Kansas City and That Amazon Headquarters?

Fuggedaboudit.

Dear Amazon, 

We Picked Your New Headquarters for You

Your dislike, if not disdain, for mass transportation alone makes sure we're not getting this, Kansas City.

Congratulations.

Best Coffee in the State?

There's one more new article out there in the media world, this one days old, extolling

The Best Places For Coffee In Every State

And they're not all Starbucks.

As for little ol' Mizzerree, they say it's not in St. Loo:

Quay Coffee: Get a head start on your day and show up early to Kansas City's Quay, since there's always a crowd.

As for Kanzass, it's close by, also.

Black Dog Coffeehouse: If impressive latte art makes your day, then Black Dog in Lenexa is for you.

It seems the Kansas City metropolitan area just has it all, doesn't it?

So bon appétit, Kansas City. Enjoy.

Links:  Quay Coffee | Kansas City River Market

Black Dog Coffeehouse

Big weekend for Kansas City

Yes sir, a big few to several days coming up for the metropolitan area.

First up, Saturday night, Waterfire on Brush Creek on the Plaza. A great, fun, unique and free event.

Next up, also Saturday night, the defacto Hallowe'en Saturday night since the actual Hallowe'en falls a few days later on a week night. It will likely be crazy.

Because the full moon is the 29th, it's rather perfectly situated as nearly full for Saturday night and then, again, nearly full on the actual Hallowe'en, the 31st.

I'm thinking it's going to be at least a crazy weekend in the area, if not also a deadly one for some.

Here's hoping I'm wrong on that last point.

Happy Hallowe'en, y'all. See you at Waterfire.

Link: http://moravings.blogspot.com/2011/10/brush-creek-two-fer-tonight.html

The World According to Jack Cashill

Thank God for Jack Cashill, huh?

Or so he'd have us think.

As he keeps telling us, we need him to help us all by explaining things like the Holocaust and the real racial history of Kansas City--and the US and world, I'm sure--as he's done in this month's Ingram's Magazine.

This time, he's telling the developers of this reputedly upcoming "Museum of Suburbia" that's to go out in Johnson County. I love how he even starts the column, just to straighten everyone out:

"Johnson County’s planned National Museum of Suburbia (NMOS, pronounced “no mas”) is not necessarily the horrible idea that most pundits think it is."

As I said, I love that. This museum idea is so bad, he has to make sure we know up front that it's not so bad after all.

Anyway, it's his contention that, while this proposal could devolve, as history would have it, as an explanation of and/or for "white flight" and racial division, that someone just needs to make it "fun" and it will, of course, work and be successful.

Golly.

What a great idea.

Forget that Kansas City is, to this day, deeply, deeply divided, racially, with the outgrowth of that white flight mentioned above, that we so clearly experienced here from the middle of the last century up to this day.

Forget, of course, that there were formal clauses in residential real estate contracts specifically calling out that blacks couldn't buy in the new developments.

Sure, Jack, forget all that.

Just paint a rosey picture of how that all developed and gee, it'll be just like it never happened.

Mr. Cashill insists that this proposed museum shouldn't make any excuses for itself and absolutely should't apologize for the fact that the 'burbs were created, at least in large part, so people could run away from people who weren't otherwise like them.

Way to rewrite history, there, Jack.

He tells, too, in the article that he does the same thing with our own national history, too, when he went back East to the Independence Hall in Philadelphia. It seems Jack was there, helping out a guide, in this example, who needed to be straightened out that the good old US of A wasn't that racist in the past, after all.

It seems a guide there mistakenly, according to Jack, told his group--God help her--that our own Constitution only applied to "White men with property."

Jack straightened her right out, of course. It's what God put him here for, clearly--to educate the rest of us.

Or, at least, God put him here to enlighten the rest of us here in reality land--those who don't agree with him and his views.

In this article, he mentions what happens to be, coincidentally, my hometown of St. Joseph, Missouri, as proof that the suburbs were'nt developed out of racism, in part or whole, at all. He states that, "despite a population that is less than one-half of 1 percent black... 'Who,'" he asked, “'are these people fleeing from?'”

Well, being from St. Joe, I can tell him. I lived there, after all.

The people in St. Joe ran from that East and downtown side of town to, yes, in fact, get away from black Americans and Hispanics and--no surprise--the lower class. The fact is, St. Joseph, Missouri makes a really poor example as a standout against the idea of "white flight" that created the suburbs because the same thing happened there that happened all across this country.

Forget the racism of the US.

Forget the racism of the Kansas City metropolitan area.

Forget the ugliness and sameness of too much of suburbia.

Totally ignore how sprawled and disconnected our metropolitan area is.

Forget how racially divided we are.

Forget all that.

If you just open a museum and have Jack run it, golly, he'll make it "fun" and you can ignore all that stuff.

Forget truth. Forget reality.

I can see it now--Jack Cashill needs to be whisked away as an international consultant to any and every Holocaust Museum in the world--from Germany to Washington, D.C. and any- and everywhere else.

Jack will make the Holocaust fun.

That'll pack 'em in.

Way to go, Jack. Thank God you're here.

Link: http://www.ingramsonline.com/Aug_2012/btl.html

Humor today---from The Kansas City Star

So I started reading the paper today, as I always do, like most people I suspect, on page A1 and went back from there. Unremarkable, right? Then I get to page A4 and see a prominent column by Mike Hendricks called "Public's Prying Is Out of Line", saying we basically have no right, really, to know what happened to Larry Schnackenberg after first his disappearance and now his reappearance in the area. And I don't disagree, per se, with the exception of the public details, having to do with the police searching for Mr. S., and so on. Let him and his family have their privacy--what do I care? But then---and here comes the humor, for me--you keeping turning the pages and 2 flips of paper later, back on page A8 is a nice, big, again, prominent story 6 COLUMNS WIDE, giving all the details the Star has about Mr. Schnackengerg's dis- and re-appearance. I mean, man, is that good? It cracked me up. Thank you, Kansas City Star. It's great to start the day with a good, hearty laugh. Have a great weekend, y'all. Link to original posts: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/07/29/2117060/we-the-public-arent-owed-all-the.html http://www.kansascity.com/2010/07/29/2115918/missing-mans-family-thrilled-hes.html