Kemper Museum & Rockfest Aftermath

I was not at 100% today energy-wise. Even an espresso goo didn't snap me out of it, and that's a 100 mg bolus of caffeine.



Originally, I planned to do the Nelson. Em was sore from yesterday's Worlds of Fun trip, and after initially telling her, 'Guess you'll just have to get in shape,' I relented and we got back in the car and went around the corner to the Kemper.



It's much smaller, much less walking to do. She showed her gratitude by complaining the whole time, asking to leave every thirty seconds and being relentlessly surly.





Ah, the teen years.





The David Bates exhibit, by the way, is worth a trip all by itself. It's a collection of Hurricane Katrina aftermath images, heavy oil on canvas.



It's very expressive stuff, not photorealistic, but what he captures is the human devastation, not just the grief but that shell-shocked look so many of the victims had in the news coverage. The look of people faced with something that goes beyond grief, a catastrophe that's hard to take the measure of.



I snapped a shot of one of these masterpieces before I found out that's a no-no, so just take my word and get to the Kemper before August 22 because it's not a permanent exhibit.




Not that much is permanent in terms of display there. A few pieces are fixtures to be sure, but they rotate stuff out at a pretty rapid clip and I'm sure half the things we saw today weren't there in February.

We went to my Mom's after and I rode a bit. Again, I was not up to snuff and I hoped that this would be one of those times where once I got up to speed on the bike I'd snap out of it. It's happened before.



No, today I still wanted a nap as I pedaled along. I was going to ride downtown via Merriam Lane/Southwest Blvd and scope out the carnage I've heard so much about from Rockfest.

A slow moving train (and the fact I wasn't feeling any better seven miles in) made me turn around. Later we drove by to see what we could see.

For some reason (sensationalistic journalism is the leading candidate), I expected the lawn between the Memorial and Union Station to be mud. But no, that was all grass. So was the area on the other side, where I saw Obama speak to about 75,000 true believers and one infidel (me) last summer. That's also where the Jazz & Blues Festival used to stage up, so in my mind, that was probably where they 'made mud.'



But no, it's that park over by the Scout, the area the Easter Keg was hidden this year, I do believe. There's a little corner, maybe three acres by the look of it, of the Liberty Memorial park that's damaged (though not nearly as badly). In fact, I had to do some figuring to find a way to get a shot that makes it look like the real mess is something you'd see from the Memorial. Maybe from the top of the Memorial, but if you were just visiting the museum, you could miss the mud entirely.



As it's been pointed out by such luminaries as Johnny Dare and Mayor Funkhouser, the grass will grow back. Not in a few weeks, as Johnny claimed the other day, but I've seen storm sewer upgrades that made a bigger mess. Some of the earth appears tilled, and I wonder if that's actually something they're doing on purpose. 100,000 feet trampling the ground would tend to compact the soil, so I'll bet the grass would grow back faster if they tilled before re-seeding.



It's certainly no Hurricane Katrina. In fact, it's not even as bad as a mural of Michael Jackson I saw over in the Crossroads district. That paint will be on those bricks for years, mark my words.