Mark Manning hosts Wednesday MidDay Medley on 90.1 FM KKFI Kansas City Community Radio (broadcast and streaming). He is also a professional educator. More on that below!
1. If you could throw a party, who would cook or cater, what would the menu be, what three bands would play, and where would it be?
MM: My dear friend Lou Jane Temple would supervise the catering. She use to run a restaurant on West 39th Street called Cafe Lulu, and earlier in her career she was a rock and roll caterer for Chris Fritz Productions. The food would be some of her greatest hits: sesame soy noodles, hot thai peanut dip with jicama and veggies, blue lou salads, macaroni and 3-cheese, champagne risotto with lobster, flourless chocolate torte. Or we would do a complete soul food experience with pan fried chicken, mashed potatoes with chicken gravy green beens, fresh cold-slaw, apple sauce, and cherry pie with ice cream. The place would be on stage at The Folly Theatre with Calvin Arsenia, Madisen Ward and the Mama Bear, and Krystle Warren & The Faculty.
2. What's your current creative project or projects? What do you want folks to know about it?
MM: For 21 years I have served as Coordinator/Director of the KCK Organic Teaching Gardens. We have created organic raised bed gardens at seven schools in Kansas City, Kansas at: Rosedale Middle, Argentine Middle, Carl B. Bruce Middle, Frank Rushton, ME Pearson, Banneker, and Quindaro Elementary Schools. We have a total of 95 raised beds combined. Along with our gardens we have created a garden curriculum for classrooms at each school. We collaborate with approximately 26 teachers and classrooms, serving 1300 students, in monthly workshops. We conduct workshops for 50 classes of students each month, serving 1st, 4th and 6th grade students. Our workshops are designed to connect the indoor classrooms with theft door gardens on their campus. All of our gardens are built, planted, and harvested by the students at each school. We have created permanent: “Butterfly Garden” beds, “Hummingbird Garden” beds, “Native Plant” beds, “Strawberry Patch” beds, “See-Smell-Touch” beds, along with beds the we rotate that grow: sweet potatoes, tomato varieties, pepper varieties, cucumbers, okra, beets, leeks, carrots, beans, chard, cotton, zinnias, columbine, sunflowers, coreopsis, echinacea, dianthus, rudbeckia, snapdragons, butterfly bush, alyssum, marigolds, sensitive plants, larkspur, rosemary, lemon thyme, parsley, sage, oregano, cilantro, garlic, dill, basil, and many other varieties. Students are encouraged to take home food from our harvests. We give away between $7,000.00 and $10,000.00 of organic produce from our gardens annually.
3. What's a brick and mortar business you've always wanted to work at, something you'd even do for free?
MM: Record Stores are some of my favorite places to hang out. Everyone who enters these place already holds a love and passion for music, so you can strike up a conversation with almost anyone about music, recordings, concerts, experiences. I try to spend at least a few hours each week at a record store. I also grew up working in restaurants, libraries and theatres. I've done almost every job you can have in a theatre: actor, director, designer, stage manager, assistant stage manager, lighting technician, sound technician, house manager, box office manager, publicity, marketing, fundraising.
4. What does your ideal creative day look like?
A long walk and allowing your self to photograph the beauty of nature. Working in the gardens. Listening to the neighborhood and sky. Planting or harvesting with young people. Working on next week's playlist for the radio show. Reading the news, or several chapters of the latest book on your desk. A healthy phone conversation with a good close friend. Making a to-do list and crossing off the boxes. Listening to music. Stretching. Challenging yourself to write a rant, or a tribute, or an essay, or poetry, or the beginnings of a performance piece, or play.
5. What’s your favorite record right now?
MM: The new Valerie June album, THE MOON AND STARS: PRESCRIPTIONS FOR DREAMERS, is really good. We The People (Eddie Moore's latest musical project) released MISUNDERSTOOD, last year, it continues to be one of my favorites. Krystle Warren and The Crew released a 4-song EP of covers last year called THE CREW, that I need to hear over and over again. The Black Creature album, WILD ECHOES is an underrated gem that needs to be heard. Shy Boys album TALK LOUD is beautiful. I've also been recently obsessed with the discography of Blondie.
6. What's the last book you wanted to buy 100 copies of and pass out to friends?
MM: Begin Again by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
7. It’s a hot summer night and there’s beer in the cooler. What movie would you most like to show in your back yard or on a wall in a public space?
MM: Female Trouble by John Waters
8. How do you take care of your creative practice and stay inspired and energized?
MM: Music is a big part of my life, but so is completely unplugging and spending hours and hours in the garden, literally watching the garden grow. Taking in the therapy of water splashing onto soil to feed the plants. I also like to stay up late to write because there is more "bandwidth of airwaves" available at that hour, as most people are sleeping.
9. What made you laugh the hardest this week?
MM: My partner Caleb loves to play devil's advocate to my sometimes rose-colored-view of things. He manages to support my endeavors even when he may not agree with my investment in these tasks. While I want to open all of the windows, he is forever pulling the blinds, and locking the doors. Even though we approach life in two very different ways, we see basic justice and civil rights with the same passion. We both agree politically and artistically and have recently been laughing out loud at Republican Senators like Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mitch McConnell and Josh Hawley and just how out-of-touch and racist these dinosaurs seem to be. We also laugh due to our own bewilderment that we have family members who support these monsters. One of our favorite comic actors and musicians, Harry Shearer wrote, "Satire is the greatest weapon against assholes."
10. How would you have handled winning the recent ONE BILLION DOLLAR powerball jackpot?
MM: I've never been a rich person. I have lived almost my entire adult life in debt with student loans, etc. I would pay off everything I owe. Everything my friends and family owe. I would donate almost all of my winnings to the non-profit organizations where I have donated my time for the past two decades: 90.1 FM KKFI Kansas City Community Radio helping them to have their own state of the art studio, full staff, and broadcasting and journalism school. And for the KCK Organic Teaching Gardens to fully fund all gardens, workshop curriculum, and have a staff to grow and support other schools in the middle of the city. I would start scholarship programs at multiple institutions. I would for a political action committee to fund progressive candidates. I would love to open a private/public performance space and gallery, that also had coffee house and catering abilities and broadcasting studios for original performance art works and controversial theatre created from voices often marginalized.
