"There's no place like home"

1-8-10 "Oz" brain

Although I’m on one of my planned weekly visits to KC, some how with all this snow and cold blizzard conditions in KC today, I feel like I’m stranded here…… and I long for my home state of Iowa. This is strange, since I know the weather up north in Iowa has the same cabin fever inducing conditions.

I know there are many stereotypes about Iowa, especially for people who have never visited the state full of flowing corn fields and breath taking views of full-horizon sky. I love being able to turn 360 degrees, up on my mother’s northern Iowa farm homestead, and seeing for miles and miles in all directions. This represents openness and freedom for me, and I remind friends, from other more sophisticated states, that Iowa often is more progressive than one would think.

Iowa embraced Obama in our Presidential Caucus, giving him a boost over other candidates. Iowa also somehow has a legal system which now allows for same sex marriage…. And many of us think this is a fair, equal-rights issue and is no indication of the moral decline in society.

Sure there are vocal conservatives in my state of Iowa….. But nothing like I had seen in my south home in KC which straddles the two states of Missouri and Kansas. (OK, so now I'll admit that I AM the one doing the stereotyping!)

AND I’ll admit it, this is one of the reasons I am hesitant to permanently move south here where the politics appeared to be more “Bible thumping“….. But maybe I could have been wrong…..

Yesterday morning I was reading the KC Star newspaper editorials. I detected a shift from what I had been reading in this paper a few years ago….. Surprisingly, there were three letters to the editor telling Dick Cheney to “shut up” about his criticism of the Obama administration. Cleverly written too, I might add.

Then the icing on the cake, which nearly had me falling off of my chair, was an editorial cartoon which dealt with Rush Limbaugh’s “heart” problems….. Basically implying that Rush is “heartless” when it comes to no sympathy for minorities, women, gays, the poor, the sick and the immigrants.

“Toto, I’ve the feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore!”…. Perhaps something is in that cold wind that is blowing down from the north?…. Some progressive ideas perhaps are blowing in the wind, and this is reminding me of my home state.

In pictures below, note flag blowing in the wild KC wind. (Greg's Cleveland Brown's football flag)