an author named william least heat moon wrote a book called blue highways that chronicled his journey through the u.s. on the old "blue highways". they were the main roads marked in blue on old rand mcnally maps before the interstate highway system. he wrote a book called prairie earth afterward that was very long. it was a detailed tour of all the counties of KANSAS. there is a recent book called what's the matter with KANSAS that i have not read. it is about politics and the conservative dominance in recent elections. i have friends that are from kansas or the neighboring states. i cannot say that i know that much about the state though. i have had a great deal of contact with the cattle industry and therefor KANSAS crosses my path. i am interested in people and how they move around the world and why. i know a young woman who is in fashion design. she lives in chicago now and moved there from NY. she worked for donna karen and other designers there. she moved to NY from Hong Kong. each move was because the man she met in HG was transferred to each of these places. that is her reason. i know people who moved here from london, italy, germany and brazil to name a few. each has reasons, some more interesting than others. i wonder why someone would move from san francisco to KANSAS. what motivated the move? how do they like the change in social character? will they make KANSAS their permanent home? what to they like and dislike about KANSAS? what do they miss about san francisco? do they see themselves as a KANSAN or do they see themselves apart from their neighbors? do they feel like they are "just visiting"? if they were to pick a place to move, where would it be? people, i think, feel themselves to be predominantly urban or rural, big city or small town. how do you feel? what mileiu do you identify yourself with and feel most at home in?
quietdesperation:
life is so short and people find ways to have strife despite so much lip service to peace and harmony. it is so easy to seperate and exclude before we make any real effort to know each other on some meaningful level. too bad that so much slips to the easiest or lowest common denominator. people seldom make the effort to speak at length and clearly to each other. so many things can be interpretted in so many different ways. it takes some saying and effort to be precisely understood. it seems that few people have the patience to truly make the effort to communicate. as a result we are often isolated at the deepest level, or have solely superficial contact with each other. it is so much easier to engage in gossip, be absorbed in some sporting event or get lost in a video game than actually communicate with each other.