Back from Kansas. Nice little town, though much smaller than Lincoln, which is only readily apparent when you stop for gas and the agricultural vehicles pull up at the next pump and the dude with the shit-covered boots asks what kind of car you're driving (for the record, a Scion Xa).
The K State students were great. Worried, worried, worried about what they needed to do to get published (short, and only, answer: send a lot of stuff out, read even more, write better. Rinse and repeat.). The university put me up in the Holiday Inn across from campus (you can even see my sixth floor room in the pictures here), so I got a chance to walk around the area. Nicely hilly. Lots of student rental houses. And Aggieville, with its little shops and beer trough bars.
The road down and back took me through the Tuttle Creek State Park, which is lovely--a sort of mix of plains and arroyo country. Sadly, the park is in total disrepair, at least from a human perspective. The turkeys, meadowlarks, hawks, snakes, golden eagles, deer, squirrels--you get the picture--were having a grand time with the crumbling roads and decaying picnic sites. If you want to do a post-apocalyptic road movie, I have just the site for you. In searching for an actual "wildlife area," I drove several miles down a long dirt road. Windows down, roadsounds and birdsong the only noise, I passed only one other person on the road. Wonderful sidetrack, and I never did find the "wildlife area."
While on this trek, I listened to Dawkins' The God Delusion. Fantastic book, especially if you find yourself awestruck before creation but don't feel like reaching out for a personal god makes any sense. Particularly useful is his discussion on pantheism.
It's been a week, so I thought I'd leave a longish post. I'm now into the writing of the comps (very similar to the running of the bulls and/or brides), so I'll probably have more "thinkish" posts coming. As well as comments on books like Elizabeth Bradfield's Interpretive Work and Philip Metres To See the Earth.
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