Kansas Weekend Scene

Even though I live in Kansas City MO, I don't often get to visit the state that is 1.5 miles to the west (and the birthstate of my mother).  This weekend offered quite a few opportunities. And my poor little car even made it to Lawrence and back!

I attended the dress rehearsal for The Golem performed by the Owen/Cox Dance Group at the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park, KS.  Here, Christopher Barksdale is teaching the Golem to dance - a brilliant and graceful expression of communication.

We ate pretty decent BBQ at McGonagle's Meat Market.  They had a board game called Mr. Bacon's Big Adventure.  I'm not gonna lie - I might be buying this for my husband for Chanukkah.  Because I am culturally sensitive.

A late summer Kansas sunflower at sunset.

The Punch Brothers at the Lied Center of Kansas.  Great show - good energy, interesting music, and Christmas lights.  They'd played a day or two before at the Hardly, Strictly Bluegrass Festival and driven all night to get to the show - they were acting a little quirky and silly, but still musically sound. You can read my review here.


All my adventures were dispersed around work and other obligations, but I had a fun time venturing out into my neighboring state.  Can't wait to go the whole 1.5 miles back, again.

Imagi-packing

Whenever I am planning a trip, I always, always spend the most mental energy planning on what to wear.  Not the sights, not the itinerary (though that's probably second highest), not booking the hotel, or traveling from place to place.  It may come from the fact that what I pack is comepltely in my control, whereas hotel availability, cash funds, event schedules, etc. are not. It may also come from the fact that when I travel I want to be prepared for all situations, weather-wise and socially.  And also that I want to present the best version of myself.  But mostly that when you travel, you don't necessarily have to be the everday-version-of-you anymore. 

In my next trip, I'm taking on the persona of "Arts Journalist - loose in NYC."  I'll get to wear my best business/casual chic and hopefully catch the eye of fashion journalist Steve Schubert.  Unlikely, as I think he's in Paris and anyway, I'd be hard pressed to morph my pure MidWestern comfort-chic into his prefered style of tailored Euro bohemian fashion forward-ness. 

Not only that, but October is a changable month.  It could be 80 degrees or 40, rainy, snowy or wonderfully sunny.  I need to look professional and put together.  The good thing is my wardrobe is eclectic.  The bad thing is that I dress very emotionally on a typical day, pulling items from the closet based on how I feel.   With the contents of a suitcase you can't really do that.  Blerg.  I wish I were one of those variation-on-a-theme type of dressers, but unless you count the very broad theme of always-having-some-sort-of-cardigan, I don't do that. 

I'm excited, though, to present the very best version of my professional self and I'll let the fashion cards lay where they may.

The Snailr Project: participating in a meta journey

I'm incredibly envious of the brain that concocted this massive and BRILLIANT plan: for two weeks blogger/writer Anna and her Beloved took a train journey circling over half the United States.  British (or English, I'm going to get it wrong one way of the other), but residents of San Francisco, they took the opportunity to see A LOT of this country in a fairly short amount of time.  The brilliant part, though, was to break away from the immediacy of techno-dependancy and instead document the trip old-school with a modern twist.  Whatever may have been twittered or blogged or emailed got written on postcards and mailed to the individuals who signed up to recieve them.  We, in turn, get a taste of the journey's variable emotional quality; reading some of the other cards that have been posted on the internets there's an interesting mix of adventure, insight, excitement, overwhelmedness, mundacity, confusion and trial.  Which is generally typical of any trip.  Anna's documentation, however, takes the journey beyond the train tracks and into the lives of friends and strangers alike. 

"After being struck down by food poisoning for the entire third day of the trip, I swear of eating anything, ANYTHING, even coffee, that has passed through the bowels of an Amtrak dining car kitchen (a horrible turn of phrase, sorry), instead relying on trail mix and energy bars picked up at our city stops along the way.  And when I discoverd horrendously overpriced cup-o-noodles from the lounge car cafe, those became a staple.  You'd think, then, I might come back from this trip thinner.  But the amount of fried chicken + bbq, montana steak and [other] regional specialties I stuff in my face everytime we 'detrain' says not so."

(Maybe a little product placement to rake in the advertisting shekels?)

This came at the very tail end of the trip all the way from Portland OR!  It's too bad we can't undergo a trip with a prescient knowledge of unpleasant food poisoning, often the bane of traveler, and then avoid the perilous bacteria....that's a certain type of adventure I think we could all do without.  But this sort of experience is EXACTLY what this project details...taking the moment, the thought, the experience and sending it out. By way of the venues throughout the blog community, then, the trip gets reassembled, reassessed, reevaluated not just from the memory and perception of the travelers, but by the receivers, who in turn have the opportunity to report and consider the message sent. 

I know that when I've been on a trip I always am most homesick on the way back; at some point your mind is just finished with the constant new stimuli and ready to be on familiar turf. 

Welcome home, Anna!

Summer 2010: Some journeys

The first, most important, most magical, memoriable and treasurable journey was May 8, 2010. That day I married my partner in crime. Every single schlocky sentiment about him pertains and every single sublime aspect of my life stems from him being in it. Walking down the aisle to him was the best journey I've ever taken.

California, May 2010.

Call it a honeymoon, a vacation, whatever. My husband and I went to California just a week and a day after we were married. Chillier than we anticipated, but beautiful. I can see why people love living there. Explored LA, the PCH, and San Francisco. Our experiences in California keep cropping up in our "real" lives and have added dimension to articles, tv shows, and stories. We left our story there unfinished and will go back.

Indiana, July and August.

The catalyst was weddings, but they were very different events. In July I partially packed up my bedroom. I've written about that elsewhere. August had a whirlwind series on events, with family outings to the Indianapolis Art Museum, the Indiana State Fair, the wedding, and explored the area southeast of Indianapolis called Shelby. In all my years growing up north of the city, I'd never found this interesting little pocket.

Missouri, Sept.

Last Thursday we went on an excursion to KCK to explore pawnshops. One of our travleing companions was a native son and regaled us with a nostaglic narrative of the places and events from his childhood and formative years. This, along with the grey and spitfully rainy weather, made it a sentimental journey. Friday the rain and damp had been blown away leaving a fresh cool breeze and sunny skies. My husband, dog and I went up to Weston to hike. We got bogged down a bit since two of the trails had flooded over during the rains and left a sheen of mud across the forest floor. But the afternoon was spent on the patio of an old Irish pub sampling the wares and passed smoothly.

That's the short and sweet of it - a breif synopsis of our past whereabouts. More adventures to come.

Ways to walk

In the past year, I've walked about a fair amount. I walked around Europe and the Midwest. I've walked with my boyfriend, who became my fiance, who bought me a puppy and now I walk with the puppy. I walked in the past of the family I'm about to join and I walk daily in preparations for the future. Traveled by plane and train and automobile to the village of my fiance's grandfather, the village from which he fled the Nazis, to see his home, the river and the castle and the hillside to which he brought his wife, forty years - a concentration camp, an ocean, a different life - later.

I've primarily walked in great comfort. I've walked off temper tantrums and sluggish moods. Through rain storms and in the tremendous snows of the past winter.

Within all these varied walkings I've neglected the writings, the ruminatings, the documenting - here at least. The journaling was neglected, too, and the other blog, but oh, the living.....the living has been fabulous.