Published on Show Me Mizzou Dec. 19, 2024
Photos by Mizzou Visual Productions
Fog softens the sidewalks between MizzouRec and Hawthorn Hall and lends familiar paths an eerie air. From above, lights and shadows dance. Homecoming banners ripple at the Columns. Students cross Lowry Mall, some hurrying, others lingering.
Meanwhile, the glow of a research lab illuminates the Sears Plant Growth Facility, where experiments continue long after twilight.
Off campus, the energy shifts but doesn’t fade.
Just north of campus, scrums navigate the glow of Sparky’s Ice Cream on 9th Street. Couples walk to dinner. At the Blue Note, a line forms outside, with people chatting as they wait for comic Craig Ferguson to take the stage. Across from the School of Journalism, Shakespeare’s employees roll out pizza dough in preparation for the nightly rush. The stadium lights blaze as the Tigers take the field, the boom-and-brass bang of Marching Mizzou echoing across town.
Even as the roar of the stadium fades or the fluorescent glow of research labs dim in the early hours, the campus never truly rests. The tempo changes, the focus shifts, but the (land-grant) plot stays alive, revealing its stories — and dissertations, theorems and podcasts — as the Tiger Moon crosses the sky.
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