The Matter With Kansas

Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft offered this scathing opinion of Kansas in her guestblog at Vodkapundit today:

"Face it, Kansas is a plain-Jane. Its "I Like Ike" and Bob Dole country. It reminds me of my most hated food -- mayonnaise -- pale, bland, uniform in consistency and boring. There's no ocean, no mountains and its population is hardly a model of diversity. And its always going to be that way. A simply mediocre, generic kind of place, totally devoid of bathos, highs or lows."

Well, Ive been there on a few occasions, and even lived there for a time. For a moment Ms Merritt almost seduced me into thinking that there were no physiographic differences between the eastern and western halves of the state of Kansas. Then I came to my senses.

The physical world of Kansas or any other place knows no politics. The languid and gentle curves of a river and its tributaries, the subtle hues of an expanse of ripening wheat, or towering gunmetal clouds trailing past a prairie outpost each have a thousand-and-one things to teach about beauty and complexity, and the damnable narrowness of one's perceptions.

Boredom is the province of the boring.
[Hat-tip to dustbury.com]