33 posts tagged “kansas”
Rumors have been swirling around for weeks, but I almost cried when I heard the official news: Obama has poached nominated Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius as Health and Human Services Secretary. I'm not exaggerating. I almost cried. I feel like crying right now as I contemplate it.
It's not that I'm completely selfish. I know Obama needs good people in his cabinet and Sebelius is good people. I know the health insurance question needs someone smart and competent to tackle it, and she's both.
That said, I'm really upset, because we need her here. When I was a kid, I remember going to a funeral for one of my favorite teachers and the pastor said, "Heaven must need her," and I said, "We need her more." (Oddly enough, I did not get kicked out of church for that, but I did get called into the principal's office over it come Monday morning.)
Kansas needs her. Like every other state in the union, our economy is in bad shape, and we need good leadership to get us through. Unfortunately, Kansas is being called to sacrifice our good leadership to Washington, to a cause American is not yet fully committed to addressing. The fact that uninsured shlubs all over the country still say, "I don't want socialized medicine," tells me we're not ready to fix what's wrong with health care.
In short, I think Sebelius is going to Washington to waste four years fighting with a nation and a pair of political parties who don't yet think the Titanic is sinking. Obama is sending her down to man the pumps, because nobody wants to admit that there aren't enough life boats.
Pop Quiz
Q: How much would I hate my job if I weren't getting paid for it?
a.) a lot
b.) a whole fucking lot
c.) depends on how much I can earn selling pilfered office supplies
d.) enough to dedicate myself to destroying the Republican Party in Kansas, who are using the paychecks of state employees in a game of chicken against the governor.
e.) all of the above.
Show us your favorite landmark in your current hometown.
It's called the Eldridge Hotel now, but it stands on the site of what was called the Free State Hotel. On May 21, 1856, pro-slavery Missouri militiamen, riding under a red flag inscribed with the words "Southern Rights" sacked Lawrence. Using a cannon, kegs of gunpowder, and eventually an incendiary device they finally reduced the Free State Hotel to a pile of smoking rubble. They also looted the downtown and ransacked the two publishing houses in Lawrence, destroying the presses and throwing the type into the river*.
Technically speaking, the raid was perfectly legal. At least as legal as the raid on David Koresh's compound in Waco, TX in this century. Federal Marshal J.B. Donaldson issued an order that declared the abolitionist citizens of Lawrence to be engaged in what we would now call an "insurgency" against the pro-slavery state legislature that Washington, D.C., officially recognized as the legal government in the territory. (Remember that, the government isn't always on the side of good.)
It wasn't the first or last scuffle Lawrence would be involved in. The previous November, the Wakarusa War broke out, following a series of tit-for-tat killings between pro- and anti-slavery camps. The siege on Lawrence that followed ended peacefully, but Lawrence and the most famous participant in the Wakarusa War--abolitionist John Brown--went on to bigger and bloodier things.
Seven years later, William Quantrill would lead more than 300 bushwhackers on a raid into Lawrence. They killed nearly 200 men and boys, many of them unarmed, and burned almost every building in town to the ground, including the Free State Hotel, now known as the Eldridge Hotel.
As for John Brown, well, he went on to start the Civil War. He was a radical, a dangerous man, a brave man, a religious man. An extremist. A terrorist. A visionary. He died just before noon on December 2, 1859, with a noose around his neck. His last wish--denied--was that his wife be allowed to spend a last night with him.
*Legend has it that this ruined press type was later melted down and turned into shot and cannonballs, which were used to fight the Civil War.
Spucko and I were talking about the fact that Barack Obama is the first president who is essentially of "our" generation. He's only ten years older than us. When I started college, he was only 26.
More than that, when I look at him, I see someone who could be my brother or my cousin. Not just because he was the child of a single Kansas mother like I was, but because he believes in the same America I do.
And I'm bringing this one back...
For most people, I know, when I say, "Manhattan," they think New York. For Kansans, Manhattan is home to Kansas State University. For me, it's like my second hometown, the one I got to choose. I spent 8 years there, got three college degrees, sandbagged the dikes and levees during the summer of '93, made lifelong friends, and generally tore things up.
Last night, Manhattan got a tornado. A big one that ripped up through town and across campus. The tentative estimate is $20 million in damage to the campus, including to my old dorm, Moore Hall, and to Ward Hall, home of the college's nuclear reactor, where I worked all of four days as a work study student, before I got too creeped out. On the positive side, the whole campus and most of the town is built out of limestone, so those are some sturdy buildings.
So I'm waiting to hear from friends there, to be sure everyone is okay and weathered the storm. Hope that's the case as a couple of people were killed by this same band of storms over in Chapman and Soldier.
And yes, Eastern Kansas is a place where people LOVE to spell things out on the sides of hills.
I guess summer is officially here in Kansas. It's hot, it's humid, and we're not likely to see the high temperature go anywhere below 85 or 90 for several months. On the other hand: thunderstorms, tomatoes, bike rides, and my screened in porch. Wonder what it's like in Utah.
How many houses have you lived in? How is where you live now different from where you grew up?
A lot. A lot lot lot. Which is why I am now going to write a novel about it.
- I came home from the hospital to a little house in Bethany, Oklahoma, where the streets were and still are dirt.
- When I was a year old, we moved to another tiny house on Polk Street in my "hometown" of Hugoton.
- A year later we moved to a big old house on 10th Street, which had been cut into two apartments at some point. Because I wasn't in school yet, I stayed home with my mother and my grandad, while they remodeled it back into a single house. I remember quite vividly the day after they built an interior staircase, and I stood at the open doorway to what had been the exterior staircase, watching them rip the stairs off the side of the house. Can you guess where I got my home remodeling urge? At age three, my main toys were various sized nails and screws, a hammer and pliers, and some scraps of wood.
- I'm going to count my grandparents' house, too, over on Harrison, just two blocks from the train tracks and the grain elevators. It was my real childhood home, where I was always a child, spoiled and doted on.
- After my parents got married, they decided to build a new house, but in the interim, we moved to a house on Trindle, which was much smaller than the 10th Street house.
- Then the landlord on Trindle sold the house and we had to move again, because the new house wasn't finished yet. We moved to the horrid little Blue House, where everything was blue. The carpet, the paint, the kitchen, the bathroom, everything. Also, it was only two bedrooms, and with seven of us, it was like hell on earth. On top of each other all the time. Also, the air conditioner didn't work for shit. Also, the hot water heater didn't work at all. Also, you couldn't run the drier and anything else at once. Also, did I mention that everything was blue? I hate blue. That house was so bad I would have been ashamed to invite my friends over, if I'd had any friends.
- At last, the new house was done. Mom's new house. It would never be our new house, because Mom had designed it and picked out everything in it. All the carpet was the same, all the furniture the same, so that all the bedrooms looked the same. It was like living in a motel. Salmon carpet, ivory walls, and freaky faux-Danish furniture. Oh, except in the kitchen where the floor was tiled in brown and the counter tops were orange. Fucking 80's.
- Then I left for college and lived in a dorm room for a while, which I don't really count. My junior year, I moved in with Allen, my football buddy, and two architecture types: Ken and Jen from Colorado. It was the first time in my entire life that I had my own room. At 19, my first room. It was about 9 x 10, with a sloping ceiling in the attic. I had enough room for a twin bed, a small dresser and a milk crate for a night stand. It was lovely.
- After two years of that, I moved into my very own apartment: part of a huge Victorian, where my bedroom was the formal dining room, complete with chandelier, and my bathroom was the butler's pantry. That's where I also had the cat ghost.
- I made the mistake many college co-eds make. I agreed to move in with my boyfriend. He picked the house and it was a dump. I'd moved out in about six months, and so I only count it as representative of why you should never trust someone else to pick out your living space. It was located in the flood plain of the '51 flood and it flooded. We didn't get water in the house, but we got it right up to the underside of the floor boards. Mosquito central, nasty filthy place, and then we got a dog--which boyfriend also picked out without any consideration for my opinion. Spastic little dog. Nice enough, but never destined to be my dog. Then, my cat got shot by some hillbilly neighbor. I was done.
- After that, I moved into one of my favorite homes: an apartment in the old Wareham Hotel. Elevator. Restaurant and bar downstairs. Swank. Soundproof. Beautifully tiled old bathroom, walk in closet. My own. Pigeons walking by on the window sills outside.
- Then I got a job in Japan and moved into a traditional Japanese apartment in Nakazawa, upstairs from the Quickie Mart and just down the hill from a massive Shinto shrine. Tiny bathroom. Tiny kitchen. Two lovely 6-tatami rooms that opened out on a balcony that overlooked a few thousand acres of rice and the Honshu mountains. I had tree frogs and mud swallows and a stray cat.
- I made another mistake. I moved in with my sister and remodeled an apartment in a house I didn't own. A story better not dramatized. Another lovely living space, but one I had to leave when my sister got remarried and sold the house. Au revoir.
- I followed that with a dinky little subsidized apartment in a brick WW2 era complex. Subsidized because I was making about $18K a year working for Planned Parenthood.
- After two years there, I got married and moved to Florida, where Hubbicula and I resided in a craptastic apartment in a craptastic complex for about a year.
- During which year, I did mountains of research to figure out where to buy a house. I drove endlessly through neighborhoods and researched property values and sales trends, and we looked at five houses. House #5 was perfect, except that it didn't have a garage. It was a lovely little Arts and Crafts Bungalow in a suspect neighborhood a block from the interstate. Still, it was perfect, with oak floors, original tiled kitchen counter tops and ten-foot ceilings. And thousands of little lizards living in my yard, sneaking up my walls, sleeping in my potted plants. Loved that house. Almost nothing to remodel in it, except for the urgent need to paint over every room in the house. Pepto-bismal pink in the living and dining rooms. Dining room had exquisite paneled walls with a plate rail and a lovely chandelier. Hideous other colors throughout. No remodeling until the end, when we got ready to sell it, then we redid the front porch and I redid the kitchen ceiling.
- That brought us back to Kansas, where we spent two months living with my parents. It was...okay. Hubbicula might have other things to say about it, but living in the suburbs was never our plan.
- So we bought the house we have now. The tiny, adorable little limestone gnome cottage. The house of the charming screened porch and the leaking basement. I have mixed feelings about this house. I'd probably love it if it weren't the size of a postage stamp. Oh, and if I didn't wake up on rainy nights and panic.
I believe that's an adequate survey of my various homes, and I'm frankly shocked to discover that I've lived in 18 different houses. No wonder I'm tired of moving.
What's different about my home now and my childhood home? Well, not a lot. It's in Kansas, surrounded by Kansans. It's a lot bigger town than my hometown. 90,000 people vs. 3,000 people. It's humid here, but not brutally windy. We've got eight movie screens instead of one. We've got squirrels and cottontail rabbits instead of coyotes and jackrabbits. I don't know everyone yet and I'm related to almost no one. Still, it's Kansas. I've got that going for me, which is nice.
Secretly and not so secretly, I long to be a petite flower. A woman like my grandmother, with perfectly manicured hands and elegant ankles. High heeled shoes and a dulcet voice. I tried. Really, I made an honest effort. I manicured, pedicured, and I've always followed my grandmother's regimen against sun exposure. I haven't been outside without a hat in probably ten years.
Sometimes, I almost succeed. I catch a glimpse of myself in a restaurant window and think, "Yes, I look rather elegant and feminine." Usually, though, I revert back to my usual notions of Kansas womanhood. I buy power tools. I clean my guns. I squat down in the garden and poke around at things. I say things like, "Yup," and "don't got."
Like my forebears, I won't say no to any request for help that's reasonable. So when friend of Hubbicula's wanted to store stuff in our basement for the summer, I agreed. Big deal. I was a poor grad student once and stored things in people's basements, and I only lived 8 hours away from college. This kid is German and he's going back to Germany for the summer.
He and his mother arrived with a small trailer full of the contents of his apartment. Plenty of room in my basement for that. Except for the sofa. The Germans and I tried several different approaches to get it down the stairs and around the corner--why do basement stairs always have a sharp corner at the bottom. To no avail. The legs of the sofa were about three inches too long. They kept snagging against the wall and the doorway.
We dragged it back up to the driveway and considered. The sun was setting. The Germans were supposed to fly home the next day. Time to decide.
I said, "What if we cut the legs off?"
"Sure," said the German. "Do you have a hand saw?"
Ha. Ha ha ha. Hand saw. There I was in all the glory of my petite flower of womanhood. I whipped out the circular saw, put on my goggles and zing zing zing zing--sawed off the legs of the sofa. While the Germans stood back and stared, slightly open-mouthed.
I try, you know. I painted my toenails last night. The problem is, for every bit of genetic information I got from my elegant town grandma, I've got an equal share from my rough and tumble farm grandma. A woman who rode a tractor until she was 78. A woman who repaired lawnmowers and reupholstered furniture. A woman who once climbed up the windmill to reconnect the pump line.
I need some heavy duty nail polish.
Well, the end may be very fucking nigh, as the hour for the NCAA Division 1 men's basketball championship game approaches. Saturday night, 20,000+ crazed fans descended on downtown Lawrence and partied into the wee hours. That was just for the game that got Kansas to the championship game. If KU wins the championship...what? 40,000 crazed fans? If KU loses...I shudder to think.
At any rate, I'm ready. The doors are locked. I've got food and water. I've got guns and ammo. Bring on the end times.
UPDATE @ 22:51: Based on the sounds of death-ecstasy screaming, I guess KU won. I think I'd better maintain radio silence from here, for my own safety.
UPDATE @ 22:57: Here's a live shot from the downtown TowerCam
