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| The Quotable Oleander |
The following commentary was aired on Kansas Public Radio on January 29, 2010--Kansas Day:
Where there’s a way, there’s a will?
Folks, they always say, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” But a lot of little towns in Kansas—Here, included—can’t find a way or a will. Our little towns are quickly disappearing, and we’re not sure how to save them. So maybe if there was a way, there’d be some will.
Here’s some ways I’ve noticed. Lucas has made itself the home of grassroots arts. Of course, they had the Garden of Eden, that cement creation of S.P. Dinsmoore. But they’ve added a Grassroots Arts Museum, another primitive artists’ home, and they give residencies to such artists. In short, they have become a destination.
Alma, that gem in the Flint Hills, with its limestone buildings, has adopted historical preservation, succeeding in their nomination of the entire downtown to the National Register of Historic Sites. Not only do they have incentive to restore and preserve, they don’t have any choice—their designation forces them to keep their town an intact showplace for stone architecture.
Other towns, Olpe and Cottonwood Falls come to mind, have signature restaurants. Whenever anyone is in the area, why wouldn’t they drive a little farther to eat at the Olpe Chicken House or the Emma Chase Café?
Peabody has long been part of the Kansas Department of Commerce Main Street Program. With 42 buildings on the National Register, and with events like Hometown Holiday each December, they have attracted outsiders, and remained attractive to themselves.
When in doubt, towns have adopted Oz. Liberal has Dorothy’s House, Wamego the Oz Museum, Sedan the Yellow Brick Road.
And don’t forget eco-tourism. Why, in a several-mile stretch along Highway 50 near the Tallgrass National Prairie, you can spend time on a Flint Hills Ranch, wagon or horseback rides and then sleep in the bunkhouse at the Flying W Ranch. Or you can stay at the Doyle Creek Mercantile Bed & Breakfast, or the Doyle Creek Ranch in Florence, the same ranchthat hosted last year’s Symphony in the Flint Hills.
So, folks, whether arts, restaurants, historic preservation, Main Street Programs, Oz, or eco-tourism, surely there’s a way. Now we need some will.
I shared my observations with the good citizens of Here, Kansas, down at the Co-op the other day. “The only thing we’re preserving is ourselves,” said Claude Anderson. “Our truest arts are quilting and canning,” Mabel Beemer bragged. “Our restaurant, Eat Here, closed when you could still get breakfast for under a dollar,” Elmer Peterson remembered. “Our Main Street is Kansas Street, with just three buildings left,” said Barney Barnhill, “and if we saw Dorothy we’d probably send her to Sedan to get her a start on her journey.”
“Surely there’s some will beyond your last will and testament,” I said.
“I feel a new business coming on,” Claude Anderson teased. “How about the Abandoned Bank Bunkhouse, preserved and serving Mabel Beemer preserves to starving primitive artists who paint only scenes from Munchkinland?”
Folks, in this new decade, I hope your towns can do better finding a way and a will.Listen to this commentary on Kansas Public Radio.
The following commentary was aired on Kansas Public Radio on December 29, 2009:
Oleander on the Common Drinking Cup
Folks, I’ve been waiting all of 2009 to announce an important Kansas Centennial. One hundred years ago, in 1909, the Kansas State Board of Health abolished the common drinking cup in public facilities in the State of Kansas.
This was the work of Samuel J. Crumbine, one of my favorite Kansans. Dr. Crumbine, of Dodge City, was appointed Secretary of the State Board of Health in 1904. From that office he published monthly bulletins that campaigned against food adulteration, the house fly, the roller towel, the rat, venereal disease, and tuberculosis. Topekans still hoard their “Don't Spit on Sidewalk" bricks. Because of Samuel Crumbine, Kansas was the first state to pass Pure Food and Drug, and Water and Sewage laws. We gave the world the flyswatter, invented as a “fly bat” by Frank Rose, of Weir City, during Crumbine’s “Swat the Fly” campaign. Crumbine created a Division of Child Hygiene and lobbied the Kansas Legislature to pass a Vital Statistics law that went on to become a national model. The good doctor resigned in 1923 under political pressure. After all, Governor Davis was the first Democrat elected in a long time, and wanted to exercise some patronage, even though it meant discharging one of Kansas’ most forward-thinking public servants.
One hundred years ago, in his fifth year as Secretary of the State Board of Health, Crumbine fired his salvos against the common drinking cup. Yes, one cup might be attached to a water source—spigot, fountain, well—in all kinds of venues—rail cars, stores, courthouses, parks—and each person consuming water shared the germs of everyone who had drunk before. Cumbine wrote:
The common drinking cup and the germ of diphtheria are partners.
An individual drinking cup is cheaper than a package of anti-toxin.
Good water is more to be prized than fine rubies, and clean hands are better than much fine gold.
The paper cup, container and dishes are the cheapest and best health insurance available.
If your roof and well both leak, fix the well first.
Folks, Crumbine went directly to the sources of disease. He understood germ theory, and anywhere germs lived was enemy territory: flies, rats, spit, adulterated food, sewage, polluted wells and the common drinking cups. Dr. Crumbine was persuasive enough to make these things enemies of Kansans, too, and for that we must salute him. In a time when we resist science—everything from immunizations to global warming—I find comfort in time travel: 100 years ago, medical science was at the basis of our health policy. Before 2009 ends, please raise a cup, though not a common drinking cup, to a persuasive, forward-looking doctor who put Kansas on the national map for public health reform. Or, if you’d like, blow him a kiss, down through time. Blown kisses to a century before, are, after all, more sanitary. As Cumbine wrote:
There are microbes, so I see,
Germlets in a kiss;
Maybe so, but they must be
Bacilli of bliss.
Listen to this commentary at Kansas Public Radio.
The following commentary was aired on Kansas Public Radio on November 20, 2009:
Oleander on Genetics
Folks, what do I know about genetics and natural selection? Not much. But my great-grandson came for a visit last week. And what do you do with a twelve-year-old boy in Here, Kansas? But the weather was nice, and Iola Humboldt suggested I put him to work in the garden. If you’re like me, you’ve been harvesting more and longer than usual—at least that’s true of my green beans. I couldn’t keep up with them, so I let them go.
Imagine me in the garden, then, picking the dried husk of beans. I’m selecting some for seed. The thinnest beans were tender and sweet. Should I save those, plant their seeds next year, select for those traits? Of course, if I can’t keep up with the beans next year, as I couldn’t this year, I should select the beans with the largest seeds. Iola can boil them up into the white kidney beans that most green bean seeds, if left to dry in their pods, will become. Or maybe I’ll just plant both, two rows side by side, one to eat, one to go to seed. Unless they cross-pollinate and ruin my strategy. For what the heck do I know about selection and genes and traits? I’m no Thomas Jefferson, no Mendel, experimenting with the seven dominant traits of peas.
No, I’m just out in my Here, Kansas, garden, pretending to know what I’m doing, entertaining my great-grandson as we husk the thick skins of the pods from the nearly-dried, mottled beans inside. When I say, “Let’s save that one for next year,” the boy dutifully puts it in a small paper bag.
“Are these like Jack’s beans?” he asks me.
“No,” I admit. “But they’re magic. Plant them in the ground and who knows what will come up.” I put some in the bigger bag for the beans to boil up, to stretch stews and soups, giving Iola and me some protein and fiber. How much protein, how much fiber? I don’t know.
The boy and I sort through the small hill of beans we’ve picked from the dying plants. We work for over an hour, and the boy wants to quit. But I need to finish. “We finish what we start,” I say, nodding.
The boy nods, too, imitating my gesture of determination, even though I can tell he doesn’t feel determined.
“We don’t want to waste these beans, do we?” I ask.
“No,” says the boy.
“We’re gardeners,” I say.
“We’re gardeners,” repeats the boy.
We hunch over the pile of beans, strip the pods from the seeds, work in unison, sometimes sighing together, sometimes showing each other the funny shapes and laughing, sometimes throwing the pod skins into the wind to watch them float away. We concentrate, we sort, we make our way to the bottom of the heap.
I might not know much about genetics. But me and that boy, we’re two peas in a pod.Listen to this commentary at Kansas Public Radio.
The following commentary was aired on Kansas Public Radio on September 3, 2009:
Oleander on Fossils and Evolution
Folks, Kansas was once submerged beneath a great inland sea. As a result, we are rich in fossils, and proud of our fossilized past. Iola Humboldt and I, being fossils ourselves, decided to turn our summer vacation into a fossil run.
The Natural History Museum at the KU began collecting fossils early. Professor B.F. Mudge, walking down Kansas Avenue in Topeka in 1873, noticed the footprint of a Paleozoic amphibian in a curbstone. The rock had been quarried near Osage City, so he went for more. His discoveries are in the Museum basement. “Upstairs,” a staff member told us, “you’ll find an exhibit on evolution. It traces the theory from before Darwin and natural selection, on up to the present.”
“That’s good for those busloads of Kansas kids,” I said.
“Some won’t come,” the staff member said. “Evolution has been controversial.”
“I’ll climb the stairs toward evolution,” Iola said
“It may be the ascent of man,” I cautioned, “but we’ll have to do it slowly. These bones feel as old as the ones in the basement.”
Folks, we also drove to the Fick Fossil Museum in Oakley. The Ficks found an ocean of fossils on their land. Out of them, Mrs. Fick created fossil art. Shark’s teeth are arranged to make an American flag. Small clam shells are the bark on the Tree of Knowledge in her portrayal of the Garden of Eden. Nearby stands a four-foot wax painting of Mr. Fick as a Cro-Magnon man, shaggy and stooped. “Did the Ficks believe in evolution?” I asked the volunteer. She didn’t know. “Do you?” I asked.
“Not so much,” she said, even though surrounded by case after case of fossilized plants and animals.
The Keystone Gallery, near Monument Rocks north of Scott City, is packed with local discoveries. Chuck Bonner and Barbara Shelton are the proprietors and fossil hunters. The Bonner family has made significant fossil finds for generations. I asked Chuck Bonner if he believes in evolution. “Of course,” he said. But, he qualified, he doesn’t like the self-satisfied humans who think they are the end-all and be-all, the highest rung of the evolutionary ladder. He excavates and admires the bones of complex, strong creatures.
Bonner’s grandfather worked with Charles Sternberg, and any fossil trip will include the Sternberg Museum in Hays, an institution that shows how evolution works, from before inland sea to after. How refreshing, given that Kansans so frequently submerge themselves in controversies about evolution. Each step to understanding the theory helps us.
Folks, 2009 is the 150th anniversary of The Origin of Species, and the 200th birthday of its author, Charles Darwin. Let’s celebrate our contribution to the knowledge of a rich and revealing fossil past. As Iola and I discovered, Kansans too often love their fossils, but hate evolution. Let’s be more like Iola Humboldt, climbing the stairs at the KU Natural History Museum. “I want to take the next step,” she said, “even if it’s not easy.”Listen to this commentary at Kansas Public Radio.
The following commentary was aired on Kansas Public Radio on June 12, 2009.
On Preservation
Folks, when you live in a town like Here, Kansas, about all you have left is your history. You may remember that we took our cue from other towns, those with the World’s Largest and Smallest and First and Most Notorious of things. We discovered we had the “World's First, Smallest, Brick, South-facing, Abandoned Carnegie Library in Kansas, From Which the Dalton Gang Checked out a Street Guide to Coffeyville." This spring, we decided to preserve that historical structure with the idea of turning it into a museum. After all, the basement is jam-packed with oddities. Among them—Bob Dole for President pins, the hat Alf Landon threw into the ring, and one of the original flyswatters made by Frank Rose’s Weir City Boy Scout troop, back when they nailed a square of screen on a yardstick and called it a “Fly Bat.” Talk about Kansas history and invention.
In Here, nothing is easy. Once we decided to go for the Kansas and National Historic Registers, Claude Anderson fought us. His Co-op is close to the library, so once we get the designation, the state’s historic environs law means the preservation office will have to approve improvements or changes in surrounding properties. Claude liked the bill that was introduced in the legislature, the one that would strip the environs inspections and approvals, but our elected officials finally agreed with the rest of us in Here. History is worth protecting, not just piecemeal but whole cloth.
Of course, once we get the historical designations we want, we’ll need to apply for State Tax Credits to help with the preservation. That Wichita contractor doesn’t come cheap, and 25 cents to the dollar tax credit helps us make the investment in Here history. Unfortunately, omnibus bills are like the omni-basement of the Here, Kansas, Carnegie Library—you never know what’s in them. Turns out the legislature capped the amount it will pay out. So we might get a tax credit sometime, but most of us in Here don’t have a lot of “sometime” left. We have to convince our legislators that the preservation of the past is economic development. It is not just rescue, but reward.
And it turns out that even Claude Anderson likes a reward. Just last week he stuck the word “Museum” after his “Here, Kansas, Co-op” sign. Three people came in. “Where’s the museum?” they asked.
“You’re in it,” he said. “Remember, this place hasn’t changed since 1952. Eisenhower has just been elected.” And he pointed to the “I Like Ike” poster on the wall. “Do you see any sign of Elvis Presley?” he asked. “Any pictures of the earth from outer space? Do you see a computer? Come look at this cash register,” and he made it Ka-ching.
Folks, he’s looking to put his building on the register, just like the library. If you ask me, he’s giving historical preservation a bad name, but at least he’s on our side. And if someone wants to visit his 1952 gas station museum, all the better. We’ll fill it full of brochures for Here’s real attraction, what will be the newly preserved and renovated “World’s First Smallest, Brick, South-facing, Abandoned Carnegie Library in Kansas, From Which The Dalton Gang Checked out a Street Guide to Coffeyville.”Listen to this commentary at Kansas Public Radio.
The following commentary was aired on Kansas Public Radio on April 23, 2009.
Late Spring Fools April Fools
Well, folks, April has been Poetry Month, so I walked into the Co-op on April first and held forth with my favorite rhyme:
It’s Spring, it’s Spring, it’s Spring,
The bird is on the wing.
Absurd, absurd, absurd,
The wing is on the bird.
It was April Fool’s Day, and now I admit to being a fool—for Spring has spent the entire month trying to arrive in Here, Kansas. Yes, the birds were on the wing, fat robins—maybe too many of them. And the crocuses croaked. And the daffodils are wandering across the yards like yellow clouds. And we have tulips. But the hostas are still hasta manana.
When I think of true Spring, I think of Mabel Beemer marching into the Co-op the first week in April to announce that her potatoes have broken through in the garden, cracking the soil like tiny volcanoes. To brag that she’s already eating radish sprouts as she thins those flat-leafed crowders whose seeds are so small she can’t sow them far enough apart the first time through. To tell us that her beets seem so thick in the stem that they will be unbeaten this year for size and taste. That the cilantro she let go to seed last Fall is a carpet between the red cabbages she set out on April Fool’s day.
Seems she was fooled, too. Each morning she stood watching the black soil for those little sprigs of green. Each afternoon she studied the next round of seed packets waiting on her table. She puts them in the same configuration she’ll plant them: green beans, and corn on the south side, squash and melons to the north. Each night she hoped for enough moonlight to pull her potato sprouts toward light. But by mid-month we hadn’t yet seen her at the Co-op, crowing like one of her gangly roosters.
“So, it’s a late Spring,” I told Iola.
“After record-breaking high temperatures in February and March.”
“That’s right, 73 and 86. I remember that because Barney Barnhill turns 73 this year. Claude Anderson will turn 86.”
Folks, I’ve lost some of the spring in my step, but I brag that my mind is like a steel trap.
“Because so much that’s in your brain seems trapped inside?” Iola asked me.
“Like Mabel’s seeds have been trapped in the ground,” I said. “They’ll come up. Just like I’ll remember your birthday next year.”
Folks, Iola can be a little cruel, but not as cruel as April, the cruelest month. For this month of poetry, my old friend from Lawrence, Steve Bunch, wrote, "If April is the cruelest month/ the cruelest day is April one-th." In Kansas, Spring often fools, and not just once. May we all have a budding, blooming, sprouting May.Listen to this commentary via Kansas Public Radio.
The following commentary was aired on Kansas Public Radio on Febuary 18, 2009, and published in the Topeka Metro News on Febuary 20, 2009.
Majority Rule/Minority Protections
Folks, the inauguration of President Barack Obama is well behind us. Of course, the discussions over nickel cups of coffee in the Here, Kansas, Co-op are ever about politics, economics, stimulus packages and state budgets. Our conversations are hot, cold and tepid. But Claude Anderson said after the election, “I didn’t vote for Obama, but he’s our president, and I wish him well. After eight years in the majority, I can accept being in the minority for a few years.”
“Minority?” I asked. “Claude, you’re in your nineties, you’re a Kansan, you live in rural America. You don’t have cable TV, or Internet, or a cell phone …”
“Oh, those things,” he said, as if they weren’t important.
But folks, they are. For example, I recently read that two-thirds of Kansas counties, 69 of 105, have fewer than 10 people per mile of public road. In this time of budget cuts, the Kansas Department of Transportation might decide to only fund highway construction and maintenance in more populated counties. After all, I pointed out to Claude, that’s the logic of commerce. And you’re in another minority.
“That would hardly be fair,” he said. “Roads are freedom—to leave, to come back, to stock my Co-op, to have visitors and to visit.”
“Exactly,” I said. Folks, as a society we are equal parts majority privilege and minority freedoms. Serving the needs and protecting the rights of the few of us—the elderly, the rural, the racial and ethnic minorities—is just as important as the right of the majority to elect leaders and make laws.
Of course, sometimes we have to be held to our ideals of racial equality, or of equal pay for equal work across gender lines. This past election saw ballot questions defining marriage, as though the majority of citizens in places like California, with their Prop 8, can decide the rights of a minority—gay and lesbian citizens.
“What do gay rights have to do with citizens per road in Kansas?” Claude asked.
“Think of it this way,” I said. And, folks, here’s my argument. Barack Obama is president because a majority of us voted for him. But he is also president because for years people stood up for the protection of the rights of African-Americans. Hillary Clinton ran against Obama in the primaries as a viable female candidate for President because for years people fought for women’s rights—to vote, to hold office, to serve the country in the military, to become firefighters, police officers, athletes and bankers.
“Minority protection,” I told Claude, “is as important as majority rule.”
“Kansas roads?” asked Claude.
“Ten of us per mile out here,” I reminded him. “How about we each stand on our tenth of a mile and hold up one of the Bill of Rights? Make a point about minority protection, freedom, mobility, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. No majority should try to rob anyone of those roadside rights.Listen to this commentary via Kansas Public Radio.
The following commentary was aired on Kansas Public Radio on January 13, 2009, and published in the Topeka Metro News on January 9, 2009.
Holiday Invasion
Folks, Iola Humboldt’s family invaded us for the Christmas holiday. Her grandson came on December 23 with his wife and two boys, one 12 and one 10. Her niece arrived Christmas Eve, bringing a cat named Matilda and a dog named Ranger. We didn’t have much room at the inn, so to speak, but we squeezed everyone into our little bungalow, except for Ranger, who stayed in the manger—our tool shed with the floor covered in straw.
An avalanche of presents cascaded from under our little tree. We brought all three leaves for the dining table out of the basement, and so much food spilled from the kitchen I thought we might all founder. After dinner we read The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, even though he didn’t steal Christmas. Iola’s grandson read from the Good Book about the shepherds and their flocks by night, the star in the east, the baby in swaddling clothes. Before bed, we read The Night Before Christmas. Soon, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse, not even Matilda the cat.
Christmas morning came to us Hereins in Here-ville. Iola and I found the stockings we’d hung by the chimney with care. Ours were full of oranges and apples, since we still remember the Great Depression. The niece, a college student, found the iPod her parents had given her to slip into hers. The rest of them found candy, more than I could have eaten in a year. The great-grandsons devoured most of it in a few gulps. Then they ripped into presents like an army of invaders.
They received an army, too. Soldiers, and computer games with soldiers to load onto the grandson’s laptop. And warriors from some fantasy game they like, and superheroes and foam dart guns. We had armies and arsenals. Pretty soon those boys found targets—ornaments on the Christmas tree, mistletoe hanging from the light fixture.
The grandson’s wife tried to settle them down. “Remember the holiday,” she said. She sat in front of the upright piano to sing carols. “O little town of Bethlehem,” she began. Sounds of rocket fire sputtered from the mouth of the 12 year old. “How still we see thee lie.” Machine gun sounds, the booming of cannons, exploded from the 10 year old.
She kept singing. But by the time she started “Silent night, holy night, all is calm …” she threw up her hands and took herself for a liar. Both boys whistled down missiles, took gunshots to the heart and toppled over onto the couch.
“Peace on earth!” yelled the grandson.
But the niece had just let Ranger in the house, and he found Matilda, and they chased each other between the legs of the dining table, and the cat caught the tablecloth in her claw and down came the breakfast dishes with a crash so loud the boys were silenced.
“Good will to all,” I said.
“God bless us every one,” said Iola.
Folks, those are wishes we can all use, what with missiles and rockets and tanks ranging the earth, and with everyone fighting like cats and dogs, whether in Here, Kansas, or the Holy Land itself.
Folks, I wish for peace in Here and peace on earth for this New Year of 2009.Listen to this commentary via Kansas Public Radio.
The following commentary was aired on Kansas Public Radio on December 9, 2008, and published in the Topeka Metro News on December 5, 2008:
On Being Here
Folks, town building in Kansas has an interesting history. Why, in territorial days, when Kansas was just an idea, so many towns were planned and begun that the Territorial Legislature of 1859 passed a resolution stating that at least every alternate section of land be set aside for farming.
I may have told you about how Here, Kansas, got its name. My ancestors were on the Santa Fe Trail, looking for land, and they kept asking the wagon master, “Are we here, yet?” They were whiney as a bunch of kids on a family vacation in the back of a station wagon, and one morning the wagon master left them. They weren’t smart enough to realize they’d been abandoned; they thought they’d arrived. They called the place Here, and we’ve been Here ever since.
I like being Here. The very name shows an acceptance. We are where we find ourselves. We’re here. So many towns overestimated themselves. There was once a Utopia and an Eden and there still is a Paradise, which is close to the Garden of Eden in Lucas. The name Here shows contentment, because Here is as good as it gets. Dickinson County may have Enterprise and Industry, but neither has attracted more of either enterprise or industry than Here, Kansas. Our name also shows that we predicted a realistic future. We are still Here. No flourishes, nothing to attract settlers with promise of crops (think Garden City) or promise of water (think Coldwater and Sharon Springs) or security (think Protection).
We haven’t changed our name a bunch, either. Weskan, a combination of Western and Kansas, is just five miles from the Colorado border—only Saunders and Kanorado are closer. Weskan had its start as a railhead on the Kansas Pacific Railroad, and was dubbed Monotony Siding. The town upgraded to just plain Monotony, then finally to the current Weskan.
Folks, let me tell you about some places that are no longer on the map. Reno County once had towns named Purity and Desire. There was a town named Echo in Douglas County. Novelty, in Montgomery County, lasted from May to June of 1881. Rock-a-by survives as Rock in Cowley County. Since some town names are traits, Tidy (in Stafford County) might be an Example (in Haskell County) to Haphazard (in Dickinson County). A town in Rawlins County, Mirage, lasted a full 10 years. There is no longer any Air in Lyon County. Young America, Osage County, last only a few years. And there was another Echo, Kansas, in 1874. And 1878. And 1894. And 1900.
Outside the post office in Wright, in Ford County, and spelled W, a sign reads, "We've been Wright for more than 100 Years!" And in the same spirit, Here has been Here. Right here, as a matter of fact, and proud of it.Listen to this commentary via Kansas Public Radio.
The following commentary was aired on Kansas Public Radio on September 26, 2008, and published in the Topeka Metro News on October 3, 2008:
Co-operative Discussions
Folks, Claude Anderson is mad. Says we’ve changed the rules of discussion at the Here, Kansas, Co-op. You see, we generally sit down every morning with our nickel cups of coffee. We like our discussions to be civil. So, like lawyers who can strike jurors with no explanation, we can each take a topic off the table.
Here is split pretty much down the middle, Democrats usually on one side of the table, Republicans on the other. Maybe not a typical small Kansas town in that way, but we’re no doubt typical in our sometimes-heated discussions.
After the two parties had their political conventions, we’ve become like parliamentarians arguing rules rather than substance. After Denver, Claude took “change” off the table. I counted by taking the “experience” bullet from his gun. Republicans Elmer Peterson and Young Hopkins, perhaps anticipating their party’s convention, removed “deficit” and “Iraq” from discussion. Barney Barnhill and Mabel Beemer further disarmed the Republicans by taking “immigration” and “religion” off the table. With all those issues taboo, we went from garden fertilizer to offshore drilling to sports to the weather with hardly an unsettling moment.
Then came the Republican convention in St. Paul. After hearing Governor Palin one night and Senator McCain the next, I walked into the Co-op with one word to take off the table. “Politics,” I said, “and by that I mean to include, as the Republicans do, ‘everything.’ Change, family, experience, religion, abortion, immigration, lobbyists, gender, glass ceilings, race, education, taxes and the hunting of large game animals with hockey sticks.”
“You can’t do that,” said Claude.
“I didn’t do it,” I countered. “The Republicans did. They make everything political.”
“Democrats do, too,” said Claude. “So what are we going to talk about?”
“The hurricanes,” said Elmer Peterson.
“Republicans used Gutav,” I said, “just as the Democrats used Katrina.”
“You’re saying everything is politics?” asked Claude.
“When used for political warfare and political gain,” I said. “Beside, politics is off the table, remember?”
“Entertainment?” asked Mabel Beemer.
“Neither party succeeded at that,” said Barney Barnhill.
“You’re talking politically,” I reminded him.
“My old truck?” asked Hopkins.
“Gas guzzler,” I said. “Don’t you care about the environment?”
“That’s politics,” said Claude.
Folks, in Here, we decided to talk about quilts for the rest of September, and play cards through October. Come November, we’ll lift the ban. By then, hindsight will be 20/20. We’ll be civil again, united behind whatever new President we get out of all this rankling.Listen to this commentary via Kansas Public Radio.
The following commentary was aired on Kansas Public Radio on September 25, 2007, and published in the Topeka Metro News on the same day:
Strong Sunflowers
Well, folks, on the day after Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama campaigned in Ohio, National Public Radio reported: “Later in the day, Obama attended a barbecue across the state. He stood before hay bales and sunflowers doubled over from the heat . . .”
Since I’m a citizen of Kansas, those “sunflowers doubled over from the heat” caught my attention. Neither Kansans nor sunflowers, you see, double over from the heat. What the reporter saw, no doubt, were heavy-headed crop sunflowers, their shells full of meat, bending toward the ground, soon to be harvested. Sunflowers love heat, which is one reason they’ve bloomed so cheerfully in fields and in ditches, draws and grasslands, long before political reporters began traveling through the Midwestern states.
They’ve also been blooming in the national mind for a good long time. As early as 1867, Kansas women adopted the sunflower as a symbol in their fight for suffrage. The American Woman Suffrage convention of 1876 declared: “The sunflower seems an appropriate flower, as it always turns its face to the light and follows the course of the sun, seemingly worshipping the [arche]type of righteousness. Let us all don the yellow ribbon, and fling our banners to the breeze. By this sign let us be known, and the more who wear it the greater our strength will be.” These women never “doubled-over” in the long journey from Seneca Falls in 1848 to the ratification of the woman suffrage amendment in 1920.
By 1903, the Kansas legislature had written this state symbol into law, noting its “historic symbolism” and lauding its connection with “the life and glory of the past, the pride of the present, & [the] majesty of a golden future.”
And in 1936, the sunflower found a place in presidential politics. Kansas governor Alf Landon ran for President. Given his uphill battle against the very popular President Franklin Roosevelt, his sunny disposition and his campaign slogan that pitted “New Frontier” against “New Deal” made the sunflower an apt symbol.
Landon’s face, with a winning smile, replaced the brown center of the sunflower in millions of posters and buttons. Like the “tough daisy” the sunflower has been called, Landon took a lot of heat in his campaign against the overwhelmingly popular FDR. In the end, Landon carried only two states. He leavened defeat with a memorable quip: ''As Maine goes, so goes Vermont.''
Folks, Kansans don’t double over in the heat of political campaigns. And sunflowers don’t double over from the heat of summer, especially a mild one. Women’s suffrage brought their sunflowers to seed. Alf Landon may have gracefully bowed out, but he returned to the fertile and receptive ground of Kansas to become the Grand Old Man of the GOP, a role he played until his death in 1987, just past his 100th birthday.
Indeed, the sunflower is such a powerful icon that a national reporter might be certain to mention it in a campaign report, even from Ohio. But doubled over? Indeed!Llisten to this commentary via the Kansas Public Radio Archives.
The following commentary was aired on Kansas Public Radio on July 10, 2008, and published in the Topeka Metro News on July 18, 2008:
Pockets
Well, folks, I brought Iola Humboldt a unique sewing project the other day. The right-hand pockets of three pairs of pants were worn to nothing. They had holes in the bottoms of them, and when I turned them inside out, they looked like cheesecloth.
“How long have you had these?” she asked me.
“They’re my newest pants,” I said. “My oldest ones have stronger pockets.”
Folks, she found that hard to believe, but then a woman is not as close an observer of pockets as a man. “Most of your slacks don’t have pockets,” I pointed out. “Same with your skirts and dresses.”
“I’ll buy some fabric and make you new pockets,” she said.
“While you’re at it, can you lengthen the pockets in my new Roebucks overalls?”
“What?” she asked.
“They have the shortest pockets I’ve ever seen.”
Folks, used to be that overall pockets were deep. A man had his keys, and his pocket change, and a pocket knife, at least for starters. Have you tried to fit a pocket knife into a pocket these days? You can’t do it.
Here’s my thinking. Overalls are mostly for ornament anymore. Sure, farmers buy them, and wear them, but you darn near have to special order them. When was the last time you saw a pair of overalls in a department store? And whoever makes them has forgotten about pockets. Used to be I’d fit in a hammer, nails, a couple of fishing lures, some twine, a button or two, maybe even a small flask if I was fishing late at night. When I was a boy, I could empty nuts, bird nests, BBs, worms and at least one toad and maybe even a turtle from my pockets on a good day. Later on, my boys could, too.
Now, my front bib barely holds a pencil and a cell phone. My back pocket isn’t even as deep as my checkbook, so it sticks out and I find it on the seat of my pickup truck. My front pocket won’t hold much more than keys and a little loose change, but then I don’t carry change anymore, since I need so much of it to buy any little thing. Folks, decent overall pockets have gone the way of cash. They’re as thin as a credit card, as small as the balance at the end of the year for a farmer.
And pants? Pockets are a mere ornament, front pocket just big enough for a few keys, back pocket for a thin billfold. And where do we carry everything else? Well, we don’t have anything else, and everyone knows it.
When I was a boy, my father used to come home from town with penny candy, and we could always find one more piece in the bottom of his capacious pocket. These days, when I come home from town with a new pair of pants, or new overalls, why, I’m lucky to find a pocket at all.Listen to this commentary via the Kansas Public Radio Archives.
The following commentary was aired on Kansas Public Radio on May 28, 2008, and published in the Topeka Metro News on May 9, 2008:
State Flowers
Folks, Tommy Burns is a big booster of Here, Kansas. He wants us to have tourists. He researches anything that propels people to what he calls “attractions.” A while back, he visited the huge concrete buffalo built by Ray Smith out by Longford, Kansas. Tommy came back with an idea, but it did not involve buffalo. You see, Smith was a trucker who collected rocks on his routes. In Longford, he laid out a thin cement map of the United States. In each cement state, he put a rock from that actual state. Inspired, Tommy enlisted the help of Mabel Beemer, Here’s best gardener.
At least five years ago, Tommy tilled his acre of backyard in the shape of the United States. He dug up patches for unattached Alaska and Hawaii behind his garage. He mounded up some mountains, bordered the 48 states in green plastic, and planted state flowers.
Of course he and Mabel started with Sunflowers. Then Goldenrod in Nebraska and Kentucky, Violet in New Jersey, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and Illinois. Texas Bluebonnet, lots of it. Vermont Red Clover. Some more Goldenrod in Alabama, to mix with Camellia–since they upgraded in 1959. California Poppies. He put the Roses in North Dakota and Iowa, Georgia and New York. Then Nevada Sage Brush, New Mexico Yucca, New Hampshire Purple Lilac–he was sure these plants would flower the next season.
“And when they do,” he said, “think of the visitors to Here.”
He did get a little discouraged when he contemplated the long wait to see Maine White Pine Cone and Tassel. What were they thinking? Or Louisiana and Mississippi Magnolias, if they could survive Kansas. Same with North Carolina and Virginia Dogwoods. Mabel wasn’t sure they could make an Arizona Saguaro Cactus bloom.
Folks, just last winter, his Oklahoma Mistletoe, a parasite on a locust tree, nowhere near Oklahoma on his map, put on waxy white berries. Nobody visited. Nobody even came down from the Co-op to share his excitement. Tommy was finally tired of the cultivation of variety.
So this spring he tilled the U. S. of A. and planted cockscomb, poppies and red impatiens to create Red States. He planted asters and chicory for the Blue States. Simple, he thought. Not much to remember. Not much to think about. And only a few states to replant every next spring, after the election. Mabel missed the variety, but neither of them missed the work.
Now, Tommy doesn’t care if he has visitors or not. He’s taken to sitting on his back deck with a 20 oz. bottle of Coke, surveying his domain, proud of his simplified country.Listen to this commentary via the Kansas Public Radio Archives.
This page is updated with each new commentary.
To find archived Oleander commentaries click on the link. Currently available are those that aired from February 2002 to March 2008.
Address all comments to
Tom Averill
Washburn University of Topeka
1700 College
Topeka, KS 66621
tom.averill@washburn.edu