Westward Ho!

Monday morning we left the historic French town of St. Charles where we spent the night after a long drive through numerous thunderstorms from Asheville.  If I had planned correctly, we would have stayed with friends.  I had visited this charming little town on the Mississippi in the early nineties when I lived in St. Louis.   I regret that I did not then explore more intimately this quaint area.  Since there was insufficient time to explore, I’ll have to place it in my Happiness File for a return visit.   Heading westward, I recalled a much earlier journey, the Lewis and Clark Expedition.  We, like them, were embarking on new and exciting discoveries.

Because we knew that we would be arriving about noon in Kansas City, renowned for its barbecue – and jazz — we asked the hotel clerk for a recommendation.  After a Google search, he suggested Arthur Bryant’s Barbecue And what a treat it was!  Melanie’s pulled pork and my barbeque beef tips left us with mouths dripping with savory juices.    Jammed packed, the clientele of this African-American establishment was predominantly white, locals and tourists alike.  On the wall were pictures of politicians and celebrities who dined there including Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter, Stephen Spielberg, Harrison Ford, John McCain and Sarah Palin, among many others.  On the wall were pasted journalistic reviews from Bon Appétit, People, Southern Living and Esquire.

After lunch, we continued our westward trek.  As we first crossed the rolling green hills of eastern Kansas, the panorama of countless herds of black cattle recalled images of the old west of cattle hands and cowboys.  Imprints of the old west frontier were further burrowed in my mind as the green vistas slowly evaporated into broad empty flat spaces of withered, dry sandy-colored brush of western Kansas and eastern Colorado. I imagined our Toyota Hybrid as the covered wagon traversing the limitless horizon of open spaces.  We stayed overnight at Hays, Kansas, where Fort Hays State University is located.   Since there was still lingering daylight after dinner, we decided to visit the campus.  We passed through a fairly non-descript downtown of small buildings with movie-set storefronts.   The university sits across a railroad track at the end of the town’s major thoroughfare. The campus was like a ghost town.  Hardly a sign of life was seen except a lone young woman jogging.

The next morning as we continued our journey, feelings of awe and wonder of the expansive plains landscapes invaded my spirit.  And as we rolled along at the lawful speed of seventy-five miles per hour, Melanie, who had lived in Colorado, spoke glowingly about the beauty of the plains.   And with eager anticipation we expected at any moment the Rockies to rise in the distant horizon.   Anxious for me to see the grandeur of the Rockies, Melanie kept prodding me to be vigilant for the first appearance of the Rockies in the horizon.   As we approached Denver, I strained to see but a faint outline of mountains as the day was hot and hazy.

Since we arrived a day earlier for the Society for Values in Higher Education conference, we stayed overnight in Aurora, a suburb of Denver, where we also had Melanie’s car serviced for its 5000 mile check-up.  We had dinner at a retro diner, Rosie’s, that played music from the 50s and 60s.  If chance finds you in Aurora, we recommend a visit there.

Melanie and I have been coming to the SVHE conference for the last eight years. It was at the invitation of Ellen Maher, a retired IU South Bend librarian and faculty member who initially introduced me to SVHE.    She, too, was in attendance,  This year’s conference was held at the University of Denver, a beautifully arranged urban campus.  SVHE is an organization of educators and others from the professions who care deeply about ethical issues facing higher education and the wider society.  This year’s theme was “Debt: Obligations that Shape our Lives.”  What I most like about this group is the interdisciplinary discussions around the important contemporary ideas.  One of the plenary speakers was Adam Davidson, co-host of NPR’s Planet Money, who gave an engaging lecture about our nation’s debt and the 2008 financial crisis.  We also heard from Vincent Harding, a renowned scholar of the Civil Rights struggle, who spoke movingly of “The Cost of Living Without a Sense of Debt to Those Who Worked for Change.”   The resonance of his voice and the measured tones in which he spoke had the audience spellbound.   When he began to speak about human indebtedness, he mentioned his indebtedness to Hannah Arendt who said that we only become fully human in dialogue with others.  And so he invited the audience to dialogue with him and tell a similar story about someone to whom we are indebted and who had influenced our lives.  Several moving stories were told.  Mine was about my grandmother who reaffirmed my self-worth.  While walking from school one afternoon, a white kid riding in the school bus yelled “Hey, chocolate boy.”  Devastated by that remark, I recounted this to my grandmother who reassured me in her soft Creole-accented voice, “Mais shey(cher), you’re a pretty chocolate boy.”

The SVHE conference is arranged by interest groups that convene from year to year, such as “Celebrating the Search” where discussions center on personal spiritual journeys.  Melanie and I typically participate in the session on the historical novel.  The four books chosen for this year were The Rise of David Levinsky by Abraham Cahan, Daniel Deronda by George Eliot, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, Pure by Andrew Miller.  Melanie and I led the discussion on Pure, a novel about the removal of the Holy Innocents Cemetery shortly before the French Revolution.

On Thursday evening, Melanie and I skipped the residence hall food at the university for a delicious meal at a charming French restaurant, Le Central.  The ambience placed us in our beloved Provence as we dined on bouillabaisse and a special lobster dish to celebrate the centennial of the Tour de France.  The meal was all the more memorable with a bottle of Provence rose’.

We took a break from the conference to be with our friends from IUSB, April Lidinsky and Ken Smith, who with their daughters, are visiting April’s parents.  We met April, Ken, April’s parents and other family members at the Colorado Boat Festival where we had a splendid time watching the dragon boat races on Sloan’s Lake and seeing several Asian folk dances.  The day was unbearably warm in this mile high city, but the food and other activities all added up to a remarkable fun event.  April took this “selfie” photo of all of us.

Tonight we are in Laramie, home of the University of Wyoming, before heading to Victor, Idaho to spend a few days with Randy and Chris Isaacson.  The air is thin here and the weather is cool, in the 60s, similar to what we had in Denver and a far cry from the suffocating heat of the Carolinas.