Dichroic Reflections

I got to Kansas City on a Monday

Kansas, at least this corner of it, has turned out to be unexpectedly lovely and maybe a little sad. I was expecting the whole state to be pancake flat. (In fact, someone once conclusively proved that Kansas is flatter than a pancake. The proof is in the Annals of Improbable Research and Google turns up a number of articles on the study.) Actually, though, this part by Kansas City, Lawrence and Olathe is green and hilly, with redbuds and dogwood blooming everywhere, the trees just beginning to leaf out, and houses set amid fields next to red barns that look just as a barn in the Heartland should look. (Robert Heinlein was from Missouri, come to think of it. I bet "The Cool Green Hills of Earth" was inspired by hills very similar to these and maybe not too far from here.) The sadness is because now the fields are broken up by encroaching subdivisions and it's clear that in another decade a lot of these rolling green hills will be built over with lookalike tract mansions. It is to be hoped that the builders will at least learn from some of the older developments, where individual houses are set on curving streets, under arching trees, and wherre the houses don't all look alike. Or even better, if they leave some farmland and woodland here and there.

Tomorrow I'll drive out to Wichita, and apparently I'll be driving along the flint hills and on to the prairie, where you can see forever. Someone told me they've been reintroducing antelope, though I'll likely be a bit late in the morning to see those.

If there's one thing I have learned this evening, it's how to go to Carabba's (chain of Italian restaurants in the US). First I went down to the hotel lobby, to have some lemonade during the hotel's Happy Hour and to see whether the gentlemen I ate with last night were around. They weren't, so I went off to Carabba's, taking the hotel manager's advice to tell them she'd sent me. Also at her advice, I ate at the pizza bar. This turned out to be excellent advice. The cooks all talked to me. The servers all talked to me. The cooks gave me a free sampler of calamari (very fresh and with an excellent sauce for dipping - somehow I wouldn't have expected great calamari in the landlocked Midwest). Israel the pizza guy talked me into ordering the tiramisu and taking it back with me, since I couldn't have eaten any more while there. The tiramisu did not show up on the bill. When I pointed this out, along with the fact that my company was paying for my meal, they told me to forget it, that their comany liked to be generous too. When I got back to the hotel, the gentlemen were there. We hung out and talked (and they drank wine) for a while, and after hearing of my adventures they decided to go to Carabba's. I went back with them, me and my tiramisu. (I drove, because they appeared to have had a few glasses each.) The restaurant staff seemed to be pleased as punch to have me back at the pizza bar with two companions, eating my free dessert and drinking only soda water. This time they gave us calamari and mussels, and gave each of the men a small glass of a certain wine to taste. We argued amiably about the music (mostly old standards) in the background, politics, and the need for tolerance among world religions (as I said, they'd had a few). I won't be back to this Carabba's, since I'm leaving town tomorrow morning - but now I'm curious as to whether the staff in the one near home is as friendly. Yeah, it's a chain, but if the food is tasty, who cares?

Also, for reasons not entirely clear to me, one of the men I ate with (twenty years older than me and apparently happily married) has decide he wants to meet my mother.