CrossroadsCurrents

Dissolve the Kansas City Missouri School District, keep the schools

2012-02-02T08:58:00.004-06:00

We’re witnessing the end of centralized governance in many institutions. Large has run its course. While we long for a better model, the model forms before our eyes; a product of diminishing resources and human capability to manage more than they can measure or understand. Debates may offer varying perspectives, but debate will not produce anything other than air when debaters possess no authority. Some use the word strategy, yet it appears that the day to day reality of education resides in one classroom at a time, one school at a time.

My recommendation is to dissolve the Kansas City Missouri School District and the school board. Establish a governance system where principals lead, where teachers teach, where students learn. Establish a Kansas City level staff accountable to the school principals not in charge of them. The staff leader could be a person with the skill sets of a city manager, not a Superintendent, a public servant, not a master of ceremonies.

Current principals may shudder at the thought of actually running their schools and all the dimensions thereof, to include curriculum and public relations.

If graduates and parents chose to do so, they could form (501c3) foundations to support and enrich their alma mater.

If this sounds familiar to those who’ve attended private schools, your familiarity is spot on. That’s my model. Schools work well when those in the school are afforded the resources, time, and space to do what they do well: learn, teach, and lead. This model has less to do with money and more to do with self-determination.

If there is a board of any kind, it could be a board of principals. This is not a strategy, but rather the organic authentic reality that’s been here for years. There is no hierarchy, no bottom up, top down approach. I consider schools potential laboratories, libraries, rehearsal spaces, studios… not institutions. The Kansas City School District is dead…long live the schools and the people who attend them every day.

Eleven reasons why private military contracting is a quiet issue

2012-02-01T21:30:00.002-06:00

1. Contracts are confidential and there’s a business culture of romantic secrecy
2. It’s (boring) business news few business writers wish to tackle
3. The profitability (which is very lucrative) is awkward
4. The US military wishes to purvey their own public relations narratives
5. The business has complex relationships: an array of companies with a spectrum of services
6. Competition is keen
7. Many companies are privately owned
8. Many of the companies are based and owned in foreign countries
9. Resentment: soldiers pay vs. the contractor’s rate
10. No central oversight: presently there are periodic studies and “reviews”
11. It’s a developing industry with developing cultures and processes, merely 3 generations old

Consider standing on your own two feet

2012-02-01T17:04:00.003-06:00

In his last and only filmed speech on December 10th 1968 at an interfaith conference in the suburbs of Bangkok Thailand, Thomas Merton argued that we can no longer rely upon institutions, for they have become entities prone to destruction at a moment’s notice. Institutions are irrelevant. He urged his audience to learn to stand upon your own two feet; an insight he gleaned from recent discussions with the Dalai Lama.

Politics is becoming irrelevant for many reasons. What is becoming relevant in its place is arguably questionable. You’re your best judge of that. Politics is virtual now. Democracy is being outrun, out-sourced, replaced by systems like autocracies (China is a good example); management models capable of turning policies on a dime. We really ache for efficient accountable city management not leadership. We need not vote for a city manager. We merely need to conduct a thorough hiring interview.

The body politic of the United States, such as it is, given the small percentage of it that casts a ballot or three at intervals, was never a body to begin with. It was an interesting cover to Hobbes’ Leviathan, perhaps. Listen and view the political rhetoric emanating from your digital devices. Relevant? Meaningful?
While some throw up their hands in frustration, disgust, and desperation, my recommendation is to consider Merton’s prophetic urging.

Sitting down? Stand upon your own two feet.

Today’s Centurions

2012-01-30T14:40:00.004-06:00

Jean Lartéguy’s novel, The Centurions (published in France 1960, in the US 1962) begins with this quote, a letter from a Roman Centurion to his cousin:

"We had been told, on leaving our native soil, that we were going to defend the sacred rights conferred on us by so many of our citizens settled overseas, so may years of our presence, so many benefits brought by us to populations in need of our assistance and civilization.

We were able to verify that all this was true, and, because it was true, we did not hesitate to shed our quota of blood, to sacrifice our youth and our hopes. We regretted nothing, but whereas we over here are inspired by this frame of mind, I am told that in Rome factions and conspiracies are rife, that treachery flourishes, and that many people in their uncertainty and confusion lend a ready ear to the dire temptations of relinquishment and vilify our action.

I cannot believe all this is true and yet recent wars have shown how precarious such a state of mind could be and where it could lead.

Make haste to reassure me, I beg you, and tell me that our fellow citizens understand us, support us and protect us as we ourselves are protecting the glory of the Empire.
If it should be otherwise, if we should have to leave our bleached bones on these desert sands in vain, then beware of the anger of the Legions!"
Marcus Flavinius
Centurion of the 2nd Cohort of the
Augustus Legion
To his Cousin Tortullus in Rome

I’m not angry, but I appreciate Marcus Flavinius’ anger. I call this caution and frustration, the centurion-syndrome.

We live in a day where our centurions are returning home. I wonder how they are faring as some continue their careers in the military while others are departing to civilian life. Many centurions wishing to continue service will be down-sized, let go, a corporate term for redundancy. I wish them well.

They have returned from some of the same desert sands trod upon by their Roman ancestors. Poignant beyond words. My comparison may be stretch for you.

I wonder if Lartéguy’s book, this one and the sequel “The Praetorians” is upon their bookshelves? The Praetorians is the one to read today, I believe, for we are living the sequel.

Lessons for learning? Perhaps. More like narrative to absorb. Both are out of print for good reason. Truthfully awkward. Worrying. Much too true, for it is narrative in a loop of real life as a soldier; serving as well as redundant. We should be concerned about the potential anger of the legions.

pictured above: Colonel Jeanpierre (1912-1958) Commander 1er REP, Algeria

Where are the hunters?

2012-01-30T10:17:00.007-06:00

Somewhere in the hills of Afghanistan, around a small open fire, there sits an old veteran of the war against Russia. Near him sit young hunters, his grandsons, with oiled AK-47s on their laps; guns still warm from a recent hunting trip. Their prey today was American soldiers. The old man listens to their stories. He smiles and remembers his own.

The American military has become, over the past decade, despite the "shock-and-awe" overture of the Iraq War symphony, the hunted. The denouement to that war was an "adagio". America has (played is a disrespectful term to the wounded and fallen) exercised the tactics and strategy of defense to such a degree that they have forgotten the art and science of hunting. Despite sitting at the top of the technological food chain of military competence, they have become the prey of the hunters of the world.

When Seal Team Six killed Osama Bin Laden, you may have been impressed with our hunting skills. Think again. They tracked down an old very sick man. I was not impressed.

I’m concerned that our nation-building believing Army, our surge-capable forces, the makings of people like “Saint David” Patraeus, or the once hubrised retired Stan McChrystal, has become an extinction fraught elephant hunted for ivory trophies.

Hunting requires cunning and patience, a laundry list of skill sets we now lack. Hunting demands secrecy but our military leaders have facilitated transparency and access. They wish a closer relationship with their sponsors; the American people. The press presses for access, yet there are no contemporary Bernard Falls capable of writing a thoughtful book like Street Without Joy or Hell in a Very Small Place.

But the hunters we hire just may be the legions of private military contractors on your tax-supported payrolls. You don’t wish to know their names. Their operations do not include embedded journalists. You won’t catch them at press conferences.

You may be interested in the wisdom of hunters. Dip into the ancient Chinese 36 stratagems for reminders of the artform. For example:

Deceive the heavens to cross the ocean
...Prepare too much and you lose sight of the big picture; what you see often you do not doubt. Yin (the art of deception) is in Yang (acting in open). Too much Yang (transparency) hides Yin (true ruses).

You’ll not find this treasure trove of wisdom in the curriculum at the Army’s Command and General Staff College. When I taught there, I offered them to my students as additional reading. Contemplating the implications of some of this wisdom confronts the doctrine of our Army, yet it informs us about our enemies. Could we be so bold as to think and operate like this? Not today, not now…for we are the targets of the ruse, the prey of the hunters.

reference: The Book of Stratagems by Harro von Senger

The “barns and ennobling” of Thomas Merton

2012-01-30T09:05:00.007-06:00

There are many business and marketing reasons why one cannot find a copy of Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain (except at the Kansas City Public Library) or Merton’s volume of 111 Cold War Letters in a Kansas City bookstore. Yes, you can go online to order. Merton seems a literal literary enigma these days. Hard to track down his writing and harder still to categorize his works in the Barnes and Noble-like deconstruction and categorization database of contemporary culture.

The reasons come forth in the reading of him: his journals, memoirs, poetry, religious contemplations, literary essays, his novel, biographies, anthologies, periodical pieces, private letters, and even photography. His subject matters and methods of expression would have him sprinkled across a bookstores labeled shelves should a merchant wish to sell them to you. And it feels ironic to me that we deserve the availability of his voice more than ever today.

You can think of numerous other writers like this; writers with wisdom and depth, hard to find yet resonant years beyond their passing. I was thinking the other day, is our contemporary Merton-like conscience-challenging writer the recently departed Christopher Hitchens? Who is our Merton in recent times? I’m struggling to name her, or him.

This short bit of thought is not meant to be a lament. Rather, it’s a suggestion for us to find our personal Merton and browse the real and virtual book barns to gather their bodies of work and dip slowly into the depth of someone’s mind in order to realize the depth of our own. That’s what Merton does for me…he sends me on a journey often to find his books, he takes me on trips of interior searching, he makes me laugh, consider more prayer, and he encourages me to write. There’s the wisdom as well; wisdom he’d probably tell me is not that wise.

And as an extra treat, he offers up his bibliography of things he read over time, and launches me into the stacks of the library. He’s a good friend like that.

picture is a view of the book-burning memorial by Micha Ullman in Berlin at the Bebelplatz.

The Abbey of Gethsemani and Bardstown Kentucky

2012-01-21T13:49:00.014-06:00

I've spent a few days wandering around Bardstown and The Abbey of Gehtsemani, the Trappist monastery southwest about 20 minutes. It’s been great to absorb the place after writing about Thomas Merton. I met some interesting people:

- Jeannette and Jim Cantrell. Jeanette runs the Thomas Merton Bookstore and Jim’s Gallery in their home. Jim painted the landscape of Gethsemani above. Beautiful. Lovely people.
- Tom Isaac is the lead reporter at The Kentucky Standard newspaper. He knew Merton and shared his impressions of the time of my play, December 1966. He arrived in Bardstown as young reporter in October of that year.
- Mammy’s Kitchen on 3rd Street in Bardstown was my rest place, writing haunt, with great food. Their chocolate pie is killer. Try the bourbon glazed pork chops. Wowza.
- Visited the soda fountain in Hurst’s Pharmacy…it’s in two scenes of my play, Conscience Matter.
- The abbey was quiet both days when I visited. So nice to just wander about.

I wrote a great deal in my journal and will try to distill some of that soon. Much to think about but what struck me as amazing was how the place and the atmosphere is how I imagined it thanks to Thomas Merton’s journals. He painted the area well with his words. Jim Cantrell painted it lovely as well. I’m taking the painting home as no photograph captures the atmosphere for me like this interpretation of his. I’m thankful to have had the opportunity to make this journey, and I will return in the Spring.

Still dreaming?

2012-01-16T10:03:00.007-06:00

Some who read this, on the 83rd anniversary of Martin Luther King’s birth, may have given up on the “Dream Speech”. Some may think the dream has come true. I’m still dreaming in Kansas City.

It’s a day to celebrate and remember. People gather to remind one another of the content of that dream and add to it with their own stories. I’m still dreaming.

While we may not be there yet and the “there” remains undefined, I feel it’s a journey worth traveling. I think we’re on a train that’s moving; too slowly perhaps, but moving. Events can halt the train at times. Desperation arrests and chokes the engine of change. Apathy makes the cargo heavier. I’m still dreaming.

Dreams consist of memories as well as visions of the future. I believe those memories we have belong to this dream at an individual and collective level. Some, like me, can remember watching King’s speech on TV. Some marched. Some reading this were there. Many have heard the stories, watched the films, listened to the recordings, read the transcripts, or watched the lips of someone old enough to relate the dream from a first-hand perspective. I’m still dreaming.

It could be an interesting exercise in awakening to take a copy of that famous speech, cut and paste it into a document, maybe print it, and add our own dreams, adjectives, and phrases to it. I used this as a writing exercise with my students when I taught at the Jackson County Juvenile Detention Center. The students enjoyed it and taught me a great deal. I wrote with them. They added practical dreams as well as conceptual ones. And still I dream.

Dreams, like our Constitution, speeches like King’s, serve as roadmaps for a journey. True, they’re written artifacts, but they are in essence dreams captured for posterity. What gives them posterity is the white (dream)space between the printed black script; dreams are not black and white. If you’re in the mood today, take some time to think and write. It’s a lonely silent activity, but in the end you make something, you give yourself the opportunity to literally see what you think. I’m still dreaming.

…see what you think.

KCUR…please promote Kansas City Music with NPR

2012-01-14T16:37:00.003-06:00

We all have personal tastes in music. I usually stop by NPR Music and “Insound” once a week to see what’s new. Insound.com curates my musical head. I like NPR’s 24-hour radio player to stream. My favorite classical station is WQXR in New York...they have a cool station called Q2 which features contemporary compositions. We all have our favorites...

KCUR 89.3 has a few local music shows: Chuck Haddix's Fish Fry, Bill Shapiro’s Cyprus Avenue and 12th Street Jump. But this is music for "musical retirees"; those happy with the old familiar sounds in their intellectual music catalogue. It’s fine. It’s just doesn’t draw me.

What really inspires me is our fresh local artists. We have so many great people creating musical history in this Kansas City area of ours every single day. What I see is an opportunity to spread a bit of our sounds around the country and the world via the NPR network. NPR purveys music well and KCUR has a chance to add to the delicious stew.

I thought about posting this at the Kansas City Star because they have an affiliation with KCUR via folks like Steve Kraske. In fact, The Kansas City Star could start to add a bit of functionality to their website with a music “venue”. Something for them to think about. I’ll hold off on posting something at MidWest voices.

KCUR, like KKFI (a great local public station), needs subscribers. KKFI is a decentralized model station without a station manager steering the ship…and that’s cool. Their authentic, organic model works and I tune in often. But KCUR has that NPR network of strength and the established, enjoyable NPR Music buffet-like web presence.

Honestly, I wish Chuck and Bill would retire. They’re wonderful folks but they’re out of touch with the street, and not interested in local music. I think they could collaborate and just have one show “A fish fry beneath a cyprus tree”.

If you subscribe to KCUR, give this some thought. It’s public radio, after all. My personal take is that KCUR is in a lovely position to champion the emerging sounds of Kansas City, and with their network affiliation spread our sounds out beyond the Prairie…sounds in all flavors and genres, amazing artists whose art deserves sharing.

By the way, NPR's Tiny Desk Concert format, hosted by Bob Boilen is wonderful, and do-able, something KKFI does often... :-)

My architects...Randee and Mike

2012-01-13T17:10:00.008-06:00

...nice article here about Randee and Mike's recent acquisition and restoration plans for an old beauty: The Mercantile Library Building in Philadelphia...

"In 1956, the historian and architecture critic Lewis Mumford visited Philadelphia to witness first-hand what he called “one of the largest contemporary efforts to rebuild the central business area of a vast city,” the redevelopment of the Broad Street Station site and Chinese Wall into Penn Center.

Apparently underwhelmed by what he found, Mumford discovered another new Philadelphia project which excited him much more: a small building at 1021 Chestnut Street recently built for the Mercantile Library to replace its nineteenth-century building razed for a parking garage."
The New Yorker, May 26th, 1956 (cover and excerpt above)

a feature in today's "Hidden City, Philadelphia"

Photo of Randee and Mike is from the above-mentioned piece.

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

2012-01-13T10:34:00.005-06:00

Broadcast the evening of Thursday December 8th, 1966 on CBS Playhouse.

Directed by Michael Elliott

Cast (in alphabetical order)
SHIRLEY BOOTH - Amanda Wingfield
PAT HINGLE - Jim O'Connor
HAL HOLBROOK - Tom Wingfield
BARBARA LODEN - Laura Wingfield

Produced by Jacqueline Babbin & David Susskind

Original Music by Paul Bowles

Digital transfer by F. Reeder on Internet Archive

Happy painted soccer feet?

2012-01-12T23:05:00.009-06:00

Don’t miss the … I suppose it’s a painting, art, sort of…at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

from the Press Release > "When beautifully played, soccer has been called art. On Wednesday, January 11 (2 p.m. CT), six top Major League Soccer (MLS) prospects will visit Kansas City’s famed Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, where they will dip their cleats and soccer balls into paint, and use their movements, kicking, passing and dribbling to originate a one-of-a-kind work of art on a giant canvas."

picture of the picture is from the Nelson's facebook page

Covert actions against Iran are overt

2012-01-12T12:16:00.006-06:00

Someone is attempting to kill Iran’s nuclear weapon program by killing Iranian scientists. Say what you will about the tactic but the tactic is overt, not covert. True covert actions do not get press the day of the action. Overt is an absurd adjective, in this case.

Presently, we’re expending a great deal of your tax dollars keeping the Strait of Hormuz open to ensure China receives her daily dose of petroleum. The US is no more than contracted military security for another nation. Apparently, this isn’t an issue for us (US). I suppose it’s the necessary price of doing business for which we’ve become accustomed…and numbed.

The overt killings will lead to overt and perhaps even covert retaliation by Iran. Iran’s president is in Cuba today. We should be concerned and I suspect our Defense Department is briefing the President again today. What are our choices; our courses of action? More sanctions? Reign in Israel a bit? Collaborate with Israel? Do nothing? Initiate diplomacy with a higher sense of urgency? Channel diplomatic action through a friendly-to-Iran surrogate?

I sense that our President is leveraging all of the above and more in this case. I have confidence in our government to explore all possibilities and creatively mitigate.

Yet, we have become comfortable with military solutions to problems. Our military and intelligence services are far more sophisticated and agile than our State Department. That lack of diplomatic agility should be a concern. Our lack of patience, out-of-balance with our incredible ability to strike, makes us vulnerable in the long run.

We could do well by resurrecting George Kennan’s “Mr. X dispatch” today and remind ourselves how “containment” worked in the past.

If we choose covert courses of action, we should not read about them in the New York Times.

Photo of George Kennan (1904-2005) is from The Institute of Advanced Study

We jump through hoops to tell New Yorkers we’re…sophisticated

2012-01-10T17:17:00.006-06:00

Beware of East Coast journalists on field trips into the meat-infested Prairie. They miss their home companions and, in this case, their local vegan restaurants. Poor thing. Flung into the desolate fly-over landscape of the Midwest. Funny thing, we read this whining drivel and we bite. Or rather the media jumps on the story to write stories about the story...oh no!...try here...try there...Lions and Tigers and Bears and BBQ, Oh My!

This Philly transplant bit. Guilty as charged. But unlike other (actually I'm not one but I like to write stuff) local foodie media celebs, I’m gonna pass and recommend that A.G. Sulzberger drives to Arthur Bryant’s for some lard-fired fries or stop by Cosentino’s in the city to forage in the veggie and fruit section which is really quite nice.

All a good drill however; a primary-like prelude to the truckloads of recycled local journalistic pabulum we’ll see as the election year gets rolling along. Elections include food. Lots of it. Local papers are poised to defend their local haunts, their cuisine, and special joints. It’s actually great advertising for local restaurants, when you think about it.

...you're very welcome for the media plug, A.G. (pictured above)

:-)

Billy: a musical …story by Tom Ryan, music by Billy Strayhorn

2012-01-10T11:01:00.005-06:00

This musical production captures the early life and music of Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967) from age 9 through 23.

Billy met Duke Ellington in December 1938. At that meeting, Billy impressed Duke with his piano playing but more so with his talent for arranging. That evening, Billy showed Duke how he would have arranged one of Duke’s songs. Duke Ellington asked Billy to come to New York. He gave Billy directions to his Harlem home. A bit of the directions noted “take the A train” inspiring Billy to write a song that would become Duke’s theme.

...but that's the beginning of another journey.

Billy lived with his grandmother in North Carolina for much of the first ten years of his life. There he learned to play the piano and listened to music on her Victrola. Back in Pittsburgh, Billy worked hard at odd jobs and saved for his own piano. He attended what must have been an amazing high school with great teachers and great atmosphere. Billy was the brains behind a few original high school musical productions.

This is a story about family, hard work, Billy, and a great high school; Westinghouse High School, now called The Academy at Westinghouse.

Act I – North Carolina with grandmother / Pittsburgh
Act II – High School
Act III – Playing out, and playing for Duke
Finale – taking the A Train

...actually my preferred working title for this is "A Train" :-) climb aboard...

It’s a hard life wherever you go

2012-01-09T12:56:00.002-06:00

Borrowing the title above from Nanci Griffith’s 1989 song by the same name. The song’s theme is children; their chances, how hatred’s a poison to them, how they need places to go. Songs like this make us think. Songwriters have a nice way of transforming observations into poetry and melody that capture a time and stretch that time into posterity. They’re backseat drivers in a very good way.

The song’s title is a stark, very real, assessment twenty-two years later. Nanci’s assessment comes with no solutions, however. But that was not her intention, I believe. One’s definition of hard depends upon one’s experience. In America, we’re confronted with statistics full of averages and economic indicators, interest rates that may interest us or not, education numbers; those quantitative bits of information that influence real estate values, tax rates.

Sometimes we use our American numbers as we gaze about the world. We can learn how where 20% better off financially than the Germans. We can conclude that the continent of Africa earns 1% of the world’s profits. We can calculate barrels of oil per day of production and American consumption. But all these numbers do not tell a complete story and besides, it’s boring.

We could begin to look to the children, however. Their story tells a great deal if we listen carefully. Some of our hard life issues deserve study and discussion from a children’s perspective. For example, all of that delicious Ethiopian coffee some of us crave comes from regions of extreme poverty, like in Sidamo. We may pay dearly for an 8oz cup; dearer still for a one pound bag of pedigree Sidamo beans ($15 per pound or more). Many children in the region receive international nutritional aid based upon their bodyweight. Reel your lens back to our own backyard, though. There are children in poverty right here in River City. Not many schools in Sidamo province. Our Kansas City Schools have problems.

You’re really good at fusing information and coming to conclusions. You gather your news from multiple sources if you’re reading here on the screen. It’s a quick click from Ethiopia to Missouri.

We have multiple, important frames of reference to frame our perspectives, analyses, and opinions. But one frame deserves more of our attention. We should consider making our solution efforts children-centric. It’s a great place to start for many reasons. In fact, many of you live that way now. Those busy giving care, probably don’t have the time to read this.

Our news is issues-based. We parse everything these days because the parsing is easy, and marketing loves the niche. We quantify, measure, calculate, and balance the best we can. Children are not an issue to parse, however. They have much to teach us if we watch and listen.

“I’m a backseat driver from America…”

President Obama's defense narrative: seeking re-election not national security

2012-01-05T21:58:00.002-06:00

When you have a moment, for it's a mere 8 pages, have a look at the document behind President Obama's speech today:

Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense, Jan.3.2012

I think it's a brilliant re-election campaign document but a very inadequate bit of strategy.

What do you think?

I know the Commander-in-Chief has some tough choices ahead but I feel this document and his speech today leave me feeling "there's no there there". I realize budgetary pressures pressure the President to slice, dice, and trim. But I feel this strategy is premature given our immature "almost-post-war" perspective. It worries me that American citizens and their elected representatives are not paying attention to this strategy or the President.

But I realize that the President wants all this to "go away" softly, so that he can strengthen his domestic agenda of economic growth. Crystal balls he must juggle.

This document, however is no fine crystallization of strategic thought. George Kennan tisks tisks from above, I think. "These naive bureaucrats", he muses.

Speaking of strategic Muses...George Kennan

The missionary position of the Kansas City Missouri School District

2012-01-05T21:28:00.005-06:00

Get your mind out of the gutter, please. Many people believe that “missionaries” can save the very broken and bankrupt Kansas City Missouri School District.

Missionaries don’t stay. Missionaries come and go. Missionaries rarely appreciate authentic indigenous cultures for they’re there to “save” and not truly contribute. That’s my opinion.

My solution to the problem is simple but very challenging. The people who live in the district must formulate solutions, free of outside politics and influence. Send the missionaries packing as soon as possible.

A leaner military? Private military contractors will thrive

2012-01-05T20:45:00.008-06:00

Today, President Obama outlined his plan to cut defense spending over the next decade. As a playwright, I’m learning to appreciate the nuance, the art of subtext. As a military veteran, I have witnessed this sort of announcement before and seen the effects of the subtexts of defense budget downsizing. Think back to the period after the Gulf War.

I’m thinking back this evening and I’d like to write a longer column soon about this. But I wanted to post something on the day when the Captain of the USS US decided to set a new course. While Obama’s speech was a powerful announcement politically, as in this is a re-election strategic narrative talking point for this year, the economics effects will reverberate over time. There will be numerous columns about this from the standpoints of foreign policy, budget balancing gymnastics, national security, business, and employment.

You may be weary with my columns about private military contracting (often referred to as PMCs). I’ll continue to nudge with suggestions for us to keep our eyes upon this industry. It is now a foundation of our national security and military strategies. PMCs are no longer subtext and yet their importance receives very little ink beyond the Blackwater historical horror stories. Time will clarify the waters and we will see that PMCs are here to stay.

You think you’ll have a leaner military. Think again. Think broader to the Departments of State and Homeland Security. Widen your lens to our intelligence agencies. Put on your 3D glasses to the global corporations endeavoring to provide you with fuel, food, and water. Consider those three Maslow basics. Add another staple of your daily fare: information.

National security, a very broad term and concept, needs PMCs more than ever. The private military contracting industry has had a very important role ever since the Gulf War when all those new systems like the Apache helicopter, The Abrams tank, and the Bradley fighting vehicle needed technicians close to the fight to keep things ship shape. Our Navy and Air Force know this need very well, yet those two services get little press much less writings about contractors who keep the planes and ships humming.

There’s nothing diabolical about PMCs in my opinion. I’ve written things before and read the reactions with responders calling them mercenaries. It’s useless name-calling but look for the “m-word” below. The diabolical or rather worrying element, to me, about PMCs is the reality that the majority of American citizens are clueless, apathetic, and dangerously ignorant about PMCs to the point of not caring.

This trend of carelessness extends to our appreciation of the uniformed military; now an established professional force where professionalism here infers the “all volunteer” logo we’ve put upon it. It’s certainly professional in many senses of the term, but the citizenry has distanced itself from the military in a very real way over the years. The military needs to do their part to connect with the citizenry, but that’s another column.

This column recommends that you circle this January 5th on your calendar. This was the day when we once again venture into a period of austerity. This is a day to think and realize the subtext of the announcement. This is a day, in particular, for our Legislative Branch of Government to consider creating a Department of National Security Contracting; a clearing house, a go-to agency for all government-contracted services. We must remember that PMCs do not take an oath to “…support and defend the Constitution of the United States…”. And yet they do, every day.

While the military may become “leaner”, PMCs will witness a growth in business, sophistication, and role. How effectively they grow depends a great deal on how your government administers, oversees, checks, and balances. Allow PMCs to grow unchecked and we may face a national and international security crisis for which we’re unprepared.

The domestic help

2011-12-29T15:23:00.005-06:00

The concept of public service in America receives little attention these days. We’re firmly in the election swing, the swift current of current information headed down a sluice near you, should you choose to wade in, weigh-in, watch, listen, and read. We’ll watch the cavalcade of Republican candidates participate in their reality-TV version of Survivor. The President waits patiently, to face the last person voted off the island.

The President’s re-election bank accounts grow; a diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds, promissory notes, and lunch appointments. I have met a few people who received their Obama Christmas card. Not the White House version, but the “hey thanks for the contribution” season’s greetings. We all can’t afford to have lunch with Obama, right?

Is there such a concept any more as public service? We should perhaps give the phrase an honorable burial.

We now hire the domestic help. Yet, the domestic help does not act anywhere near a subservient serf. We do not need serfs. We need skilled stewards.

Stewards do not have as their primary objective “to get re-elected”. Stewards do not bend to the influence that money brings. Stewards know that it’s “not about them”.

What makes stewardship so difficult these days in America is that we have a blurred concept of what it is we’re “stewarding”.

People have opinions but we seem to disagree if we do have an idea about the nature of what needs care, protection, and nurturing. Some see the support and defense of the Constitution as the object of our national affection. Some feel the citizenry deserves stewarding. Many feel we need no stewards at all. A growing number of people see government as a dimming anachronism, slowly being replaced with corporate compliance and that ethereal concept of globalism. Coming to a consensus upon who deserves the stewardship is complex too; all those rules of citizenship (a hot debate topic).

We’re in the process of hiring new…what should we call them? I’m not sure. But they’re not servants, stewards, and they certainly haven’t shown themselves to be helpful of late. But, we're definitely hiring...

What color ribbons for private military contractors?

2011-12-29T11:26:00.004-06:00

They are employed by the Departments of State and Defense, foreign governments, and international companies. They serve in a number of countries in support of US foreign policy and company share-holder interests, foreign government objectives, and private company profit objectives. Your tax dollars support them, yet they rarely cross your mind. You may think of them as mercenaries; an anachronism, sorry.

The companies under contract provide a myriad of services; from armed close-protection for high level officials to barbers who cut hair. They pilot unpiloted vehicles. They drive supply trucks. They’re American citizens. They’re citizens of foreign countries. They die or suffer wounds and they get captured by allies and enemies. The vast majority work unarmed, though.

They work in a lucrative industry. Competition is keen.

Your image of them is prbably “Blackwater-esqe”. Blackwater changed its name a few years ago. For your information, Blackwater was a mere tab in a larger consortium’s portfolio that’s since been financially dismembered.
Many of the contracted are veterans.

Some recent contracts have created actual contract security units with a spectrum of capabilities and a chain-of-command. But these units have no colors to case or un-case, no oath to “support and defend”. They have passports from various nation-states but their contracted allegiance is to their company-under-contract.

Our government needs their services desperately and has so for the last twenty years. Our foreign forays could not have been fathomable without their services. Those who’ve died or suffer wounds rarely get mention in the media. Those captured, sometimes receive a footnote. Those who’ve worked rarely discuss the work.

Private military (and state department) contracting companies are now a given. The American people accept the services and pay. There’s ancillary government oversight from government bureaucrats and military leaders; leaders and bureaucrats with short tenures. It’s a rather new addition to the force structure and military and intelligence services veterans serving as contractor company leaders must often feel conflicted, philosophically; on the one hand collecting a pension while competing for contracts. It’s a delicate balance.

If America continues to ignore this new contracted “defense force”, one whose employees work for a US State Department entity one year, then to an international business the next, then back to your tax-paying payroll again, we may lose perspective. In fact, I believe we’re already there. Who is checking? My hope is we can balance.

Contractors deserve your attention. They are not mercenaries. Your tax dollars and stock investments support them. They’ve earned a permanent, emerging chapter in foreign policy history with an American lineage traceable back to the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, perhaps.

Conscience Matter, the play

2011-12-28T20:59:00.009-06:00

Thomas Merton in front of his hermitage, 1966

Conscience Matter presents a day in the life of writer, priest, and Trappist monk Thomas Merton. The day is Thursday December 8th, 1966 when Joan Baez and her friend and fellow peace activist Ira Sandperl visited Merton at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani near Bardstown Kentucky. At this time in his life, Thomas Merton (his Order name was Father Louis) was residing alone in his hermitage on the grounds of the abbey.

Joan and Ira arrived just after noon. The three of them took a drive, secured cheeseburgers (Thomas had a chocolate shake too), returned to the abbey, took a walk around the fields and trails, had tea in the hermitage together, listened to Baez’s recent Christmas album Noël, and then took a drive to Bardstown. They wanted to go further; to Ohio. It was Joan’s idea. She wanted to take Merton to see Margie Smith in Cincinnati, Ohio. Margie and Merton fell in love that previous April. They met while Thomas Merton recovered from back surgery. Margie was his assigned student nurse.

Conscience Matter refers to the abbey’s system of keeping correspondence confidential between priests and those they were advising; in the same way that the confessional is confidential between priest and the one confessing. Merton and Margie used the “conscience matter” label on the envelopes of their numerous letters.

Conscience Matter, a play by Tom Ryan, opens in Kansas City in the Fall of 2012.

Kansas City’s Urban Core

2011-12-28T20:25:00.002-06:00

If they gave me a dollar, or donated a dollar to a favorite charity, every time the term appeared in the Kansas City Star (two bucks, please, Yael), the Kansas City Star would soon have to close its doors. The phrase “Urban Core” makes no sense to me and the blanket reference is jargon beyond jargon. What does it mean?

Core infers center; the core reason, core values. Perhaps given all the recent travails in the Urban Core area, people are really suggesting rotten to the core. But I doubt that. So, in this wonderful land of re-invention, I suggest a name change, something positive, something hopeful, maybe. But let’s ditch the Urban Core name…please.

Embedded forever

2011-12-26T20:32:00.003-06:00

The word is now an accepted adjective and verb in journalism. We have accepted that, in future wars, journalists will be invited into the thick of it to report without a Stars and Stripes level requirement for operations security. From these experiences we now accept the vast linear feet of commercial books, documentary films, and fictional accounts offering inside views, firsthand perspectives, and memoirs.

Today, I read an editorial in the Kansas City Star by Matt Schofield; one of the formerly embedded. Yes, the word’s now a noun as well. In his piece, he bids a fond farewell to Iraq. He shares the names of a few of the people in Iraq whom he met and collaborated; people who helped him in various ways. It’s a nice short essay from one who was embedded.

There must be a few embedded-experienced memoirs still in the publication queue. Local writer, Whitney Terrell is set to release a novel based upon his embedded visit to the Iraq theatre-of-war. I heard the working title was “The Good Lieutenant” and even heard him read an excerpt. This generation has had their war, or so it seems, from the media’s perspective as Afghanistan dims from the national consciousness. Yet, I sense that while the wars appear to be coming to a close, the wars are merely entering a new phase.

I offer this because, for those who drove these wars, and in this instance I’m referring to the various groups bent upon our cultural and national demise, there’s more work to be done. For the time being, those who report news and make a living writing for news outlets and publishing houses, the market must be shifting to the coming presidential primaries and the election. I’m not certain the American people yearn for more war correspondence. Hollywood’s certainly avoided the subject this year, yet there could be a few young directors desiring to make their war film in the traditions of Coppola, Scorsese, and Kubrick. In the meantime, we have War Horse. Jolly good…

I expect to read more nostalgia like the editorial from Matt Schofield. Memory begins to take hold as the nightly news and newspapers coverage of the wars fade to black. Yet, still bright and burning are the fires of discontent, religious fervor, and misplaced nationalism in the countries we are departing. Still active are agents and organizations determined to destroy this country of ours fueled with unfathomable religious belief and a commitment to martyrdom.

Therefore, while touched by the nostalgia and retrospection from writers, the employed embedded throngs, I’m cautious to declare what we’ve witnessed over the past ten years as over, or even coming to a close. Those embedded veterans, those still employed, with literary agents, may consider keeping their bags available for packing and their conclusions just in draft form for now, as we enter this yet-to-be-defined phase of contemporary conflict. We shall not have the luxury to define the phase nor name it. Our numerous and loosely-affiliated, multi-disciplined enemies shall draft the new campaign plans and act upon them.

Profitable Non-Profit Marketplaces

2011-12-24T17:43:00.007-06:00

Non-Profit entities are really profit-making marketplaces complete with curators who vet art for the consumer and sell art on behalf of artists.

The other night, I watched the documentary film called The Woodmans on PBS’s Independent Lens. It was an engaging piece and I learned a great deal about the photographic art of Francesca Woodman. After the film, I looked on amazon.com to find her work and sure enough, there’s a new book of her work, recently published in November 2011. I suppose other viewers were pointing away and clicking like me. The new book is $50.

Then my mind shifted to the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts; an easy shift since it sits outside my window. I wondered about the recent ballet production, Tom Sawyer. I know the authors must be on a hunt to sell the show. With that I remembered that the KCPA is a non-profit bit of bricks and mortar.

There are theaters with this mixed business model too. Theaters, which are brick and mortar non-profits that present works by companies seeking profit. We have gallery-like organizations like Charlotte Street, here in Kansas City; non-profit, grant coordinating, galleried spaces existing under the tax-sheltered warmth of the 501(c)3 business organization.

In the midst of all of this complexity, I think about the artists and how they navigate the landscape to sell their art, sustain their art and gain exposure. I think about the non-profited “art administrators”, those who vet, judge and select. Few of the judges are serious collectors, if collectors at all. What’s fine art? What’s fine enough to be placed in the non-profit market stalls? Who gets to judge? How do the ticket purchasers, the art collectors, the music buyers fit into this equation? Do the customers, even the donors, understand the ins and outs or even care?

Donors who shelter their assets in art-related non-profits deserve our thanks. I suppose all of this works out fine in the end. Those who purchase art deserve to ponder the fact that art is often being curated, selected, and presented by non-profit art administrators. Their motivations differ from the gallery owners who sell and the serious collectors who collect. This complex landscape of the art business (profit or not) world is a subject not in the curricula of most art schools.

A Christmas Story Chinese Christmas dinner

2011-12-24T12:40:00.008-06:00

In 2005, on what was to be our last Christmas together, my son Sean and I spent Christmas evening in Westport, Kansas City. That afternoon, we had watched his favorite Christmas film, “A Christmas Story”. We decided to continue the “movie day” and go to the wonderful Tivoli Theater to see “Capote” with Philip Seymour Hoffman. Before the film, Sean had the idea of having dinner at the Chinese Restaurant nearby, the New Peking Chinese Restaurant.

The highlight of the meal was the eggrolls, a food item we both savored. The film afterwards was fantastic. There were three people in the audience. We talked briefly with Jerry Harrington in the lobby. It was a fun night. Sean asked me more about “In Cold Blood” (1966) and wanted to read it. The next day, we went to Border’s and got a copy of the book and a copy of Capote's novella, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1958). The famous Audrey Hepburn film is his sister, Jens’, favorite still.

A few weeks later, after I had returned to England, I received a letter from Sean, explaining his amazement at the dark edginess of Capote's story, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" in contrast with the rather lighthearted film interpretation. He mentioned that the story deserved a remake. He dreamed of being a director and, in my humble fatherly opinion, he had a keen eye and ear for film and a good story.

Moon River
Wider than a mile
I’m crossing you in style
Someday…

Tomorrow, I’m resurrecting the tradition of Chinese food and film, with a few dear lovely friends…and eggrolls.

away writing...

2011-12-19T08:42:00.001-06:00

call, text, email, knock, nudge...

The Bear, baptism, and Thomas Merton

2011-12-18T16:42:00.005-06:00

This time of year, in 1966, Thomas Merton was reading Go Down Moses by William Faulkner. He used the book, particularly the story “The Bear” as well as Faulkner’s novel “The Wild Palms” as subjects for Sunday afternoon lectures to the novitiates at Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey, KY. Merton was so taken with “The Bear” that he desired to one day write a book about the story and what he saw in it. What he mentions in his journal at the time is, for him, “The Bear” held the key to monastic life. In January of 1967, he published an essay discussing these two works. He felt that “The Bear” presented a story of baptism, not of water, but of nature. The memorable scene for him (and for me, before reading his essay) is when Ike, as a young boy on a hunt for Ben the old bear, forsakes his watch and compass; hangs them on a branch deep into the woods, and just ventures into the forest…

The Canadian musical persuasion

2011-12-12T22:16:00.004-06:00

In a retrospective kinda way, much of the music stuff that’s stuck with me came from musicians from Canada. Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, The Band (except for Arkansas’ Levon Helm), Glenn Gould… We rarely discuss the Canadian persuasion of musical influence in our ears. Tonight, I listened to Neil Young’s song “Sugar Mountain” (a sweet B-side) a few times. He wrote it 1964 on his 19th birthday, in Winnipeg.

British invasion aficionado musicologists, kindly "piss off"...for tonight anyway :-)

Other people’s money and their Kansas City Chiefs

2011-12-12T13:37:00.004-06:00

Ink will spill in mass quantities over this departure of the Kansas City Chiefs’ latest field marshal. Playoff hopes dashed with a swarm of Jets. The current episode seems a red flag, and fans may consider refashioning their Official NFL apparel into white flags with some bleach. We surrender. Truce time. Stop seeing red. Time to let go.

Professional sports teams in Kansas City cannot sustain their business. Current trends in our life here cannot withstand continued revenue hemorrhaging to out-of-town bank accounts and stock portfolios. You may think we have a great deal invested in this franchise, and the one across the parking lot. You may believe that professional sports teams place Kansas City on the map. And you may be re-considering those season tickets in light of your family balance sheet, for disposable income as a phrase is becoming a glaringly irrelevant term for you.

But you may be a fan: a die-hard one.

Consider that everything’s for sale and the Chiefs front office has probably had this tough discussion long before my irrelevant words here that may have you seeing red. You see, this franchise is a business, and while you may feel emotionally like a stakeholder, you’re not a stockholder. There are no stocks to own. This is a privately owned, supposed $1 billion in worth, business, ranked 20th or so in the NFL portfolio, price-tag wise.

What creeps, justifiably so, into this discussion is the emotional qualitative "12th Person" in the stands and in front of the screen; you who watch them (I rather enjoy listening to Len Dawson on the radio). That emotional stock is unquantifiable on the horizontal surface of the Chiefs’ boardroom conference table. In the end, amid wringing of hands, the emotional bit remains irrelevant.

Winning in business outweighs winning upon the playing field, for this is not child’s play. Professional football (and baseball) is very big business. Irrespective of game records, The Chiefs are a failing business. The turbulence in leadership reminds me of the Kansas City Missouri School District; not a franchise, not a business per se, but leadership storms indicate plummeting market value…Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk.

I believe the Kansas City Chiefs constitute a misplaced modifier to Kansas City. I’m reminded of the film, “Other People’s Money” (1991), based on the play by Jerry Sterner, with Danny DeVito as Lawrence Garfield (Larry the Liquidator)…and Larry’s excellent speech about cable, buggy whips, hard decisions, and funerals...great writing, Jerry...

Jardine’s and the Kansas City marketplaces for artists

2011-12-08T09:23:00.007-06:00

I’m fairly new to Kansas City; moved here in 2008. People with a deeper history here will have deeper sentimental and insightful thoughts about this. As a writer, an artist, I feel happy here. This city feels right to me in so many ways. But this Jardine’s episode reminds me of my previous life as a pub owner in England.

Jardine’s is many things to many people. I see it as a gallery; a gallery where performance artists sell their artwork. Sure, it’s a restaurant, a bar, a business.

But as an artist, I view Jardine’s part of the artistic marketplace of Kansas City.

Artists must do a lot of stuff to do what they need to do. And I’m learning that this creative urge is a need. But a big thing artists must do is sell their stuff. People want their stuff. People are enriched by this good stuff and, in the case of musicians, artists need a place to sell their stuff, with beauty and dignity. So, a club owner, while being many things, owes it to their temporary employees, the artists, to curate their work with love and care. It may sound strange, but when I had a pub, I worked with my performing musicians to make their experience fun and respectful to their art forms (lucrative too). I was many things as a “publican” (not a Rebublican) and one of them was a sort of gallerist…at least in my mind.

Jardine’s has potential, despite the kerfuffle recently. Perhaps some enterprising artists should band together and buy the place…in the spirit of continuing a rather nice “gallery”; keeping in mind that the gallery serves food and alcohol. Keeping in mind that a well-managed gallery helps artists to sell their stuff. In this rather swirling time of change, perhaps artists need to engage with the “marketplace” in new ways…like owning a chunk of it. After all, it’s their market, right?

Artists could make Jardine’s into the beautiful “jardin” they deserve and the public would love. Artists gotta sell stuff…

Artists, don't be angry. Buy it and rename it "Jardin" :-)

The muddled American social classes

2011-12-07T09:57:00.010-06:00

Some use the violence-laced phrase of class warfare to divide and conquer constituencies. Others look to the old countries, like England, to model their American breeding and design decisions. Our American tax laws place citizens in brackets. We have this word in our English language, class, which has a wide variety of inferences. Class may be in the eyes of the beholder, something we know when we see it, but these days class as a concept is muddled simply because we are bewitched, bothered, and bewildered.

Does class matter to you? Are you self-conscious about the way you speak? How do you judge others? With what social checklist do you make your measurements?

President Obama’s speech yesterday in Osawatomie Kansas used the phrase “middle class” twenty-one times. He never defined and probably did not need to explain it because we have a good handle on what “middle class” means, right? I’m not so sure of the class yardstick anymore. In fact, I think we never had a yardstick. For me, the word prism comes to mind and over the years we’ve added facets.

If you’d like to take your self-professed upper class, or even upper-middle class self to England for instance, and see how you measure up, have at it. They are our class-masters and there you will receive a master class. You may be able to lease the posh London flat in the “proper” post (their zip) code and even afford to send your children to that prestigious public (our version of private) school, but as they say in the Ozarks “…that dog ain’t gonna hunt”.

In England one is judged based upon how one speaks. We have a few local broadcasters in Kansas City from England. Their accents raise their IQs, oh, 30 points or so, don’t you agree? To speak properly is to exude class. Or how one speaks contributes to one’s class standing. In addition to your required vast means, you will have some serious personal “re-invention” ahead of you, in London society. Best of luck, on that. You will be less disappointed modeling your life according to Martha Stewart designs and re-runs of Masterpiece Theatre on PBS.

Our American class system is muddled and regionally so. I think it’s a beautiful thing; this muddled somewhat united variety of States. While politicians measure your class based upon your checkbook balance, savings account, stock portfolio, you know that this country is the land of invention as well as re-invention. You can begin by changing your surname for example. Pick a “Tommy Two-Names” variety, for example to turn heads, like Prairie-Snodgrass, or Swope-Park. Re-invent. Americans may not be class masters but we are the masters of change, beginning with re-inventing the self.

And that’s exactly what makes this class division, this artificial class warfare, so absurd, really. In our hearts we know about personal re-invention that has nothing to do with economics. It, the “it” being personal change, begins with desire and dreaming. Turn off the television for a few moments and contemplate the media. The media teaches us about re-invention and that Martha Stewart you love changed her surname from Kostyra, after she departed Jersey City, New Jersey.

Re-invention comes with education, too. Education can last a life-time if you pursue it and remain a bit curious.

Use caution when people call you to the barricades or the ballot box with class-warfare rhetoric. Listen carefully to rhetoric, including mine. Think twice before putting that 99% bumpersticker on that automobile of yours. Think again before thinking too highly of yourself here in Middle America. Be careful judging someone’s intellect based upon their accent. But if you desire to change, do so; reinvent yourself with abandon. You live in a land of re-invention. Just ask Martha What's-Her-Name.

A School of the Arts for the Crossroads, Kansas City

2011-12-01T17:45:00.006-06:00

I’ve lived in the Crossroads, Kansas City for just three years. People are choosing to live here and work here for many good reasons. It’s a nice neighborhood. I love it here and have decided to make it my home.

One thing missing from my neighborhood is a neighborhood school that educates children.

I think having a school here amid the arts, and most important all the wonderful artists, could enrich the people and the place a great deal. Others have a similar view, I sense. UMKC is discussing moving their Conservatory of Music here in the future. Big ideas start with small steps. Here’s what I’m thinking:

- A private institution with the independence to work towards excellence, free from the bureaucracy of State oversight.

- Begin with grades K to 5 and establish a day care/pre-school

- Hire local artists to teach. Fund interested artists to obtain teacher accreditation.

- Build the school slowly to expand grades, with an ultimate goal of grades K-12 with a ten year plan

- Create a curriculum that includes the visual and performing arts with an emphasis on the liberal arts and languages.

- Partner with local artistic organizations, businesses and companies (ballet, symphony, and opera)

- Partner with the Kansas City Arts Institute

Our liberating, libertarian Kansas City Public Library

2011-11-28T14:00:00.003-06:00

I’m sensing a libertarian political philosophy in our Kansas City Public Library. Ships have captains and the library’s seems to imbue this public institution with a rather subtle agenda of programs that whisper the philosophy gently. And perhaps that’s the nature of libertarianism; to suggest with civility, to encourage one to broaden intellectual horizons with thought and keen curiosity.

I like it, really. I love the place, my neighborhood second home, the Central Library. I enjoy the programs, my Book Club, the staff, the welcoming spirit there. It’s a gift that gives seven days a week.

In this day of media labeling, of conservative vs. liberal artificial flavorings, we have places like a library to explore on our own. With raucous talk radio and arresting sound-tracked sound bites on TV, we have books for free. We can check it out on our own and check out a few books in an assortment of formats; paper, audio, and “e”. This is not an advertisement for our library. They market themselves very well as they should, for we deserve to know what’s going on there, and they engage the people of this great city in so many great ways.

No, this is merely a musing on the nature of subtlety, suggestion, and libertarian thought. I think I’ll walk there today and research the term…

Conserve and correct, counseled Clemens

2011-11-28T12:38:00.006-06:00

Not an original thought or political philosophy. I encountered the writings of William F. Buckley, Jr., Edmund Burke, and the likes of J. William Fulbright in my Archmere Academy, a "preparatory" (for more than I'll ever know) school for (then just) boys in Claymont Delaware, under the guiding intellect of my political science (not civics) teacher, Mr. Paul N. Clemens. He assigned many books to us. We discussed them. He gave me a few books from his extensive library. We read Fulbright’s The Arrogance of Power, and editorials written by Buckley and other thinkers of the time.

We listened and debated. We wrote papers; many. Mr. Clemens engaged us in the hallways and in the library. He kept his office door open. He assisted us with applications to universities. Mr. Clemens offered great lectures, but he listened intently.

This was 1967. I watched Buckley on TV every week as he debated the notables of day like Gore Vidal. Spirited to say the least. Explosive at times, actually. Articulate and astute beyond my vocabulary (I still need a dictionary close at hand when I read Bill). I ventured into Philly a few times to listen to the revolutionary speeches on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania (not Penn State, that campus is further west, a lot further west). Perhaps that Quaker spirit in Philly, that William Penn statue on City Hall, that Ben Franklin tongue-in-cheek atmosphere had something to do with this search for ways...realizing that we make our way, that the way is not set out for us. It's the Philly way, paved with a lot of bricks that aren't yellow by the way...

Exciting times, I felt at the time and I still ache to understand it all. My mayor, Joe Eyre, lived a few houses down from my 800 square-foot row house, in Highland Gardens, Chester, Pa. He lived in one of those little row houses too. Joe was a big guy in many ways, but this city leader always had time for me. He often admitted that “times they were a changin’” and he didn’t listen to Bob Dylan.

In the midst of all the confusion and change, Paul Clemens kept his cool, in and out of class. He wanted us to swim in the complex mix of ideas and he certainly, in retrospect, threw us into the deep end beginning freshman year. He challenged us to write well, to read more, and consider alternate perspectives. I remember when I told him that I felt an affinity with Buckley. He smiled and counseled me to “conserve and correct”; to appreciate and understand the goodness, to assess the world around me, to think, to develop courses of action (something that helped me a great deal in my military career), to work to write clearly, and to act upon my conclusions.

Conservation is a matter of judgment; collective judgments, for we live in a democracy. Corrections deserve careful thought, time, and planning. This, among many more things I’ve forgotten and will endeavor to remember, Paul Clemens taught me. I’m still a conservative, Mr. Clemens, in that conserve and correct kind of way.

Climbing around the Kauffman

2011-11-28T10:08:00.003-06:00

Yesterday I went to the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts to listen to the Kansas City Symphony. This is my third visit to the building, not counting the times I climbed around inside and outside when it was under construction. I’ve watched this building come to life out my window for the last three years. I really want to like it, but I’m uncomfortable there, literally.

Many of the patrons of the classical canon arts (ballet, symphony and opera) sport grey hair. I’d estimate that 80% of the attendees to the symphony yesterday were over 50. I watched them move around the building, or rather climb around it, and realized that this beautiful building was not meant for people, not designed for humans, but rather designed for sound. It seems to be all about the acoustics.

Seating is rather cramped. People wishing to take their seats, must ask those seated to please stand to allow them to pass. The seats themselves are too low; I’m 5’9” and my knees were higher than my bottom. I felt badly for the tall chap in front of me. He had to lean forward to get comfy. Navigating from front door to one’s seat is an adventure, requiring climbing and careful use of handrails.

While Helzberg Hall sounds lovely, the interior is cold and hard which makes sense given the design that was designed with sound in mind. But it’s like sitting inside the body of an instrument, one of wondrous wooden curves. The structure impresses me yet I don’t feel as if I belong there.

The walkways come to a few unnecessary narrow points, places where moving, climbing people slow and gather like logs in a passage on an otherwise expansive river. Get ready to stand in long lines for the restroom. Try to find a drinking fountain. Exercise patience as you stand before a modern large bar with just two servers on duty. Take a gander at the price on your ticket and wince as you wait.

You may feel, as I do, that I must love and adore this new bejeweled modern cathedral without a bishop for the performing arts. This is modern and state-of-the-art as we’ve been repeatedly told. This is a building for which we should be proud; placing Kansas City on the map, garnering it a nice article in the national curator of the American consciousness, the taste-master, the vetting voice of the NY Times. And, this is a Safdie design after all, right?

I think it will take time for us to break-in this couture-like edifice. When people have time to use it, to live in it, and know it, the “it” will experience human adjustments. But, I feel this is a stiff, cold, steep, cramped place. It doesn’t feel nice at all right now. This building was built for sound in the same way a race car is built for speed. It’s a thing of beauty, but the people who visit it, who contribute to its future by purchasing tickets are afterthoughts. But that makes sense.

This building was built by people who contributed resources. These people are accustomed to having doors opened for them, valet parking, and choice seats. The designers and engineers took the lead of the acoustic designers with a bit of coaching from the master architect on his visits.

This building is not of its place; the brick-built buildings around it, the Crossroads below it as you gaze south out of the enormous glass windscreen, seems to look back in awe for a moment but then remind me that the brick is the thing of beauty here in this part of the city. The red-shaded, rectangular, six sided, molded clumps of earth are the primordial literal building blocks of the architectural soul here. Steam bent wood, computer generated spaces, CAD-designed cladding are out-of-place. Safdie should have listened to the whispers of the ghost of his one-time mentor, Louis Kahn...that interesting speech Kahn loved to give to his students; the one about the brick.

“To express is to drive.
And when you want to give something presence,
you have to consult nature.
And there is where Design comes in.

And if you think of Brick, for instance,
and you say to Brick,
"What do you want Brick?"
And Brick says to you
"I like an Arch."
And if you say to Brick
"Look, arches are expensive,
and I can use a concrete lentil over you.
What do you think of that?"
"Brick?"
Brick says:
"... I like an Arch"”

I'm guilty of listening to the bricks in my Crossroads neighborhood...sorry.

The building stands. It's too late to flip it around to allow it to face north, downtown. I doubt if the Board will vote to remove some seats, adjust them, to cater to humans.

Those of us who love the classical canon scene have few alternate choices now. I’ll continue to go see the ballet, symphony, and opera. I’ll get used to the acoustics, the resonant coughs and sniffles that resound louder than the percussion section at times; I’ll stand to let my neighbors slip by as they repeat “sorry, sorry”. I’ll wait patiently in lines for the restroom and a drink to replenish. And I’ll climb and climb and get in better shape before my next concert.

Yet, this is a whiney bit of thought. I sound like a crotchety crusty old brick. Sorry.

What did you say, Brick?

Photograph by Theresa Wysocki

On pie crust with lard

2011-11-24T13:55:00.003-06:00

Crust the way you make it
The way your ancestors suggested
Lard, butter, Criso could define you
You know?
Fillings, you’ll need a few
After savoring sugary thick sweet
Rolled around the tongue
Lingered memories induced
By mere fragrance from an oven
Across the street?
Hope it’s not burnt
As we gabbed over the fence
Watching your bird bubble
In a few gallons of peanut oil
This day may be nicknamed
For the bird, I wonder
If Charlie Lee Byrd’s classmates teased him?
Yo, Byrd! Play that guitar!
Lard I say, lard it is
They’ll never know
And if they ask, I’ll just say
What do you think?
Anyway, what about the filling?
Lard seeps through Byrd’s music
Shoulda used lard instead of peanut oil
Nice bird, neighbor
It’s just once a year…anyway.

A Thanksgiving recipe: administrative jurisdiction, government, mixed with social media

2011-11-24T11:51:00.003-06:00

Add to this concoction, mainstream media which leverages social media like facebook (your method to sign into this blog and respond if you wish) and Twitter the personal broadcasting tool where we can tweet even our hearts discontent. If you’re giving thanks for our American gifts, like free speech, consider this headline news story.

I’ll be tweeting a link to this piece, mentioning Kansas Governor Brownback (@govsambrownback) and our Kansas City Star (@KCStar) to widen the net of coverage. These days, we can write words and share them in a few seconds. Online social media tools enable us to respond at high speed with packets of information that hurtle like tiny freight trains whose cars separate and re-link and appear on your flat-screened device of choice. We have the tools to add color commentary to events we witness, to create a virtual huddle on a playing field, to share a side-bar at a conference with those miles away from the conference table.

There are ample examples recently where administrative entities like schools and business are flexing their authority muscles in the murky gray areas of social media. Governments, even Presidents, tweet. It’s a confusing realm while being an inspiring and socially changing world where we communicate. Yet, what’s interesting is that we do not always appreciate the social reach of our social broadcasts.

I would have handled the effects of this high school student's tweet quietly, in private. I’m not critical of the Star in making this public, even publishing a picture of the student. This could become a national story after we wrap the Thanksgiving leftovers. It seems an interesting piece for Ira Glass’ “This American Life”. The story will start a conversation here, I suspect.

We’re easily distracted. I’m guilty of that tendency…easily distracted by stories, affected by live theatre and art days after experiencing it. I write a lot. I read too much. I multi-task and listen to music while I read and write, often at the same time. I tweet, post interesting things to friends on Facebook. I’ve had to learn to be patient with myself, to think twice or more before I click the send button, hit the return key, touch the “OK” link on my touchscreen.

This sunny morning, after breakfast, sitting with coffee, a friend, watching the cat bask in the warm sun, smelling a turkey that’s smoking somewhere downwind in the neighborhood here in Kansas, I felt I had to write something about this complex stew of social media, administrative jurisdiction, and government. Add your favorite ingredients to this amazing recipe without measurement. I think that this story of a student tweet on a field trip, a governors’ “concern”, a school principal’s counsel, a family’s reaction(s), and a student’s thoughts on the matter will send more digital ripples across this network of ours. Or is it ours?

If you’re aching to instigate an explosive, dessert-ruining debate at the table today, this just may be it. Happy Thanksgiving.

All My Sons (and now Daughters): the complex industry of war and peace

2011-11-21T23:03:00.004-06:00

I think that instead of his now famous farewell speech to the nation, his “military industrial complex speech” televised on January 17, 1961, President Eisenhower should have instead broadcast a performance of Arthur Miller’s play All My Sons, first performed in 1947. This play will be remembered, will possess a resonant posterity, beyond any speech delivered from the Oval Office.

Kansas City’s Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre presents this play over the coming days. In the midst of Nutcrackers and carols, this piece may seem maudlin and sad. Yet at this holiday time, when many of our daughters and sons serve overseas, as we contemplate the decade of war, this story, which takes place after a war reminds us that war is hell beyond the firebases and foxholes. There’s much too much to spoil in summarizing Miller’s play, so no summary here. It’s too grand in narrative and too poignant in performance to deconstruct or critique. Some pieces of art defy analysis.

This play, which takes place in an American home, will hit you close to home. A fractured apple tree, snapped by the wind, with its apples strewn on the ground, gives bittersweet fruit.

Sailors, Marines, and Soldiers never die in vain. But often, their deaths feel preventable to the living. Or so, we survivors often feel. Vain is a complex concept. Guilt is a terrible ghost that haunts. Loss is a hole in the heart that allows the blood to circulate, while reminding us we’re half alive. War requires business, a military industrial, technical, and now contracted human complex. Ours is no longer Arthur Miller’s conscripted and volunteer enhanced military of World War II. This business of war is serious business now; an all-volunteer force since 1973.

See this play and consider how art can transcend generations, how even what is not said can ring clearer and truer than any political speech. Arthur Miller was no prophet when he penned this prophetic play. He was an artist. That’s what playwrights do; they hold up a mirror for us, and light a stage with a powerful bolt of lightning.

Artistic direction for the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts

2011-11-16T14:37:00.003-06:00

Perhaps the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts (KCPA) is shopping for an “artistic director” as I write this, but if not, here’s a gentle nudge. Presently, the KCPA seems to have an impressive lineup of artists for the coming months. An artistic director, one with vision and reputation such as Kevin Spacey at The Old Vic in London, could contribute to the sustainability and vitality of our Kansas City “center”. Right now, it seems the KCPA staff members are custodial and fiscal stewards, depending upon the resident performance companies (the symphony, opera, and ballet) for artistic direction(s).

Obviously, some team is booking other performers. Again, the portfolio looks impressive, but the KCPA has no artistic face, one which it deserves, like the Old Vic’s Kevin Spacey or Lincoln Center’s own Wynton Marsalis, Artistic Director for Jazz at Lincoln Center. “Jazz at the Kauffman Center” has a nice ring, doesn’t it? That’s the subject for another column perhaps.

The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia, ten plus years old, is a “center” that’s not quite one right now, a building without artistic leadership and vision…should the KCPA take note?

I’m not sure who the KCPA could recruit. Our present “Kansas City Star” in the classical canon realm is Joyce DiDonato, in my humble opinion. But Joyce seems in her performance prime and is touring the world. Getting an artistic director position established requires a bit of focus in the early days. Kevin Spacey worked hard beginning in 2003 to transform the Old Vic’s programs to their current vibrant state eight years on; with great help and collaboration, he’ll admit.

The KCPA is a center after all, and the noun has great potential meaning. People create a “center”, for a center is more than a beautiful architectural and acoustically engineered building. A center deserves leadership and in this case, an artist leader in residence.

The Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, while it markets itself as Kansas City’s own, is in practical form a “.org”, a 501(c)(3), a non-profit organization, with a Board of Directors whose names I could not find on their present website. It’s in a wonderful way, “our center” in spirit, but realistically, operationally, artistically, those who lead direct its future. My recommendation is to add an Artistic Director to the Leadership team to help the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts become a “center”.

More marble in Danby

2011-11-11T09:32:00.002-06:00

Seems there’s enough for a while
Deep below Danby Vermont
Countertops for kitchens, family gatherings
Appointed gleaming floors, lobbies
Hallowed halls for whom we serve
But the best pure white
Sliced precise forty two by 13
Four inches thick, markers, names
Rows, dress right, dress
Ready, front!
Some cry, how long?
How many more?
How much more marble in Danby?
You may not wish to know…

The Unanswered Questions of Ives and Bernstein

2011-11-01T03:09:00.008-05:00

I cannot get back to sleep tonight. Before the Chiefs beat the Chargers in overtime, 23-20, I went to bed. Sometime around 1am, I awoke after a dream where I walked on a long road that ended at a sand dune near the sea. By the sea there was a rocky cave. It felt like Ireland, landscape much like the Giant’s Causeway. For some reason, I confronted a young man and we argued about something. We both seemed angry, but in the end, we shook hands, apologized, and parted ways. I gathered my extra clothes and shoes, placed them in a cardboard box, and walked back down the road, barefoot on the smooth warm blacktop as the sun set before me. Why had we argued? And how had we come to make peace?

Tonight while the football game played on the TV, I sat in an adjoining room and watched excerpts of Leonard Bernstein’s 1973 6 part lecture at Harvard called “The Unanswered Question”. At one point I took a break to listen to Ives’ piece by the same name. His music feels like a dialogue; three channels of musical themes running at disparate times, like three conveyor belts at different speeds. He composed this in 1906. Bernstein’s lecture is epic. Twelve hours almost. It’s a bit exhausting to me, but I plan to watch more later today, after I get some sleep.

On Wednesday night, I plan to attend the newEar’s Book Club where we’ll discuss the book of the lectures. I’m glad I watched it instead of reading. After watching Bernstein speak and play musical examples, after listening to the symphony selections, and watching, I cannot imagine reading the book, for this is something to see and hear. I’m not halfway through the six parts and yet I’m feeling as if Bernstein’s fitted me with a new set of sensing antennae, a fresh shiny new wide-angel lens, and a new set of ears.

And with his interdisciplinary approach, metaphorically linking language and music, pulling in my knowledge of linguistics, referring back to my nerdy love of diagramming sentences, I’m a puddle of mush right now; deep in a jungle of everything, hearing sounds I never understood, tones that slipped past my ears, yet seeing fibre of connections like a huge spider web glistening in the sun, minus the spider, thankfully. Maybe the spider appears later. I hope not.

In the background, I’m playing some Bach courtesy of Glenn Gould. When I was in high school, I became interested in classical music after listening to his Goldberg Variations recorded in 1955. By the time I heard it in 1968, it was a classic. I didn’t know that. It just sounded really cool and I had no idea who Glenn Gould was; that he had given his last public performance in 1964.

I enjoyed watching Bernstein’s “Young People’s Concerts” series on TV as a kid. I was in no way self-aware of the fact that none of my friends were into it, that my parents rarely watched. I dabbled at clarinet, but found it tedious. I wanted to play like Benny Goodman, but my teacher was this old guy who was really boring and didn’t want to be a teacher. Or so I sensed. Maybe he wanted to be in a jazz band or an orchestra. Maybe he was and I was not interested enough to ask him. Maybe I should have talked with him about those Bernstein shows.

Classical music as a term is as meaningless to me now as it was when I was young. To me it was music; big music, complex stuff without lyrics unless some people were singing in Italian or German which I didn’t fully understand at the time. It felt a lot like Shakespeare; hard to wrap my arms around in one go, something I could learn more about the second, third and fourth time around. There were a lot of musicians to watch at once. Going to the symphony at the Academy of Music was very cool. Eugene Ormandy conducting. I saw Bernstein a few times. He was quite a performer, hair flying around just like on TV. I used to conduct in the mirror a lot.

I’m still excited about connecting my dorky love of diagramming sentences to music. I have my grammar book from grad school. Yes, after learning to diagram sentences from Sister Asunta and the Franciscan Sisters in grade school, I continued my weird fascination throughout the years. I remember my grammar course final exam at St. Mary University. Sister Marie Brinkman had us diagram a few literary passages…a Shakespeare soliloquy and one of those humungous sentences from a Faulkner novel. In that two-semester course I studied Noam Chomsky closely for the first time. Bernstein collaborated with him in building his 6 part lecture.

So now my head is swirling. Maybe this swirl had something to do with that weird dream. The young guy with whom I was arguing looked a lot like Glenn Gould come to think of it. I don’t know for sure.

the Occupy KC people and camp, Oct. 26, 2011

2011-10-26T18:05:00.009-05:00

Today, I visited the Occupy KC movement's camp at Penn Valley Park, just south of the Liberty Memorial, across the street, west of the Federal Reserve Building. It's a small group but the people seem animated and organized. I sat with a fellow named Cash, and another person, Mike, and talked about the movement and the spirit of the camp there. It was a pleasant discussion and I enjoyed talking with them very much. Also had a nice talk with Samantha (Sam), the group's chef. After listening to them and meeting the people, I felt impressed and hopeful for them. I plan to write a piece for the KC Star's MidWest Voices blog soon about my visit and the movement's energy. In the meantime, if you're able, stop by and see them. If you wish to assist them in a practical way, they need some living supplies. The Occupy KC website is here. Have a look at their supply needs. Their General Assembly is daily around 6pm. In addition, the permit fee per month is $800...they are open to contributions to pay the rent :-)

The Occupy Wall Street thinkers have hit upon an interesting strategy as of yesterday. You may have heard their chant "We are the 99%" (actually the 99.6 or so %). The movements website posted a piece yesterday, entitled "Occupy the Boardroom". Their approach calls for dialog with the 1%...after all they are people. Read about it here. From a Kansas City perspective, we know the elite families who steer this city...the Kauffmans, the Blochs, the Helzbergs, The Nutters, the Kempers, the Halls. Those of you who are from Kansas City know the list is larger. So, while the encampment is across the street from the Federal Reserve, it's also visible from the Hallmark corporate headquarters. Interesting. This is not a call for confrontation, but it makes me think about how this approach applies locally. That will be the subject of my OpEd soon.

In the meantime, have a look at this report from the Congressional Budget Office, published today, reference income distribution in the US...interesting.

On Tom Sawyer the ballet, part duh…

2011-10-14T17:13:00.006-05:00

Witness and absorb a momentous event for so many creative people, created and brought to life over such a long period of time, and I’m overwhelmed to comment and critique. I suppose some will write reviews of this. Good on ‘em.

This ballet, Tom Sawyer, is big. Yeah, that’s incredibly deep and insightful, I know. But if you have the urge to see it, I’d be interested in your review. This ballet had me thinking about this whole review “dance” in the city of Kansas City. I mean, who really cares? We have one fading newspaper, God Bless ‘em, and the small circle of writers are tapped out with deadlines. They have no competition and their articles are prosaic to say the least.

And who cares? Well, the ticket offices still do, to an extent. But that’s changing as well as theatres are socially networking really hard and smarter these days. Who needs a critic? In the first instance, find me one? Hello? Critic? Jiminy Cricket? Artistic conscience? Are you out there?

Tom Sawyer will take time to sink-in. Nothing I can write here will mean a hill of beans or a bucket of whitewash…

But…you knew there’s a butt, I mean but…not to be a butt but:

- at times the stage was really crowded and with the crowd I missed a ton…

- some of the scenes reminded me of pageants and parades…

- the dancer who played Tom Sawyer didn’t dance enough…he stood around, reminding me of Vanna White (see photo above)…the dancer playing Huck Finn stood around a great deal as well...move people, move!...jump over the fence!!!!!

- I kept thinking of Billy Elliot which could have been inspired by Mark Twain’s book, and Billy may have read it, but he’s fictitious, but he went on to be a “ballee” (ballet) dancer, and then the movie turned into a Broadway musical, well actually it was borne in London as are many cool “Broadway” shows these days, like Jerusalem…have ya seen that one? Anyway…Tom Sawyer even looked like Billy Elliot…really…

- in the novel, Tom leaps fences on at least a dozen occasions…now that would be fun…but Tom the dancer had no such choreographic instruction…they just painted it…ho hum but Aunt Polly was impressed.

- the fence in the novel is described as a “board fence” (that’s a fence with horizontal not vertical pickets) 9 feet high and 90 feet long…were this to have been a “picket fence” a la the Father Knows Best Show, they could have built another “St. Petersburg, MO”, ya know? Plus a “board fence”, which is like a ladder in a way, is easier to jump…let’s blame this image misconception on Norman Rockwell and Thomas Hart Benton, OK? (see the book, Chapter II, first page…)

- the fence is a cool image…and it slips in throughout the novel…and it could have been a staple prop in the ballet, butt, I mean but…

- the scenery was busy too…whew…

- there seemed more pantomime than dance to me, due to the authors seeming intent for “rich narrative”…

- the music reminded me of Copeland…Billy the Kid…floating on some Stephen Foster…

- and “show” was very…Caucasian, given the setting of Missouri circa 1840. Even the music felt rather…milky…

I don’t wish to seem an ungrateful spoiled person as I was invited to see this…and genuinely felt the joy of the occasion… I am not a paid critic, on McClatchy’s payroll, so this is free from me to you. Last night was a dress rehearsal after all. This ballet will endure and go through some changes, I believe. To me it needs to be “quieter”, more suggestive…but it was really funny in places, truly great performances…I’m even contemplating the definition of “ballet”…in fact I think Whitener and Yeston just redefined it last night…I can see this production in a theatre, on Broadway, even in Vegas…and yes…on film.

Duh…What do I know?...Absolutely nuthin’…you decide. OK?

photo of Vanna, I mean Tom, by Rachael Jane :-)

Jane Gotch in space

2011-10-14T15:45:00.009-05:00

“The physical world’s one constant is change, and dance is an artistic act of embodying its transitions.”
- Jane Gotch…from her artist statement

What’s it like to be human? How does it feel to be human? Artists ache to define this sense for themselves and as a result something happens to an audience when they do. Jane Gotch dances and choreographs others. She often begins with space; spaces you and I walk by, or sit near as was the case when Jane and I sat together at LuLu’s in the Crossroads having lunch. We contemplated the corner of the room and up to the ceiling. Space.

Perhaps you’ve seen her work first hand. If not, there’s a bit online. Soon, Jane plans to release a film of her project called “WE!”. Working with a film editor, Jane has enjoyed learning the image quilting art form of filmmaking. The film project has provided her with creative elbow room, space to inhabit her dance, choreography, direction, and chaos in a new way.

People often concern themselves with this personal mining operation to find their mystical core. Some worry if they feel scattered, and out of focus. Cool to find your core, but interesting to float in space, too. Jane Gotch is doing what she wants to these days. She says that with a Cheshire Cat grin. So, consider “doing what you want”, within reason of course, free of arterial bleeding as my Mother used to say. Seriously, perhaps you need to be a bit less serious.

Back to this feeling human thing, because I needed to think about that a bit, how do you feel, anyway? Do you feel from the outside in, as in yikes I’m cold or do you feel things from the inside out? Is all this nuance irrelevant? If your art form’s materials are space and physicality, the nuance has meaning. Your artistic nuance has a great deal to do with you and how you see the world. Jane likes to meditate, to get in touch with empty space and silence, inside. We all need that emptiness to appreciate the fulfillment.

To fulfill her literal dreams, her project visions, Jane applied for a few grants. She shepherded her projects like a good shepherd who places her best sheep at the front of the flock and leads from behind, and learned more about her art of control which involves a great deal of letting go. She learned to listen, to absorb the various languages of artists in other art forms like music, lighting, film, and set design. She learned to relish the days when you come to rehearsal and just don’t know. She loved how dancers understood when she sometimes had no idea what she was doing. She practiced holding a mirror up to life. Dancers need those mirrors you know.

Jane found out more about the art of finding common ground with others as collaboration, the crazy gathering of disparate members of humanity, is a central bit of grist in this dancing realm. I’m sitting here alone writing this, happy that there’s not three more of me around the desk, deciding which word to pick next. Jane’s project vision takes hold becomes real in the presence of others. She creates from “that inside out flow”…in space.

We don’t need limits. Think of the possibilities. Takes a dancer to remind us of that. Jane didn’t use the word “stretch” but there you go. Dancers stretch. Choreographers take dancers to new places. So, try stretching it.

Here’s another mind bender…Jane admits she’d wouldn’t be able to dance for Jane the choreographer. Do you feel like that sometimes? I do. I’d hate to be my editor. I don’t have one yet, but I sincerely “pity the fool”. There goes that Cheshire Cat grin again.

At the end of our LuLu’s lunch, we pondered our fortune cookie messages while crunching on those round sweet morsels. I shared how a friend has a funny way of stating fortunes by adding the expression “…in bed”. We restated our fortunes that way and laughed. Yet after meeting Jane Gotch and having a few of my perceptions reshaped, with some homework to do, I think I’ll try adding “…in space” to my fortune cookie prophesies from now on. In fact, I’m going to start doing more of what I want to do…within reason…in space.

Best wishes with your projects, dreams and visions…in space.

Pictured: Jane Gotch under the table, Matt Tady on top of the table. Brooke Vandever took the photograph, a beautiful moment in time and space of “WE!”.

_______________________________________

From Jane's website:

Originally from Omaha, NE, Jane attended University of Missouri at Kansas City’s Conservatory of Dance from 1996-1998, and graduated from University of the Arts in Philadelphia in 2000 with a BFA with honors in modern dance. In 1998, she studied at the Alvin Ailey School in New York on a full scholarship from the Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey. She danced professionally with Scrap Performance Group (PA), Netta Yerushalmy’s Dancing People (NY), and as an apprentice with Tere O’Connor Dance (NY).

As a choreographer she received, the annual Excellence in Choreography Award for her senior thesis at University of the Arts (2000), an Inspiration Grant from The Metropolitan Arts Council of Kansas City (2008 & 2010), and a space grant at Urban Culture Project’s City Center Rehearsal Space (2009-2011). She is a 2010 recipient of a Rocket Grant from The Warhol Foundation in partnership with The Charlotte Street Foundation and Spencer Museum of Art, for a multi-disciplinary, collaborative performance project, WE!. Her choreography has been presented at The Fifth Stop Open Studios (Brooklyn), The Philadelphia Fringe Festival (PA), A Modern Night at the Folly (KC), Urban Culture Project’s La Esquina and Paragraph Gallery (KC), and The Lawrence Arts Center.

In 2002 she directed and choreographed a collaborative group of women for NYC: the girl projects, which was produced by The Philadelphia Fringe Festival at the Painted Bride Arts Center. She was the production director for City in Motion’s choreographers’ showcase, A Modern Night at the Folly (2009-2010).

In addition to her artistic endeavors, she is a teaching artist through Kansas City Young Audiences and at Community School 1. Since 2001, she has been a certified trainer and pre-trainer of GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS®, a movement training, rehabilitation, and body conditioning system. She has taught private students in New York, California, Israel, and India, and conducted the first GYROTONIC® pre-trainings in Israel and India. Here in Kansas City, she has an established private practice at Plaza Wellspring wellness center.

Tom Sawyer…the ballet...fresh thoughts after rehearsal

2011-10-14T01:01:00.007-05:00

I’ve always pictured Tom Sawyer as this dusty ornery young boy. I’m not sure you could scrub him up adequately, dress him properly, and take him to the ballet. I believe Billy Elliot must have read Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. Yet both boys went to the ballet (or "ballee" as they say in the north of England). How would Tom pronounce ballet in his St. Petersburg Missouri accent of 1840-ish timeframe? Whadaya reckon?

You may not have tickets to see this world premier. That’s all right; for there’s a few left if you wish to book a few seats at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. I tagged the place, city, state, and country there because this is a world premier.

And if you cannot get here to see one of the seven performances, no worries. You’ll have the opportunity to catch it next year and quite a few thereafter. Your grandchildren will enjoy the revivals because this work has something called “posterity”. That’s what I felt tonight watching the dress rehearsal of this new three act ballet to a new score in Kansas City’s new performing arts center.

New all around yet timeless.

My granddaughter, Ryan (she’s almost five), wants to “take” ballet. I like that verb take because if she does, and if she connects her heart and body to dance, she will be giving a great deal. Ryan would love this, I think. Like her, it’s beautiful and fun.

I’ll write something longer tomorrow about this epic Tom Sawyer ballet of ours.

Yes, it’s ours now.

Photo by Rachael Jane...here's more…she was there with me this evening…we had a great time.

Tom Sawyer, the ballet, the dress rehearsal, Oct 13th, 2011 - photos by Rachael Jane

2011-10-14T00:19:00.001-05:00

Memories of Rudy Acojedo

2011-10-13T23:34:00.006-05:00

June Week, 1975, just before our "Oath" ceremony at Trophy Point, West Point. Left to right: John Nance, Rudy Acojedo, and me...

Many of us knew and loved Rudy and he loved us back. We will miss him very very much. Rudy passed away on Tuesday, October 11, 2011. My classmate Dan Cappell broke the news to me via email this evening. I hope to talk with Dan soon. Just had a real good cry and then a few smiles, looking at our yearbook. I need to write about Rudy tonight. He’s here, keeping me up too late as he always did. Way past taps, blanket on window, sealing off the light after “Lights Out”. All Right?

Rudy was a good friend. Rudy had a wonderful bright sense of humor, irony, and inner light. He was my roommate for a time at West Point. We were DJ’s together at the radio station, WKDT. We shared a love of music and we turned a lot of records together on our turntables. He was the world’s greatest Beatles fan. We laughed a great deal.

Our company, C4, was not your image of a tough spit and polished company of cadets. We called it Country Club Four, despite the cool beer mugs we had made which said “Charlie 4”. It was a fun group of guys. We did our best at being pleasantly mediocre, enjoying life despite the grayness. Mike Cosio, no longer with us, but drifting up there with the Long Gray Line, was in our company, and he was a grad of Rudy’s high school in Salinas. Mike was my doubles partner for a while. Mike, a year our senior, took good care of Rudy and me and many others.

Rudy was like that too. He took care of people. He listened. Told you to quite whining and stop taking life seriously for a while. He taught me that West Point was not about shiny shoes, although he could be very “strac”, spit and polished. And despite his devil may care outlook, he worked hard, real hard. He was there for people, really there, present for duty, and very present in the moment of things.

I’ll always remember our nights at WKDT. Our hiding place, our cozy home of music. Rudy taught me how to put together a decent radio show, make a tight playlist, and relax behind the microphone and just talk to the audience out there. In my experience with him, that was when he was most alive, playing good music, always including a few Beatles’ tunes. I forget his favorite song. Maybe someone else remembers.

There’s so many people that knew and loved Rudy. No one owns this sense of loss we feel now and will feel from time to time when Rudy decides to tap us on our shoulder. I hear his laugh right now, clearly.

The intensity of life as a cadet could overwhelm. The closeness of classmates there is hard to explain. The thing we call a bond transcends space and time. And yet, for those of us who knew Rudy and shared those four years in E-Wing, that wonderful out of the way flank of the cadet barracks complex overlooking the Superintendent’s Quarters and Ike’s statue, we know that the intensity lowered with friends like Rudy in the hallway. We know that a few pizzas from Tony’s solved the world’s problems. We knew our TAC was fast asleep and we kept watch for the OC.

Rudy took good care of me and many others. That care was infectious. It was a time that will remain timeless. The people made it so.

Rudy must be laughing now and he whispers to me to cut this short, like him, he’d say. He never knew he was a giant. We knew how tall he stood.

Taps…Lights out…”All Right”...We'll be all right, Rudy...but you know that.

The Good Soldiers in a very bad place

2011-10-12T11:49:00.005-05:00

When I was a cadet, I studied under a French exchange officer who taught a two semester course called “Revolutionary Warfare”. He was a veteran of the battle of Algiers, a lieutenant in a parachute regiment. I don’t remember him sharing his experiences in any great detail, but vicariously, via four books, he shared more than I ever imagined. He and those books, the writers, shaped the way I see the world. I dip back into them often, for there are layers of perspective and detail, newness I seem to unearth with repeated readings. Reminds me of how Shakespeare’s plays have strata of meaning over time.

The Four books:
Street Without Joy by Bernard Fall (1961)
Hell in a Very Small Place by Bernard Fall (1966)
The Centurions by Jean Lartéguy(1963)
The Praetorians by Jean Lartéguy (1964)

David Finkel spent eight months with an infantry battalion in Iraq. He’s chronicled their year long deployment (April 2007- April 2008) in his book called The Good Soldiers. My Book Club is reading this book for our October gathering at the Central Library. While Finkel’s narrative is harrowing, it seems to me not harrowing enough over the 287 pages which includes pages cataloging every name of the battalion’s soldiers, pictures of the fourteen soldiers who died, and acknowledgements. There is no index. The book contains no footnotes.

This is a book for a wide range of audiences. Finkel, a 2006 Pulitzer prize winning journalist, commendably distances himself from the narrative and instead sketches for us the characters of experiences of soldiers of 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, principally the battalion’s commander. For the battalion, this book serves as a battle journal for posterity. The writer begins each chapter with a quote from President Bush. To me, it captures the distance and sometimes disconnect between the White House and in this case the tactical compound.

Despite Finkel’s fine work, I am not impressed.

I never met Fall or Larteguy, but in a way I did, over time. Those two writers gave me a deeper sense of many aspects of war and the people who fight them, the people who command them from afar. And most important, Fall and Larteguy taught me about consequences. Their observations lasted much longer than 8 months. These things take time.

Published in 2009, one year after Finkel's assignment, The Good Soldiers book is hasty pudding, really. I wonder if the battalion commander kept a diary? But these days we long for immediacy, fresh dispatches from front lines when we have the desire to change channels from X-Factor to the nightly news. America has a short attention span given the myriad of information choices. I invested a long evening with Finkel’s book and I’m glad I did.

His writing moves. He employs clear writing and the pages turned quickly for me. He names names and gets personal. War is very personal, in the end.

The body-armoured soldiers, riding in lightly armoured vehicles reminded me of the Battle of Agincourt…French armoured mounted knights riding downhill in a narrow field, hurtling, into the lightly armoured footsoldiers and bowman under the command of King “Harry”. Armoured knights falling beneath a steady rain of arrows from English longbowman, shining armour in the mud.

In the end, the battalion commander, flying away from his battalion’s compound, departing for America, muses, according to Finkel, that they’ve won. But the commander says he’s seen enough. I wonder what his enemies mused as they watched his helicopter drift slowly to the horizon? Finkel has a deadline for his book. 2-16 Infantry had a rotation date.

These things take time. I believe there are no winners, just the wounded and the dead. Despite what the battalion commander said often, “…it’s all good…”, it’s not good at all.

The Good Soldiers by David Finkel, Sarah Crichton Books, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.

Prevent violent occupations with a truce

2011-10-12T00:41:00.003-05:00

When not if, I fear. When occupation becomes violent, the nation will shake and divide into pieces. We should prepare for the losses, the injuries, the investigations, the memorial services. Right now, America seems in denial of this inevitable. Are there preventive measures the movement and law enforcement can take, even mutually in a coordinated way? Do people have keen informed wise eyes upon this issue of probable violence?

Historical movements such as this, movements with good intentions of order and peaceful gathering, have invited, motivated, inspired others to violent means to achieve the ends. And often the ends, the purpose of the movement, its existence even suffered. Yet history teems with examples where violent, loosely affiliated factions raised the stakes and achieved ends far beyond the peaceful movement’s dreams.

Law enforcement agencies have their hands full with this growing movement. Our law enforcement agencies have little recent experience in dealing with civil disobedience and unrest on a large scale. The demonstrators are novices as well. Conditions of uncertainty and lack of training spell positive conditions for negative results all around.

My suggestion for the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movements across the nation and for law enforcement agencies is to declare a two week stand-down, a truce, in order to meet together as citizens and develop procedures and rules, ways to schedule gatherings, and liaise with one another; to literally place demonstrator liaisons with law enforcement and visa versa.

The movement needs the training and thinking time as well as those public servants, local, state and federal with the mission to serve and protect. Is it possible to call a constructive truce? Could the movement benefit from the wisdom of Civil Rights and Viet Nam-era protest organizers? Does the OWS loose network desire a tighter one?

The OWS movement, while benefitting from social network tools, extraordinary communication methods running on corporate digital rivers, drowns in torrent of information that does not equate to intelligence. Intelligence begins with tough questions, not clean crisp answers. One of my questions is: How can an advanced society such as ours prevent violence in the midst of real protest, real gatherings of people?

Restraint is not enough. We need time. Time to coordinate, speak, listen, write, train, and listen some more. The OWS movement could also suggest a moratorium on physical movement, and instead adopt a tactic of peaceful static gatherings. When people move from point A to point B, hurtling masses of humanity have a greater potential to clash, bump, shove, and break barriers.

This week, I’ve been reading about the Bonus Army, an occupation of Washington DC by World War I veterans in 1932. I know the motivations and conditions are not exactly the same, but there are similarities. Later this week, I’ll share what I’ve learned…again. I suppose this makes me an armchair, laptop’d, amateur historical analyst, a novice. I‘m trying my best to wrap my head around this OWS movement and I feel deeply worried for us. Sometimes it feels as if we’re walking into the future, with our heads turned over our shoulders, looking back at history, while it falls upon us like an avalanche, throwing us forward, too quickly in a drafty windy rush of dust and rubble.

I wonder if there’s a Bonus Army member alive today; someone who could tell the story of how MacArthur ordered the troops to advance, orders dispatched via aides such as young Eisenhower, to commanders like Patton.

It’s time to declare a truce and perhaps take the time to develop a mutual treaty. Can the OWS orchestrate such a stand-down? Can we sacrifice momentum for wisdom?

Munich and a state’s prosecution of violence

2011-10-08T22:27:00.004-05:00

I remember the film Munich and wish to see it again soon. I first saw it in January 2006 and at the time it affected me greatly while reaffirming my personal perspectives about the cunning ways a sophisticated nation-state could exercise violence in support of national policies, in the face of unconventional and rather cunning enemies.

The film follows a member of Israel’s Mossad who participated in Operation Wrath of God, a methodical series of missions to kill the Black September movement members thought responsible for the murder of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. Later, I read George Jonas’ book, Vengeance upon which Tony Kushner and Eric Roth based their script for director Steven Spielberg. This film receives scant mention these days, as does the Mossad or Black September.

I believe we will never go back to this time of secrecy, not because we can’t but rather because as Americans we were never there to begin with in any serious way. We have our share of secret special operations in our history, but what we lack is consistency and skill. We lack the resolve. We possess an inherent urge to reveal; for what we comfortably call transparency. We are skillfully adept at operations employing overwhelming firepower. We kill individuals with precision guided missiles and then broadcast the “battle damage assessment” (BDA), complete with DNA proof of death, with bombastic and proud pronouncement from presidential podiums. Impressive? To whom? You?

I’ve never been impressed with overwhelming firepower. I learned to respect it, but I also learned that when it comes to hunting an enemy, one must do it with care, quietly, in order to sustain the ability to do so on a long term basis. Overwhelming firepower, even harkening back to the use of atomic weapons on Japan, has consequences. Killing civilians, with nation-state armed forces should not be tolerated in my planning notebook. But over the last two decades, we’ve grown accustomed to overwhelming firepower, the ease of it, and we no longer as a nation care about killing innocent, unengaged-in-the-struggle civilians. We have exercised overwhelming force because we could. Who was there to stop us? Why bother with cunning, patience, time, precision, and secrecy?

I think our enemies know that we overwhelm as a matter of doctrine which makes them a bit more flexible in the cunning and secrecy department. I sense as individuals, most of our current enemies do not see themselves, as individuals, as special. Our American military forces, equipped with the highest quality sophisticated weaponry, equipment, and technologies are impressive. Yet I believe we’re incapable of confronting movements, insurgencies, unconventional small forces with conventional overwhelming tactics and journalistic HD-quality transparency.

We have invaded and occupied but we will depart. We have overwhelmed, and in so doing, served to underwhelm and encouraged our enemies to fight on with even greater will and resolve. We have flaunted our power and become rather arrogant about its use.

I am currently re-reading a book called “The Arrogance of Power” by J. William Fulbright (1967), a book Mr. Clemens assigned to us in political science class in high school, a set of ideas that I am happy have stuck with me. Munich stuck with me as well.

Occupying Wall Street, wherever, and heuristics

2011-10-08T20:55:00.007-05:00

Last Sunday, I wrote a short piece here about the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. At that time, I was not clear on the movement’s mission and goals. Apparently, neither were the participants, after listening and reading. That lack of clarity still seems the case. But this unclear movement of people spreads across the nation in a real way, as well as virtually on facebook pages, twitter handles, #hashtag’d streams, and websites. What’s happening?

One could visit our Liberty Memorial tomorrow and find out but I probably won’t. I’m curious, but a friend of mine, a musician, wishes for me to help out with a recording session. I’m reading a poem I wrote earlier this year, “Heuristics”. The poem addresses that experienced well of knowledge we have within us; things we don’t realize we know so well, things we learn by doing and observing. A practical example is how long it takes you to get from point A to point B. Think about your daily commute if you have one. We all know a great deal about life; aspects we take for granted and yet our heuristics, our personal “rules of thumb” help us in life to find and make our way(s).

What do heuristics have to do with the Occupy Wall Street Movement? The American way of late is not a way of protest on a large scale. We just don’t protest a great deal, collectively. We certainly do in private, speaking of that slow commute you may have endured today. But consider how protests, real live taking it to the streets and squares, are rather uncommon in our personal experience. Those reading this with intentions of heading to Liberty Memorial know this. This experience will be something new. Will this be a long term occupation or just a short term outing for a Sunday afternoon?

But will this movement perhaps give people experience, over time, in the art and science of protesting in a peaceful way? Will various city and regional movements effectively share tools and techniques? Will there be a meaningful dialog, or just spectacle and noise. Will people in this movement form a leadership council of some sort; a shadow government?

Is the movement fueled by mere frustration? Is government as ineffective as they seem to claim? Can an amorphous and general concept like “capitalism” be an enemy, in the same way we’ve grown listlessly accustomed to using the term “terrorism”? The movement claims and chants they are the 99%. In so saying, they claim many of us reading this as members of their socio-economic grouping. In giving us a percentile choice, they claim the existence of “class”, strata, judgment based upon wealth.

Those class heuristics are innate measurements in many of our intellects, but we carry different measuring devices. You may be one who strives not to measure these social standings. Your heuristics may be based upon experience backed with a belief in equality.

The “Occupy” movement has people worried. Are you worried about them? Or are you worried about more practical aspects of your life…health, safety, employment, your loved ones, education? We have our worry lists. We have our heuristics.

I see a movement that’s simply taking the news to the streets, making real in human collective form the expression of what we read and hear about the world. I also observe a movement, by virtue of its occupational nature, consisting of young people in America. There’s great potential for people to gain a great deal of experience in the techniques and tactics of protest; physical as well as intellectual.

The 99% will not protest. The 99% of younger people, let’s say between the ages of 18 to 35, will not take to any barricades or sit in parks. My demographic measurement tool needs fine tuning, I realize, but I don’t think people have the motivation to sustain or even significantly grow the Occupy movement. This is not a challenge but more of a personal heuristic. In my 58 years, I haven’t witnessed a protest movement with any consequence or cohesiveness. Let the response-givers here chastise me about the Anti-Vietnam War protest movement and the Civil Rights Movement. Didn’t those movements fuel change? Perhaps. But a large percentage of those marchers are still alive today. Where are they? Giving protest seminars?

America, collectively on a significant social-changing scale, does not possess the heuristics, the rules of thumb, the innate dexterity to organize, to revolt, necessary to make lasting significant change from a street point of departure. We know how to work hard, study, practice, create, invent, and innovate. We know we’re more than our credit score or bank balance. I’m not sure the percentage of this heuristic of mine, but I reckon it’s a fairly solid majority, all political colors aside.

We're too occupied to occupy Wall Street

2011-10-02T13:02:00.005-05:00

Occupy Wall Street?

Right now I occupy this desk chair in a friend’s office in Kansas City, Kansas (Missouri's state line in one block east). I just came in from the deck outside. It’s a beautiful day. I haven’t turned on the Chief’s pre-game show yet. Right now, on the other side of this screen, I am “live-streaming” the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York City here.

I’m not sure what to make of it all, really. Realizing that this blog is a corporate platform, I’m hesitant to write the thoughts that swirl about in my mind. Advertisers advertise here, and the content of my writing, as well as the content of your comments, serve to justify the sale of goods and services. In the meantime, we enjoy the freedom to write and share within the boundaries of a usage agreement.

The Occupy Wall Street:

“…is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.”...From their website

They mention “The revolutionary Arab Spring tactic” but do not describe the techniques or methods of the tactic or approach.

One could look at the number of protesters and ignore the event. The fact that the people there have no leader or manifesto has many dismissing the relevance of their occupation. Just now, as of 1206 Central, the group’s mobile hotspots appear malfunctioning, so there is one camera only at the movement’s park table. The site notes that over 8,000 people are watching their makeshift broadcast.

I’m not certain whether this leaderless, manifesto-less movement will spread throughout America. I have my doubts. But this model of protest, whereby there is authentic occupation, real people, a real place with the virtual “social media” tools appearing well crafted, looks to be worth your awareness. It’s interesting how, these days, American university students are not involved in any significant ways. Perhaps the high cost of higher education has transformed college campuses into corporate office parks, with compliant attendees, employees-in-training.

Writers here will have advice, over the coming days, for this movement. A good example of such an editorial is this one by Nicholas Kristof in today’s New York Times.

You’ll read a few pieces like this soon after local journalists read their Sunday New York Times. Kristof has furthered the protesters cause with his thoughtful PowerPoint-like presentation after an on-site visit.

Unless we choose to visit New York City soon, unless there’s an ongoing real movement here, this “American Autumn” in the Big Apple will fade with the first snow. Protests entail commitment, time, sacrifice, and the very real choice to occupy a place. America appears to be comfortable with virtual occupation, fantasy football, television, and our flat screen of choice. As you’ll see if you watch the protest online, the reality of protest, despite the protester’s chant that they are the 99%, protesting looks to be really…uncomfortable…sleeping on the ground?...being outdoors?...questionable and limited beverage choices?...food?

Americans do not possess the resiliency, commitment, or robustness to protest in any way close to what we “virtually” saw, and continue to see, in the “Arab Spring”. We are husbanding our shrinking resources, paying bills tomorrow, and submitting resumes. Besides, it’s football season, and the baseball playoffs just started, and sports will receive countless gallons of ink, much more attention, than this occupation on Wall Street.

True Light, Emancipation, and now Freedom at 31st and Charlotte

2011-10-01T09:46:00.003-05:00

Pastor Alice Pigge-Wallack makes words come alive. She speaks and listens with a kindness that exudes, light, emancipation, and freedom. She creates community every day in and around her community at 31st and Charlotte Street in Kansas City, Missouri. This past Thursday, she and a host of loving neighbors and volunteers opened the front door of Freedom House.

Freedom house is now a home, a dream come true, a place where women seeking a new start in life can reside while seeking employment and a home of their own. Stop in at True Light Church and visit Pastor Alice when you have a chance. She’ll be there. Have a look around at how she’s transformed the place into a reception center with caring people ready to connect the lost with support and services, homeless with a home, the forgotten with people who remember, the transient seeking a dignified transition.

These are all words, so you must see it to believe it. You may believe it when Pastor Alice takes you across the street to Emancipation Station, a wonderful comfortable place of rest where women who are without can be “with”. Safety, nutrition, clothing, cleansing, contemplation, conversation, sewing, reading, and even piano lessons. A room to quietly think and even pray if the spirit moves and listens. An atmosphere of dignity and calm, where the doors open for breakfast each morning and close a few hours after supper. Come and eat. Come and help cook. Just come.

And now, around the corner, on Charlotte, behind Emancipation Station, Freedom House, home to four women who will stay there for up to a year, volunteer in the community, seek and find employment, and start a new home of their own. No longer homeless. No longer lost. Found.

We live a great deal of our lives in a world of words these days. E-mails, text messages, background or foreground television presented information, online tapestry tableaus of words on screens, symbols and images there for our scrolling pleasure. I sense, though, that with all this on-demand content for our senses, we seek authenticity in it all. That desire and longing, for the feel of the real, make us human. But longing’s not always enough. You need to sense it. You want to connect for real in this world where being connected is now being determined based upon your array of handheld and lap-rested devices and the speed of your digital connection.

I think we deserve a chance to get real. I think the disconnected deserve an opportunity to get connected.

Pastor Alice and her circle of community people do just that. They connect in real ways. Pastor Alice makes me feel more intensely real. She’s created a community that reminds me that communities are more than bricks and mortar. Community is connected real people.

Have a look…pictures by Rachael Jane.

...that, I am...

2011-09-10T17:20:00.002-05:00

The Truth about the Infamous Major Tom Sawyer as told by a Military Academy Classmate by way of Marshal Bass Reeves and Injun Bill

2011-09-04T18:07:00.003-05:00

“Judge Thatcher hoped to see Tom a great lawyer or a great soldier some day. He said he meant to look to it that Tom should be admitted to the National military academy and afterwards trained in the best law school in the country, in order that he might be ready for either career or both.”

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Chapter XXXV
By Mark Twain

“All I know about military matters I got from the gentleman at West Point, and to them belongs the credit.”
Mark Twain
June 8th, 1881

The following very fictitious but authentic letter should set the record straight about the infamous Confederate guerilla scoundrel, Major Tom Sawyer, founder of the clandestine Missouri Bluff Runners, a mounted band of pirates and poets who struck fear in hearts of every Federal soldier in the Western Campaign, and if they didn’t sure should have…

August 15th, 1913

To Brigadier General John J. Pershing
Fort Bliss Texas

Dear General,

Greetings and congratulations on your speedy yet deserved recent promotion. I am writing this letter to apprise you of the possible whereabouts of one whom we’ve thought lost and many have happily forgotten.

You may remember my classmate Tom Sawyer. We graduated together in 1852. When the war started he was a traveling lawyer living in Charleston. Or that is to say, he had planted his oft uprooted roots there I hear around ’58 being a helpful adjudicator of shipping and trade contracts or lack thereof along the Atlantic coast south to as far as Argentina, his present residence, I’m told.

The cannon of Sumter must have shaken his Missouri heart for he packed up and intended a journey to his home, St. Petersburg, Missouri. He never made it we know. Meeting up with his old friend Injun Bill, son of the infamous Injun Joe, Major Tom dusted off his riding britches, secured some gold through various means and formed that regiment we, in the Union ranks, called The Bluff Runners. We named them because Major Tom Sawyer never allowed them a name as you may have read in a few books of late.

A few years back, in the Spring of ’07 I had the pleasure to meet the negro Marshal Bass Reeves while visiting my sister in Muskogee Oklahoma. Bass passed away in January 1910 and I’ve since spoken with his widow about Bass, Tom, and Injun Bill. Enclosed you’ll find a letter from Tom to Bass from August 1909. Also, I’ve enclosed a silver dollar which Bass won in a poker game the night after the Battle of Pea Ridge, March 8th 1862. Widow Reeves requested you send the coin to West Point to commemorate “Major Tom” and his friendship with Bass and Injun Bill. Enclosed is also a short note from Tom to Injun Bill from Spring of this year, sent from Argentina, requesting the shipment of ten horses. All of this will make a bit of sense I hope.

If you know about Tom, chances are you heard a few tall tales in Benny Havens and a few other taverns around Highland Falls. Most of them are lies but a few have basis in fact. There’s the time that Tom herded 35 cows overnight to the lawn of the Superintendent’s Quarters whereupon General Lee awoke to see Cadet Sawyer and a few henchman milking the cows at reveille. The canon startled a few of the cows which decided to make a run for it to the parade ground. Tom’s smiling defense of his dairy skills to a puzzled General Lee consisted of Tom’s organizing an ice cream social for the Academy’s officers in thanks for their service and leadership to the Corps of Cadets.

I was skeptical when I first met Marshal Reeves, but he recounted this tale as accurate as I had witnessed it from a milking stool no more than twenty feet from Cadet Sawyer on that early morning. In truth, my vantage point was a rigid position of attention when the General opened his front door. And yes, the ice cream social was a big success and a means whereby the Corps received a class and work-detail free day thanks to Tom’s enterprise.

From what I’ve pieced together, it sounds as if Major Tom Sawyer may be in Mexico. No doubt the dust from the revolution there crosses the Border and perhaps concerns you. I know you’re too busy to chase a Wanted Dead or Alive old man like Sawyer, for he’ll be 83 this year, and it is not my intent to distract you from your important duties and responsibilities. My wish is that we can clear Tom Sawyer’s name, for I hear you have the ears of a few important men including the President.

It seems that based upon the detailed saga told to me by Marshal Bass Reeves and his widow, supported with written testimony from Injun Bill, Major Tom Sawyer’s Confederate outlaw legend began and ended at Pea Ridge, Arkansas. Bass, Tom, and Injun Bill rode with General van Dorn. Tom gave command of the Bluff Runners to his brother Sid on March 9th. Bass and Injun Bill headed for the Oklahoma territory together while Tom Sawyer rode south to New Orleans and booked passage on a ship to Argentina.

Young Bass saved the life of Major Tom Sawyer on March 7th. Tom and Injun Bill helped Bass escape from his master, Captain Reeves. Bass was a crack shot and horseman and thus was his utility to his master.

On the night of March 8th after their defeat, remnants of van Dorn’s cavalry hid for the night before heading out the next day. Bass had secured a bag of silver from a Federal officer but his master tried taking it away. A fight ensued. Tom intervened. He told Bass and Captain Reeves to play a game of poker to decide the fate of the treasure. With the help of a few jugs of whisky from Injun Bill and Tom’s distracting yarns and quiet counsel to Bass, Bass won fair and square, mostly. Tom, Bass, and Injun Bill decided to make theirs a hasty night retreat, more in fear of Captain Reeves Company than the threat of General Sigel’s less than speedy Union forces in less than hot pursuit.

Together, they rode for six days and in that time formed a bond and a few plans. Bass needed a place to hide out for a while, being a runaway slave. Injun Bill wanted to get into the horse trade and knew a few folks in the Oklahoma Territory who could provide assistance. Tom decided the disunited States not the place for him. He decided to head south, far south, and seek his fortune in beef and military affairs and consultation for the newly elected General Mitre of Argentina in late 1862. Tom corresponded with Bass and Bill over the years.

In your hand you may be holding the 1861 silver dollar. Notice beneath the Eagle the etched name “T.Sawyer” flanked by two X’s the one on the left being Injun Bill’s mark, and on the right the mark of Bass Reeves. Bass told me Injun Bill has one like it and Tom carries the third. You are holding the one that belonged to Marshal Bass Reeves. It’s a bit worn and smoothed out, so handle it gentle.

I loved Tom like a brother. It has been far too long that many of us have wanted Tom hanged based upon what I know now as useless hearsay which has become legend and even the truth in the minds of some folk. I was guilty of believing the legends. Not now. Whatever the Bluff Runners did, if they existed as a cavalry unit at all, they did without Tom. And based upon the less than sturdy reputation of Captain Sid Sawyer, my estimation is that the Bluff Runners were just a ghost story, a phantom unit to blame every Federal blunder west of the Mississippi. Feel free to blame them for any incidents in and around El Paso.

Tom still sends five silver dollars to Injun Bill and Bass, now to his widow of course, as he has done since Christmas of 1864. The silver dollar served as the calling card for Marshal Reeves, so I’m told and probably secured a few good horses for Injun Bill’s corral.

I thank you for your time and gracious attention in reading this. Please review the enclosed notes from Tom. With your help, it is my sincere wish that we re-enter Tom Sawyer’s name to the West Point graduate Register, remove all wanted posters, and wish him God Speed on what seems to be a farewell adventure, with a Mr. Ambrose Bierce, himself a writer of note, a veteran of Shiloh, and officer of the Union Army’s 9th Indiana Infantry.

With tongue-in-cheek
Sincerely,

Tom Ryan
USMA Class of 1975

Transcript of Tom’s letter to Bass:

July 4th, 1909

Dear Bass,
Hope this letter finds you well enough. Been a stretch of 7 months since my last dispatch. For that I will not apologize for I have my reasons which seem fine at this moment but three months ago felt less so. A fast schooner to Philadelphia proved slow. Lost a poker game in Camden, ran to Baltimore and won two. Argentina still suits me. Best wishes to your family. Time for us to take it easy, but I suspect you are still enforcing the law. I sure am glad it wasn’t you who was chasing me all these years. Shoot straight, ride hard.

T. Sawyer

Transcript of Tom’s letter to Injun Bill:

February 15th, 1913

Bill,
Heading to Mexico in a month to meet with my old friend Ambrose Bierce. We aim to join up with Poncho Villa and conduct some business. Not sure what two old men can do for the rascal but the whole thing sounds like a real adventure, maybe my last. Please ship those ten horses to my son James. He has sent payment by way of Frisco thanks to Mr. Bierce. You may already have received it so I hope you haven’t lost it due to your card playing skills. When I get to Mexico, I’ll attempt to contact you, but don’t hold your breath. We’re getting old for this childish behavior.

With fond memories of us
Brothers forever,
Perhaps an hour or two longer
If we can hide from St. Peter
And have one last drink.

T.Sawyer

Inspired by Mark Twain’s love of West Point, celebrated in Philip W. Leon’s book “Mark Twain & West Point”, ECW Press, 1996… as well as
Arthur Burton’s “Black gun, silver star: the life and legend of frontier marshal Bass Reeves”, University of Nebraska Press, 2006.

...gone writing...

2011-06-27T14:17:00.003-05:00

from the eyes of Tony Ladesich...The Tease by The Late Night Callers

2011-06-22T16:45:00.000-05:00

How Skeeter might have helped The Help a bit more

2011-06-22T10:52:00.004-05:00

At the end of Kathryn Stockett’s very popular novel The Help, Skeeter heads to New York to begin her writing career at a national magazine with her $25,000 family trust fund, which in 1963 would be sweet. Skeeter negotiates with her old boss at a Jackson Mississippi newspaper and secures Aibileen a job doing what she really did all along as Skeeter’s ghost-consultant for homemaking tips. Aibelene receives $10 a week to write Skeeter’s old column. Before she leaves, Skeeter gives Aibelene a blue cloth notebook with all of her past articles about how to remove stains, iron pleats, and clan bath tubs. Nice, eh?

Aibileen walks into a new sunrise with her pencil and paper…

Skeeter flies to New York with her Smith-Corona typewriter and her trust fund…

All along in this story, scenes describe Skeeter at Aibileen’s kitchen table typing away as twelve domestic servants tell their stories. In many places, Stockett shares that these maids have received an elementary school education or a bit better. In particular, Aibileen writes daily in her notebook. She is a writer…

In a few scenes we learn how Skeeter gets to go shopping to buy a new frock at the cost of her domestic servant’s monthly salary.

I think Skeeter missed an opportunity to teach Aibelene how to type. How different this book would have been had Skeeter “taught others how to fish”. Instead, she used the compelling oral narratives of these amazing women to foster her own upward mobility; upward literally to New York City. I picture her showing up in Richard Yates’ writing class at the New School, taking a night class or two (for he taught there at this time). Is she really a writer or just a typist? Think about it, Skeeter’s writing career after college at Ol’ Miss consisted of taking dictation...

Kathryn Stockett’s The Help and Minny’s chocolate pie

2011-06-21T14:56:00.002-05:00

I read this novel over the past two days. My book club will discuss it in mid-July. So many people have read this book; so many white women seeking to start a conversation about what, I’m not certain. Careful in critiquing the author. She worked hard, meant well, wrote her story, shopped it widely, and hit a contemporary literary home run complete with a feature film opening this August.

After finishing the book, I contemplated the publishing market, the print and visual media, Oprah and Amy Einhorn. I thought about that meat pie in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. Yummy. I remembered back to 1962-63, black and white, black and white television, John F. Kennedy’s assassination in November, black and white TV images, all of them rather gritty, strange foreign race riots in the South. But they’re dim memories.

The Help continues the tradition of white literary ventriloquists throwing their voice into African American characters…Mark Twain, William Faulkner…with recent incarnations by Tom Franklin in his “buddy version” of The Help called “Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter” (2011) also set in Mississippi in the knowable past by some.

These and other books look good in the (slowly disappearing) bookstores together on that big table when you enter…sprinkle in some works by Twain, Faulkner (his literary geography of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi), Carson McCullers…y’all come. Yet I doubt the merchants will situate Zora Neale Hurston’s works (Their Eyes Were Watching God) nearby. This marketing huddle around The Help works wonders in the marketplace. If you liked this, read this…oh, and don’t forget your To Kill a Mockingbird. Why did they let Boo Radley walk? Southern justice…(great piece by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker).

There’s ample analysis of The Help out there in review-land; plenty of book junket interview clips. This book has me thinking about the book business (and film industry). Will the fresh-looking (by the look of its trailer) film capture the darkness of this book? The riots in Jackson? Will it include those gritty black and white TV clips of police dogs munching people? Or will this be a Ya-Ya-Sisterhood like film? Looks Ya Ya complete with a very marketable soundtrack.

Hilly consumed two slices of Minny’s “famous” chocolate pie. Munch on, America. It may taste nice but there’s a secret distasteful ingredient therein.

Let Go

2011-06-17T15:32:00.003-05:00

© 2011 by Michael Ryan Architects

Contemporary culture places an unfortunate emphasis on "knowing what you want" and, of course, "being smart." Unfortunately this works against the design process.

- Michael Ryan

ring bouy, vinyl letters, 20" diameter by friend and client Joe Begonia

Brother Michael

2011-06-17T15:12:00.004-05:00

Over the past month, my brother Michael and I went on a journey with my Father Toddy. Dad passed away around 3am on May 16th, the last day of his 89th year. His birthday is May 17th. Dad was not one for wasting time or starting something he couldn’t finish. It was really nice to spend Dad’s last week with him and great to be with my brother Michael and sister-in-law Randee. We talked a great deal but often too just hung out quietly.

A time of transition and change…

Mike’s working on a new website that captures the essence of his practice as an architect. I’ve seen a few screenshots. Some nice statements there. The site feels like an extended artist’s statement. We’re used to reading those at galleries. Artists work hard to summarize their work into a sort of elevator pitch complete with hooks. Often the effort to summarize misses the beauty of extended contemplation over time. We feel these days as if people have so little time and we wish not to waste it for them. But some things are time well spent. In the case of my brother, I’m not objective but rather shamelessly subjective. I love him and I enjoy his work immensely.

But in the spirit of clarity and summarization, of conclusions wrought over time as the result of craft and practice, I offer the above preview that makes one consider the notions of knowing and thinking and how we sometimes overdo…

Overthinking can be bad

Overknowing can be worse

Other distilled statements from Mike include…Open up…and Let Go…

___________________________________________________

About Michael Ryan Architects: Michael Ryan established his architectural practice in 1989, in Loveladies, New Jersey. Taking the position that architecture is an art, the firm offers a comprehensive approach to design, viewing architecture and interior design as interdependent disciplines. The firm’s reputation has broadened its geographical base beyond the Loveladies office location, to include work in Philadelphia, Maryland, Delaware and New York City. In 2004, the firm moved its main office to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to continue expanding its efforts. Transcending the temporal qualities of style and taste, Michael Ryan Architects focus on imparting a timeless quality consistent with the permanent nature of architecture. Blending architecture, interior design, and custom furniture design to create complete, thoughtful, unique spaces rooted in a modernist aesthetic, the firm seeks to combine order and accommodation, front and back, and interior and exterior to create simplicity derived from understanding the subjective use and desire of the space.

Tony Ladesich: storyteller

2011-06-17T12:41:00.005-05:00

Tony Ladesich tells stories with his films and songs. He makes films. He’s an auteur in that he conceives the narratives and renders them with his skills as musician, writer, cinematographer, director, guitar player, singer, and editor. It works because he works very hard to make it work.

While he creates in what we categorize as two distinct art forms, music and film, for him the two art forms blend. His songs feel like films and his films feel like songs. His core art form is storytelling which may not be a unique conclusion for someone to express, but it helps to come to that conclusion. It gets down to realizing one’s core, one’s passion. And when one can channel their passion into a life’s work, practice it daily and sustain their life, life is beautiful.

Yet, Tony’s real gift is his passion for sharing with others. He may have stories but the beauty lies in his desire to share them and tell them in an interesting way. He takes time with his projects, his narratives, taking the time to complete them. Write the song. Make the film. Share them and take the results to market. It sounds linear, this process of story creation, but he’d tell you it’s rather circuitous, circular, and undefined.

He has an eye for things, an ability to observe and relate, write, practice, edit, splice and perform. His films come from the heart of a songwriter. His songs are informed by the eyes of a film maker. How can an artist practice this passionate process and sustain themselves, and others, in the process? There’s never one way, I’m learning. And that diversification of approaches is what I learned from Tony.

Tony’s film making skills allow him to operate in just about all types of visual film and video art. He directs, operates the camera, edits, writes, produces (he understands the business), and sells. He works as a collaborator using one or two of his roles and he single-handedly creates. Most instances, as film is a collaborative art form, you’ll find him in the mix, and often leading it. He gets it and gives it. I get it as well.

Shift if you will, because Tony does often, to the art form of music. Transpose his film skills to the music scene and you’ll encounter the very same Tony, comfortable holding a guitar instead of a camera. At home with lyrics and melody, collaborating as a band member, often singing solo.

Grill him on the business of all of this and he’ll dodge the detailed questions, and hesitate to give guidance. Tony embodies the word humility. Yet observe and follow if you’re swift of creative foot and you’ll get to know an artist who scatters in a very positive way, all his creative energy in a myriad of places and projects: commercials, documentaries, editing gigs, songwriting, performing, writing, directing, marketing, selling, and telling stories. Others may encourage focus and Tony would agree with that. After all he knows focus in a literal lens sense.

But from a sustainment perspective, and I’m hinting a bit to the business aspect of art while asking you consider the word “sustainment” in a broader sense (from soul to checkbook), there’s something about finding a way to orchestrate your many talents in multiple directions while staying true to your “sweet center”, your core. Variety spices life and tacos. Diversification makes for healthy investment portfolios. Scattering apple seeds creates orchards.

Consider your core…Tony’s is storytelling…pause and take stock of your skills and talents that can sustain that core. Consider your projects. Make them come to life. Sing them and show them. When you find time, when you can get out of your studio, meet with other artists, like Tony. He’ll show you how to build a very delicious diversified taco at El Camino Real in KCK…meet him for lunch. I’m hooked on Tony’s art, Tony, and those tacos.

_______________________________________________

Tony was born and bred in the Kansas City area. He graduated from Center Senior High School in 1991 and from UMKC in 2000 where he designed his own film studies program before there was a program. He is the owner of Mile Deep Films and Television in Kansas City. You can also find him on musical stages around town singing his songs and telling stories...as he does.

Still with Proust

2011-06-17T11:36:00.001-05:00

Today I realized that Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” (Remembrance of Things Past) makes me feel still. I’m still reading volume one, “Swann’s Way” and yesterday passed page 100. This week, I attended my book club at the Central Library. We read Lionel Shriver’s “So Much For That” and I didn’t enjoy it. On the side, I’ve been reading Blaise Pascal’s Pensées (thoughts) and Provincial Letters as well as short stories by Richard Yates.

But Proust seems to settle me and make me pause. Reading him reminds me of sitting at the Nelson, looking at Monet’s Water Lilies triptych. Not a moving picture in the film sense, yet the movement is there if I just open up and see it. Then again, there’s this richness that’s the result of the artists observation and rendering that allows the viewer to examine slowly.

We desire stories with action, pace, and writing that moves along. We’re used to that excitement. We wish to “get to the end of the line” as David Mamet likes to encourage his actors to deliver…

But in Swann’s Way, Proust’s narrator remembers sitting beneath a chestnut tree and reading, thinks about the people at his aunts country home in Combray, simply remembers all of that and allows his mind to pour forth. It’s a stream of consciousness more engaging than in James Joyce’s Ulysses I think. But so far I’m finding that I cannot read too many pages at once…the pages turn slowly, so slowly it feels like stillness.

my madeleine

2011-06-13T14:48:00.003-05:00

Slowly making my way through Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way, Volume One of In Search of Lost Time (also titled Remembrance of Things Past). In the prologue or what Proust calls the Overture, there’s a wonderful passage about how a sponge cake, called a madeleine, retrieves a rich memory for the narrator. That taste of something long ago, in this case the flavour of a tea-dipped piece of a cake from the northeastern region (Lorraine) of France. The memory doesn’t come all at once though. The narrator savors the morsels again and again. Over time, the narrator remembers his summertime town; a ficticious place called Combray…

Muriel Barbery used the madeleine as a “central food” in her novel Gourmet Rhapsody…I won’t go into details…have a read if you fancy how food is something more than nutrition…

I suppose we all have those madeleines, those treats, aromas, foods with flavours that transport us somewhere…a special wine perhaps? Your granma’s cole slaw recipe or a blueberry pie. I have a few…

Butterscotch krimpets made by Tastykake Baking Company in Philadelphia. Recently, when in Philly and New Jersey, I had a few…the taste is like a flavour-filled time machine…like a madeleine, nothing complex, just…perfectly simple.

…like fresh garlic bread…or salt water taffy…or…

a summer of Proust

2011-06-08T16:58:00.002-05:00

Amidst other changes, I'm reading Alain de Botton's book How Proust Can Change Your Life. So far, as of page 111, Alain's argument seems to be quite valid to me...and on my reading pile, at the top, is Volume One (of Three) of Proust's "In Search of Lost Time"...

Paying tribute to the English…America as the rock audience not innovator

2011-06-04T15:01:00.007-05:00

Last night at the MET’s performance of Tommy, I was thinking about the tribute craze going on in Kansas City. British rock, all of it including the Pretenders who are really American expats who bounced back home after forming in England…sorry America…we may rock but we’re just the consumers…Pink Floyd’s Wall, Stoned Exile, a Beatles tribute for KKFI last night, Who’s next anyway?

Shakespeare Festival...my country for a horse, already...

Hendrix?...sorry America, he had to go to Ing Ga Lund to get his jams on…even Paul Simon expatted his butt for a while to write and get his chops…

Dylan…ain’t rock, right?

What are we doing? What’s this tribute post-Beatles to punk (born at London’s Roundhouse in 1976) homage-paying we’re stuck in? Seems we’re victims of the 1970’s LA music curating machine, ya know? Think about it…California Dreamin' was lame-ass...

Name a big classic American rock band…quick…buzzer…sorry, folks. Neil Young…Canadian, eh? Maybe the Allman Brothers…Duane sessioned with Clapton…sorry to Layla that on ya…

Bill Haley and the Comets? Springsteen?...OK, maybe then…

Just thinkin’ about all this. Not trying to be parochial or nationalistic but let’s face it, we ignored Chuck Berry in his time, Little Richard and in denial we labeled folks based upon their color. Kansas City missed the Soul Music of the 60s or if they didn’t there’s no vestige sounds in the background here…takes the Dap Kings to come from outta town with Sharon Jones to get us to dance…

So, it’s way cool to rock, play rock, pay appropriate tribute to our parents vinyl collections but to me I’m wondering where we’re headed as well. All these tributed groups from England listened to the blues, Chuck, Muddy, and others and bounced it back into our harbours and airports…Van the Man, Spencer Davis groupin’ Winwooded sounds, Animalia, Yardbirdin’ Zepplined stuff started in English pubs, Mate…

Buzzer’s off again…rack your brain America, but they won’t be tributin’ any music made here…maybe we provided the ingredients, though and exported the raw materials…

But, “Baby Please Don’t Go”…Them with Van Morrison…somethin’ Big Joe Williams cooked up in 1935, yo…

Help me...The Anglophiles are everywhere !!!!!

On using Appropriate Grammar

2011-06-04T13:36:00.006-05:00

Appropriate Grammar is...Alex Dunsford, Claire Adams, Nick McKenna, and Steve Gardels

I like stretching words and phrases. I enjoy using words like paint, splattering them on white space. I’m not a stickler on grammar, but I really like Appropriate Grammar. They are the most interesting band to me in Kansas City today and here’s why.

The people are interesting:
Alex Dunsford plays guitar and calmly paints with clear notes
Claire Adams exudes amazing joy and energy onstage with her bass and backing vocals she brushes at the appropriate times..
Nick McKenna connects with an audience like no other I’ve seen
Steve Gardels plays his drums with abandon and beats any beat with his smiles and enthusiasm

This ensemble fits so well together. Nick and Claire are an artistic match made in heaven…Steve and Alex underplay yet provide incredible textured canvas to Nick’s vision…

Last night at Davey’s, I sat inches from Claire and marveled at how her bright colored knee-stockings colored the show so well…she’s a treasure…

Nick, freshly arrived the night before from Milan with a brand new guitar, played it, nailed it without a rehearsal. His music is inherently him, you see…

In this case, appropriate grammar cannot do justice to this group’s art. Dump your active voice, subject-verb-object rigidity, open up, and throw your personal rules out the window. Absorb them when you have a chance…

Marnie Stern...here's your touring opening act...America, here's an interesting group of artists...take note...

Shattering this Tommy’s mirror

2011-06-04T12:43:00.010-05:00

In the summer of 1969 when I was 15, I spent some of my allowance on the Who’s album Tommy. I remember that my parents were out that day. Coming home to my small row house, 3 bedroom, one bathroom, 800 square foot mansion on McCarey Street in Chester, Pa., I unwrapped the cellophane from my treasure and placed it on the turntable of our Hi-Fi record player in the dining room. I listened to it maybe three times that afternoon and turned up the volume. My neighbor who was my age, Jeannie Frances knocked on the door and we listened together after she coached me to turn it down because her Mom was trying to take a nap. We liked it…a lot. She borrowed it and I remember getting it back scratched, which sucked, so I gave that copy to her and bought another.

I didn’t get, what we call today, the narrative; the story. I took that album, along with my copies of Sergeant Peppers + the first two albums by The Band, to college in ’71 and happily played cuts from those favorites on my radio show at our little FM station, WKDT (The Rock of West Point). We all have those favorite albums, right? Think back to yours…

I caught the Who’s Tommy tour at the Spectrum in Philly in 1970…pretty amazing…and along with Led Zepplin, after seeing these guys, to me I had found a sound I enjoyed a lot.

Fast forwarding to 1972…the orchestral version to me was “lame” (a modern word for what I probably called boring at the time)…then the 1975 version of the music, the soundtrack to the film…again boring to me. I really didn’t care about the story that much but thought some of the renditions were cool, like Tina Turner’s Acid Queen interpretation. But it seemed like a commercial remake machine at work and I had moved on to Live at Leeds, Who’s Next and Quadrophenia…Love Reign O’er Me…Mods and Rockers beatin’ the crap out of eachother?...a foreign concept to me.

Last night I saw the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre’s production of Tommy. Karen Paisley, the director, greeted folks as they came in; helping people find seats. She’s quite incredible. Like the well trained Catholic boy that I am, I took a seat in one of the “back pews”. She dragged me front and center, giving me a big hello hug. “Sit here where you can really see”. Front pew for me…close to the sweat, so close I could smell the greasepaint, and hear the actors breathe. I had a lot of fun…and I was confronted with Pete Townsend’s “narrative” and it almost shattered my personal memory of that afternoon with Jeannie in the summer of ’70.

Like Tommy, who sees and feels after his Mom shatters his mirror, this Tommy felt something very new watching folks who could be my children and grandchildren perform this rock-like operatic libretto and score. My experience with this music is now more elastic and meaningful, deep and resonant than ever before. This elasticity came though after some resistance. At intermission, I felt the first part was lame, overdone, and didn’t pay homage to my treasured 1970 LP. I listened to that Who in my head and held onto it hard. At intermission, I listened to the family behind me discuss the musical thus far…Mom, Dad (late 40s maybe) with four teenagers. They reconstructed the story, using terms like autism and PTSD. Man, I got pissed. Listen to the original album, I thought. I had to get away from the sociology lecture, go to the goodie table, get a coke and cookie and go outside to have some fresh air and a cigarette.

Outside, I let go. I decided to let go, or rather stretch myself a bit. Decided not to be such a stuck-in-the-past asshole holding on that image of Townsend smashing his guitar and amps at the Spectrum in 1970. The music had moved forward and I needed to as well. Tommy, you asshole…look how these folks are connecting to this! Smash your memory mirror and see, feel, and touch this. Live theatre does this...it changes you, somehow...

I felt, saw, heard, got the heat, listened, “got the opinions”, and got really excited at the feel of the show and the actors six inches away.

You have two more chances to shatter your mirror at the MET...tonight and tomorrow...but good luck getting a ticket...look for a scalper on Main Street and be sure to get one of the cool yellow T-shirts...

in Olde City

2011-05-24T11:55:00.003-05:00

Bricks, cobblestones, streets, alleys
Demarcation, bounded, Penn
Vine to Walnut, Front to 6th
Maybe more, a cemetary once
Washington, square, Franklin, ornery
In the pens dance, hall, bell
Lip her tea, party
Declinations, retail, high-rise
Old pity, young and pretty
Stainless steel cheesesteak trailers
Free cornered mats by Betsy
Sowing, seeds of posterity
Artisan pizza, bespoke soot
Crackers, Quakers once
Conscientious, Georgian, Federal property
Tree-lined, still
In Olde City
Penn went home to England.

pictured Elfreth's Alley, Philadelphia

conclusions

2011-05-24T11:23:00.002-05:00

Making them, coming to
Endings
Therefores, truths?
We draw them...
Arriving
How do we get there?
What, who, informs them?
The path(s)leading...
Or breaking trail, machete
Sharp or rather blunt, cold, stark
Relief? maps, elevations
Cardinal directions, true, north?
Going south, sometime
Chronometer, logitudinal slices
Platitudes, degrees thereof
Use your stuff, share
Get there, savor here
Present, presents presented
Now...

photo of an Avalon NJ sunset, the Back Bay by "hjhipster"

Dad and Mike yesterday

2011-05-08T10:51:00.001-05:00

midnight in Paris

2011-05-08T08:42:00.002-05:00

The people who move the Kansas City Ballet…last nights at the Lyric

2011-05-06T15:02:00.006-05:00

The word move danced in my head last night while watching the dancers of the Kansas City Ballet. Three more nights at the Lyric. Four more performances of Mercy of the Elements, Moves, and The Catherine Wheel Suite. A move soon, this summer, to their new home The Todd Bolender Center for Dance and Creativity, a new stage at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. Movement. The performance moved me as well.

These artists, this giving company of dancers, gave it their all last night. I cannot fathom their depth of talent and for that reason some of them could read this today and say “…if you think that was our all, come see us this evening”. I’m in no position to share a review and in fact I’ll venture to say that few writers in this city could craft a competent technical assessment. Dancers could but dancers dance, express with their bodies. William Whitener may be smoothing edges and making changes today prior to this evening. Eddie Verso could be sharing some coaching this afternoon to intensify an already intense Moves. Whitener and Aisling Hill-Conner will be sharing notes today to pump up the volume and fun of the Catherine Wheel Suite. James Jordan and Karen Brown, master and mistress, will have notes to pass on as well.

Last night I enjoyed the moments of stillness too. The moments of anticipation before the curtain rose, standing outside at intermission on the steps of the Lyric taking in the cool night air thinking of all those times here, meeting Eddie and Bill between pieces, smiles, handshakes and happiness, the hush after the last ovation as people left the theatre. I stayed for a moment to just take it in and savor it.

But what’s continuing to move before my eyes, making it very distracting to try to write this, are the vivid images of movement from last night, the poetry, the many palettes of colours, the moves, the elements, the sweet sights and sounds of it all. That’s what ballet does to me. These people who move for me in what at first seems like a perishable moment of expression seem to brand those images on my brain with a white hot embrace. It’s quite hard to describe, but you probably understand for you may have a tune in your head today, or an image of home, a loved one. Our world is full of movement and memory. Dance intensifies this world.

Sometimes movement exhausts. I know the dancers understand the meaning of tired far beyond my scale of measurement. On they’ll go this evening and every day until Sundays last curtain. And on Monday, rest? I doubt it. These people have to move, it is their art form to do so. Incredible.

___________________________________________

meet the people who move...

Contemplate scale for the next military venture

2011-05-05T18:15:00.002-05:00

An editorial piece in the Kansas City Star today asks us to contemplate reducing our role in Afghanistan. My recommendation is to consider scale as we posture for our next military venture.

In the cases of both Afghanistan and Iraq, as a former military planner and soldier, I winced at the overwhelming scale of our operations. Huge given, what to me were a good set of precise objectives. Since the Gulf War, we’ve gone in with guns blazing in an overwhelming way. We planned it that way. We rehearsed Gulf War II at places like Fort Leavenworth, Spring after Spring at the Staff College. We have a way of war which is to use all of our capabilities whether we need them or not.

Before the journalist-coined term “Powell Doctrine” there was the Weinberger Doctrine. Both doctrines consist of questions. Good ones, indeed. But along with the thought there’s the reality that we have a very healthy technical and industrial capacity to wage war. We have amazing tools at our disposal, and an impressive professional military force of talented trained people.

But should we always overwhelm? Is cunning a dead concept? Is secrecy no longer possible?

A governor on the engine of “overwhelming”, doing as we wish, kicking in doors, is the reality of nuclear weapons. Such is the reason we treat Pakistan so delicately, lest we forget…why we’re gentle with North Korea. Those who wish us harm know this. Those who wish us ill will watch as we repeat our military operational script in Libya.

We’re too hefty and too open. We’ve been building firebases for the last ten years. We never stay. We never intend to hold ground. So why occupy in the first place?

In the military I was trained to distill the murky into the clear and elegantly simple…and over the past ten years what was clear to me mission-wise was:

get Osama bin Laden
get Saddam Hussein
Over-simplification? Maybe…

Given what we haven’t learned yet, given that we’re leaning forward in our intellectual foxholes, given the ongoing battle simulations, wargames, rehearsals for the what ifs the military is tasked to prepare plans…we should consider the concept of scale and consider the scales we’ve tipped since the Gulf War. We should consider the art of cunning and the importance of secrecy.

And given all of this, America needs a more robust diplomatic corps to prevent conflict and engage with the world so we have fewer foreign military ventures.

Lean, secret, cunning…

Interrogate yourself

2011-05-05T17:06:00.002-05:00

If you could interrogate anyone living or dead, who would it be? I asked myself this question last year after reading an interesting book called “How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq” by Matthew Alexander and John Bruning. It’s a compelling story, well written by a guy who was an interrogator. He used a pen name.

This book got me thinking about the nature of questioning, the art and science of interrogation, and the modern narrative debates. Based upon the book and the thoughts it provoked within me, I wrote a play about three interrogators and their subjects.

But back to my question, who would you interrogate and why? What would you wish to know. What secrets do you wish to have them reveal?

After considering the question for a long time, my answer was Jesus Christ. Raised and educated a Catholic, the interrogation of Jesus really grabbed me. The story of the “passion” was something I heard and literally participated in year after year as an altar boy, walking the Stations of the Cross with my priests. The story took place in a real place. The gospels have various versions but a few things intrigued me. In light of how we view and see interrogations, in films, the media, Jesus, while tortured horribly remained vague to his captors. He never really revealed his motivations, and his interrogators seemed to not really care. Pilot washed his hands of the whole thing, literally. So when I read the word interrogation, my mind jumps back to Jesus and his confinement, his questioning, and his torture and final hideous mode of death, nailed to wood.

I’d never think of using torture if I had the chance to question Jesus. I’d really want to talk with him and question him, not his beliefs but find out more about him.

I also think of Abraham. His God interrogated him soundly. That interrogation started a movement of a family…and movements on a larger scale. Some think of it as an order from God, but it always seemed to me that Abraham did a bit of soul searching and made a decision on his own.

Interrogation is in the forefront of our national conversation and I’m glad it is there. We deserve more consideration of this rather dark art and why we as humans seem to continue to use it, how we continue to stretch the boundaries of torture and justify its use. Whatever I believe has no consequence given the fact that the captors, the winners, will always have the power to act as they see fit. Ends justifying means always the nexus of the debate, yet those wielding the water, the nails, the thorns have the upper hand over the people in captivity.

While writing my play, I came to a few personal conclusions, one of which is that the hardest person to interrogate is the self. It’s hard to ask ourselves the hard questions and even harder to give honest answers.

It’s a time now when people are asking a load of questions to others but I feel we need equal time for a bit of personal soul-searching. Thinking back to Jesus, I remember the bit of time the night before he was betrayed and captured. He sat in a garden and interrogated himself in way. Questioned his Father, doubted his role in life, questioned his motives. Rough to read and imagine, yet there’s something rather profound there to consider.

Maybe this doesn’t apply to military interrogations or those related to law enforcement. Interrogation is part of the human experience, perhaps; so ingrained in us that it will always be a subplot in testaments yet-to-be-written. This is not meant to be fatalistic, it’s just a fact we haven’t confronted because we don’t look into the mirror often enough and really interrogate who we see.

If you could interrogate anyone living or dead, who would it be?

Acoustic beauty

2011-05-05T15:31:00.004-05:00

I’m not much of a thing person, but one thing I’d like to have some day is a Martin guitar. Perhaps it’s my Pennsylvania roots longing, or the fact that I’ve heard a few played well in my life thus far. There’s something special about acoustic music. This is in no way a statement knocking the fun and sheer power of amplified music. I love rock ‘n roll a lot. But I love acoustic music including a beautiful symphony orchestra. The other instrument I love is the cello.

In the 70’s while at college, I escaped campus frequently to frequent the Towne Crier Café, then located in Beekman NY. It’s moved since to Pawling NY. This was an old roadside inn with great wood and …acoustics. The music there was cool. Members of the Band frequented the place which served no alcohol at the time, but there was other stuff available. This is not about the Towne Crier Café, though. This thought is about acoustics.

It didn’t bother me when Dylan plugged in. I’m not political when it comes to music, although there’s great discussion possible in the topic. I like instruments, the way they’re built to sound a certain way when played well. My favorite guitar players are Mississippi John Hurt and John Fahey. Acoustic musicians. Yes, I realize their recordings amplify things. Yes, I know they performed with mics. But back to the Towne Crier.

The music at the Towne Crier I enjoyed the most was acoustic…Leon Redbone comes to mind. Leon, his glass of whiskey, and his guitar. A mic for his voice, but no pickup. We listened to music there. It was admittedly a small place free of the riff raff conversations at the bar. People listened, musicians played. The place was like sitting inside of a guitar too. The acoustic guitar sounds fit there well. I know that’s not the case everywhere, but there it fit.

Not many places these days where acoustic music fits. Not many places where a guitar player can play a Martin unassisted by electricity. Not many places where a Martin can just be a Martin. In most venues, even concert halls, music competes with a lot of elements. Acoustic music, fingers on strings, bows stroking, reeds vibrating, drums pounding, horns blowing, somehow need electricity. In some small venues I think acoustic could happen but musicians are comfortable having to amplify. Singers too.

At the Towne Crier, I remember how we used to be able to sit close to the musicians. It was crowded often, but we leaned forward together so close that I could clearly see C.F. Martin & Co. est 1833, and hear it as well. This is not a memory trip because acoustic "is"...

Ballet lives

2011-05-05T12:16:00.005-05:00

I’m reading Apollo’s Angels: a history of ballet by Jennifer Homans again. I picked it up last year when it first came out. It’s more than just a history of ballet to me for it reads like a history book of Europe and America with dance as an anchor, or better yet a lens through which I’m seeing the passage of time, people, generations of influence and an art form. Jennifer was a ballet dancer and that experience she brings to the narrative makes the narrative that much more compelling to me.

Dancers express with their bodies. Talk, writing seems to understandably take a back seat to being in the moment of the dance, residing in the body to use it as a multi-faceted vessel to express and articulate, to tell a story. And while we do have film and video to capture the dance, the art form continues to be one so dependent upon memory in terms of thought but also as something, I understand a bit about having played too much golf, we call muscle memory. Deep below this muscle memory is the aesthetics of the art form, the memory and expression of heart and feeling.

Jennifer Homans laments what she sees as the slow disappearance of ballet. I hesitate to use the harsh word, death. The demographics and revenue numbers point to a dip in the Ballet Stock on Culture Street perhaps. It’s more than flat-lined from a quantitative way of looking at the world. But my optimism for the art form is purely subjective here and transcends that concept of hope. Here’s why.

Tonight, I’m going to the ballet to see three pieces with a contemporary, recent tag upon them. I know we categorize things based upon time and style, but this gives you a reference point. Two of the pieces are creations of living choreographers and the third is a very interesting dance without music by Jerome Robbins…you may remember him as the choreographer for West Side Story; another good reference point in your dancing memory. This performance will be fun. I’m in no way a purist or an aficionado when approaching ballet or writing about it. My ballet vocabulary is very provincial. I simply like it a lot.

I like thinking about the art when I see it. It challenges me to listen with my eyes and my heart. Listening with the eyes sounds strange I know, but by watching closely as well as stepping back to see the entire picture, the many dimensions, I always feel a story, a statement, even questions course around in my head. Realizing that these dancers create these dances from scratch, from utter stillness makes me appreciate that what I see upon the stage is but the tip of the iceberg that is their art. Add to this all of the musicians, production staff, set artisans, lighting artists, on and on. Ballet is theatre for sure.

Ballet as ballet as a singularity, as the only art form upon a stage, in its pure sense is a challenging prospect for modern day theatre-goers faced with a myriad of entertainment choices. Ballet is foreign upon initial consideration. But for me, while it’s cool to see dance as part of a musical, or inserted in a rock concert, as a sort of side-show in what we awkwardly call “performance art” a la Fringe Fests, seeing the art form as the focal point of one’s experience makes me feel something, intensely. It reminds me of the current showing of Monet’s Water Lilies triptych at the Nelson. You should see that as well. When you do you’ll be delighted by the setting for seeing the paintings. I don’t want to spoil the experience for you, but I’ll just call it serene.

Ballet’s not always serene in its form, for there’s lots of arresting pieces, but the setting for the art form, the atmosphere, the anticipation in me anyway, is always a neat mix of emotion grounded upon this idea of serene. It’s a peaceful place where I know I’ll see quite a number of things to add to my definition of beauty. I know the dancers will stretch their bodies and souls beyond my comprehension but I do my very best to stretch with them. I know it hurts too, truly there’s immense pain, physical and intellectual associated with dance, and ballet narratives speak to that often. I’m not going to talk about Black Swan, OK?

While Jennifer Homans’ book is stunning to me, while it teaches me so much, while I’m thankful that a dancer took a decade to write about her art, I must sway in my agreement to one of her conclusions. I think ballet lives…it resides in the hearts minds and bodies of those who dance, and for this person, it’s in me too. It’s deeply inside Jennifer as well, I just think that sometimes when we look back and then look forward, we become uncertain and a bit sad in the process trying to compare then, now, and a future of which we’re so unclear. After watching members of the KC Ballet rehearse Moves recently, under the direction of Eddie Verso, after talking with Bill Whitener about his new piece that premiers tonight…I’m certain that ballet lives…intensely. This is more than hope, this I feel, this I know.

May 5th and April 30th

2011-05-04T15:15:00.004-05:00

For May 5th, celebration of the Battle of Puebla, 1862...a symbolic victory.

April 30th - Camerone (Camarón) Day for the Foreign Legion...a symbolic defeat...parades and toasts in Aubagne and bars around the world to commemorate the defeat of Captain Danjou, 2 lieutenants and 62 legionaires confronted, one day in 1863, by over two thousand soldiers of the Mexican Army. The Captain's wooden hand leads the parade...and Le Boudin colours the marching with an 88 beat slow cadence for those wearing kepi blanc.

status history

2011-05-04T13:57:00.002-05:00

1st Friday in the Crossroads...May 2011

2011-05-04T12:51:00.002-05:00

Rachael Jane projects...

2011-05-04T12:36:00.004-05:00

A picture is worth a thousand words, and hopefully, dollars to benefit Emancipation Station, a shelter for homeless women located at 31st and Charlotte.

As part of this weekend’s “First Friday” events in Kansas City’s Crossroads District, on May 6th, Rachael Jane will project a slide show on a vacant building at 18th and Wyandotte featuring nearly 50 compelling images of homeless women and their children. Photographs will project at about 14-feet-wide on the face of the building, located at 1820 Wyandotte Street, and continuously change during the event.

Two years ago, Rachael Jane, a Parkville-based photojournalist, was assigned to take magazine pictures of women and children who frequented Emancipation Station, and was deeply moved by what she saw. After forging a relationship with Pastor Alice Piggee-Wallack, founder of the shelter, Jane worked for more than a year to document many homeless women and children’s stories through photographs.

“It is my hope that the people who see the images of these homeless individuals will see their sisters, their children,” Jane says. “I want people to connect with these individuals and to realize that while circumstances might be different, we are all bound by a common humanity.”

There is no fee to attend, but tax-deductible donations will be accepted with 100% of the proceeds given to Emancipation Station. (Pastor Alice Piggee-Wallack will be set up at a table underneath the photographic display to give interviews and receipts for donations.)

A few samples of the slideshow can be found here: http://www.janevision.com/sampleslideshow/

Rachael Jane has worked with some of the best photojournalists and picture editors in the field, including Dennis Dimick, an Executive Editor for National Geographic. Her work has been published and exhibited locally, as well as internationally at the United States Embassy in Portugal. Her photographs have run in The Guardian-UK, Present Magazine and many other publications. For more information, see www.janevision.com.

Photo montage proof for an article about Tony

2011-05-04T11:59:00.002-05:00

everyday/everynight at night at the Nelson, recently :-)

2011-05-03T17:13:00.000-05:00

Everyday/Everynight: You've Died In a Dream from Love Drunk on Vimeo.

a Fayum Portrait at the Nelson-Atkins

2011-05-03T09:33:00.004-05:00

My favorite painting at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is a Fayum Portrait located in the art deco room after one views the Meritites exhibit. This link from UMKC gives a nice overview of the history of the painting. Recently, I read John Berger's book The Shape of a Pocket. It's a book about many things, with many perspectives that really turned my brain inside out. One small chapter is a discussion of the Fayum Portraits. Berger shared his amazement, his consideration of what it might have been like for the subject to sit for such a portrait; a picture meant to accompany them in death, not a likeness meant to hang over the family hearth. And what was it like to be the painter of such a passport picture to the next world? This portrait was meant, literally, never to see the light of day, and yet now we see it. We look into her eyes, and we can even count the tiny grapes on her earring.

the photograph to prove

2011-05-03T00:35:00.004-05:00

As many await the official US government photo of the dead Osama bin Laden, I am reminded of Che Guevara's....and so it goes...

How to Walk to School redux: how I got it wrong

2011-04-30T13:24:00.002-05:00

I first met Jacqueline Edelberg in January 2010. She came to the Kansas City Public Library to talk about her new book “How to Walk to School”. She gave a lovely talk. I had read the book a few times before she came. She and her story inspired me.

Jacqueline connected with local Kansas City notables to include then Mayor Mark Funkhouser. Mark, inspired as well, asked Jacqueline to come back again to help with his Schools First Program. Mark asked me along to listen as I’m a writer who writes about things here, including education. It was a time of hope for change. I thought I saw what could be done and a bit about how to get there. I got it wrong.

Recently, I re-read “How to Walk to School”. And this piece goes out to my fellow Kansas City artists. Food for thought…

A key element of the Nettelhorst Elementary School, in Chicago, (continuing) Renaissance is art; art that connects with children, art delivered by giving artists. Sure there’s a bevy of wonderful parents, great teachers, supportive community leaders, taxpayers, and school leaders. There’s even a French market periodically on the school grounds. Local businesses love to help out. Yes, the financials are umbrella’d beneath a healthy “.org” trust. This book is an exquisite blueprint for those searching for a design.

Back to we artists. We have an opportunity in Kansas City to connect with schools. It’s not easy, though. I’ve tried, yet not hard enough. Educators are wary of artists. Without active arts programs in the schools, they’re not used to working with us and we’re not used to partnering with them for the most part. There are exceptions in Kansas City of which I’ll be happy to discover. The Chamber of Commerce is wishing for a city-wide arts festival. You may have read about that. Anyway, we seem to have an opportunity to enrich children and their lives with art. But, it’s going to be difficult.

As an artist, you’re probably like me…living a bit more than leanly. We want to sell art, tickets to shows. We’re competing for grants and we’re downright busy doing this thing we have to do. We wish to sustain our art in some way. This education connection may not pay off financially, I know. I shared my concern with its difficulty.

I find it awkward watching a half-billion dollar performing arts cathedral being built out the west view of my window on Walnut, while to the east, this city smolders, schools closed, teachers let go, and children…well, I’m not sure how they’re doing really. No resentment for the disparity just puzzlement.

“How to Walk to School” redux, has me thinking about connecting with a city school somehow as an artist, a writer. I’m not sure where to start but I will soon. I know people have great intentions from many perspectives. I expect our new mayor will address education on his agenda very soon. What I understand now, knowing there’s so much more to understand, is that Jacqueline’s blueprint includes many elements and people with various skills and talents. I now know that as an artist there’s a place for me to assist and connect somehow.

Have a read of this book if you can. There may be a place for you in the future renaissance of Kansas City’s public schools.

What will I do without my Present?

2011-04-30T12:48:00.003-05:00

Present Magazine folds its last page today with a gentle sound. Pam Taylor and Pete Dulin did so much for me as a new writer in this rich city so full of art and beautiful artists. I am so grateful to them for letting me find this writing voice of mine which is still a bit raspy and needing practice. Mixed emotions, for sure. What will I do without my Present? Write on…I suppose. Thank you, Pam and Pete.

“Cowtown Ballroom…Sweet Jesus”, I missed it

2011-04-30T11:56:00.004-05:00

I remember the night at the Tivoli in May (I think) 2009 when "Cowtown Ballroom…Sweet Jesus” premiered. I was with my Kansas City native friend Marc. I'd recently moved to KC. We were there to see another film which I forget. That night in the lobby by the ticket window, I met Joe Heyen. Despite my suggestion to Marc, we didn’t see Cowtown. Marc told me all about the place later from his “having gone there many times” perspective. Fast forward to this past week.

Tony Ladesich and I had lunch together. I didn’t realize that he was a producer and the director of photography for the film. Duh. My bad. Anyway, Tony gave me a copy to watch and this week I watched closely and thoroughly enjoyed it; learned a great deal about this city and the music. Now when I go to the now Cowtown Mallroom on Sundays, it’ll mean so much more.

I’m from Philadelphia. Wow, my whole music experience was different. I graduated from a rather hoity-toity prep school in Delaware in 1971, the year Cowtown opened. Despite my preppy education, and industrial very Catholic urban neighborhood upbringing, the priests were rather left wing and even radical by today’s standards. By 1971, the counterculture in Philly seemed a distant memory. The San Francisco cultural scene never took root where I lived. With a great density of universities, what I saw at the few protests I attended were college students engaged in active political dissent. SDS was pretty active. Lots of speeches, some drugs stuff, but more sit-ins and petitions.

Philly music had a great deal of soul, too…soul music that is. It was a cool musical stew without defined color lines. Local TV DJ Jerry Balavat, The Geator With The Heater, was a Philly white Catholic kid who helped blend the tunes really well. We danced a lot. Later, heading to a rather un-college military academy, I missed the whole ferment of cultural change, big time.

Watching the film, it struck me how “California to me” the sound was here then. Looking at the lists of artists who played at Cowtown, it was music I had shelved for the most part. Dumb ass me thought Brewer and Shipley were commercial San Francisco hippies, for the song, One Toke Over the Line, when it hit our Philly airwaves sounded really lame next to James Brown and the Stones. Such as it was from my little lens. Cowtown seemed like a very fun scene and the three years must have been amazing.

Watching the film opened my eyes to a wider bit of America. Made me realize what I missed. Reminded me that experience is alright, but context has meaning too, place. Tony’s artistic construction of the film, the visual narrative and feel, the atmosphere was very beautiful, felt really authentic…this coming from a younger person, a musician, who has a resonant local authenticity of place all his own. This must have been a genuine labor of intense love for many people…Tony for sure.

Today I feel blessed, Tony…grateful for your gift, happy to know you and this city a bit better. Thank you. See you at the Mallroom (which now will feel like a musical cathedral to me).

Late to Alacartoona, but not really

2011-04-30T11:00:00.005-05:00

Last night I watched Alacartoona’s film Night is the Mirror. I suppose we remember Alacartoona as a band; the title for a collection of musicians. Having never seen Alacartoona, you could say I’m quite late and naively new to this, now no more, phenomenon. The film transported me somewhere, not to the forgotten cabaret as the trailer suggests, but rather to Prague and Dresden around 1969 when I was a young student (a year after the “Prague Spring”), to the film “Unbearable Lightness of Being” which made sense to me much later, explaining more about what I saw and felt.

In Dresden (then East Germany), I saw my first Theatre of the Absurd-like play. In Prague, saw a few interesting cabaret shows. Since all this was in foreign languages, and my German at the time was marginal, it was hard to figure out the verbal bits. My friends helped me out with that but the visuals and music, the atmosphere seemed really cool, and cerebral; a word I didn’t know at the time.

That’s where “Night in the Mirror” took me…back, then forward again, then into the film (1988) “Unbearable…” and then to the book (1985-ish) which I dove into later.

I know the four artists of Alacartoona no longer perform, but the concept seems an important one to sustain. In watching the film, I felt compelled to translate some of it into German (even French). The context would fit well in the city of Strasbourg, France (Alsace) which is a culturally complex place with French and German swirling like a blender that doesn’t always blend well…conflicted. What would happen if this concept could reside in a context where it could really shine? I know lots of Kansas City folks saw it, enjoyed the performances, and “got it”, with all its delicious edges. But to me, this deserves translation, and exportation…back home. I envision seeing this in Berlin, Prague, Strasbourg, and Vienna. I hear this in German, French, and Czech colloquial, spoken music.

Alacartoona…four artists who it feels are four sides (or more) of our faceted intellects, the puppeteer with the spotlight, and the amazing cartoon painter could perhaps, over lunch in a dark edgy joint, consider reconstituting this…concept…with French and German performers, a translated script(s), and a plan for export. Alacartoona lives…every night, it seems.

Sorry for being late on this…show?...concept?...whatever...it ain't over, folks :-)

still resisting the upgrade

2011-04-29T15:31:00.002-05:00

eenie meenie mynie moe

A Christel Highland design...page 78 in the May 2011 issue of Kansas City Spaces

2011-04-29T14:54:00.003-05:00

click the picture above to read

Local Music coming to Trezo Vino

2011-04-29T10:03:00.002-05:00

Watch this space...more info on the way...in the meantime check out their website 11570 Ash Street in Leawood, Kansas

The MET's 2011 - 2012 Season

2011-04-29T09:36:00.004-05:00

For more information visit http://www.metkc.org/

Rules for Widows by Michael Ruth
Sept 8 - Oct 2, 2011
Shortly after her husband's unexpected death, Iris uncovers mystery secrets about the man with whom she built her life and family. As the family gathers together, Iris finds herself in an emotional standoff with her overbearing sister Liddie, dealing with the nagging questions and frustrations of her thirty year old, unemployed son Chuck and her daughter Erika, who has returned for the funeral with her new girlfriend, Nif. One good question leads to another. Comedic and poignant by turns, as allegiances shift and more secrets are unearthed, this family repeatedly faces the question: "How much do you really want to know?"
Featuring Jan Rogge as Iris and MET Core company member Marilyn Lynch as Liddie. Other casting in progress..

All My Sons by Arthur Miller
Nov. 10 - Dec. 4, 2011
The quintessiential American family drama by one of America’s greatest playwrighst! All My Sons by Arthur Miller, based on a true event, is the Post-World War II story about the Kellers, a seemingly “All American” family. Layer after layer of secrets cover a terrible truth. During the war, the father, Joe Keller, allowed his factory to ship faulty airplane cylinders to the U.S. Armed Forces, killing over twenty American pilots. He framed his business partner for the crime and engineered his own exoneration. Now his older son, Larry, is missing in a plane crash and the younger has come home to reveal that he is about to marry the partner's daughter. Held up to the clear light of day, the affair is revisited, and truth is revealed.
Casting in progress: Featuring MET Core company members: Matt Griggs, Donette Coleman and Courtney Stephens, Costumes by Atif Rome.

The Seagull by Anton Chekov
Jan. 12 - Feb. 5, 2012
An international masterwork! When a hush descends on Chekhov’s restless country estate dwellers — as it often does, abrupt and unbidden — the air remains alive with crosscurrents of thought, clashing chords of longing and the steady thrum of time passing. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to experience this 19th century masterpiece. The play elegantly displays the poetry of everyday life; The silences, cliches, stammerings and attempts at high expression by his characters are a mirror to our own improvised lives. The Seagull contains, as Chekov put it, “5 tons of love.”
Featuring MET core company member Bob Paisley as Trigorin, Coleman Crenshaw as Konstantin and Jessica Franz as Masha. Other casting in progress. Costumes by Atif Rome.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Dale Wasserman
March 1 - 25, 2012
McMurphy is a charming rogue who contrives to serve a short sentence in an airy mental institution rather in a prison. It seemed like a good idea at the time! This, he learns quickly, was a mistake. He clashes with the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. In the contest of wills that ensues, he quickly takes over the yard and accomplishes what the medical profession has been unable to do for 12 years, he makes a presumed deaf and dumb Indian talk. He leads others out of introversion, stages a revolt so that they can see the world series on television, and arranges a rollicking midnight party with liquor and chippies. Funny and moving, horrifying and tragic, tour de force roles for every actor involved and an unforgettable theatre experience for every audience member.
Featuring MET Core company members Alan Tilson and Jan Chapman as Nurse Ratched. Other casting in progress.

Pride and Prejudice by John Jory
Adapted from the novel by Jane Austen
April 12 - May 6, 2012
All the wit and romance of Aune Austen’s classic 1813 novel comes to life in this refreshingly past paced and engaging new adaptation. Finding a husband is hardly Elizabeth Bennet’s most urgent priority. But with four sisters, and overzealous match-making mother, and a string of unsuitable suitors, it’s difficult to escape the subject. When the independent minded Elizabeth meets the handsome but enigmatic Mr. Darcy, she is determined not to let her feelings triumph over her own good sense— but the truth turns out to be slipperier than it seems. In a society where subtle snubs and deceit proliferate, is it possible for Elizabeth and Darcy to look beyond his pride and her prejudice, and to make the best match of all?
Featuring Robert Gibby Brand as Mr. Bennet and MET Core company member Katie Ligon as Charlotte. Other casting in progress. Costumes by Georgianna Londre Buchanan.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
May 31-June 17, 2012
Tragedy tomorrow, Comedy Tonight! Outrageous, farcical things pile upon one another to create a glorious car wreck in this riotous “Roman” musical farce. The slave Pseudolus strikes a bargan with young Hero—if Pseudolus can arrange for Hero to get the girl of his dreams, Hero will reward Pseudolus with his freedom. And from this, all else ensues. Winner of multiple Tony Awards, this play could accurately be titled, “Many, many, funny things happened on the way to the Forum!”
Casting in progress. Directed by Bob Paisley. Costumes by Georgianna Londre.

Tommy at the MET, May 17th to June 5th

2011-04-29T09:17:00.002-05:00

This Tommy's gonna go > to the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre

The Photography of Ray K. Metzker at the Nelson-Atkins, through June 5th

2011-04-29T09:05:00.003-05:00

This one is my favorite..."My Philadelphia"...a nice contrast to Roxy Paine's silver tree outside...

Yael should leave his office as well

2011-04-28T08:01:00.004-05:00

Read Yael's parting shot to the editorial ridden body of Mark Funkhouser. Yael should write a book...with Mark :-)

David Petraeus for President

2011-04-27T08:26:00.003-05:00

Perhaps with his recent re-assignment announcement as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) this may be a bit premature. Too early for a bid in 2012 as the Democrats’ face-off candidate to Donald Trump? Conjecture is often worthless, but in this case envisioning Petraeus as president is pretty easy for me.

Here’s a soldier statesman approaching 37 years of public service; 41 if you wish to include his four years at West Point. He graduated in 1974. David’s a scholar as well with a Ph.D. in International Relations from Princeton University. He’s a prolific writer and a calm wise communicator. Is he the right person for the job? I think so.

Serious times ahead that demand serious competent skillful leadership. Times will require strong wise diplomacy, too and despite David’s insightful military skills, he knows the paramount importance of diplomacy and international engagement. Business and economics? Consider his experience stewarding the defense budget. His multiple talents include dexterity with the numbers and resources necessary to “support and defend”.

It’s comforting to me knowing that Petraeus will be advising our National Command Authorities as part of his full-time yet-to-be-approved job. His counsel will be priceless; counsel we’ve needed for a while in this less-than impressive Cabinet.

David’s greatest talent, in my opinion, is the value he places in people and their education. For in the end, people matter most. He more than knows this. He lives it. We’ll see where this all goes, but it was wonderful to hear that General David Petraeus is candidate for DCI. It’s cool to think of all the talented people he’ll bring into his new fold. It’s amazing to think of all the people he’s mentored over the years and he’ll be the first to tell you, he’s thankful for countless mentors as well.

I hope he runs for President some day. Best wishes, General.

And if he chooses not to run, here’s a nudge to General Lloyd Austin… :-)

With Tony Ladesich

2011-04-25T19:54:00.003-05:00

Spent this afternoon with Tony Ladesich discussing, art, film, songs, storytelling, the world, and food...we shared meatloaf recipes. He kidnapped me to have lunch at El Camino Real in KCK...wow...I'm hooked :-)

Should Kansas City organize a regional arts festival?

2011-04-24T18:11:00.002-05:00

With such a rich variety of artistic happenings and venues, museums, galleries, studios, performing arts stages, local music haunts, the Arts Institute, film fests, first Fridays, third Fridays, and let’s include high school music and theatre productions, from my vantage point it feels as if there’s a festival happening all the time. For Kansas City to hold a MidWest, a la SouthBy “center by center” arts happening would be cool and for that to happen corporate underwriting needs gathering. If and when organizers organize we’ll see the start of a club system with SXSW-wrist-banding, color coding, and hospitality marquee tents for members only.

If and when this festival grows, we’ll see artists moving further out to the edgy bits of the area to practice their art in places where the rent is reasonable. Progress is good and progress will progress. This will be interesting.

What could encourage distant travelers to come to Kansas City for an arts festival? There’s certainly plenty here, yet regularly scheduled arts events of all forms seem to be suffering from a lack of ticket purchasers, subscribers, and gallery patrons from in and around our Metro. Could a festival throw a wider net across the nation, or even the world, to announce we’re here…creating? Perhaps so.

Yet with all this hopeful feeling, I sense we may be missing an opportunity with our arts. When thinking of the many art forms, and perhaps this is the teacher in me writing, while we may seek commercial artistic success, we could contemplate how our artistic community could engage with schools and the children therein. I’ve met a few people recently with a vision of selling Kansas City to perspective businesses with this “we’re a wonderful arts city” elevator speech. Exciting stuff, yet perspective families looking to move to KC know schools are challenging…to the suburbs they will go. That’s business I suppose.

But back to children and schools, even the private ones, with scant arts programs…should Kansas City organize a regional arts festival, one that embraces our children, and enriches their schools? Now there’s something for which to be festive…our future.