I would not exchange my home on the range (the photo essay)

The last of three posts waxing poetic on Kansas.  ('The soliloquy' and 'The discourse' are here and here, respectively.) If you want more Kansas photos, go to Andrea LaRanye Etzel's website. I didn't want to post any of her's without permission, but they are excellent. Here is another website with links to other Kansas photos and photographers. Excellent as well. The photos not marked are mine. As it says in the captions, if you know the source to the Ad Astera and Keeper of the Plains photographs, let me know and I will give them their due.

 

Ad Aspera on the Kansas Capitol dome in the moonlight. I don't know who is the photographer of this.
If you know the source, let me know and I will acknowledge.

 

Keeper of the Plains in Wichita. Again, I don't know who is the photographer of this.
If you know the source, let me know and I will acknowledge.

 

Flint Hills

 

This graphic novel has humor

 

A part of John Steuart Curry's mural Tragic Prelude at the Kansas Statehouse (courtesy-Kansas State Historical Museum)

 

Wichita Footballers (courtesy-Wichita/Sedgwick County Historical Museum)

 

Civil War Rotunda at Maple Grove Cemetery in Wichita

 

Civil War Rotunda at Maple Grove Cemetery in Wichita

I would not exchange my home on the range... (the discourse)

If you read the previous post, you'll know I am waxing eloquent on my home state.

Kansas has been a favorite punching bag of late. Yes, we have business leaders and politicians who behave in a manner that sometimes confound us. Yes, we seem to have a different mindset and priorities than those states who don't get flown over. We get labeled as flat and red and jingoistic.

• To be fair, Kansas is actually the sixth flattest state geographically. What makes it appear flat is Kansas' width. Kansas' elevation difference is about 3,300 feet. That is roughly the average elevation difference between the base of the Appalachian Mountain and its peaks. They just take 300 less miles to get that high.
• In addition, regarding Kansas ia a Republican stronghold. In the 2012 election, nearly 40% of all Kansans voted Democratic. In addition to the 'in addition', half of the governors of Kansas since the mid-1950s have been Democrats. BTW-the last 25 years has seen the same percentage as well.
• The jingoistic label is just as deceptive. Our per capita of jackasses is just about the same as the rest of the country. There are times that Kansas is an easy lightening rod for ridicule and there are times when someone from Kansas steps in it. But as often as not, what is missed is the great work Kansans do for their community and the country.

But I want to highlight why I am a proud Kansan. Today, both are artistic.

Last Wednesday, I went to see South Pacific in Wichita by Music Theater Wichita. MTW brings young actors from across the country and partners them with established Broadway talent in a reparatory setting for the summer. The company will perform five shows in roughly ten weeks. The organization is so respected, that almost all of the Disney shows on Broadway in the past ten years had their tryout at MTW. I need to admit that I am not a fan of South Pacific. I can give you reasons, the best of which is that Bloody Mary scares the hell out of me. What I found was a revelation. The show rests on the female lead and, all I can say is that, Erin Mackey is brilliant. Brilliant. I do need to acknowledge that a dear friend and someone I recently talked about in the blog is her commanding officer in the show. I'll watch Chuck Parker and another local actor, Tim Robu, in anything. I got a little choked up at the end, as the sailors and nurses prepare to leave the island they've called home for months and enter the battle in the South Pacific.

This video is from a few years ago...Lyle Lovett and the Kansas City Symphony

On Saturday, Maggie and I went into the Flint Hills to listen to the Kansas City Symphony perform in Symphony in the Flint Hills, an outdoor concert on a working cattle ranch. Some 7,000 people travelled 45 minutes to the ranch, parked and walked another 45 minutes to the concert site. Maggie and I ended up sitting facing away from the symphony, listening while we watched the landscape-and more than 25 hats fly away from their owners in a stiff Flint Hills wind. The organizers always have a cattle drive during part of the concert and this year the theme during the drive was the song used in the Beef. It's What's for Dinner commercial. "I'll take irony wrapped in symbolism for 500, Alex." The evening ended with everyone singing the state song, Home on the Range. I have gotten choked up singing the national anthem. I get choked up at things like the ending of South Pacific. I get choked up at a lot of stuff, but never at the state anthem.

Until Saturday.

I would not exchange my home on the range...(the soliloquy)

I like this painting because it reminds us that what is painted isn't what is actual.

I had a weekend that reminded me why I live where I live.

 

I have lived the majority of my life in Kansas. It was my mother's home and so, when her soldier husband was done moving the family from Boston to Germany to Korea to Fort Bliss to Fort Gordon to ..., she chose Kansas for the family to retire to. I was about 4.

 

I pretty much had the Norman Rockwell childhood. Scouts. Little league. Public School. Public swimming pool. One screen movie theater where I ushered. Church every Sunday. It was a great childhood, but I always told myself I would move away so someplace 'else'. What I didn't know what the it was already too late.

 

I did move on and joined the 'family business'. In the military, I saw the South and was offered opportunities I wouldn't have had in my small town. I was sure I was never going back.

 

I was wrong.

 

When I did move back, temporarily I told myself, I found myself married with kids. The military again offered opportunity and escape and I jumped at it. The second go at life in the service was different-I was married with small children in an organization that demanded that it be my priority. I had been a good solider. I was still a novice at husband and father. I chose to focus on what I was good at. When I left the military, I was divorced and hundred of miles from my children. It took a couple years, but I realized that I could start over by going home.

 

I couldn't give my kids the exact Rockwellian experience I had, but it had to be better than no experience. It was awkward. If was humbling. It was difficult to rebuild a life in a place I never thought I'd return to.

 

But it was also the best decision I've ever made in my life.

 

That decision gave me a chance to mend some of what I had damaged. I like the word mend. To mend means to fix while acknowledging damage occurred. It is no longer brand new, but it is usable again. It gave me a chance to take a breath and figure out what it was I was supposed to be doing with my life. It also put me in the company of someone who, it turns out, gets me and loves me in spite of it. It gave me a chance to parent again; this time knowing that you can't recreate Rockwell. Rockwell's world never really existed except on a canvas. It pointed to optimism and a sense of duty to something bigger than ourselves, to a future prepared for now.

 

I still wonder the 'what could have beens'...I'm a middle aged man, after all. However, I also know I am exactly where I'm supposed to be. This weekend reminded me of that.

 

 

"If politics brings out the worst in people; maybe people bring out the best..."

Senator Jerry Moran, R-Kansas
BTW-I have a couple classroom pictures but the blogger program is not playing nice in the sandbox.
Will post as soon as it lets me

When I see and adult in the hallway at school, my first thought is parents and so I was going through my mental roldex to figure out who this man walking up to my collegues and me. Then I recognized him ...

US Senator Jerry Moran stopped by my classroom unannounced. I had written him about a missed chance to meet him while in Washington DC and he decided to visit me instead. He said mine was one of nicest 'disgruntled' letters he had seen and so wanted to contact me. He had a little extra time that morning and so stopped by. 

No warning. No entourage.

To say I was suprised would be an understatement. On the first day back, before my first hour ...

The senator then spent my first hour chatting with my students about being a public servant. He talked about his family, school, and his new roles as one of the leaders of the Senate. He was gracious and self-depricating and my kids, in the first few minutes back from holiday break, were fascinated.

I know we blather on about partisan politics and dysfunction and he acknowledged the messiness of elections and governing. But you also got the honor he felt in public service. He reminded me that we can look at politics in a crass and cynical manner. We can also look at it from the standpoint of public servants qenuinely trying to both balance their ideals at the same time trying to discern and do the will of the people who trusted them enough to elect them.

Easily one of my favorite movies of all time.

 

Mr. Smith makes me think of fillubuster and I can't think fillibuster without this clip from West Wing.

As a grandfather, I concur.

To be honest, I had Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in my mind all day as a result. I know political neophytes will see me as a Polyanna and I know there are harsh realities to politics and governing, but they can sit down and shut their pie holes as I wax philosophically on why public servants serve. I honestly believe you don't go through what elected officials go through in order to play Machiavelli. Senator Moran proved my point yesterday.

I was so glad my kids got to meet Senator Moran.

I was so glad I got to meet him.