Kansas City Clever

Kraske Whiffs Again - What He Should Be Asking

Steve Kraske claims the upper right corner of today's front page of the Star, and manages to look good while whiffing almost entirely. It's kind of like watching an unschooled rookie with a sweet swing face the famed knuckleballer Tim Wakefield. Kraske swings mightily, but can't quite make his wooden analysis impact the baffling trajectory of local politics.

The headline in the dead tree version of the story is "Has mayor run out of political capital?", and the lede is an anecdote claiming that Funkhouser failed to gladhand at a democratic fundraiser. In short, Kraske asks the wrong question and answers it with conventional wisdom from the chattering class. That, my friends, is not "analysis" worthy of publication.

First off, the question is not whether Funk has run out of "political capital". The guy won by fewer than 900 votes and walked into a council chamber poisoned by hardball politicians seeking to become mayor. The guy never really had political capital - he walked in with a target on his back, and nobody on earth was going to trade that target for a 7 member dependable majority. And, to give his critics their due, he certainly has not behaved in a fashion well-designed to accumulate it, either.

The correct question is "Can Funkhouser work with this Council to accomplish good things for our city?". Because, really, that's what people wanted when they elected him, and that's how he will be judged. Maybe a few of the insiders and professional game-players such as Kraske care about style points or how well he shakes hands at a cocktail party, but the rest of us care far more about accomplishments. By focusing on shaking hands and fuzzy concepts of "political capital", Kraske focuses on the parlor game aspects of city government rather than on the street level effectiveness of city government.

Now, before the anti-Funk brigade reflexively misinterprets what I have written so far, I'm only saying that the question ought to be "Can Funkhouser work with this Council to accomplish good things for our city?" rather than "Has mayor run out of political capital?". I hope we can all agree that my question is the better question - who cares if he never shakes another hand and the verdict at Kraske's chattering class cocktail parties unanimously states he has zero "political capital", if he is able to work with our council to accomplish good things for our city?

Having thus refocused the issue from image to substance, I'll go ahead and answer my own question.

Yes, Funkhouser can work effectively with this Council to accomplish good things for our city. He can do that by continuing to work creatively and subtly through other council people, the majority of whom will, when push comes to shove, get on board for the right reasons on the big issues for the good of the city. Jan Marcason and Beth Gottstein, for example, are not going to vote for a lousy Cauthen budget no matter what they think of Funkhouser or his wife. Most of the council is composed of grown-ups, and they can separate their disagreements on the anti-volunteer ordinance from good policy in facing the substantive issues they need to address.

All that said (and apparently beyond Kraske's imagination), Funkhouser has an opportunity right now to jumpstart his working relationship with the City Council and kick off 2009 in the most productive way possible for our city's future. In one fell swoop, he could eliminate his biggest problem in image and the city's biggest problem in reality.

In my opinion, Mark should approach those city councilmembers who really do have the good of the city at heart with a proposal to dismiss his Volunteer Ordinance lawsuit in exchange for their support in getting rid of Wayne Cauthen. Most agree that Cauthen is simply the wrong man for the foreseeable future, and I believe they would welcome such an opportunity to get back on track in solving our city's very real problems.

I feel like I owe some explanation, since I loudly called upon Mark to file his lawsuit, and I continue to think that the anti-Volunteer Ordinance is an unconstitutional bastard born in a backroom from spite and dishonesty. Despite my dislike of the Ordinance, though, that single issue need not continue to distract attention and dominate the public discourse.

Right now, Mark is working just fine with his geographically flexible Mayor's office, just as most of the councilmembers work effectively while spending little time in the four walls of their offices. While it feels wrong to let such an ugly little ordinance remain on the books, dismissing the suit does not make it constitutional. Someday, in a less critical time when we can afford to focus on "B" level priorities, the ordinance can be challenged in a more favorable environment. In terms of impact on the city, the Volunteer Ordinance is tiny in comparison to the damage wrought by the wrong City Manager.

Dismissal of the suit would also unplug the electricity surrounding rumors of Koster investigations and other nonsense. In short, Funkhouser would be rising above the Council's petty mistake, diminishing a danger, and accomplishing a larger goal. It would also provide the good Councilmembers with a way to redeem themselves from their current tarnished, bickering image, and make a clean break from the past.

Would Funkhouser ever make such a deal? I have no idea.

But it's a lot better question than Kraske's breathless insider chatter about "political capital".

My Way for the Highway

MoDoT: Tell me what you think about my plans.
Public: What plans?
MoDoT: I'll tell you when I think you should know, but I want to get your opinions first.
Public: How can I have informed opinions until I know what your plans are?

The Missouri Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration are launching a study process for changes on I-70 from State Line to 470. In what appears to be a classic example of cynically controlling input while appearing to be transparent, they are hosting a "listening post" a "public" meeting - at the St. Paul School of Theology, Holter Center on Truman Road between 4 and 7 tomorrow evening.

Nowhere in the invitation, though, do they talk about what sort of changes they are considering, so if you, like most people, have things other than highways on your mind, you have no reason to attend the meeting. Then, when they do something colossally stupid to the highway, they will blame you for not attending the meeting and being heard.

This is not public input - it is insider control. If you control affected land, or plan to sell asphalt to the State, or are one of the insiders who has moved the plan to this stage, you know what is in it and you can make sure the meeting and comments go your way. If you're an average citizen, you don't know what is in it, so you won't know whether your ox is getting gored until it's buried in asphalt.

Frankly, I have better things to do on Tuesday night than watch the charade of public input. In my absence, I have a few thoughts I would like to share with the planners:

1. Do NOT change that view of the city through the overpass when you're headed west between the stadiums and 435. If you mess with that, I will come at you like a spider monkey.

2. Do NOT smooth out the Van Brunt curve, or take away the flashing lights that congratulate drivers for going through it fast. It might be cool, though, if you could post a high score or a special light for the people that manage to double the recommended speed. Give us something more challenging to shoot for.

3. DO create an interchange between I-70 and 71, so that I can get to eastbound 70 from northbound 71 without cruising down Truman.

4. DO create "blinds" for motorcycle cops to run radar. It's undignified the way they hide behind the pillars around the 435 interchange - just give them little shelters so they can stalk their prey in comfort, just like duck hunters do.

5. DO install wireless access along the length of the highway, so that commuters from the western suburbs can check their email on their laptops on their way to work. It's a shame that right now they can only shave, put on make-up, read the paper and eat Egg McMuffins.

6. DO NOT fill in the potholes on the Manchester Trafficway overpass. That would destroy the tire and hubcap businesses in the vicinity.

7. DO NOT eliminate any of the "Exit Only" lanes - those are the best places to box in BMWs with Johnson County plates.

8. DO move the highway closer to the outfield of Royals Stadium, so that opposing batters can have something to aim for when our relief pitchers serve them hanging curves.

9. DO put up some kind of high-tech filter for the sun so that it doesn't shine in our eyes when we're headed east at sunrise or west at sunset. It's a freaking nuisance.

10. DO NOT tell us how much you are going to be spending on all these changes, because that might make us think again about regional light rail, and, apparently, we're just not ready for that kind of thinking.

Sunday Poetry: Older Love, by Jim Harrison

Older Love

His wife has asthma
so he only smokes outdoors
or late at night with head
and shoulders well into
the fireplace, the mesquite and oak
heat bright against his face.
Does it replace the heat
that has wandered from love
back into the natural world?
But then the shadow passion casts
is much longer than passion,
stretching with effort from year to year.
Outside tonight hard wind and sleet
from three bald mountains,
and on the hearth before his face
the ashes we’ll all become,
soft as the back of a woman’s knee.

- by Jim Harrison
___________________________________

I think this poem is simply lovely. A older man carefull indulges his smoking habit so that it will not bother his asthmatic wife, leading to a reminiscence on the role of love and passion in a long life. The closing two lines, recalling "ashes to ashes" and melding it into the freshly intimate back of a woman's knees, are just so right, just so perfect in balancing what does abide in the warming shadow of passion.

Does the heat he feels on his face from the embers replace the heat of passion that has wandered back into the natural world? Isn't it wonderful that in Harrison's world, passion does not die or disappear - it wanders from love back into the natural world? And the shadow of passion outlasts the passion itself, stretching from year to year, but only with effort. There is more wisdom and wonder packed into these 93 words than you would find in a decade of Dr. Phil shows.

I first came across Jim Harrison as a novelist. His novels are like Raymond Carver writing about an adult Nick Adams. They are rooted in nature and solitude, but they are painted with a somewhat broader emotional palette, while retaining an admirable stoicism.

In a world where many work other jobs to support their novel-writing ambitions, Harrison's devotion to his poetry is demonstrated by the fact that he works at novel-writing to support his poetry. His poetic attention to just the right words strengthens his novels, and his novelist's attention to the nuances of human interaction fuels his poetry.

Harrison is a hunter, fisherman and all-around outdoorsman, and those interests are at the heart of almost all his work. You can find a reading, an interview, and more biographical information about Harrison here. As always, I encourage you to listen to the poet read his own work - it gains a depth in his gravelly voice that the written word cannot convey.

A simple gesture - smoking up a chimney - becomes a lovely meditation on love, loss, passion, mortality, and intimacy. That is the power of poetry in the hands of a mature master.

Is Bernie Madoff a Heroic John Galt?

Bernie Madoff deprived the super-wealthy of $50 billion, without resorting to the Estate Tax (a/k/a the Paris Hilton Tax) or armed robbery.

According to Republican economic theory, we should be throwing roses at his feet.

By fleecing the wise uber-wealthy folks of some $50 billion, he had provided a supply-side burst of incentive to those fine people to regain their former wealth. Those captains of industry are now incented to the tune of $50 billion, just to get back to where they thought they were a couple weeks ago. Better yet, he accomplished his gift of incentive without spending the money on wasteful government programs such as school lunches or welfare that simply disincentivize the poor. And BEST yet, he did it in a fashion that owes its existence to the under-regulated market the the Republicans have made a fetish of.

The bedrock of Republican "Economic Theory" is that incentives for the super-wealthy are critical. The wealthy - not lazy unionized workers, pampered teachers in our schools, or grossly inefficient government civil servants - are the supermen who, with their finely attuned, market-sensitive, invisibly guided wise hands are the ones must be allowed to keep their billions and billions of dollars, so that they remain incentivized to create more wealth. Taxing the wealthy hurts us all, they claim, because the wealthy will no longer feel the incentive to work, and we will all suffer in their absence.

The timing could not have been better, either. With Obama's election, rightwingers were beginning to darkly (inappropriate pun intended) mutter about the "John Galt Option" or "Going John Galt
", in a reference to a character in a very bad novel who withdraws his productive force from the economy when the unproductive "looters" seek to tax his fortune. Rightwingers were threatening to slow down their productivity in the prospect of having to pay for the war they supported.

Dr. Helen, in a pre-Madoff meditation on the possiblity of an Obama administration, sets out the thought process that motivates those who would imitate John Galt:

Perhaps the partisian politics we are dealing with now is really just a struggle between those of us who believe in productivity, personal responsibility, and keeping government interference to a minimum, and those who believe in the socialistic policies of taking from others, using the government as a watchdog, and rewarding those who overspend, underwork, or are just plain unproductive.

Obama talks about taking from those who are productive and redistributing to those who are not -- or who are not as successful. If success and productivity is to be punished, why bother? Perhaps it is time for those of us who make the money and pay the taxes to take it easy, live on less and let the looters of the world find their own way.

If Republican incentive-based economic theory is valid, then Bernie Madoff was the right man at the right time to boldly create incentive in an economy that was going to hibernate until a new administration of deregulation, no watchdogs and deficit spending could reverse Obama's plans. Instead, thanks to the heroic Bernie Madoff, the John Galts of this world are waking up to find themselves in a $50 billion hole in an economy that needs more of their "wise" investments. They now have the incentive to rejoin the economy.

This Kid Has Potential

But not all potential is positive.



He got picked up a couple weeks later for beating his grandmother when she refused to buy him chicken wings.

REJECTED

As a skinny, nerdy teenager with acne, I was once a connoisseur of rejection. If it weren't for blind dates with a gentle sense of humor or a strong sense of pity, I might not have had any dates at all in high school.

But this is reeeediculous. This one hurts.

The Kansas City Star emailed me yesterday to tell me I won't be one of their Midwest Voices columnists. The paper that actually publishes Jason "Attention Whore" Whitlock, Steve "Hacktastic" Kraske and Yael "Spiteful Teenager" Abouhalkah on a regular basis won't put me on their page for a year.

And then there's Jenee' Osterheldt. Jenee' Osterheldt! Ouch.

This one hurts, hurts bad. I feel like the Chess Club just blackballed me because I'm not athletic enough, or the Math Club rejected me for a lack of social skills.

As I learned in High School, rejection teaches you that one door doesn't close without another door opening. Unfortunately, the door that opened was usually the one that led to watching the Carol Burnett Show on Friday night with my parents, while other kids were out doing all kinds of things I was yearning for. But still . . .

Praise for the Council

On New Year's Day, I received a chipper and realistically optimistic email from Jan Marcason, wishing her supporters "good health and happiness in 2009". The other night at the beer party, someone asked me why I am so positive about Jan Marcason, Beth Gottstein, Russ Johnson, Deb Hermann and several other city councilmembers who have, at least to all appearances, not been supportive of Mayor Funkhouser, whom I also support.

The question has many answers.

In the biggest sense, I don't necessarily want a monolithic City, County, State or Federal government. I've never understood the perspective of those who feel that government is working best when it is bickering least. In reality, government is one of the battlegrounds where clashing interests meet to decide on shares and rules - peace is an unnatural state in any legislature, including our City Council. When Barnes had a dependable majority behind her, she drove our city into financial disgrace and allowed TIF pigs to plunder our future.

Beyond the inherent conflicts of legislative life, I also accept that each elected official is a human being. I think all of them have had grand moments and boneheaded blunders. The Mayor, for instance, made a mistake in the Semler appointment/retention, and his go-it-alone approach to firing Cauthen was simply foolish. As for the Council, the Volunteer Ordinance is an hysterical embarrassment, and the thoughtless decision to give Cauthen a raise and a three year contract may have been the only way to be more foolish than Funkhouser in the Cauthen saga.

In short, if I want to find a perfect politician who never makes costly, bone-headed mistakes, I had better search someplace other than City Hall.

But I think they're, on the whole, doing a darned fine job. They joined together and rejected Cauthen's ludicrous, unrealistic budget. They did the hard work to come up with a far better budget and are already working toward doing it again in an even bleaker economic context.

They came up with a good Economic Development Policy, and have generally eschewed the sort of high-cost, high-profile, high-risk projects that typified Credit Card Kay's tenure. Instead, their few investments have focused on the long-neglected East Side of Kansas City.

They have also done the hard and completely non-glamorous work of drafting a sewage overflow control plan, as required by the EPA. Jan Marcason led them to approval of a well-thought-out, innovative and environmentally-friendly plan that will improve our city for at least a generation. The plan may not capture quite as many readers as a deposition in the lawsuit that the City Council has kept alive, but it is far more significant to our city's future.

It's easy to get frustrated by the continuously-mistaken, bickering bunch of knuckleheads that you read about in the paper and on blogs. But if you pay attention to the work they do, and tune into Channel 2 from time to time, you'll see that they are not the same people you read about.

They are gracious 99% of the time. They are cooperative most of the times when they ought to be. They represent conflicting interests effectively and competently. They answer calls and emails, and seek out the opinions of citizens. They take on difficult tasks without expectation of glory or lucre, and they do those tasks well. They respond to problems day in and day out. They endure attacks on their intelligence and character without responding in kind.

We are truly fortunate to have the City Council we have right now. There is great work going on at City Hall, and those of us who pay attention too rarely offer appreciation.

To borrow from Jan Marcason's email, I wish the Mayor and each of the Councilmembers good health and happiness in 2009. Thank you for your work on our behalf in 2008.

Beer in the Bottoms? Let's Bulldoze the Power & Light District!

Last night, while researching my next homebrew recipe, I came upon a spot of amazingly cool news. In 2009, Kansas City will have another brewery opening up, this time in the West Bottoms. Dead Canary Brewing is a woman-owned and run new brewery, setting up in the West Bottoms down off 12th Street, among the haunted houses and great old brick buildings.

Folks, this could be amazing.

They are setting up Beer Pong and Dodgeball Leagues. They are creating a taproom. They are committed to brewing practices that are green and sustainable. They got started on this journey by brewing naked.

Most importantly, they are creating "high content, high flavor, knock you on yo ass beers." Beers like Cat House Stout - (Dry hopped mint chocolate imperial stout), Local No. 12 - (lemongrass maple strong ale), Speakeasy IPA - (honeysuckle grapefruit IPA), Bathtub Barleywine - (copiously hopped barleywine), and Chickory Rhubarb Imperial Porter.

This could do more for the West Bottoms than any TIF Project ever brewed up in a closed-door meeting between Kay Barnes and Mephistopheles. Really - the West Bottoms could become the new Crossroads X 20, with lots of inexpensive great old buildings around, acres of parking, and reasonable access to the highways.

But, since Wayne Cauthen and the prior City Council have gambled our city's future on the Power & Light District, which is already turning out to be a bit of a flop, I have a radical idea. Let's bulldoze the Power & Light District, and refuse to give any more of our tax dollars to Cordish and their cronies. (Yes, of course they will sue, but it will take years for them to recover anything, and a sensible jury might just rule in our favor if we can introduce evidence of all their broken promises and their racist dress codes.)

Now that we have freed ourselves of the millions upon millions of obligations to out-of-state developers, we can bring in some topsoil and put in the world's most awesome beer garden in all the paved expanse that currently exists down there. Let's be ambitious - let's create something that will make Munich's Oktoberfest seem like an unpopular fraternity's weekend kegger. (We can even, as a nod to our prior mayor, put in a rain garden, just to show we're not angry anymore.)

Then, we take a few million dollars and give them to our local brewers to create the micro-breweries of their dreams on the periphery of our new beer garden. Relocate Boulevard's and its emblematic smokestack downtown. Get 75th Street Brewery to open up a 12th Street Brewery. In a cross-state gesture of goodwill to make up for our outright theft of the 1985 World Series, offer Schlafly a space.

But don't forget the beginners, either! The Kauffman Foundation wants to support entrepreneurship - let them funnel a few million dollars to help ambitious homebrewers make the leap into micro-brewing. And, because cans are so much more recyclable and cheaper to ship than bottles, let the city open up a municipal cannery, offering access to its canning lines for each of the breweries on a cooperative basis - a green infrastructure project that ought to attract funding from every level of government.

As I think we demonstrated at 75th Street Brewery on Monday night, real beer is a big draw. People will come out for something unusual, and they appreciate a good party. Imagine if Kansas City was the undisputed Home of Great Beer. We would have to hire thugs to control the hoards of convention planners! Vacationers would come in year round, just to try the seasonal brews! Hotels chains would pony up their own money to get access to the crowds of tipsy beer-lovers walking around downtown.

Most importantly, it would be awesome.

My point in this flight of fancy is that for the millions of dollars we have blown on a cookie-cutter assemblage of national chain restaurants, we could have had something unique and truly attractive to Kansas Citians and conventions if only we had focused on local businesses and local flavor. This is the sort of impulse that Mayor Funkhouser has pushed with his New Tools initiative. Economic Development does not have to mean sending massive amounts of money to out-of-state developers for massive projects. Let's hope that the Council gets behind the concept and that we see some real Kansas City economic development.

In the meantime, let's raise a toast to Dead Canary Brewing. They might accomplish with beer what politicians have failed to accomplish with hot air and taxpayer dollars.

Whitlock - Winning Mizzou Team Should Feel Awful?

I know that Jason Whitlock doesn't get paid to put reasonable views onto paper - he justifies his massive salary by attaching his name to counter-intuitive perspectives, and every now and then he hits paydirt with a fresh insight.

That said, this morning's column berating the Mizzou Tiger football team after they defeated a similarly-ranked team in the Alamo Bowl Game is a classic example of saying something stupid in a vain attempt to be original. In it, he seeks to rain on the Tigers' parade because their victory was not a stomping of their opponent. He called the victory "an embarrassment", because the #21 team in the nation went into overtime to defeat the #23 team in the nation. He was shocked and horrified that the Missouri team celebrated on the field after the game.

Jason, a bunch of 18-24 year-old kids just won a nationally-televised big time football game, and it was the last time that many of them will get to play together. Do you honestly, truly think that they should feel bad about themselves, because they won the game but didn't complete the grim task of meeting the expectations of a middle-aged guy who can't play anymore? Do you really expect the winners of the Alamo Bowl to sulk off the field in a storm of self-loathing because they "merely" won the game?

Congrats to Mizzou for finishing among the top football teams in the country, and enjoy your ticker-tape parade in Columbia. College sports are for college kids, not for semi-pro joy-sucking parade-rainers.

Thanks for Coming Out

This is one of those times I don't dare mention names, because I can't list them all and I wouldn't want anyone to be overlooked, but thanks to all who came out and tasted the Triple Sugar Tripel last night. That was a heck of a party!

The beer, for those who weren't there, was a lot sweeter than I expected, but it was a warming sipping beer for the winter. When cold, it had a pretty good balance between bitter and sweet, that slipped toward the sweet side as it warmed. I'm pleased with how it came out, though my homemade version was less sweet and full-bodied - the 75th Street version is a rich sipping after-dinner beer. The beer snobs at the party seemed to enjoy it as a complex, style-stretching Belgian Tripel, and people who don't typically drink beer enjoyed a sweet drink. One of my Bud Light-favoring friends summed up her reaction as "if you closed your eyes and didn't know it was beer, you would think you were drinking wine." I think there's some truth to that statement, and it hints at the complexity of the beer.

We raised somewhere over a thousand dollars for the Central City School Fund, enough for a scholarship enabling a child to attend an excellent Catholic school in the old Northeast or the West Side. That's a tremendous accomplishment. Thank you to all who came out and enjoyed the beer, and a special thanks for those who tossed something into the pot.

Don't Forget - Drink MY Beer Tonight!!

The long-awaited tapping of Triple Sugar Tripel will be taking place tonight. Come on by - there'll be a party in the back room! 75th Street Brewery, 5-8 tonight.

(Read about the beer here.)

Republican Compassion

I try to read broadly, to stretch my mind, test my ideas, and gain a few chuckles along the way. In a recent review of the right-wing blogosphere, I happened upon a brilliant example of Compassionate Conservatism at The Source - a rightwing blog that generates more litigation than logic. The particular article was entitled "The Christmas Rifle", and it is an unintentionally hilarious masterpiece.

It centers on the story of a kid whose father spent money on saving a widow and her family instead of buying a rifle for his son for Christmas. Set in 1881, the story is told from the point of view of the son, who comes to realize that the family's faces filled with gratitude for saving them from literal starvation were more important than his hoped-for Christmas rifle.

To really appreciate the story, it's worth noting that it's pure fiction. The author, Rian B. Anderson (the Source has the author's name wrong), wasn't born in 1881, but wisely chose to set his story in an imagined age of pre-New Deal rugged individualism he's never experienced.

The story starts off with a ritual denunciation of the demons of right-wing thought - "Pa never had much compassion for the lazy or those who squandered their means and then never had enough for the necessities." Just making sure you know that Widow Jenkins wasn't a welfare queen, because, if she were judged "lazy" by Pa, it would have been okay to let her little ragamuffins starve to death, right? One wonders what would have happened if Pa had seen Widow Jenkins refuse a lucrative career in prostitution, or why she hadn't been out chopping wood herself . . .

It's also humorous how taciturn Pa is - he undertakes the entire experience without explaining to his son where they're going or why. Strictly a need-to-know basis - Pa shares Dick Cheney's fetish for secrecy, it seems. Authority, to be really impressive, must assert itself without explanation.

But the funniest thing about the story is that, at the end, the kid feels all gooey and wonderful about the wonderful stroke of non-governmental largesse he has brought to a starving family, but all he really did is follow orders and he shares nothing of his own. Like so many of today's conservatives who are born on third base believing that he hit a triple, the boy in the story is blessed to be living in comfort, and perfectly untroubled with the fact that less fortunate children might have starved to death on Christmas Day if his Pa hadn't noticed "little Jakey out scratching in the woodpile with his feet wrapped in those gunnysack rags".

It takes a peculiar mindset to view near-starvation on Christmas as particularly heart-warming, but that is the intent of the post. In the world of "The Source", any act of near-compassion by a welfare-hating authority figure is worthy of celebration, even if it happened a century and a quarter ago. And even if it's fiction.

Eating All Over the Place

One of the many benefits of living in an information age in a moderately cosmopolitan city is the opportunity to eat something other than roast turkey for fancy meals. Over the past several days, we've served 3 meals of note - Christmas Eve, Christmas, and a dinner party on Saturday evening. It struck me how varied our food options are.

Christmas Eve is always tamales at our house, and we wound up purchasing them from the groceria place on Southwest Boulevard a couple doors west of La Fonda. I love those tamales, sold by the dozen, and we accompanied them with Rick Bayless' easy-and-quick-to-make fried beans and rice pudding. It wasn't wildly authentic and it wasn't all homemade, but it was a fantastic meal that tasted a whole lot more Mexican than you ought to expect in a house of pasty white Irish Poles.

The multinational flair continued on Christmas Day, when Sam fired up the stove and roasted ten pounds of Korean pork butt, served with kim chee, some kind of freaky soy paste I got at the Asian Supermarket just north of City Market, and home-made pickled peppers. The recipe has a name, but I've forgotten it, but I won't forget the crispy/tender texture of the pork wrapped in lettuce leaves with accompaniments. I've never been to Korea, but slow-cooked pork is always Seoul food for me (I am filled with remorse for that one). We finished it off with home-made key-lime pie - geographically inappropriate but a gastronomically perfect citrus ending to a meal that was all umami and spice.

Saturday we were hosting guests whose taste I don't know well, so a little restraint was demanded. I went with the Tandoori Chicken recipe adapted for those of us without tandoori ovens, featured in the most recent Cook's Illustrated. (Cook's Illustrated has a subscription-based online recipe database, but this recipe looks very similar.) The recipe was spectacular - spicy/flavorful more than spicy/hot, and just slightly charred but still moist and tender. I accompanied it with Indian Spiced Cauliflower and Potatoes - golden with turmeric and cumin, and just spicy enough to be flavorful. Dessert was chai-spiced almond cookies - I'm glad I held off on a little of the cardamom, and the cookies were crumbly perfection.

Friends, I grew up in a pretty meat-and-potatoes household, and I've never been to Korea, Mexico, India, or even Key West. I count myself fortunate to be alive in an age where ingredients and good recipes make it possible to taste cuisines from all over the world. I love a good pot roast and making pierogies is a foodie connection to my own recently-lost ancestry, but, armed with a few good cookbooks, the internet and a few ethnic markets, I can take my kitchen around the world, and still drink the water.

If You Enjoyed Last Week's Sunday Poetry

Then go read this fine essay on Phyllis McGinley ("almost entirely forgotten today") published this week in the New York Times.

Sunday Poetry: To an Athlete Dying Young, by AE Housman

To an Athlete Dying Young

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields were glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

- AE Housman
____________________________________

Housman was not a great poet. Housman was a competent compiler of couplets, but his poems are didactic, dry and obvious. While technically adequate, his poetry lacks the ambiguity and depth, and often the emotional honesty, to really sing out as great poetry. "To an Athlete Dying Young" is probably his best poem, and it has a certain resonance for those who have watched Meryl Streep (as Karen Blixen) use it to haltingly eulogize Robert Redford (as Dennis Finch-Hatton) in the movie version of "Out of Africa".

The strength of the poem lies in the tension between its nursery-rhyme structure of iambic tetrameter couplets and the emotive bleakness of a young person's death. Adding to its appeal is the fact that the rhyming couplets stick in the reader's head like a death-praising jingle - this poem is the catchy "Delta Dawn" of morbid, suicidal teens.

Housman was the "gateway drug" to great poetry for me, though. His slim, self-published volume of poems, A Shropshire Lad, may have been the first book of poetry I bought for pleasure instead of as a required text. His poems are understandable, rhythmical, quotable and sometimes even funny. From the poem entitled "Terence, this is stupid stuff", you get such barroom gems as "malt does more than Milton can / To justify God’s ways to man," and "Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink / For fellows whom it hurts to think."

As I've read and enjoyed more poetry, Housman remains a guilty pleasure. What he lacks in subtlety he makes up in refreshing directness. While too many of his poems in one sitting can leave one yearning for something with more emotional depth and lyrical variation than a greeting card, a few of his poems at a time recall the pleasures of well-worked, clear-meaning verse in a world of atonal opacity.

Merry Christmas, Nuke!

Nuclear Buffalo just left a comment in my prior thread offering me a "Merry Christmas", and I thought it only right to put up a post a little more seasonal than the economic catastrophe we're all facing. And Nuclear Buffalo is a perfect example of someone this blog has made me glad to know - a guy who I never would have met without the blog, and with whom I'm still far from close friends, but someone I can look forward to having a friendly beer and conversation with in the coming year.

In a few minutes, we'll wake up the children who, a few short years ago, would have been waking us up before the crack of dawn. I'm a lucky, lucky man.

Peace, friends, commenters, readers, and all.

Mayor's Forum on Financial Preparedness

Yesterday morning, concerned Kansas Citians gathered at the auditorium of the Liberty Memorial Museum for a conversation just as bleak as the weather outside. The structural imbalance of Kansas City's budget and the crazed tax-giveaways of the Barnes years have left us facing a $84.9 million dollar shortfall which will grow to a $111.5 million shortfall if current trends continue. The short answer, brought home by Deb Hermann, Mayor Funkhouser and the consultants who spoke, is that current trends cannot continue. So what are we going to do about it?

In a nutshell, we failed to come up with workable solutions. The ideas that seemed to have the most support all placed the misery squarely on the average city worker or average citizen, and involved little or no sacrifice for the ultra-wealthy Kansas Citians who spoke out at the meeting. "Charge for trash" and "cut back on city workers" were the strongest suggestions offered up by the multi-multi-multi-millionaires who grabbed the microphones before going back to their taxpayer financed enclaves. Funny how nobody even suggested graduating the earnings tax, or even delaying Payments in Lieu of Taxes so we get a year's worth of interest on the money we are paying to finance their castles. Indeed, one of the wealthiest men in the state openly scoffed at any thought that some of the problem could be solved on the revenue side of the equation. The suffering, it was clear, belongs to the peasants.

That said, I'm glad I showed up and participated. Almost all the smart councilmembers attended, and it was wildly impressive to see 60 of Kansas City's heaviest hitters show up on a frigid Monday morning in Christmas week. Notably absent were Wayne Cauthen, Kay Barnes or Steve Glorioso. Also, no Federal, State or County politicians attended - we're in this on our own, Kansas City.

While we didn't solve the massive budgetary problems we're facing, the morning was time well-spent. We all learned a little more about the issues, received a briefing on the consultants' report (available for download here), and we got to think a little and brainstorm on ways out.

Perhaps most valuably, we got a flavor of the political realities faced by our elective representatives. On the one hand, we had the uber-wealthy loudly and jealously guarding their advantages, while we also faced fantasy-land fossils grumbling about free trash promises from generations ago, and calling for repeal of the earnings tax. We heard ill-informed, reckless suggestions tossed out by those without a clue on implementation, and we heard earnest, factual statements about the financial unsupportability of doing nothing.

Walking out after 3 hours of financial bad news, it was hard not to feel a strange sort of optimism. We have some great people in this city, and the City officials who showed up are focused and smart. Deb Hermann did a great job of presenting, and Funkhouser did a great job of getting everyone's attention focused on the problems we're facing.

A New Way With Pasta

Last night, I made a big pan of Manicotti - a simple meal of cheese-stuffed pasta tubes baked in sauce. When making a classic, you don't want to get too creative, but I used some pasta sauce I had made earlier, festooned with olives and capers, and doused with some marsala to add depth. I mixed in some garlic and herb cheese with the ricotta and mozzarella for the filling and the St. Louisan in me made me top it with a blend of provel and parmesan. Good, traditional pasta - a filling meal on a cold night.

The very traditionalism of the meal made me think about how rarely I eat pasta in what for me is the old way - pasta covered with sauce, accented by maybe a meatball or a bit of sausage. Instead, pasta has grown into an ingredient in my cooking - an element to be balanced instead of a delivery mechanism for something else.

For example, one of my favorite quick meals lately is to swing by the grocery store on the way home and pick up a roasted chicken and some mixed olives from a cart. At home, I pull the meat from the chicken, cut it into bite-size pieces chunks, and boil up some pasta (anything from fettucini to radiatore - whatever shape you have and enjoy). I chop up the olives, add some pepperoncini slices and capers, definitely some garlic, and heat that for just a few minutes in a covered skillet, tossing in the olive, caper and pepperoncini juice. When the pasta is almost but not quite done, I drain it and add it to the skillet, with a good dousing of white wine and the chunks of chicken. I let it steam in the flavor rather than swim in boiling water for its last few minutes.

No alfredo or tomato sauce - though, the last time I made it, I added a few dollops of my wife's awesome home-made pesto. As opposed to the way pasta got treated in my earlier ventures, the pasta plays a real role in the flavor of the dish, and not just something to dump sauce on.

But if someone wants to put a plate of good old manicotti or lasagna or spaghetti and meatballs in front of me, I'll show my respect for the old ways . . .

Sunday Poetry: Ballade of Lost Objects, by Phyllis McGinley

Ballade of Lost Objects

Where are the ribbons I tie my hair with?
Where is my lipstick? Where are my hose -
The sheer ones hoarded these weeks to wear with
Frocks the closets do not disclose?
Perfumes, petticoats, sports chapeaus,
The blouse Parisian, the earrings Spanish -
Everything suddenly up and goes.
And where in the world did the children vanish?

This is the house I used to share with
Girls in pinafores, shier than does.
I can recall how they climbed my stairs with
Gales of giggles on their tiptoes.
Last seen wearing both braids and bows
(And looking rather Raggedy-Annish),
When they departed nobody knows -
Where in the world did the children vanish?

Two tall strangers, now I must bear with,
Decked in my personal furbelows,
Raiding the larder, rending the air with
Gossip and terrible radios.
Neither my friends nor quite my foes,
Alien, beautiful, stern and clannish,
Here they dwell, while the wonder grows:
Where in the world did the children vanish?

Prince, I warn you, under the rose,
Time is the thief you cannot banish.
These are my daughters, I suppose.
But where in the world did the children vanish?

- by Phyllis McGinley
_________________________________________

I cannot do justice to Phyllis McGinley by providing one example of her wonderful poetry. Phyllis McGinley is the sort of poet who provides a meal of hors d'oevres - she's best appreciated by sitting with one of her books of poems and enjoying them by the handful. Her wit rings through in creative rhymes, dry takes on large subjects, and friendly, approachable verse.

Sadly, the quoted poem is often cited as "Ballad of Lost Objects", with ignorant fans politely correcting what they think is a typographical error by eliding the "e" in "ballade". In fact, "ballade" is a literary term for the painstaking verse form that Phyllis McGinley tackled in this poem. Four stanza all ending with the same line, and employing the same rhymes, with the final one frequently addressing a Prince "sub rosa" - the ballade dates back to French poetry from the 14th century, and it is, I assure you, a bear to write.

Phyllis McGinley was one of the foremost practitioners of light verse - indeed, her book of poetry titled Times Three was the first book of light verse to win the Pulitzer Prize. It is out of print, but I found a nice copy of it at Spivey's Books last week for only $6.

Here's another sample of Phyllis McGinley that might have some resonance for those pondering how to loudly complain about Obama's choice of invocation:

The Angry Man

The other day I chanced to meet
An angry man upon the street —
A man of wrath, a man of war,
A man who truculently bore
Over his shoulder, like a lance,
A banner labeled “Tolerance.”

And when I asked him why he strode
Thus scowling down the human road,
Scowling, he answered, “I am he
Who champions total liberty —
Intolerance being, ma’am, a state
No tolerant man can tolerate.

“When I meet rogues,” he cried, “who choose
To cherish oppositional views,
Lady, like this, and in this manner,
I lay about me with my banner
Till they cry mercy, ma’am.” His blows
Rained proudly on prospective foes.

Fearful, I turned and left him there
Still muttering, as he thrashed the air,
“Let the Intolerant beware!”

Writing about McGinley is a little like food writing - my only hope of being fully understood is to tempt you to try it for yourself. Short of that, I can compare it to other tasty poets you may have tried, like Ogden Nash or Lewis Carroll, but with a distinctly and proudly feminine twist. She writes with a tremendous amount of intelligence, and she is often touching, but never really sentimental or even "heavy" - she exists to amuse, entertain, and provoke a little thought. One of her other books is entitled "Pocketful of Wry" - a fitting title for her style of poetry that maintains its decorum and humor.

Top 10 Kansas City blogs

Present Magazine has asked for a list of top 10 Local Blogs, and I'll go ahead and join in the game. This list is much different than one I would have compiled last year - a lot of good blogs have folded or simply shriveled to occasional postings. I hope to feature a few that haven't really gathered a ton of attention otherwise, in the hopes that I can get their name in Present Magazine.

It was sneaky of Present Magazine to not specify what they should be "tops" in. In making the picks, I am going to focus on blogs with a distinctive voice that publish regularly. Mostly, it's just who I think is doing great work lately, and it's a personal list. I could expand it to 30 without a whole lot of effort - there is some great writing going on out there - and I'm going to ignore a few that others are listing simply to be a little contrarian. So here goes, in no particular order:

1. Ancillary Adams: Ancillary Adams is the center of his own universe. He has political opinions, and he states them when they're on his mind, but he's not a political blogger. He loves sports (even, for some reason, professional basketball), but he doesn't use his blog as a cheering spot for any team. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of 80s movies, and he shares a weekly quotation. Despite its broad range, the blog is just a perfect guy on a barstool, spouting off on what comes to mind, but not ever really getting personal. Ancillary Adams is a guy's guy - sharing the stuff you can laugh at with a buddy.

2. Erin in the Real World: Erin describes herself as "the hottest pickle in town", and, whatever that means, I think she's probably right. Silly and boundingly enthusiastic, she'll write the funniest and almost-inappropriate pieces you can find. Her multi-chaptered series on her courtship of Mr. Perfect may be a perfect blog example of my favorite joke on the difference between men and women.

3. Tony's Kansas City: A lot of people are carefully constructing their lists to avoid Tony, but no serious list of top Kansas City bloggers can ignore Tony. Even if you don't like him, he creates more posts on all Kansas City topics than the rest of us combined, and it wasn't very long ago that a link from Tony would bump my own numbers up for the day. He's used his humor to hurt people, but he's also created the most-read and most powerful blog in Kansas City.

4. Frighteningly Uncommon Sense: Faith is a character I love to read, and I thank my lucky stars I don't live or work with her. Easily annoyed, quick to condemn and frequently wrong, she's also funny and strong. I might not be able to get through a conversation in a bar without an argument, but I'd happily buy her a beer. Her self-description captures her essence: "SUPER-pissy. Would you people stop pushing my buttons? GAH!"

5. FuKCed City: This blog is too new to have really earned a place on my top ten list, but they have provoked more literal laughs out loud from me in one month than anyone else in a year, so why not?! Their sample depo page is horribly wrong-headed, but funny, funny, funny. When I see that they have a new post, I click over with a mixture of dread and anticipation.

6. Observant Bystander: If blogs were sold like magazines, most of us would be cheaply published and sold on the newsstand, like the Daily News or some other tabloid. Observant Bystander would be sold in warm, quiet bookstores filled with leather comfy chairs, among the fine literature.

7. Noodletown: Noodletown has had an infant to distract her from her blog for a while, but she's still the Monarch of local foodbloggers, and we have a great selection of food bloggers for her to rule. This is an optimistic choice - I really hope she finds more time in the coming year to enthrall us with great recipes and reviews. I feel bad choosing one food blog out of the plethora of great ones . . .

8. Hip Suburban White Guy: HSWG is profane, funny, and always worth a read. He's kind of the Mad Max of the blogosphere's Thunderdome. I think I might be a lot like him if I were single and I suffered a major head injury.

9. My Spyderweb: Nobody has done more for the sense of community in the local blogosphere than Spyder. She gets the word out about the gatherings, can always be counted upon for support, and is simply one of the nicest people I know. Her blog is funny and often features snippets of good fun from around the internet, and no description of local blogs would be complete without acknowledging her role.

10. Absolutely Feisty: Earlier, I described Observant Bystander as being sold in the literary section of a great bookstore, while other blogs would be sold on the newsstand. Absolutely Feisty wouldn't be sold, it would be printed on posters and pasted in bright colors on walls. She's a blast of fresh air in a room - she's the bucket of gatorade getting dumped on a coach. Intense, direct, and personal. Read at your own risk, and you'll be going on a roller-coaster ride through the life of a young woman barely keeping it together through all the challenges of single-motherhood in a weak economy. I cheer for her.

Is Rick Warren Abandoning His Principles?

My fellow progressive bloggers are having a conniption fit (that's four links - I could provide a few dozen more) about Obama's choice of conservative pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. In a nutshell, they accuse Obama of selling out his core beliefs by daring to invite Rick Warren. The various statements attributed to Rick Warren have been dragged out and rephrased so as to make the man appear to be the world's most vicious homophobe, and then my incredulous leftwing friends indignantly ponder which of those statements Obama is adopting as his core beliefs.

Why isn't the shoe on the other foot?

Why is it disgraceful for Obama to invite Warren to speak, but not disgraceful for Warren to accept? If Warren is such a raging, monstrous homophobe to his very core, then why is he stepping onto the inauguration stage of a progressive, gay-friendly new President? Isn't the day going to be much more about Obama, and people unifying behind him, than it will be about the guy giving the invocation? Why is it that some on the left are soooo fearful that a prayer offered by someone who might disagree with them on a few issues will conquer all their hopes and beliefs, converting the entire day into a celebration of homophobia rather than of Obama and our grand new future?

Hilariously, some of us are complaining that Obama is "legitimizing" Rick Warren by inviting him to speak. Umm, yeah, the right wing conservatives have been waiting with bated breath for Obama to choose their next leader, and progressives are going to put "The Purpose Driven Life" on their nightstand right next to "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot". (Those with a memory may recall that Warren was the object of a mirror image of the current hand-wringing furor when he invited Senator Obama to speak at his Saddleback Church in 2006.)

Personally, I fully expected that anyone chosen by Obama to offer a religious invocation at his inauguration would have a few beliefs that differ from mine, on a theological, political, and policy level. I can listen to that person offer a prayer, and not feel like either one of us is abandoning his or her principles.

Tapping the Keg!

Regular readers will recall that I won the opportunity to have a full batch of my beer brewed at 75th Street Brewery. It now appears to be ready for prime time - they'll be serving "Triple Sugar Tripel" beginning on Monday, December 29th. Yes, I'm working on putting together some kind of party for that evening, and I'll post details here when I work them out.

I haven't sampled the beer, and we made a few significant changes to my 10 gallon recipe in the process of scaling it up to 200+ gallons, so I'm relying a bit on guesswork to predict how it will taste. The last time I saw this beer it was nothing more than sweet, tea colored water being pumped from the boiling kettle through the chiller and into a fermentation vessel where it would meet up with the special Belgian yeast that does all the work.

I expect that this beer will be the color of medium-strong tea, with a subdued but long-lasting head. The aroma will probably be honey mixed with just a suggestion of hops. The flavor will be sweet, with a strong note of honey flavor, followed by all the esters thrown off by the 75th Street Brewery's Belgian strain of yeast. Those esters will add a fruity, spicy taste to the beer, which I hope will combine with the honey to create a sweet, warming beer that will stand up to rich holiday meals and accompany traditional holiday desserts. At 9% alcohol, it will be a strong sipping beer. My hope is that the sweetness will make it appealing to those who think all craft beer is dark, hoppy and bitter, while the Belgian complexity of the beer will appeal to the beer snobs. It's not really a Belgian Tripel, because those ales focus more on the yeast characteristics than on the sugar, and it's a little dark for the style. Go here for a good article on the tripel style.

In light of the monkish lineage of this beer, it seems appropriate to use the occasion of its tapping to support a good religious cause here in Kansas City. While I'm still working out exactly how it's going to work, I'll make certain that samplers of the beer will have some opportunity to voluntarily support the Central City School Fund, which helps four wonderful Catholic elementary schools in the Old Northeast and the Westside give kids a great education.

Stay posted for more info on the party and the beer.

Killing Each Other at 100 Feet Per Second

This holiday season, thousands of us will be taking to the highways, possibly in unpleasant, challenging weather, and driving miles on interstates at 70+ miles per hour. And, even though we all think of ourselves as "safe" drivers with decent skills and adequate reaction speeds, somebody is going to die out there. Some family is going to be waiting for their son and his wife and their children to arrive, only to have their annoyance at his tardiness morph into something awful. They will "bleed out" in some ditch along I-70, with stunned spectators followed by travelers annoyed by the delay.

Whether you are among the annoyed or in the ditch is mostly luck. Even if you manage to keep yourself alert at all times, even if you have checked your tires to prevent blowouts and even if you allow someone else to control the radio - someone else less responsible can make a 70 mile per hour (102 feet per second) mistake with a ton and a half of metal.

A while ago, something like that happened to the brother of a friend of mine. While her my friend's brother died and her sister-in-law and niece bled in a ditch, the niece heard the driver of the other car explain that she was looking for something in her purse. How criminally stupid, right? But who among us hasn't looked down to adjust the radio, or to find a dropped piece of gum? I once worked on a wrongful death case where the driver's last act was to try to fast forward a cassette tape to "Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls". At around a hundred feet per second.

Driving is always dangerous - holiday driving is even more dangerous. Many of us don't often drive the interstates, but we'll be out there changing lanes without checking and failing to accurately judge the time it will take to stop. Even if you're perfect, I'm not, and it only takes one to make an accident. When you mix in the fact that people will be traveling on unfamiliar roads, and locals will be driving to and from parties, maybe in a little rain or snow, somebody is going to die.

Think about 100 feet per second, and think about how much damage that could imply. And please be careful - please use good judgment, and be a little frightened. Fellow drivers are counting on you, and so are the people at the other end of your journey.

Tamara Lowe - Motivating Me to Write Nice Things About Her

A month ago, I wrote a piece lampooning consultants, riffing off of a bunch of local bloggers writing breathlessly about which of Tamara Lowe's Motivitional Type DNA they have. In a nutshell, I'm cynical about consultants and I'm cynical about personality tests, so I had some fun making sport of the concept.

Last night, just before midnight, Tamara Lowe herself came to this blog and posted a reply. If you are one of those who liked her seminar, you'll love her comment. She defends the concept quite well, and pretty much calls me an ignorant jerk in the most positive, motivating fashion humanly possible.

The woman clearly has talent, insight, and a sense of humor. She also has a few books to sell, if you're interested . . .