Seussical

Em was a Bird Girl in the Gardner Community Theater production of Seussical, a musical I first saw last spring after she asked (begged) to go.

It really is a wonderful show, combining the marvels of Dr. Seuss and the charm of Eric Idle.

I sometimes forget how awesome Dr. Seuss is, but a few days after this musical closed, I found myself reading Yertle the Turtle and Gertrude McFuzz to my sixteen-year-old daughter.

And loving it.

She returned the favor by reading me The Sneetches and The Yax.

I'll never outgrow Dr. Seuss.

For that matter, I remember when old Theodor Geisel died, Jess Jackson read Green Eggs and Ham on Saturday Night Live and it was awesome.

And part of what makes it awesome, I think, is how real Dr. Seuss is. I know, it always seems far fetched, but these stories are about real life.

The star bellied Sneetches paying to have their stars removed by the same huxter who sold stars to starless ones? Gave me a flashback to Eighth Grade.

I had some lawn-mowing and paper route money, and went to a store called Chess King. I vaguely remember that the staff was made up entirely of girls who seemed completely out of my league.

I spent a fortune on a pair of parachute pants, largely because these hotties made it seem like if I would only wear them...

I promptly got teased mercilessly at school for wearing these ridiculous nylon pants. Rightly so, they weren't comfortable, they weren't attractive, and they made a lot of noise when you moved around.

I gave up on them, only to discover a couple of months later that the cool kids, the ones who couldn't believe I was a big enough dork to wear these things, they all showed up in parachute pants, it seemed on the same day.

It must have been a good commission month for the hotties at Chess King. And everyone had amnesia about how I had worn this garment just a few weeks before.

And in this election cycle, I've met, first-hand, a couple of Sour Kangaroos. A person who has never done anything without calculating its political or economic consequences simply can't comprehend that some people would want to grow their own food.

I think what bothered me more than the assumption that a desire for an edible yard might translate into cult membership or being a survivalist, was that some foul-tempered marsupial thought such people needed her personal approbation before they could keep chickens or plant row crops that were visible from the road.

Which is exactly what happens to Horton, he gets put on trial not for conscripting the Sour Kangaroo into caring for the Whos, but for trying to look out for them himself.

Anyway, the show was fantastic.

The hair alone was fantastic, actually.

And yeah, I probably took too many pictures.

Switzer Community Garden

I stopped off here the other night when I saw some folks there working in the evening.

The Switzer Community Garden is, in my not remotely humble opinion, the best of class among KC's community gardens. There's one by the new Kauffman center that is more high tech, but unless you're talking Mission Hills (where the Kauffmans lived), most communities lack the resources to do most of that stuff.

This garden, though, it's in the West Side neighborhood and it's not operated by any pharmaceutical robber barons.

I was impressed by the rain barrels. Both because they're pretty (this garden does more artsy fartsy stuff than the usual, probably a lot of why I think they're the best garden in town), but also because they were still watering the beds from rain collected in these barrels off an impossibly small shed roof.

This is rain that fell before the worst drought to plague our region in decades. They still have some of that rain to water their crops, so take note you Army Corps characters. We may need to do this on a wider scale, and soon.

I was also impressed by the bee hive. I've kept bees, it's like having thousands of high maintenance girlfriends who throw stuff at you when you're only trying to help. Well, like that but without sex.

I still have honey I mean to make into mead from my last crop, 2002. I do still have a huge soft spot for the hobby, or agribusiness or whatever you want to call it. Still have my protective gear and my copy of The Hive & The Honey Bee.

I guess what I lack is enthusiasm for backbreaking, hotter than hell work with minimal rewards that's like as not to sick the neighborhood association on you to boot.

The only bright spot is most of the nay-sayers and don't-dos have no idea they're looking at a hive when they see these white boxes.

Most of them will claim to be allergic to bee stings, but people who say this are often only 'allergic' if you count dislike or fear as an allergic reaction. There haven't been wild honeybees running around since late last century, and tame or wild, none of them give a shit about people unless we're pulling the lid off their house to steal their food. Even 'Africanized' bees won't seek you out and sting you just to be dicks.

Anyway, the gesticulating woman in the bright plaid shirt is one of the people that made this garden happen. She shies away from accusations of being in charge.

She doesn't hold back on her enthusiasm for the whole project. She wanted to make sure I knew about the bees, about how they'd re-queened the colony lately, chickens and whatnot they had down below.

Every once in awhile I meet someone who is truly a pillar of their community, and this woman (Marcelle?—I think that's what I heard) seems to be exactly that. Someone with the energy and interest to truly expand what's possible in a neighborhood, who gets people to do what they wouldn't otherwise do and do it cheerfully.

Sticker

Mo loves her some stickers.

Her step-mother, my wife, took her out today and stopped by a dumpster she knew might have stickers. They got back with a mother-lode.

 Mo couldn't even keep her eyes open, it was too exciting.

Which I guess brings me to the point: I counted on the stickers to distract Mo while I worked. When I came up to check on her, she'd resorted to prying open some framed artwork to sticker over. But, I think I could see her logic, everything she defaced with stickers was her artwork.

Her logic wasn't entirely faulty. Yes, I was pissed she'd defaced art I found worthy of a frame, but it wasn't as bad as the time she opened up my framed photographs and covered them over with stickers I'd made to label things in the garden.

Dance Walk

This was one of those evenings when I planned to ride 'straight home.'

The details, as far as why I needed to get home directly, are lost to me now, but it probably had to do with being slort of sheep in the first place and having some stuff I needed to get done at home before I could hit the sack.

This happens to me quite a bit. Bike commuting is slightly more time consumptive than car commuting if you just look at the travel time. I can make it from house door to work door in about 35 minutes if I don't run into much traffic in the car; my best bike time is little over double that. Call it an extra 45 minutes.

Round trip, that's an hour and a half, not that bad if you figure car people often drive to a gym in the evening and work out for an hour. I may get behind on pruning/tying my tomatoes, but on my bike commute days I can at least cross 'work out' off my to-do list.


The biggest menace, though, is not the ride itself. It's the social interactions that almost inevitably happen. Like, say, you're coming across the Plaza on Broadway and you spot a bunch of costumed people getting ready to cause a ruckus.

The ruckus turned out to be a 'dance walk.' I whipped out my camera and started shooting, of course. One girl said something vaguely apologetic about the whole affair, and I said, "Are you kidding me? You guys are the funnest group I've encountered since I stumbled on the Hash House Harriers in the River Market."

I think the girl with the really bright tights was the one who piped up with the answer, "Yeah? My sister is a Hasher!" You don't say.

And then they were off, boogieing their way through the Plaza like a small, pedestrian Critical Mass.

West Bottoms Gallery

Stuck behind a train? More like given the opportunity to appreciate some art.