What a trip south to Missouri, or “Missoura” as any native of the Show Me state knows. My home from age 15 until I left the rolling hills of Kansas City in the late ’50s, bound for adventures beyond my wildest dreams, a cow town on the Missouri River, it’s not.
The Amtrak rails took me there for two warm weeks with lots of walking up hills and down and up hills and down again. It’s similar in size to Milwaukee, with similar urban problems, including potholes and a sagging economy. It is also morphing into a city for “entertainment.” The dazzling Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts opens this fall, thanks mostly to the enormous fortunes squirreled away by both the Hall and Kauffman families. A huge facility houses mega events in the downtown area where, once upon a time, I sold Easter hats to brats, and just like our Third Ward area, Kansas City has an area devoted to galleries housed in former warehouses. There are numerous places to stuff your faces, but that said, the worst meal I’ve EVER eaten was served on huge plates at Strouds, now into year 70 of producing deep-fried mistakes. If you’ve ever eaten a mound of chicken livers and gizzards, fried to the nines, I’m here to say: cease and desist.
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| Roxy Paine’s “Ferment.” |
On a beautiful site near the Country Club Plaza stands the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, newly attached to a rave-reviewed (by the New Yorker Magazine) addition known as the Bloch Museum. Underway in the Bloch was a blockbuster exhibition of a trio of Monet’s water lily paintings. It was impressive, but not nearly as grand as Roxy Paine’s stainless steel sculpture (“Ferment”), newly installed and standing tall on a nearby rise of manicured lawn. A twisted and writhing sculpture of mind blowing craftsmanship, it alone made my trip south worth the endless bleak Amtrak announcements, “if you see something say something.” But no one frisked me, thank God.
I’m here to tell you that The Bloch has a gallery featuring photography from various greats, including the work of Milwaukee’s Ray Metzker, who was born here in 1931, and is featured in a solo exhibition. In many ways, the elegant addition is akin to wandering through the Calatrava, as many of their contemporary works are by artists housed at the Milwaukee Art Museum. I didn’t expect to encounter anyone from Milwaukee, but I did. Art educators Carolyn White and Leon Travanti were touring with MAM’s Fine Art Society.
What are the chances of meeting them in Kansas City? In Milwaukee, we are almost next door neighbors and rarely see each other.
While waiting for the Southwest Chief to carry me from Chicago to Kansas City, the woman next to me struck up a conversation detailing her trip to Chicago to be part of Oprah Winfrey’s show focused on the 450-plus Freedom Riders. Jorgia Siegel Bordofsky is the real McCoy, and at age 19, while a student at the University of California, Berkeley, joined up to travel with the riders bound for Jackson, Mississippi. Arrested with the other riders (for breach of peace) when they reached Jackson, she made bail and then traveled to New York City to give speeches in Bryant Park, the object being to raise monies for the jailed riders. She majored in anthropology at UC Berkeley, but is now an RN teaching the Lamaze method of natural childbirth. With her two granddaughters in tow, they were training back to Santa Barbara, a long, long haul from Chi to there. On her lapel was a large black and white button printed “Freedom Riders.”
Before I left my former hometown, I tucked a small book into my carry-on bag. A collection of essays (The Language of Passion) by Mario Vargas Llosa, on page 235, he writes about “The Lost Battle of Monsieur Monet.” Written in 1999 after several visits to view a Royal Academy exhibition, “Monet in the 20th Century,” I read the late master’s words as the Amtrak snaked across the 1920s iron bridge spanning the swollen Mississippi at Ft. Madison, Iowa. The essay ends thusly:
“All signs indicate that the magnificent Monsieur Monet died without understanding what he had achieved, and perhaps also with the sorrow of having failed to realize his modest dream.”
So many dreams, so little time.
