A Letter from Kansas

The term "disaster porn" has entered popular lexicon. But some disasters are not sexy. They're too slow and personal to be dramatic. A watershed goes foul. The neighbor struggles with cancer. A family business becomes unprofitable and closes. This pasture got bulldozed. A teenager becomes an alcoholic. One drought withers all the sprouts. The noise from the new highway makes a parkland unpleasant. A lady gets her purse snatched. There are too few butterflies. A lot of people are underemployed. The talented teacher retires. A spouse grows obese. The sound of gunshots in the night becomes more frequent. A nearby factory cheats a little on following environmental regulations, accidents happen. And then, one day, the whole landscape is ravaged.

And nobody noticed.

The central United States has become such a disaster.

I was born in Kansas City at the tail end of the baby boom. I grew up in Kansas and Colorado and came into adulthood in the town of Lawrence. I moved away in my mid twenties because I was thirsty to know the outside world that had been called up for me through my acquaintance and friendship with William Burroughs, who lived in Lawrence, and the amazing circle of people who visited him. Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Hunter Thompson, Patti Smith and John Giorno were among the steady stream of extraordinary individuals who came to town and mingled with us locals. Their presence inflamed my curiosity. I packed up and sailed to France on a coal freighter at the age of twenty-five in late 1985.

I lived in Paris for ten years, with short stints in Italy, San Francisco and a fair amount of wandering. In the late nineties, because I missed the creative energy and raucous mythology of The American Dream, I moved from Paris to Brooklyn. My time in New York City was typically challenging and rewarding, professionally and emotionally. I'll always love the place and think of it as home to the person I became there. But in 2008, feeling cooped up and stagnant in the economic crunch that hit me, I decided to take the leap and move to Kansas and near my family, especially my father.

I also hoped to arrange my life so I could get out into the land, a lot.

While I expected that I would experience a period of culture shock upon returning to the Midwest, I was not prepared for the extensive changes that confronted me.

You can't (if you're concerned about your health) eat the fish out of the many lakes and streams around here because they're contaminated with much heavy metal, dioxin, PCBs and toxic industrial agriculture/livestock run-off. (Back in the eighties I often caught and ate fish during the warm months -for fun and fresh fish.) There have been egregious spikes of the herbicide Atrazine found in the drinking water of many districts throughout the sate and the Midwest in general.[1]

There is a company here in Lawrence, Kansas called Vangent. They specialize in "Talent Acquisition Systems" that help government and corporate institutions hire people. They're a big employer in our local economy. They have received numerous grants from the Department of Homeland Security. They managed the hiring of something like seventy thousand individuals over eight months to fill positions in the Transportation Safety Administration. I went to their place of business last fall to see if I might be able to get a job there. The campus is a high-security gulag and does not even have a public entrance. Computers robotically manage all of their communication with the outside world, especially anything related to "HR", or "Human Capital Management" as they call it. As I was looking for some kind of reception area, I saw the "designated smoking area" where employees can take a break: a bunch of sad-sack hollow shells silently puffing in depressed silence. My on-line application/resume submission got an automated rejection letter. Their computer is programmed to express courtesy.[2]

I've made frequent work-related trips to the southeast section of the state, particularly to a town called Coffeyville, and seen such reckless toxic industrial waste it staggers the imagination. Whole cities and sections of cities have had to be evacuated (Treece, Kansas, Picher, Oklahoma, Galena and Coffeyville, Kansas). There is a refinery in Coffeyville that is owned by Goldamn Sachs, does $3 billion in sales every year, that dumps its waste straight into the Verdigris River and can be smelled throughout the town and, depending on the winds, from twenty miles away. A business called Safety Kleen (you can't make this up), owned by Viacom, dumped enormous quantities of dioxin and PCB into the regional ecosystem. No one has yet figured out how to clean up Safety Kleen's lethal mess. The populous of Coffeyville demonstrates a bizarre array of skin afflictions. The tap water tastes like something you would use to clean a rug.[3]

I've sat at a kitchen table with young men who were snorting methamphetamine and calling Obama a nigger. My best friend's next-door neighbor -in a fairly nice part of town was busted for cooking meth in her garage. You don't very often see meth-heads walking the streets in this area, but twenty-five miles south of here and into Oklahoma, it's a common sight. Some cops in some towns are networked in with the methamphetamine industry. The guys who snorted meth in front of me filled me in about their relationships with their local P.D. and the cops' needs for supplemental income.[4]

The courts are filled with sex-crime cases. (My ex-girlfriend from when I was in high school is now the chief assistant district attorney here who prosecutes these crimes.) A few years ago, before my ex-girlfriend was a prosecutor, one of my dearest friends was beaten nearly to death because he's gay, yet the police did not file charges in the case, since the attacker had lured my friend into the situation by promising, then momentarily engaging in sex. As if that somehow excused the violence.[5]

Last year three college students died of alcohol poisoning or accidents caused by extreme over-consumption of alcohol. Alcohol toxicity among young people is one of the highest causes of hospital emergency visits, and peaks around sporting events and certain times during the academic year.[6]

The sports department of the local university effectively runs this town.[7]

More than half the population is overweight to obese. The incidence of diabetes has the health care system severely challenged.[8]

The local franchise bookstore has a tiny closet sized science section and a giant lobby-sized religion section, between the celebrity biographies and diet books.[9]

All but a few of the locally owned businesses here have been snuffed out by corporate franchises, which pay lousy wages and only the barest minimum local taxes. The local businesses that remain standing are beholden to corporate suppliers and mega-banks.[10]

The state government is nearly bankrupt, cutting education and law enforcement budgets back even further.[11]

The roads are in general disrepair.[12] When it rains the east section of town gets hit with flash floods that seep into people's homes and cause a crisis of pathogenic mold growth.[13]

In the past year the rolls of those accepting food assistance have grown by more than 50%. Officially, unemployment is around 5%. But when you look at the numbers of people who are demonstrably gainfully employed, actually paying taxes, it's only about 55-60% of the work-age population. So that's 35-40% of employable people who are unaccounted for. I, for instance, do not show up as unemployed according to the state criteria. I do show up as one of the people accepting food stamps, however, as of last September.[14]

There are entire strip malls of commercial real estate that are completely vacant at the edge of most towns, and peppered throughout the region. More than a few of these malls are brand new, never occupied.[15]

And then there are the housing developments... sprawling tinderbox agglomerations, most of them sparsely inhabited... many of the units featuring For Sale or Foreclosed signs...[16]

Car dealerships (the ones that are still operating, Lawrence lost two of them this year) have signs offering a new kind of insurance: if you buy a car you can bring it back for a full refund if you lose your job in the first year.[17]

When I hike in the countryside on the weekends, the bucolic quiet is frequently pierced by the sound of gunfire, people doing target practice or hunting with their many types of firearms. The gun stores are very low on ammunition since all the freaks around here (and there are lots of them) believe that Obama is planning a fascist takeover and the only remedy/defense will be an armed insurrection, so they are buying hundreds of thousands of rounds for their assault rifles.[18]

None of this is exaggerated. What's more, it is sprawling, endemic and mostly unrelieved, with only slight variations for hundreds of miles, if not throughout the continent.

What can be hoped for?

Much of it can be resolved by simply stopping the destruction. The landscape has an unstoppable capacity for regeneration. If you don't mow your lawn, in a few short months you'll find yourself surrounded by jungle.

Once erosion stabilizes and wetlands renew themselves, they have a near miraculous capacity to filter and break down most toxins. Wildlife populations race into new niches, adapt quickly and thrive when relieved of the stresses of human encroachment.

Time has a lovely way of repurposing an oppressively glittering, chintzy franchise development into just about any vital form creativity can muster, once the corporate stranglehold is broken. It only takes a fraction of the energy and effort it took to create an isolating, soul-obliterating housing archipelago to turn it into an actual neighborhood where people can walk to the corner store and meet each other on common ground. No social problem can go unresolved for long when it is addressed on common ground, free from fear.

When was the last time you really felt like you were running short of dioxins, PCBs and the products manufactured that produce them. Never? Why not just stop making them? They take a mighty long time to break down and lose their toxicity, but they eventually will. -If we quit making new quantities of them.

All of these regenerative effects are so apparent, such common knowledge, that they have become clichés. What is stopping us from acknowledging the crisis?

My old friend, William Burroughs had a title for what is required to fix the mess: "Naked Lunch", -a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.

It can't happen too soon.

Sources

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/us/23water.html

http://huffpostfund.org/stories/2009/08/epa-fails-inform-public-about-weed-killer-drinking-water

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2009/sep/13/herbicide-safety-monitoring-scrutinized/

[2] http://www.vangent-hcm.com/Home/

[3] http://ludb.clui.org/ex/i/KS3132/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffeyville_Resources

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:QopA7RreEP4J:skyways.lib.ks.us/ksleg/KLRD/Publications/Energy_Resources/Jan_mtg/Stan_Riemann.pdf+Coffeyville+Resources+Refining+%26+Marketing,+Llc&cd=23&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2009/feb/22/more-sink-holes-open-mining-scarred-kansas-communi/

http://www2.ljworld.com/videos/2009/may/27/24831/

[4] http://www.justice.gov/ndic/pubs3/3600/meth.htm

http://www.topix.com/forum/city/coffeyville-ks/TI0JVPO1P9117KJC8

http://www.topix.net/city/coffeyville-ks/2010/01/coffeyville-couple-sues-srs-worker-after-granddaughters-beating-death

http://www.topix.com/forum/city/coffeyville-ks/T7I14DKCRMITE1341/p2

[5] http://www.lawrence.com/weblogs/wtmwrc/2007/may/21/bashersdozen/

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2009/mar/01/reality-rape-lawrence/

[6] http://www.news.ku.edu/2009/august/17/alcoholedu.shtml

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2009/mar/10/father-blames-alcohol-ku-students-death/

[7] http://www2.kusports.com/

[8] http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2010/jan/29/nations-diabetes-epidemic-has-serious-consequences/

http://blogs.pitch.com/fatcity/2009/07/missouri_and_ks_keep_eating.php

[9] http://www.borders.com/online/store/StoreDetailView_203

[10] http://local.startupnation.com/7_Steps_to_Choosing_the_Franchise_for_You_Lawrence_KS-r1209952-Lawrence_KS.html

http://www.thinkkc.com/SiteLocation/TaxesIncentives/PropertyTaxExempt.php

[11] http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2009/nov/24/more-cuts-kansas-state-budget-may-be-way-even-afte/

[12] http://primebuzz.kcstar.com/?q=node/20631

[13] http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2009/mar/16/mold-can-pose-health-hazards-remains-unregulated/?print

http://www.ripoffreport.com/Real-Estate-Services/Century-21-Miller-Mi/century-21-miller-midyett-ag-8cqdc.htm

[14] http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.ks_lawrence_msa.htm

http://www.infowars.com/real-unemployment-figures-double-those-reported-by-labor-department/

http://www.businessinsider.com/david-rosenberg-forget-the-unemployment-rate-the-real-nightmare-is-the-employment-rate-2010-1

[15] http://local.minyanville.com/Commercial_Real_Estate_Saturation_Point_Lawrence_KS-r1199326-Lawrence_KS.html

http://www.loopnet.com/Kansas/Lawrence-Commercial-Real-Estate/

[16] http://www.foreclosuredeals.com/list/ks/douglas/

http://lawrence.douglas.ks.foreclosuredatabank.com/

[17] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/15/gm-dealerships-closing-se_n_204031.html

http://www.nytimes.com/projects/maps/chrysler-dealerships-slated-for-closing.html

[18] http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=93483

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2009/apr/21/worried-gun-owners-trigger-shortage-bullets-rise-p/

Tags:

Comments

Article

Submitted by Pippalayana on Mon, 02/22/2010 - 22:42.

Clear and Concise

... no more shocking then apparent

... may the weeds begin to grow ...

... just wizards and witches in the Heartland

... there's no place like home ... there's no place like home .... there's no place like home .... {OZ}

Talk about one sided...

Submitted by joyalexa on Mon, 02/22/2010 - 12:31.

This article could be written about ANY of the states... Kansas is no more a scourge than any other state. The whole country is going to shit. I'm not going to disagree with your pollution facts. Yes, this is Monsanto land. Yes, there are gun-loving rednecks. Yes, people here love their meat. etc, etc.But damn, why are you harshing on the midwest?I recently moved to the midwest (KC, MO to be exact) from the east coast, and I can't say the east coast was much better. And while I've only been here a few months, I can say that there are a LOT of positives about Kansas City. One major thing being the people. I find the people here much more genuine, caring, open and desiring to engage. There is a counter-culture of vegan raw foodists, free-thinkers, and artists. There is a lot of diversity, even a sizable Buddhist community. And while it is still a "car town" it is possible to bike, walk and get around via the (hopefully improving) bus transit system.Seriously, what was the point of your article???

Harshing

Submitted by Philip Heying on Mon, 02/22/2010 - 13:45.

Hi Joyalexa,

I do appreciate your comment observing that there are many great people and communities around here. My own family lives in this region, after all, and we have the best hopes and intentions. We are also obliged by ecnomics to drive our cars everywhere and end up buying food grown with Monsanto technologies.

As I mentioned in the piece, one of the more troubling things about our local situation is that it is not unique. If it were, I would not have written this and I would have already moved away.

The view I have after living for 25 years away and having returned to reside here a year and a half ago is that the degradation has accelerated and is a genuine crisis. I can't say, at all, that the "good people" are making any significant difference for the better. I think we are all caught up in a social and economic system that is contrary to our real values and best interests, in the long term. It has been a very... uncomfortable... experience to confront this situation. Frankly, I hope I'm totally wrong. But both my personal observations and "the news" inspired me to write this.

What I hope is that reading it will help inspire others to confront the urgent need for big solutions and get serious about getting to work.

And by the way, maybe we'll meet in person before too long, since we're practically neighbors (I live in Lawrence), as we're getting to work fixng this mess.

Great post

Submitted by jesse wingrove on Mon, 02/22/2010 - 15:45.

Having long ago left me native West Virginia for San Diego, I can empathize with the heartache Philip is expressing for his home state. If your worldview includes any concept of karma, then the place where we were born has immense significance for our life destiny and our ties to that region are deep, complex, and strong. If you are a fan of simple answers, the farmlands, rural mountains, and inner cities of America are probably places that you should avoid. Is it frustrating to watch people numb themselves with meth, Mountain Dew, and toxic forms of religion? Oh yea. And equally frustrating to watch consumer capitalism do it's best to make sure that they will always want to be numbed. In my hometown in West Virginia our corporate overlord was DuPont. If you don't live in one of these regions it can be challenging to understand just how powerful these sorts of interests are there. DuPont was constantly threatening to leave town if they weren't given free reign over the local ecology and economy. Everybody knew that the threat was real and that the area would face staggering unemployment and poverty if they did leave. And that's just a small piece of the bigger social dynamic that Philip described.

While we are at it, why is it okay to belittle cartoonishly manufactured regional stereotypes in a way that we would never think of doing with a race, religion, or nationality? I enjoy a good redneck joke as much as anybody, but let's remember to have compassion for these regions that face inredible challenges to their consciousness integration and evolution.

Speaking of the proud counter-movement

Submitted by Philip Heying on Tue, 02/23/2010 - 12:19.

Hello Michael. I'm wondering if you were aware of this nonsense and the possibility of responding:

http://savejon.org/

sounds like a great time

Submitted by b-kin on Mon, 02/22/2010 - 20:24.

to be moving to lawrence! i am bringing music and lots and lots of books (maybe i can supplement the dearth of scifi at the bookstore) a desire to live vegan and sustainably and a pretty legit blueprint for some green greenhouses that we will be trying to build in people's yards, maybe in the darkest hour a great seed will finally finaly sprout in the heart of america, anyway it is very funny that you wrote this while i am on the cusp of moving out of colorado to lawrence, sounds like a situation with a lotta ins, alotta outs, alotta strands knockin around in ol duder's head... woohoo lawrence! hey phillip wana try an plant an evolver spore in lawrence? CROJAKILLYWILLYREREEREBOOBOPALAPALAPALAPALAHHHAAAAAAHAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Spore

Submitted by Philip Heying on Tue, 02/23/2010 - 12:14.

Hi Deepbeakon. I've been informed that your Big Lebowski reference establishes your credibility beyond question. I'd very much like to know more about your green greenhouses. Whether with an Evolver spore or another social group (there are a few such alliances getting started around here) I'd be delighted to get to work in good company. You may find my contact information on my website. I hope to hear from you.

here there and every where, Savoir faire

Submitted by jai 1008 on Tue, 02/23/2010 - 16:57.

While I appreciate your thoughtfullness and tender sensibilites and wish for better, there is no state in the union that does not have these exact same issues plaguing it (and let's not even talk about abroad, there are patches of hell all over this globe, please, Kansas hardly has a hegemony). Your essay brings to mind that eternal conundrum of consciousness's manifesting capacity-- treading the razor's edge between "Reality" noting in all it's crass, ugly, degraded, rot and getting stuck in a world view informed by such. You are wherever you hang your hat, in your head especially. I live not 60 miles from Lawrence, spend plenty of time in your neck of the woods (literally), and while it is no shangri-la, it is a beautiful, verdant, creative state and country filled with great folks, lots of counter culture, good fishing (well I eat the fish, I may have mutantized by now) and the Kaw Valley growers Assoc. still strong after decades plus, which makes Lawrence an incredibly unique spot on the pschydelia radar. The music that comes through town is surprisingly OK for a college town that size. The local music across the state is remarkable, try Winfield Music fest. Lawrence has a well established old collectivist anarcho community, Kansas home to plenty of old Debs Socialists and Wobblies. The Ks Grassroots Art Center is a fine addition o the folk art tradition in Ks, which is also vital. There is a very sweet long time Sufi community there. There is a statewide solid network of organic farming folks, farmers markets everywhere and Wes Jackson's place in Salina, homesteaders and a long tradition of free state mentality. Elmer Green's think tank in Council Grove is a hotbed of new thought. KC, just to your East, is having one of (if not the) the biggest grassroots art making renaissances in the whole US, a really staggering thing the last 15 years and I do not mean the new power and light district. Ks has to be taken intact with it's Civil War history and hardscrabble landscape, it can't be isolated or compared to other groovey locales. I've been everywhere, man, and the midwest is hip in it's own bioregional fashion, friendly, easy going, signifcantly less pretence than many places...cheap. You are correct in your description of the Capitalist detritus of death that does dot the state, (and every other state) but to claim it's the only thing going on is myopic and kinda silly and ultimately detrimental. Do you think all the fab earth deva kingdoms that inhabit the rocks, land, sky and fauna of the state have split for the coast?? You just got to poke around----the heart of any place is a hidden thing.......if you want folks to respect your notions of utopian culture and how it is supposed to be, you'd best figure a way to respect theirs..gun toters/meth snorters et al..and Kansas is a great place to learn that principle.

The Good Things

Submitted by Philip Heying on Tue, 02/23/2010 - 17:23.

Hello jai 1008. I moved back here after 25 years away with all those good things you mention about this state in my memory and current, if absentee, awareness. I was itching to partake. After having done a fair amount of travelling around, Kansas looked really promising. I hoped to be a contributing member of a healthy community that might be exportable, at least as an idealistic principle.

A year and a half later, I can't escape the conclusion that the "good things" about this place are way too exceptional and, well, I wrote the piece you read and responded to. You can take a look at the source links if you want to get an idea of how hard a time I had believing what I was seeing.

Since you mention the Kaw Valley Growers Association, doubtless you are familiar with the recent raid by federal authorities of an entirely legal business:

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2010/feb/05/lawrence-man-charged-after-sacr...

The art renaissance in KC is remarkable, but it is really struggling right now to maintain its foothold. Compare it to the Kansas City Chiefs dominion over local "culture" and its relatively miniscule scale becomes apparent.

I don't mean to rebut or deny any of the circumstances you mention. They all exist. I wish to propose that focusing on them alone, to the exclusion of the predominant trends, is not going to result in any improvement. I wrote and sought to publish the piece in the hope of reaching out to anyone interested in forging a much more effective, even militant, activist community -which I have yet to see in action, beyond isolated niches.

Are you up for it?

Thanks so much for writing this!!

Submitted by q fields on Wed, 02/24/2010 - 02:23.

I returned to the midwest after traveling in Latin America for almost seven years. I was psyched to transform my homeland and connect with old friends.

I love my home Bioregion! Sadly, the home of my heart no longer exists.. The paw paw patches that I ran through as a child have all been cut down. What I returned to was an absolute brick in my face. Hopelessness, alcoholism, nature abandoned... and a racial divide few people mention.

I would agree, there is a grassroots arts movement, but it is small at best compared to the culture that surrounds it.

I will also add that the one bright spot I could see: the Latinos. They understand what it takes to start small businesses and local community and don't even realize they are breaking the corporate mold.

While I understand the 'wherever you go there you are meme' I have to also point out... if you find yourself trapped around a cycle of worthless addiction and degradation remember the story of Moses and others, sometimes life requires an Exodus (or hejira/hagirah). I am certainly a reluctant gypsy.

Best Wishes Philip! Thanks again for writing this and bringing these issues up in a public forum!

Bearing witness

Submitted by Themon the Bard on Wed, 02/24/2010 - 01:15.

It seems to me that the point of this article is to bear witness.

We humans are all creatures of habit and limited attention span. We normally see what we want to see (or fear to see) and little else. The idea of an "epiphany" is often imbued with an idea of "divine inspiration" -- more often, it's merely a matter of opening our eyes and seeing what is there. Phillip has been away, and upon returning "home" saw a familiar place with new eyes.

This is valuable.

It is not absolute truth. It is, however, A truth, and one that will certainly be harder for anyone who has lived within the changes to see.

The Road Runs Out of Town Too

Submitted by Smokeydrinker on Wed, 02/24/2010 - 01:43.

I just waded through your vat of whine and was wondering how soon until you will be leaving? For all ye that have not been to this locale: Pay Heed, Beware of the Disaster Porn! Stay thee away! Seriously, this place is festering with GM foods and oversized boobs, both physical and mental. The meth-addled, Sapphics, and Obamaphobes are multiplying with such velocity a Phelpsian Plague is verily upon us here in the Land of BlAhs. If you do happen to find “yo’self in these here parts,” remember the one blessing you have left is that the road does lead back to where you came from or to somewhere else all the same. Do not tarry and do not linger. You won't need an old or young priest to exorcise yourself. Simply pour some fossil fuel in your bad motor scooter and ride thee the hell away!

Phelps

Submitted by Philip Heying on Wed, 02/24/2010 - 13:49.

The anonymous poster "Smokeydrinker" mentions the "Phelpsian Plague" -which is a reference to Fred Phelps, who heads an extreme fundamentalist congregation based in Topeka in vehement homophobic and anti-abortion demonstrations. I did not bring up Phelps in my writing. Maybe I should have... when Dr. George Tiller was murdered in church by a right-to-lifer in Wichita last spring, Phelps publicly celebrated the event and sent a group of his congregation members to harrassingly demonstrate at Tiller's funeral.

ad astra per aspera

Submitted by jai 1008 on Wed, 02/24/2010 - 16:39.

Well it is a tiny little multiverse here in lowly KS and I was stopped from making further snarky remarks by a pal who gave me your personal low down and said you were a nice guy. I was about to remark that if you are still in the job hunting business you might try the FBI, as you'd be ripe for their fool lure tasking of dissaffected Kansas youths itching for a fight, what with questions like "are you in for some militant activist action"....what monkey wrencher worth their salt would say, oh yeah, Mr. Online Stranger, let's build some pipe bombs. It is a bit of such hubris I over reacted poorly to, there are plenty of us local militant activists abounding, but some of us tend to activate FOR things rather than just against. I had a boss in Cali who once said, "Encourage Signs of Life, there aren't many". It IS handy to serve as the pointer-outer of the decay around, lest anyone miss it (it's hard to miss it around here, truly), but if you claim it the sum totality you just make yourself look poorly and I'd hate that for ya, as you're obviously a finely tuned little muckraker. There are also ad nauseum other things to add to your gloom and doom pile--the Flint Hills are owned largely by the Bass family, gold rush style wind energy down there is a problem, Osowatamie is a hotbed of egregious civil rights violating and has been for decades.....military industrial airplane building is a main bldg block of the Ks economy, Fred Phelps/Tiller Killer types run rampant, creationism is in the schools, cattle/ranchland management is dismal in some quarters, etc.. Looks like I'll run into you one of these days, if you keep up your galvanizing efforts. I appreciated your lament, I just thought it was a bit premature for a eulogy.

anonymous online pronouncements

Submitted by Philip Heying on Wed, 02/24/2010 - 18:28.

How about instead of just running into each other "someday" you put some courage behind your convictions, step out from behind the anonymous online pronouncements about my character based on hearsay and just look me up? This is my real name and I'm in the book. You can also find my contact information on my website. I'd very much like to connect with some actual local activists, in person, and get to work. It sounds like you're a lot more informed about all of this than I am. I'm free this coming weekend. I am not a cop, nor will I ever be, and have no desire to build bombs nor give actual cops any more reason to break out their nifty new Homeland Security SWAT gear. I want to do more than "advocate FOR things". I want to start helping clean up this mess.

Awareness with a microscope

Submitted by Smokeydrinker on Thu, 02/25/2010 - 13:44.

Phillip's view of Kansas is a glass all empty or full of piss and vinegar. Either way, his awareness is completely skewed by negativity and this diminishes the awareness value. If he takes that microscope to some other locale would it be capable of seeing anything other than the negative? I doubt it because it isn't the lens, and it isn't the world, it is the perception of the viewer. The scrits concluded that Kansas is F*cked but with Time all will be healed. Scintillating revelation, eh? Might as well jack off while we wait, Right?

for what it's worth

Submitted by joyalexa on Thu, 02/25/2010 - 11:30.

I'd totally be interested in a KC-area spore. (Not sure how one goes about setting it up?) But definitely NOT interested in any militaristic pursuits of any kind.Also, just curious... why would you choose to hang out with people who are snorting meth and using degrading name-calling. ??? There are many things going on that you cannot control, but you can choose the company you keep.And again, I think many of us want change for the better... but it always comes back to HOW to enact that change. I think we can only start with ourselves... peace.

Odd Job

Submitted by Philip Heying on Thu, 02/25/2010 - 11:51.

Hi Joyalexa thanks for reaching out in the affirmative. I'd say the first step to getting anything going, either an Evolver spore or another kind of group, would be to establish real non-anonymous contact. You can find my contact info on my website www.philipheying.com. I am also on facebook under my real name.

I can reassure your that I have no interest in any kind of "militaristic pursuits". Nor am I interested in any kind of "martyrdom".

To answer your question, the circumstances that lead me into the company of meth-snorting, epithet-speaking people were unforeseen side-effects of an odd job that I had. Suffice it to say that after that incident I terminated the association.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you.

Submitted by CS on Fri, 02/26/2010 - 00:08.

Like a previous commenter, I'm far more depressed by the quality of some of the responses to your post than by the post itself, which I'm very grateful to have read. If these are the people who see themselves as part of the "solution" they fail to inspire me with any hope in it whatsoever. I want to thank you too for responding to them with far more dignity and respect than they bothered to extend to you--you are quite right to cite the anonymity of the online world as an obstacle to meaningful connection and exchange and call them out of it. And you seem to have the needed patience--maybe you can develop a real dialogue with the folks in your region who do at least seem to want to help build an alternative there. I think you are absolutely right that the heartland has really been caught in the jaws of the system's worst consequences (which are NOT shared evenly across every place in this country, even though you can find them everywhere). Perhaps some of these respondents failed to recognize or understand the human emotion of mourning, and to value it, as it is still valued in many other cultures, as in no way in contradiction with effective action, but a feeling that should inspire compassion and a sense of common humanity, which are what give us the strength to act for good. To see the depiction of degradation and despair as somehow being synonymous with co-optation and cynicism is inane. It is to me a sign of just how far we still need to go in this country to become people who are really capable of undertaking effective struggle in a complex world. I hope you may find kindred spirits there who can help.

Dignified responses

Submitted by Themon the Bard on Fri, 02/26/2010 - 11:33.

Phillip, I'd also like to comment on the dignity of your replies to the surprisingly undignified comments you received. Thank you.

I find it interesting that your article provoked such violent responses. You must have touched a nerve.

Sometimes the truth hurts

Submitted by Lightning Hawk on Sat, 02/27/2010 - 06:27.

Philip, God Bless You for telling the truth. How can we EVER improve things without first coming to terms with how bad things are?

To the commentators: Philip didn't write about the social problems of Modesto, California because he doesn't live there. He obviously loves Kansas and hates to see it go downhill. He was moved by the mounting problems he saw upon his return and wrote about them. The idea that every article about everything has to be "fair and balanced" is a ridiculous perversion of open-mindedness. THANK GOD Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi were willing to speak out against injustice instead of pimping some lukewarm mixture of milquetoast criticism and feel-good platitudes.

I grew up in Texas and, as you can imagine, have similar feelings sometimes when I go back to visit family. I can barely stand to listen to my brother talk about religion and politics. Then there's the gun stores on every corner. I don't think I would have the courage to move back, much less try to improve things there.

Peace to you and best wishes on finding a better employment situation and partners for evolving.

start with a good movie

Submitted by river on Mon, 03/01/2010 - 16:55.

simple though it is, may I suggest you pick a good movie, maybe Capitalism a love story, or Food, Inc, or perhaps you can dig up something even more holistic and find a venue (church, community center) at which to screen it and then publicize the heck out of it. It's a good way to bring people out of the woodwork and creates a space for dialogue. Also, since you are on Facebook, please check out King forums on there. A call for community forums about MLK, in order to apply his profound love for humanity (as in applied *real* christianity, though personally i am not a christian, formally) to our society today. I think there needs to be a moral/emotional/spiritual basis for people to take up the task of transformation/healing/keeping one another. Good luck, brother.

The World According to Monsanto

Submitted by Philip Heying on Mon, 03/01/2010 - 19:28.

I recently watched the excellent documentary "The World According to Monsanto". I wish any one of these films had been broadcast instead of the Superbowl.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6262083407501596844#

Thanks

Submitted by Philip Heying on Mon, 03/01/2010 - 19:24.

Thanks for the encouragement and info. And thanks for the criticism too. It's all part of the kind of civic dialogue I hope to participate in as we begin to address this situation (for real - not symbolically).

Especially, thanks to the individuals who have gotten in touch with me.

All best to all.

moved back, but not for long.

Submitted by redd2 on Tue, 03/02/2010 - 13:01.

You couldn't be more right, Phil...the dispair seeks into everything here in Kansas City, Mo.

Peer reviewed hard science

Submitted by Philip Heying on Tue, 03/02/2010 - 21:28.

Atrazine is in our drinking water.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/us/23water.html

Atrazine, one of the most commonly used and controversial weedkillers, can turn male frogs into females, researchers reported on Monday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6204RG20100302

Nobody really knows quite what it does to humans.

What to do.....what to do....?

Submitted by Desire on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 00:14.

There's no disputing your 'painting' of your landscape. There are paintings like this everywhere... and so the question becomes: What to do? This is the hard question. Where does one look for guidance? Sitting and reflecting on this question I realize that the images that come to mind are from the movies and TV - The Constant Gardener, The Girl in the Cafe, Erin Brockovich, The China Syndrome, Silkwood, run the gamut from individual with a conscience to lawyer with a conscience. All romanced airbrushed unreal assuaging of guilt. An Inconvenient Truth is another painting of the problems, but what to do? Silly me expecting any answer from the entertainment branch of the machine. Elders come to mind, I childishly think, I know I'll ask my Dad...hmmm if he'd had any answers then would things be this bad? Probably not. What to do? Heroes? Philip, you mention childhood heroes of William Burroughs, Hunter Thompson, Timothy Leary - not much help here Burroughs and Hunter S. cynically riffed on the edges of the disaster as it unfolded doing nothing productive and undermining the true and heartfelt yearnings of many a youth to use their 'angry young man' feelings to 'change the world' effectively emasculating the young of several generations with glib cartoonish put-downs. Leary - turn on tune in drop out - yeah that really helped us resist the onslaught that lead to the picture you paint. So, what to do.....what to do.... hmmm... Gandhi? Passive resistance..maybe there's something here - "A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave." I'm paraphrasing my thesis here but to cut to the chase, if anyone I care about asks me what is important in life, what matters...? My only answer is one thing. Love. Pah, stupid hippy, I hear you all groan...moron, idiot, simpleton, yeah but I love you :) When one or two of the commenters above criticized the author for hanging out with the racial epithet slinging meth addicts and the author then assured that it was a now corrected mistake.... I winced. Do a Gandhi - hang out with them on purpose, bravely love them. Make eye contact, tell them what you really think with love, I do think it's hard to do, being brave in that way. But I do think it's all there is to do. Philip you've asked above several times for contact, if I was in your area I'd do that....but I think it's been a mistake with American activism since the 60's that we seek each other out and then spend a whole lot of energy talking together about how bad things are and not doing a whole lot more except maybe scoring with the cute chick who's equally disgusted with the way things are and the rudeness of the meth addicts. The courageous thing to DO is to lovingly talk to, be with, help, resist, encourage, enlighten, love, the people who need it. But wow is it hard....the 'empty husks' at the government employment agency....need love. The meth addicts....need love. It heals, it helps, it is the only tool at everyone's disposal that can make a difference and the only one that is never used. So what to do....? Love. People, things, places, water. How do you love a road? Clean up some trash. A person? Be with them. An older car? Clean it with very little water that drains onto grass to filter the dirt. Don't drive it hard and burn oil. How do you love a river? (See Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie.) How do you love Monsanto? WOW that's a difficult one! Loving a polluter consciousless soulless corporation....what to do? Love the corporate officers, love the corporation by not using its products, freeing it from the pain of having to exist as a polluter, love the farmers who do use it's products, love the farmers who are trying not to, love the salesmen who are meeting their quotas to feed their kids.... WOW that's a lot of loving to do.....fortunately love is unlimited and free.... but it's hard to do... yup, it takes courage to actively love people and things. I need to do better... I love you all for causing me to write this and realize that... I will try and do better.

Beautiful

Submitted by Philip Heying on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 12:09.

Thanks, Desire, for this beautiful, insightful comment. It's funny, but yesterday I was thinking along these lines and indulged in the fantasy of bringing Eric Prince, CEO of the corporation formerly known as Blackwater, and Bernard Kouchner, a founder of Doctors Without Borders, together to collaborate. I reflected on times I have listened to both of these individuals speak publicly and could imagine them finding common ground. More to the point, I wondered what it would be like for me to have an actual conversation with Eric Prince, someone whom I otherwise would love to see put into prison, a personnage out of my nightmares -based on what I know of him. I wondered, how could I convince this man to kill less and cure more? Your comment, Desire, resonates with this goofy reverie I had yesterday afternoon while driving in rush hour traffic through suburban sprawl from south Kansas City to Lawrence.

By Gandhi's standards....

Submitted by Desire on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 22:28.

I suppose I'm a complete failure, and a coward.... it is SO HARD to really love.....I just ended a conversation with an ex, she is having problems with her parents end of life issues, it's a complex mess and she's not doing well with it.... so I try to love her in this difficult time. She was abused mentally by both parents and it continues as she tries to love and help them. Her relationship with her father brings up issues existing between us so she talks to me harshly. So I try to stay loving, and the harsh continues, and I'm aware of some of her psychological routines, so I continue being as loving as I can, but she has issues and the conversation slides into dis-function about us not what we started talking about, and I feel the active love drain from my body, I get defensive. I get hurt, I stop being loving - bah, such a failure WWMD? What would Mohandas do? Well, I ask myself first why did I fail in maintaining a loving attitude in the face of adversity? Because I'm stressed, because I'm still working at 6pm, because I'm worried about my own stuff, because I want things to be different, wah wah wah... I am such a baby! But that is who I am, I'm a complex plugged in post-postmodern man making his way in the world with 300 tons of psychological and physical baggage. WWMD? He would let go of all the stuff so he could love - what stuff? The psychological stuff, the possessions, the fear, the struggle....why? Ultimately so he could actively LOVE, unencumbered. He was THAT brave.....me, not so much. Well you wonder, what does all this have to do with Philip's original post? The term "distaster porn" is what. I submit that the disaster we see without is paralleled by a disaster within. I don't know which came first or which caused which - I suspect it's case by case. But I do think that as much as our exterior landcapes are ravaged and destroyed, so are our interior landscapes, our minds. Look within for "disaster porn of the mind". Why? Maybe because our ancestors stole this land and committed genocide on the native people. Maybe because we're descended from convicts and criminals. Maybe because our minds just can't handle modern life, online, offline, inline, it's all become just too complex, hard, difficult. Maybe because we are insignificant specks among billions of others who have no power but to game the system as well as we can and feed and clothe ourselves and our loved ones and suffer the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune'. Blah. We're fucked up. At least I am. But what to do? LOVE! I'm trying to. To actively love myself (see the Piya Sutta). To actively love people in my life. To try and help them unravel the threads of their used and abused psyche. But earlier today I failed. I wonder if visualization would help? When you're actively loving someone and they attack..... if I see the attack as arrows piercing my skin, but not hurting and passing right through? WOW it's hard - it stresses me out - for me that means I feel uneasy, on guard, fight or flight gets activated, lizard brain stem stuff. My chest tightens up, I can't breathe properly. BREATHE! Sit up straight, center, calm, arrows passing through, listen, hear, respond with LOVE. It's so hard to do. So simple to say. I'm a failure BUT I'm a tryer. I'll try again, I hope I'll do better. The only thing worth the effort is love. It helps me repair my landscape inside and outside. I'll put up a sign... 'Landscape Repair 5c'... and hand anyone who wants a card with 'Love' written on it. I'm trying :)

Too hard

Submitted by Philip Heying on Thu, 03/04/2010 - 11:16.

Come on you're being too hard on yourself. Ghandi is dead and can't speak for his standards so why would you invent him judging you? You're not "fucked up". You've got a broken heart. If you're correct in your assesment that the interior (personal) and the exterior (socio-environmental) landscapes are ravaged -and I agree that they are linked, then that means you can heal one with the other. You can heal your broken heart by healing the landscape and you can heal the landscape by relieving your broken heart. Maybe try this experiment: if your internal realm is in turmoil, work on external things and see if it helps you to cheer up.

Hey Philip

Submitted by Desire on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 22:42.

Meant to say too that I saw your photographs today and enjoyed them, thankyou. Above I'm just trying to get at the link between being loving and action - you know, achieving change. All the bad things out there in the world started in someone's mind, in a choice, in a decision, in a bad emotion....so maybe if one heals the mind, one heals the world. Love to you :)

The sadness of the smokestack, from which nothing puffs

Submitted by Brian George on Thu, 03/04/2010 - 15:57.

Hi Phillip,

I was very moved by your RS posting of “A Letter from Kansas.” When I return to Worcester, MA, the city where I grew up, I also experience many of the complex emotions that you describe. My first thought is always, “How do the majority of the people here make a living? The whole industrial base of the city has disappeared.”

Overwhelmed by nostalgia, I wander through street after street of abandoned factories—as through the ruins of an ancient empire. Row upon row of broken windows stare back at me. Pigeons fly in and out. It is really so strange to be feeling such affection! Growing up here, I could not wait to say “goodbye.”

Before leaving to go to the Art Institute of Boston, I had applied for several factory jobs. One HR interviewer asked, “How were your grades in high school?” I answered, “Erratic.” He laughed, and said, “Well, I don’t think you would fit in here!” Nonetheless, I mourn for my city, and for the “working class” way of life that is now a historical footnote—a way of life that, years ago, I had viewed with such contempt.

Thank you so much for this article.

Submitted by melanied on Sat, 03/06/2010 - 20:29.

I think it did everything you intended for it to do, at least for me. I'm based in Brooklyn now, but am intimately aquainted with "America's Heartland" - not the midwest exactly, but some very similar places. I definitely have a heart for the suffering of more "mainstream" America, just cause I've seen it up close so often. It absolutely disgusts me (the mountain dew, whopper, gun, tv, religion & apathy thing)... but I also have a sense - not *trying* to sound patronizing - of: "Forgive them Father, they know not what they do." I love reading pieces like this simply because - they reflect a reality. The reality of what's wrong, the reality of what needs to be fixed, the reality of where we need to apply our vision, our talents, our capacity to heal & work hard. This article fires me up to help & to serve. Partly because - if the ills you describe are so commonplace ~ then we can all work locally on the same common problems ~ & the solutions should prove to be common & share-able too! Very exciting to me, that last thought. I'll leave you with 2 Buckminster Fuller quotes that I find useful in thinking about these 'realities': "All the problems you see in society are design flaws." & “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." Namaste all. - Melanie D.

A Letter from Kansas

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