A Home for Homecoming Queens Discovered

“Where have all the homecoming queens gone. Long time passing”… sung to the Pete Seeger song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”.

Thursday I had a dental appointment.

I met Dr. Excellent Dentist my first year of teaching on Hospital Hill when he was a member of the faculty at the UMKC School of Dentistry. He was impressive and he became my friend and my dentist.

However, unable to be confined within the stifling clinical parameters defined by the SOD administration, he left for private practice. Of course he established himself in the goldfields of Johnson County, Kansas.

So several times a year I venture into the Jayhawker state to have my wonderful smile checked and buffed into a brilliant shine. Actually it is easier for me to go to his office from Hospital Hill than back to Barataria (where I am sure there are many excellent dentists also).

Anyway, it was a wonderfully mild almost winter morning when I cruised down Mission Road for my 9 am appointment. I was early so I decided to grab a café latte grande at a nearby Starbucks.

When I first entered I thought maybe I had stumbled upon the finals of the Mrs. Norwegian contest, all blue-eyed, blondes and beautiful. I was the only male there. I timidly got in line for the barista and listened carefully.

This is what I discovered.

This is the place that high school and college homecoming queens come home to roost. One table of about twenty gorgeous women all had their day-planners out and were busily preparing for the coming social season. The best I could tell from the conversations, while waiting on my latte, were that other than being a mommy the number one occupation of these Queens of Days Past was real estate.

Later, out in the parking lot I think the small Lexus SUV beat out the BMW almost two to one.

I always wondered where had all the old Queens gone.

Hola!

Tonight I graduated from my Spanish I language class. Yes, I did; I even have a certificate to prove it. Since I have been traveling to Central America the last few years I thought it was about time I started to learn the language, instead of just winging it, or relying on sign language and friends.

It was only ten easy evening classes sponsored by the local school district. But I did learn a lot and I had a great time. The teacher was fantastic. He is a retired gentleman that is a linguist and has taught foreign languages his whole life. He teaches French, Spanish and Japanese. He has taught here in North America, Germany and Japan. What was best was his sense of humor, his funny stories and his ability to switch accents. One moment he would talk in a Scottish brogue and then slide effortlessly into prefect Spanish, then into a deep Ozark mountain twang and right on into French.

Tonight all the class met at El Maguey for a Tex-Mex dinner and celebration. I’ll miss my Monday night language lessons. Maybe they offer Spanish II.

I love snow!

The older I get the more I dislike cold. It makes my bones ache. Things no longer work well. I begin to understand why old folks migrate south to Gulf Shores and Naples.

But, I have to admit that as wonderful as the warm Thanksgiving weather was this year; it took freezing rain, and then a foot of snow to get me into the holiday mood.

Don’t get me wrong. I did have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I saw a brother I had not seen in years. Our family is small, we don’t DO things. This year we were all together. Enough of that, let’s just say it worked out well.

Then back in the metropolis of Kansas City my total holiday elation dived into a dark funk. I would say depression; except I so like the people with whom I work, they always bring a smile to my face, the students are wonderful, and as always patients continue to astound me with their positive attitude and good humor (Yes, there is always a few that I would like to…) . But something was wrong, missing?

And then it snowed. A total white, new, start over, erase the world, let’s have fun, no school, deep snow. Suddenly things were different. I made gumbo. I whisked off a grant proposal, I drank coffee. I visited my blog (which even had a comment).

Tonight is forecast in single digit temperatures. I don’t know if a foot of snow will cure my holiday blues but for now….Yes, life is good. As long as the pipes don’t freeze.

Delayed Blog v1.0

A Wonderful Weekend

It all began on such a downbeat. I have never worked so long a stretch without a break. I was truly at my breaking point. And then the holidays came near.

Dulcinea had a weekend off. Friends from Columbia arrived in holiday spirit, as they had the total week off.

We did physical things. Yes, I finally finished the Little Blue Trace Bicycle Trail.

We drank too much at night; gin, rum, vodka, wine and even beer. Lots of beer.

We ate too much. Beef steak and mussels and clams.

I’m feeling so guilty relating this weekend of gastronomical depravity. And to top it off I’m going south tomorrow to visit my brothers, one I haven’t seen in many years. Should I feel so guilty for having so much fun?

Is It Safe To Come Out Yet?

Here it is almost two weeks after the 2006 mid-term elections and I am still shell shocked from the bullshit machine, once known as American Democracy.

Before it was over I just had to turn off the media: radio, newspapers, television and blogs. They were driving me mad. I was beginning to think I might hurt someone.

Does yelling at the top of your lungs at people, calling them idiots, despising them as a person, does any of that ever change anyone’s mind? I think the media and especially blogs spend too much time just reinforcing their own opinions.

Then finally…the election was over, and the people had spoken. Not only loudly, but they yelled . People are yelling that they are tired of a government that is non-functional and wouldn’t work together to solve any problem. So did things settle down so we can all get to work? NO!

I am a NPR fan. I listen on my commute downtown every morning and back home again. However, I was getting very tired of the rehash of war and political coverage.
So I buttoned over to the AM side. That didn’t last long, Hannity, Savage and a local wanna be were even worse than pre-election coverage. Please grow up! Quit your whining. They certainly don’t know the meaning of constructive criticism.

And political bloggers are even worse. Last week as I was revisiting some of the political blogs I had been avoiding during the election, I suddenly realized how much anger and meanness they were about. And worse yet how angry they were making me. I don’t need their shit in my life. I deleted about 90% that very night.

I’ve decided I am a happy person. I love reading well written blogs of interest. The rest of you can fuck off.

First Friday at the Crossroads

Perfect fall weather, almost a full moon, lots of new shows, music on every street corner, who could have planned a better First Friday at the Crossroads? And I think I had a great time. I really do.

It was the guy’s night out so I left Dulcinea back at the family manor; actually she decided to stay at work late to get caught up (should I have felt guilty?). At six pm sharp I was going to meet two old college chums, err…other knights, at the Cashew on 20th and Grand for drinks, view a few galleries and then a late dinner.

Being an expert procrastinator I arrived early at about 6:30 pm. The Crossroads were already seething with humanity. The Cashew was bursting at the seams with GROUPS of beautiful people and I was here solo, the loner. But I can handle that, an older gentlemen even gave up his seat at the bar for me, did I really look that needy?

Martini Numbero Uno; Damn that tasted good. My cell (mobile to you English) went off, I couldn’t hear the ring but I did feel the gentle vibration against my thigh. It was the guys telling me the soccer game was in overtime and they wouldn’t be here until 7:00pm.

Martini Numbero Dos; Feeling rather obviously alone, it seemed everywhere I turned my gaze it met another empty face looking back at me. I couldn’t take it any longer. A good friend I work with lives in a loft near the Cashew. So I trudged over and rang his code on the outside box. The noise coming out of the speaker was even louder than the bar, indicating a very good party was going on that I had not been invited to and I had no intention of crashing. I casually left the lofts and eased back into the Cashew (my seat was still open because I had failed to pay my tab before leaving).

Martini Numbero Tres; Another call, “Damn El Quijote, it is packed down here we can’t find any parking, we’ll have to park about ten blocks away and walk.”

“Okay, I’ll have a martini ready for you.” But thinking to myself, Sir Dense what did I just tell you!

Martini Numbero Quarto; I’m feeling no pain, in fact I think I may just crawl up on the bar and nap until they get here. Opps, they are here! With a couple of extra guys, short cropped hair, the perfect two day old beard stubble, tight t-shirts, ear rings and talking with lisps. Uh-oh.

So I start, “Hello, blab, blab… Nice to meet you….blab, blab,….Can I buy you a drink?”

“Oh, we aren’t drinking tonight.”

Well fuck me. I’ll match my drunken slur against your lisp any day. “Barkeep, give me a martini.” Martini Numbero Cinco.

You are probably getting the idea by now how my night went. But I went along and I had fun. I’m sure we looked at some great art. We ate. I’m sure it tasted good. I remember talking with my mouth full and really not giving a damn.

Then we all said our goodbyes and I think I drove home. I’m not proud of that, it took all the concentration this good knight could muster.

Yes, I think it must have been a fine First Friday.

The Perfect Football Game

Saturday I was invited to Mizzou for the Tigers Big XII football opener against Colorado. It was a perfect day for a football game, sunny, slightly overcast, warm but not hot and beautiful fall foliage. The game was an early start at 11am and I also planned to tailgate with one of the business fraternities.

I had to get up earlier than I really wanted to on a Saturday to make it to Columbia in time for beer and burgers before the game. Actually, the Busch Light tasted good at 10am, so good in fact that we missed the kick-off. The beer bong was out and surprising to me more girls than guys were using it. But we did make it to the game.

It was good to see Missouri not only win but dominate a football game for a change. Colorado stayed within reach just enough to keep it interesting. After the game we had a few more beers and then dinner at Addison’s. We had planned to go to the Blue Note to hear a few bands, but I bailed out and made it back home to Kansas City by 10pm. Can’t party like I used too, I think my age is showing.

Running Blog Thoughts. Vol. One

I never have anything to blog about. And I so want too. I’m beginning to see things in terms of possible blog entries.

Does blogging equal whining in public? I used to like to read Dooce, but now it seems as if she is one big whine.

Are pets a pain in the ass, or a little bit of heaven?

I will not be dragged into being a gripe ass political blog no matter how much our present national elected jerks continue to dismantle everything the United States of America has stood for the last two hundred and thirty years.

I will not rip the CO monitor out of the wall the next time it starts beeping in the wee hours of the morning. Or maybe I will.

Thanks, I’m feeling better already.

Actually, I’m feeling so good, mind if I continue for a while? (whining that is?)

Why did I feel bad last night, when the toothless woman knocked on my door at 8:30 pm and wanted to shampoo one room in my house for free? I actually listened to her spill until she said, “Oh, my name is Nikki, what’s yours?” Then I said, “No thanks, we don’t want any” and loosened the grip on the collar of my madly barking dog. Talk about a smile turning to a frown.

Hey, don’t look at me that way. I have enough of those ten dollar discount cards from “any merchant in town” peddled by the local “team” to feed and clothe an army.

I still miss the skinny little blonde girl that sold me the yellow trash bags to support her cheerleading squad. They were just perfect, and I bought them all through her middle school and high school years. I know she has graduated; yet when I run out of trash bags I often wonder what became of her.

Alien life forms...my pets

10am

As I sit here this morning writing I have a dog staring out the backdoor, patiently waiting to be let out to explore the backyard for the latest fresh kitty poop.

In the big sea foam colored chair sits “little kitty” in a semi-comatose state laconically watching the room.

“old kitty” saunters in looking for the sunniest spot and settles on the couch where a brilliant beam of early morning sun is momentarily streaming in through the open shutters.

I’ve never wanted pets other than a bird dog to keep outside in a pen to use during bird season. But life has progressed and living with women that seem to attract odd creatures like a magnet (including me) we have accumulated some very interesting animals.

Each animal is a story unto itself. The mean-ass barn cat that loves parties, the puppy that was left on our front doorstep and then developed a life-threatening disease, and the cat (her highness) that has had everything, but is totally psychotic. The problem is you develop attachments to them all and they become members of your family.

*Set this post to the music of Supertramp’s, “My Kind of Lady”, a large cup of coffee with a sugar and you may experience what I am feeling while writing this.*

POLITICAL INSERT: Why can’t we at least treat humans as nice as we treat our animals? I have yet to see any wholesale shipping of pit-bulls off to the equivalent of Gitmo.

And now for a short...Political Interlude

By now I’m sure you are all sufficiently outraged over the remarks Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made during his speech at the United Nations. Regretful, but typical of the US media, they reported only the sensationalistic minuscule part of his speech that poked fun at our elected supreme Decider and omitted the heart of the speech, which was deeply critical of the Bush Administration; not the American people but their elected government, there is a difference you know.

I tried to think of a way to make this bitter pill easier to swallow but I just can’t think of any way to sugar-coat any type of terrorism, even if it is American. Yes, we have been in the terror business for many years now. Two current incidents are at the root of my comments today.

First, as Chavez reminded the world in his speech, this is the 30 year anniversary of the bombing assassination in New York City of the pro-democracy Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier by the CIA and the Pinochet government (the terrorist bomber now lives free in Miami).

Second, Luis Posada Carrilles is poised to be released from detention in El Paso. Sure you remember him; convicted in Venezuela for one of the worst cases of terrorism in the western hemisphere (until 9/11). He blew up a Cuban commercial airliner in midair over Barbados. He killed 73 people, among others the Cuban fencing team and five Latin American students on their way to study medicine in Cuba. He was convicted and jailed in Venezuela (where the plan was hatched), freed by the CIA only to show up working for Oliver North running guns to the Contra in Nicaragua. I think he is scheduled to live in Miami also.

And we thought we were only the victims of terror? You should know by now the US can give as good as it takes and often just gives.

My Dad's Secret Garden

When I was a kid we regularly tilled about a half acre in which we raised most every vegetable we would eat for the year. That meant early peas and lettuce in spring, green onions, and fresh tomatoes all summer long, green beans and new potatoes, cucumbers and squash, early sweet corn, melons, winter onions, late potatoes, okra, beets and turnips for the fall. We ate what was fresh and in season and canned the rest for winter use. Everyone worked the garden, planting, weeding, harvesting. Now, years later I live in the city and try to keep my two anemic tomato plants alive as my neighbors bristle because I don’t have perfect golf course turf in my backyard.

After having success with the tomato plants Dulcinea decided she wanted to plant a few native Missouri perennials. The next thing we knew the bird feeder, the one that no birds ever visited, began to need bird seed. Once the golden finches and red-headed house finches became regulars and began to hang out on the wooden fence to wait their turn at the feeder the human neighbors began to notice. One afternoon as I was mowing the back yard, my neighbor Barbaria yelled over the back fence, “How do you get those pretty yellow birds to come in your yard?”

But I digress. When my brothers and I matured and left home the garden shrunk. Although we continued to relish the canned tomatoes my mom doled out at family dinners and as gifts at Christmas. After she died the garden got very small. Lettuce and onions in spring, no more new potatoes or Kentucky Wonders, but always fresh tomatoes.



Over the years Dad has aged, receiving bionic hips, etc. The garden has gotten very tiny indeed. But it has never gone away. To this day, he is nursing fresh tomatoes on his front porch, that will bloom and bear until first frost.

The News from Hospital Hill

There is a complete full moon tonight. When the moon was just above the horizon it was a glowing orange; beautiful, but it makes you wonder what is in the Kansas City air. Now, hours later it is a brilliant perfect white globe.

I had lunch at You Say Tomato yesterday. It is a new combination coffee house, café, grocery, place to hangout, just south of the Hill on Holmes. It is a great concept and already has personality, and real potential. I hope it can survive long enough to realize that potential. Later that evening, I saw it mentioned on several blogs and in Pitch.

With the completion of the UMKC Nursing and Pharmacy school getting closer and all the new condos being built along Gillham Road the Hill neighborhood is beginning to undergo a transformation. Gentrification, happening in many urban cores is both praised and despised. I suppose it depends on your point of view. But it is nice to see some of the older brick homes and apartments that have stood in disrepair or empty for years now undergoing renovation. Time will tell if the developers overprice and kill the golden goose.

One thing does bother me though. I don’t need to tell anyone about the neighborhoods that surround Hospital Hill. There is a great amount of diversity. And the employees of the hospitals, medical and dental schools, and the research institutes all include many Asian, black, white, Hispanic, middle-eastern and other variations of racial and ethnic origins.

But the workers that are building the Nursing and Pharmacy School are very homogeneous. White, young to middle-aged male, drive mega pick-up trucks and commute from suburbs beyond Grain Valley. I walk this area every day of the work week. I have seen four blacks working on the construction of the School in the past year. The first was an iron worker, then a carpenter, a hod-carrier (brings the cement to the brick layers) and a night watchman. Something is very wrong here.


Okay, if anyone is listening out there send your comments. Thanks

Labor(free) Day Holiday Weekend

Friday, September 1, 2006
You Can Go Home Again

It's just not always the way you remember it.

For Labor Day Weekend I decided to visit my father who still lives down in the Ozarks. It was past time, I have been most everywhere else in the Western Hemisphere this summer now it was time to return home for a while.

Something about returning to where I grew up makes me feel like a child. I decided I was going to take the tent and camp out in the side yard under the big pine tree. Late the first evening, alone in the tent (Dulcinea, having not grown-up in the country, had decided to sleep indoors in a bed) and lying on the air mattress I was enjoying the early cool night air. For some reason I began to remember how much of my summers as a kid were filled with itching and scratching. I turned on the small flashlight and shone it behind my knee where a little seed tick was busily burrowing into my skin. And then I vividly remembered why I was always itching and scratching as a kid: ticks, chiggers and poison ivy.


Saturday, September 02, 2006

I did sleep great until just before dawn when I awoke to a cold pain in my butt. During the night the air mattress had deflated. I always did want to get up early to take pictures in the fresh light of early morning. After a pot of Dad's great tasting coffee (I think the secret is he never washes the pot) Dulcinea and I headed out for a morning of fishing in the creek that winds it way along the border of my Dad's farm. We use the word farm loosely in our family. The farm is the original homestead of my father's family; roughly 130 acres of Ozark hill country that has remained largely untouched since the Great Depression, except for a few fertile bottom acres my Dad lets a neighbor use to raise hay and winter pasture his cattle on in return for keeping our fence up.

After several hours of non-productive fishing and non-productive dove hunting the sun was now high overhead and we were perspiring profusely from the unusual exercise. I'm not sure who had the idea first, but within minutes we were swimming in the COLD spring-fed creek. Just like kids again and it felt great. We were back at the house in time for lunch.

As I write this during the lazy afternoon sitting in a cool breeze on the side porch I am watching two ruby throated hummingbirds do aerial combat stunts as each tries to keep the other from feeding at the red globe of sugar water . They are both so busy defending territory they are oblivious to my presence.

Later...
Time to head back to the city. It has been a perfect weekend. I have no problem with always being a kid when I visit here, if only in my memory.

Cry Baby!

I can't believe at this time last week I was lamenting about being overly tired from too much vacation traveling. This is only my fourth day back at school and I am ready for another extended vacation, or how about a sabbatical year?

Don't get me wrong. I love my job. The problem is I love sleeping in late, taking afternoon naps, eating and drinking too much and staying up late even more.

It hasn't helped that each day on my commute from suburbia there has been a major traffic accident. It is tough enough to have to rise before the sun is up, but then to sit in traffic inhaling toxic vapors just because the whole city forgot how to drive this summer is not my idea of a good time.

A list of bad traffic behaviors that piss me off:
1. Tail-gating. If I can't see anything but your front windshield in my rear view mirror you are to close. Back-off. If you were following me that closely walking on a city sidewalk a jury would acquit me for acting in self-defense after I had blown you away with a 12 gauge shotgun.
2. Signaling after your turn is completed. That blinker is to be used to signal your intent to change lanes. I already know when you have so rudely cut me off; I don't need you to then turn on your signal just to remind me.
3. We are moving along well at 80 mph and one set of brake lights come on; who are the idiots that then have to dodge across four lanes of traffic so they won't be caught in a slow lane?

There was a comedian that once promoted the idea that every driver should have a powerful rubber dart gun with darts that said, "Stupid" on them. Whenever a fellow driver pulled an obnoxious boneheaded stunt you were allowed to shoot their car with a dart. At least that way when you saw a car coming, bristling with "Stupid" darts, you would know to get out of their way.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

I haven't had a true summer vacation since elementary school. I'm talking about that total excitement of being out of school, a summer spreading before you without end and not a worry in the world. Those long, hot, lazy afternoons, sultry nights catching lightening bugs, searching the night sky for shooting stars. You get the idea. One of those idealized kid's summer vacations. A summer vacation that began with anticipation, swimming every afternoon in the the river, continued with poison ivy and chiggers and ended with the complete boredom that renewed us for a new school year.

I had five whole weeks this summer: no clinic, no teaching, no students, no administration. The perfect time to experience an an old fashioned dream vacation. But noooo... what did I do? I tried to cram everything I had been planning to do for the last ten summers into one summer vacation. Now I am totally exhausted. I need a vacation to recover from my vacation and I have two days before the fall semester begins.

I did make a summer promise (sort of like a New Year's resolution, made to be broken) that I would work more on my blog. That is enough for now, so be prepared to hear about more of my summer adventures, the best and worst of a summer odyssey nearly shot to hell.

I will get some pictures up on flickr soon, I promise.

Over and Over Again, My Friend.

Fuck the Goal

I have to finally face reality with my web log. When I first started blogging I set a high goal for myself.

I wanted to be able to paint pictures with words just like the photographers I had traveled with in the Central American highlands. They were able to capture their subjects in photos. I wanted to expand on that and use a word palette to capture on paper the feelings, the words, the meaning of places. I have failed.

In the mean time they have succeeded in capturing on film (electrons) what I can’t seem to express in writing. I invite you to visit their websites. Some of you long time UMKC Kangaroos will know at least one of them.

In the mean time, I am resolving to continue my website. But don’t look for excellence or even mediocrity. It will just be me.

Rendezvous at the Kona Grill

Dulcinea went down to the crossroads to have her hair cut my Jimi at Imij (yes Hemingway that is a palindrome) yesterday afternoon. She called just as my day at school was ending asking me to come have a happy hour drink at the Kona Grill. She had commandeered a table in one of the large open windows of the bar that looks out onto the Plaza. She said she was in desperate need of help in fending off all the valiant knights that were intent on coming to her aid.

The Country Club Plaza was just a short hop south of my Hospital Hill location so I motored on down to join her. The breeze coming in through the open window was delightfully cool and our seating was shaded by a large ornamental pear tree. It was happy hour and several beverages and pupu’s were being offered at a goodly discount so we were determined to order from the happy hour menu as not to dilute our spending power. I love martinis, but not the sweet ones that were featured; I only drink beer when I plan to guzzle it so I settled on the baby Margarita. I think there was some tequila in among the salt and lime somewhere. Dulcinea had iced tea. After several drinks I was beginning to get a bit drowsy, although it may have been the sticky, sweet, hot spicy, fishy, delicious sushi rolls we were also consuming.

People watching being one of my favorite pastimes, I surreptitiously scanned the crowd. Surprisingly it was an interesting mixture of GenY, X and even a few baby-boomers thrown in for garnish. And evenly divided between X and Y chromosomes. The rumor was the big guys in the corner were team members of the KC Chiefs; if so they started in a league over their heads, failed to score and were being let go on waivers.

My Kansas City Walkabout: Day One

In Australia the aborigines have a term "walkabout", often a rite of passage for their young men into adulthood. They wonder about the bush, sometimes with little food or water which can induce a trance-like state that allows them to visit Dreamtime. From visiting Dreamtime they gain insight and wisdom into the creation of their world and culture. A religious experience if you will.

I’m not after a religious experience but after reading the blog New York City Walk I discovered that there is a whole movement of people walking all or parts of many of our urban areas: New York, Minneapolis, San Francisco. They often blog about the experience or document it with photography. So I have decided to mix the idea of a walking the city blog with the walkabout and tour on foot a few of the interesting parts of Kansas City.
Today I started Day One of My Kansas City Walkabout. I decided to start it were it all began in 1826 when Francois Chouteau moved his fur trading post up river to just south of the mouth of the Kaw River.


I parked at 2nd and Main, just above the Missouri River and the railroad that runs along the river. The original buildings of The City of Kansas are long gone. But some of the larger brick buildings built in the late 1870’s as citadels of commerce and industry still stand and have now been converted to lofts and condos.



I walked down Main, cut over at 3rd St. to Delaware, then south to Independence Avenue. On the way I stopped at a small cafe called A Dente', Italian of course, and had a sandwich called "The Rookie". It was eggplant, onion, tomato and other vegetables covered with cheeses and grilled on delicious bread.
There is a wooden and steel footbridge where Main ends at the Missouri River. It has an outlook over the Missouri River and stairs go down to the old levee below. I didn’t go down because the levee area was occupied with a few fellows that were relaxing with a few beers and more. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. In all I thought it was a good start to the first day of My Kansas City Walkabout.

Update: Links to other Kansas City Walkabouts.
Living in the Scoot Utopia

Serendipity

Serendipity is a wonderful word. Not only the nonsensical, melodious way it flows off the tongue but also the meaning of the word.

ser~en.dip.i~ty: noun. Etymology: from its possession by the heroes of the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip: the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.

When I attended college, this time of year always seemed so great! A renewal, a break in things that were getting old. A chance to start something new. A world pregnant with possibilities.

Maybe that is why now, as I teach full time, the very season I loved drags so much on my soul. I don’t like saying goodbye to great students, people I may never see again. I don’t like having one measly week off and then starting all over again.

Okay, so you get the idea. I have been feeling sorry for myself. When I do that I have a tendency to stay-up too late, not do the important things I need to do, drink and play too much and give myself more reasons to get pissed off at myself.

The last thing I wanted to do last week was post such shitty feelings on a blog so I didn’t. But today as I forced myself to get a few required things done I begin to feel better. So just to take a quick break I opened a beer, fired up the internet and begin to read a few of my favorite blogs.

If you haven’t had a chance to read memyi.us May 6th then please do so. She knocked the feelings of melancholy and self-centered pity right up against the side of my head, just what I needed. Thank you.

I never got the chance to post the pictures of the great bookstore I wandered into in Baltimore, but strangely enough I did find one picture of a plaque outside the store. I’ve always been a sucker for good signage.Now that I feel better I’ll get back to work.

Where am I?

Here are a few clues: I’m looking northwest toward downtown;
Looks like I must be almost as high as Quality Hill.

Hmmm, give up yet? The Spanish writing on the store across the street gives up a lot so you might have figured out I’m up on the hill in the Guadalupe district. But do you know which building? Let me tell you the story.

This picture was taken Easter Sunday. I know that day is time to be with family, to celebrate and worship together. Regretfully, I’m about the last of my line and Dulcinea’s family seems to be spread out all over the world these days; so for the first time in as long as I can remember we were alone for the Easter holiday. The Easter Bunny didn’t come to visit so we slept in late. It was a beautiful spring day. Feeling a bit lonely I remembered that The Blue Bird Bistro (on my all-time favorites list of restaurants) served a Sunday Brunch. A quick call ascertained they were open and serving a 10am – 2pm brunch.

The Blue Bird Bistro is on the southwest corner of 17th St. and Summit Ave. When it was called the Blue Bird Café it was an all vegetarian place that grew its own fresh herbs in a garden across the street. It now has a new owner and chef and it also serves free range poultry and beef and organically grown vegetables. And it is still fabulous!

The Blue Bird is in an old storefront with former living quarters above. Formally only the lower area was open to the public but now the upper story is being used to serve also. The restroom still has a cast iron tub. The walls are decorated with a local artists work. The picture above was taken out the second floor window of the Blue Bird Bistro.

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there." Lewis Carroll

After I had been reading a few blogs from Kansas City (and other places) for about the past year I became interested in creating my own blog. Although I never found time to even read my favorite bloggers on a regular basis, I thought that once I committed myself to a blog I would find enough time to at least make a few reasonably timed posts. Wrong!

I suppose if I wanted a particular type of blog, or a certain audience, I would do better. But I’m not at all technically-mined, I’m the wrong sex for a mommy blog, I’m a rather poor writer, I don’t have in mind being either political or humorous. I think I just wanted to start for the fun of it, without an agenda of any kind and see what might happen.

I have noticed many blogs, especially in Kansas City, are political and/or angry and I find myself reading them and wanting to fire off angry messages to the comments section. And then there are those blogs that are personal and seem to either regurgitate the happenings of the day or go into detail why the writer is in the mood they are in. I often feel I am being a voyeur when I read them and I don’t want to be.

The blogs I like best are written by people that are doing interesting things and tell about it in an entertaining way, and bloggers that go though the day just having interesting thoughts and reactions to their world. I seem to prefer the more urban centered blogs. One of my favorites from the first day I read it has been me, myself + infrastructure; of course Tony’s of Kansas City always works for a good laugh and a bit of indignation and the informational bloggers like KCBlog.

Last night as it was raining and I was lying awake listening to the soft raindrops again the rooftop I suddenly thought of a delicious post about last Easter weekend; and then I fell asleep. Maybe next time?

And In The Beginning...

I enjoy reading Kansas City blogs. Some are humorous, many political, all opinionated, but lots of great reads. I have always wanted to expand my writing skills beyond begging for grant money. So I decided to join the land of blogging, it looks easy….wrong! Only the sign-up was easy and then I came to the “first post”. What can I say, what should I say, do I have anything to say? I think it is called freezing.

Segue…
I had the misfortune to take a speech class my first semester in high school. The day of my first speech, and I have no memory of what it was about, I stood at the lectern a lowly eighth grader looking out on juniors and seniors. (Yes I was one of those poor souls subjected to the educational inquisition known as 8-5; eight years of elementary school and then directly into five years of high school. A cost cutting measure to eliminate middle schools. We were thrown right to the wolves. What I would have given for a Freshman Center.) Back to the speech. I think I did well the first three minutes and then I ran out of material and I froze… Deer in the headlights frozen. Later in the year our speech class put on a school assembly, as frozen boy I was assigned to lead the Pledge of Allegiance. With microphone in hand I started “I Pledge ….” Luckily, enough students knew the pledge that it drowned me out as I slowly lip-synched… I couldn’t remember the rest of the words. I froze on the Pledge of Allegiance. I remained frozen for the next two years.
Exit segue…

This is my first entry and I admire all you bloggers that have something to say and how elegantly you say it.

Pardon the mess…I‘m just moving in.
To be continued.