In Mombasa on the coast of Kenya is a place called Haller Park. People flock there to see 180 indigenous species of plants and trees, and a variety of animals including hippos and giraffes.

U.S. women's volleyball is second to none, sitting atop the world rankings. The game is thriving from the youth level up to the Olympics. But every year, the top U.S. women head to international leagues after college.

That's because the rest of the world has something the U.S. does not: dozens of women's pro volleyball leagues that are crucial for players to reach the highest level of their sport.

"We have 400 girls that have to go abroad if they want to continue in the world of volleyball," Katlyn Gao, the CEO of a new pro league called League One Volleyball, told NPR.

Elizabeth Strout's latest, her eighth book, had me at the first line: "I would like to say a few things about my first husband, William." The forthright, plainspoken speaker is Lucy Barton, who we came to love in My Name is Lucy Barton (2016) and Anything is Possible (2017), where we learned how she overcame a traumatic, impoverished childhood in Amgash, Illinois, to become a successful writer living in New York City.

Goodbye. Farewell. Adios. Sayonara. Workers have been giving their bosses an earful of such words as of late. Last week, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that 4.3 million Americans, or 2.9 percent of the entire workforce, quit their jobs in August. That was a record-breaking month, piggybacking on previous record months. "The Great Resignation" is real, and it can be seen across virtually all industries.

For hundreds of public employees in the state of Washington, where a new vaccine mandate for state employees went into effect this week, Monday was their last day on the job. That includes a sergeant with the Washington State Patrol who told KUOW that he had made an appointment to turn in his patrol car and equipment.

Most orchestras emphasize music by composers we're all familiar with: Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and so on. But a small organization received a big honor this month at the Gramophone Classical Music Awards for its extraordinary service to overlooked American composers of the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

Fists curling and uncurling. People who don't look each other in the eye. Food, and everyone coming together around it. These are the images at the core of Jane Wong's second collection of poems, How To Not Be Afraid Of Everything.

"That turning around when I walk down the street, always feeling like I have to look behind me?" Wong says. "That's the feeling of this book."

In her poems, Wong depicts how fear accompanies Chinese immigrant life in the United States by bringing us her family's history of migration, and their relationship with food.

Natalie Saldana would love to put her 1.5-year-old daughter in a quality child care program while she works and goes to school, but the $700 monthly price tag makes it impossible.

"Seven-hundred dollars is almost my rent," Saldana said.