Conflicted in Kansas

The wheat crop is not good this year,
but it's still pretty.

I've been away for the past week or so because I went back home to Kansas for a family visit.  As I was waiting in Dallas to board the flight to Wichita, I looked around and realized that I could always tell when I was on a flight to Kansas.  The crowd was familiar; I felt like I knew those people even though I had never met any of them.  I had grown up with those people.  I had known them my whole life.  There is definitely a "look" to the crowd and I'm quite certain that I fit in, on the surface.  I can't quite describe it and I won't try -- there's definitely a common element, but it's not entirely homogeneous.

Iris in my mother's garden.

I was headed home to visit my mother for Memorial Day and for her birthday.  Our maternal family would gather from across the country over the next couple of days. We are a small group even when all together, barely more than a dozen or so, but we all get along and we all like one another. My sisters and their significant others and offspring came from Kentucky and Montana, sort of a reprise of our family trip to Yellowstone a few years ago. My mother's sister, her son, and their spouses would join us for the Memorial Day weekend as well.

My immediate family, going around the table from left to right:
My sister Kate; her partner, Kim; my partner, Clay; my mother,
Shirley Jacques; my sister, Paula; her husband, Pat; their two
kids, Melissa and Matt; and then me.

Clay and I both made it to Wichita late Thursday night in spite of stormy weather that delayed and cancelled a number of flights. The next day we rented a car and drove up to Salina.  Only a native will describe Kansas as beautiful but a native always will. The vast sky, the unobstructed views, and the subtle hues of ripening wheat are eye candy to the native born.  Even the rich black topsoil laying exposed in fallow or freshly turned and planted fields is beautiful.  Formed by receding glaciers, it attracted settlers in the 1800s and it sustains them to this day.  That soil is rich in history as well as nutrients.

The sunflower is the state flower of Kansas, but
this is one of my favorites, a prairie wildflower
called purple poppy mallow.

The sky over Hall Cemetery

We made up 40 some pots of flowering plants to place on the graves of family and friends for Memorial Day. Most are in a cemetery near Delphos, Kansas where my mother and her sister grew up and where their parents, my father, uncle, and many other relatives are buried.  A few miles away is another cemetery with more distant relatives, including the pioneer generation who homesteaded the nearby land that my mother still owns. Roots run deep in the rich prairie soil.

We placed our potted flowers, watered them well, and staked down the pots against the ever present wind.  As we did so, we repeated the stories and histories of those we came to remember, forging and reinforcing our collective memory.  It may or may not be entirely accurate but there is no one there to contradict or correct us.  The Western Meadowlarks that inhabit the area provided the musical score and made it clear that they prefer our deceased relatives over us, the living intruders on their territory.

Over the next several days we spent time together as families do. We ate, drank (a lot) and were merry. We did some things around my mother's house to help her out, something we don't often have the chance to do. My sister in Montana has two children whom we don't often see, so it was a chance to get acquainted with them as adults.  I was pleased but not surprised to learn that they were not just good kids, but had grown into genuinely good people.

So where's the conflict?  If you saw "August: Osage County" you saw a portrayal of people who were hauntingly familiar.  Except, our family really has none of the dysfunctional characteristics and really none of the conflict.  We all went our own ways as we were raised to do, but we all still love and care for one another.  The conflict in my head isn't with my family as much as it is with the larger community of people in Kansas.  I guess I can best describe them as the nicest bunch of assholes you've ever met. Individually they are warm, friendly, and kind-hearted people. Collectively, however, they go into the voting booth and shit out the biggest turds they can produce.  These are the folks who brought us the likes of Sam Brownback, Pat Roberts, and Bob Dole.  Dwight Eisenhower was also from Kansas and he was probably the last decent Republican.  He would be ran out of the state by the christian taliban teabaggers that form the electoral base in that state currently.  Eisenhower proves the adage that the only good Republican is a historic (dead) Republican.  

Enjoying a few cold ones at the end of the day.

Frankly, it's a horrible place on a political and cultural level.  This is a place that tried to mandate the teaching of biblical fairy tales as science in public schools.  This is the place that elected an attorney general who was so fanatically anti-abortion that he was eventually sanctioned by the Kansas Supreme Court and was ultimately reduced to teaching at Jerry Falwell's Mickey Mouse bible school, Liberty "University."  This is the place that was poised to pass the archetypal law authorizing anti-gay discrimination in places of business and public accommodation until even the right wing national Chamber of Commerce advised against it. 

It doesn't seem to matter how far right they are, Kansans will elect them if they wrap themselves in the flag while carrying a bible in one hand and an assault rifle in the other.  Needless to say, Reagan, Bush, Bush the lesser, McCain, and Romney all carried the state handily in presidential elections. 

Above and below, the view from Coronado Heights, just south of Salina.

I'm well aware that there is a distinct minority of good people in the state.  I'm also well aware that even Kansas does not have a monopoly on ignorant assholes, even if they do have more than their share.  Virginia is certainly no bastion of progressive thought either, but I am tough on Kansas in a way that I'm not on say, Mississippi, Alabama, or Arkansas, because I always thought we were better than that. 

Souvenirs from the trip for the dogs' collars

The "Ol Stuga" is a bar in Lindsborg, an area
settled by Swedes south of Salina. The bottom line
reads: "Times we won't remember with
friends we'll never forget."  I like that.