff that will keep the Community Center open Monday through Friday,” she said, “allowing our community members to stop by any time they like.”

GLO is one of many organizations in the Ozarks coming together in an attempt to promote diversity.

“Springfield has come a long way in what it has to offer,” Clark said. “We are very fortunate to own our Center outright. Springfield also has a very active GLBTQ bar scene. Beyond that, there isn’t a whole lot out there that’s gaycentric, if you will, which is why it’s so important to have the Center to help fill some of that void.”

However, she stressed that groups such as FOCUS (the gay professional organization), OLGA (the GLBTQ archive

housed at Missouri State) and GLO are working together to better serve the gay community.

Those wishing to volunteer, participate in activities or seek counseling or support

group services from the GLO Center can find more information at http://www.glocenter.org.