Washington Mayor Sandy Lucy laughs thinking back to a revelation she had on her first trip to Marbach am Neckar, Germany, in 2012.

If you live near or visit any body of water regularly — a river, lake or even a creek or stream — you’ve likely seen a Great Blue Heron.

Summer unofficially begins this weekend, but there will be no roar of the crowd or crack of the bat at Busch Stadium in Downtown St. Louis. Major League Baseball has yet to announce if or when the 2020 season will begin or the details of how games will be played amid the current COVID-19 pandemic.

If there’s one thing gardeners crave more of, it’s time, and with the stay-at-home orders put in place this spring to slow the spread of COVID-19, they got plenty of it.

Green shoots of life were already beginning to emerge just a few weeks after the last prescribed burn of the dormant season at Shaw Nature Reserve in Gray Summit.

This family of foxes has been seen playing near East Main and Walnut streets in Downtown Washington. They have been running in the area of the riverfront trail and near the train tracks. They have mostly been seen in early morning and early evening hours.

Peace Lutheran Church’s community-wide RIP Medical Debt campaign to retire $1.5 million in medical debt for people living in Franklin and four surrounding counties is more than halfway to its goal with just a couple of weeks left before the deadline.

Students will close out this school year with distance learning from home, but organizers of the annual Franklin County Back to School Fair are looking ahead to the start of next year.

Reading and math don’t always go together outside of a word problem, but this year they’re like peas and carrots as The Missourian and the Community Literacy Foundation continue their effort to have this area declared “the best read community in America” with the One More Page project. 

You might never have noticed them before, those mud nests stuck to the exterior walls of several Downtown Washington businesses just under the overhangs .

The buzzing sound is enough to make Joette Reidy smile.

The Missourian kicked off National Poetry Month on April 1 sharing two community poems.

Steve and Matt Murrie, the father and son writing duo, have created a children’s e-book to explain the novel coronavirus, “COVID-19, A to Z.”

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Missouri 4-H’ers across the state need generous donors to give a hand in this final week of the 4-H Feeding Missouri food drive.

Janice Meyer, Washington, smiled when she saw a photo that Dr. Raul Ugarte sent to her from Honduras a couple of weeks ago.

Noah Elbert’s Art of Rome class hasn’t been the same since he was forced to return home from the Loyola University Chicago campus in Rome, Italy, early last month.

Adrienne and Aaron Bailey, Union, didn’t start out with any grand plan of how they could help feed the coworkers at Mercy Hospital Washington during the COVID-19 pandemic. They were simply looking for a way to feel useful.

St. Francis Borgia Regional High School students haven’t been in the school’s STEM lab for more than a month now since stay-at-home orders to slow the spread of COVID-19 began, but the lab’s 3D printers are running day and night.

The virus, coupled with nice weather, is offering opportunities to meet and talk to neighbors because we’re outside more, the virus making the four walls of home feel claustrophobic at times.

It wasn’t long after the stay-at-home orders were put in place around the St. Louis metro area that Bill Parmentier, a 2000 graduate of St. Francis Borgia Regional High School who now lives in St. Louis, was already getting antsy.

Far be it from me to negate the horrors the coronavirus is causing. It’s a nightmare none of could have foreseen.

With all that is going on in the world today, shoes not may be something you’re paying much attention to.

(Family Features) Many spring celebrations call for fabulous food, specifically dishes fit for brunch, even if your "crowd" is simply your nearest loved ones gathered at the family table. A wide variety of recipes may fit the festivities, but a combination of comforting bites with sweet and …

You have likely seen this image of Jesus all over Washington and beyond. It’s posted outside of churches, along roadsides and at people’s mailboxes.

How did people across Washington respond to the Spanish flu pandemic back in 1918? What did it feel like on a day-to-day basis to live through that experience?

If being cooped up at home as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has you searching for some DIY (do-it-yourself) projects or just thinking about how to live more self-sufficiently, Lisa (Vehige) Bass of Marthasville has you covered.

Love conquers all, or so it did last Saturday, March 21, when Anastasia Ratcliff, a Washington native and 2012 graduate of St. Francis Borgia Regional High School, found a way to keep the wedding date she had planned with her fiance, Colorado native Stanton Skerjanec.

“Sharp!” Kyle Buescher said loudly enough for everyone to hear as he walked through the culinary arts classroom kitchen at Washington High School while carrying a knife.

Book clubs that meet monthly at Neighborhood Reads bookstore in Downtown Washington are finding creative ways to continue connecting as the COVID-19 outbreak forces people to practice social distancing.

Owensville is about 45 minutes from Mercy Hospital Washington, but when Judy West was discharged just days after having a heart attack Feb. 8, she didn’t worry about that distance.

As you read your Missourian today, you may want to keep a pencil and paper near by. Or if you’re good at counting, you may not need to.

From his desk inside the Washington Historical Society Museum at 113 E. Fourth St., in Downtown Washington, Marc Houseman can hear members of the Schwarzer Zither Ensemble practicing just steps away from his door on Wednesday afternoons.

If you’re being cared for by a nurse somewhere in Franklin County, the odds are good that they started their career as an LPN student at the Washington School of Practical Nursing.

Jeanne Bandermann has lots of uplifting stories about the students who come to The Dress Room at Pacific High School looking for something to wear for a special occasion. She remembers them all because their reactions are always so heart-warming.

From a distance, the white exterior of the old American Legion Post 262 Hall at 5333 Hackman Road in Augusta looks fairly nondescript, but get up close and you will notice that the brackets along the roofline look sort of like music notes.

Painting the mural of a Mediterranean scene on the side of Angelina’s Italian Market at the corner of Second and Lafayette streets in Downtown Washington late last year reminded Washington artist Jim Peters a little bit of his days decades ago painting billboards around town, when people wou…

Children are naturally creative, especially very young children, and many parents, teachers and other adults are eager to provide them with art supplies like crayons, paints, markers and more to encourage that creativity.

Back in the 1980s as Rosalyn Pursley, Port Hudson, and her daughter, KrisAnn, were backpacking across Europe, they occasionally hitchhiked to their destinations.

When you think of home, what comes to mind?

If the Supermoon that occurred last weekend had you looking up at the sky with interest and curiosity, you may want to make note of the public stargazing schedule offered by the Eastern Missouri Dark Sky Observers (EMDSO) astronomy club.

Last spring when the University of Missouri-St. Louis presented the first Timothy J. Caton Scholarship in Information System in memory of the 2008 Washington High School graduate, his mom, Marlin Heidmann, Washington, couldn’t have been more proud.

For every melody that Gloria Attoun (Bauermeister) composes and the lyrics that she writes, she has a little movie going on in her head.

Even though it’s been decades since she escaped an abusive marriage, Julie McCollum, New Haven, still remembers what it was like those first few days after her rush to get to safety.

Washington High School didn’t have an NJROTC program when Rear Adm. William Chase III was a student there in the 1980s, but the school’s marching band was the next best thing for instilling discipline and order.

Good things happen when creative minds get together to brainstorm ideas.

If the bitter cold weather these past few days already has you longing for an early spring, the owners of Paddle Stop New Haven, a new business “serving Missouri River paddlers,” are right there with you.

If you have ever heard someone wonder, on a really frigid day or stretch of days here in Franklin County, “What ever happened to that global warming?” Jody Miles has an explanation for you.

This time last year, Kara Bell was in her ninth month of a new whole food, plant-based lifestyle and nearing a milestone: losing 100 pounds.

Losing his last three toes to diabetes hit Henry Hull, Washington, hard. He was already living with end-stage kidney failure and blood pressure problems, and had previously lost his other seven toes to diabetes.