Meador Manor

Twixtmas in Kansas City

Posted on December 30, 2014 by Granger Meador

Late December 2014

Wendy and I decided to spend some of the time between Christmas and New Year’s, a period which I shall term Twixtmas, in Kansas City, MO. This shorter trip 200 miles north was a deliberate contrast to our longer vacation the prior Winter Break, when we drove 575 miles south to San Antonio, TX. Rather than fleeing it, we would allow winter to embrace us in its grip. It made our time together in the Paris of the Plains all the cozier. The map below provides the locations of the Kansas City attractions we visited, and you can click here for a slideshow of our trip.

Osage Hills

A couple of days before we embarked, we hiked 3.5 miles at Osage Hills, knowing that we’d soon be walking cold urban sidewalks. It was relatively warm and sunny on the bluff above Sand Creek. The Creek Loop was mushy, and Sand Creek was running well from recent rains.

Union Station

The day after Christmas we headed north out of Bartlesville, stopping at the Copan Truck Stop for a huge and delicious cinnamon roll, slathered in thick icing. We arrived at Kansas City’s Union Station in time for lunch at Harvey’s. The immense Grand Hall and North Waiting Room were decked out for Christmas. At one end was a lovely, huge Christmas Tree, with more trees and nutcracker guards up high. Holiday lighting at the entrance and along the length of the North Waiting Room invited one to walk its length to arrive at a nice display at the entrance to the Model Railroad Experience.

Crown Center

We took the The Link, the enclosed elevated walkways, over to Crown Center, enjoying the view of the downtown skyscrapers. We toured the Hallmark Visitor Center, where Wendy posed with crabby old Maxine and her dog Floyd. Then we walked over to the lobby of the former Hyatt hotel, the site of the infamous skybridge collapse I analyze in my Failure By Design lesson.

Country Club Plaza

Our own hotel for this stay was a few miles to the south at Country Club Plaza. I eschewed the Best Western Seville Plaza, where I’ve previously stayed, for fancier top-floor accommodations at the well-located Courtyard by Marriott, which is housed in the 1925 building which was once the Park Lane Apartments. I am always glad when an old building is successfully renovated for continued use, and judged this renovation as a great success.

During the trip Wendy and I enjoyed dining at Buca di Beppo and other Plaza restaurants, although I regretted not planning ahead so that we could finally have dinner out with a gracious former student living in the KC area who has repeatedly offered her and her husband’s hospitality during my infrequent visits to the area. Wendy loves KC, so hopefully we can finally connect on a future trip.

The Plaza was outlined in lights at night, although it was not nearly as impressive as the Christmas lights we saw earlier in the break in OKC.

Art Museums

We walked over to the Nelson Atkins Museum, my favorite KC destination, which was also decorated for Christmas. Wendy liked Wayne Thiebaud‘s Apartment Hill, and I thought that the Synthesis resin columns by Tom Price looked like something out of Star Trek. We quested through the museum for truly small treasures: a few items from the city’s Toy & Miniature Museum deposited in various rooms while the museum undergoes renovation. Then we enjoyed a chocolate cupcake in the museum’s Rozzelle Court before venturing upstairs where we found an interactive create-your-own-Rodin-sculpture kiosk. Both my effort, Despair, and Wendy’s creation, Strength, make me question what was in that cupcake.

The bright sky beckoned us back outdoors, where teepees set up on the grounds contrasted with the stately nearby residences. Along our walk back to the Plaza, we discovered, on the grounds of the Kansas City Art Institute, the life-size statue of Thomas Hart Benton sculpted by Charles Banks Wilson and Nick Calcagno in 1989.

On another day we walked over to the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, which inevitably disappoints me. Crying Giant by Tom Otterness reflected my view of most of the works on display, while Wendy is more accepting of contemporary art and enjoyed June Ahrens’ Used and Worn display of used soap and other materials. She also got a kick out of Elizabeth Layton’s I am Loved. In it, Grandma Layton (she didn’t begin drawing until she was 68) depicted an elderly woman holding her wedding dress up to her body.

Myself, I am a great admirer of Wendy’s own creations. Just before we left for Kansas City, she completed her third paper mosaic, depicting a bear hidden amongst autumn trees. It joins her earlier depiction of a winding snake and a thunderbird, all originally inspired by the tile work we saw this summer at Albuquerque’s KiMo Theatre.

Downtown

We ventured downtown to tour the public library housed in a renovated bank building, including the big vault turned into a film room and a small vault Wendy had fun posing inside. Out of one window we spied two pigeons huddled together atop a stone eagle. Wendy and I agreed that snuggling was the best remedy for the cold weather.

We also drove to the very northern end of Main Street to walk the Town of Kansas Bridge which leads out over railroad tracks to a platform above the south bank of the Missouri River. A train passed under us as we walked toward the river’s edge, where stairs led to the Riverfront Heritage Trail. Signage provided history on the early years of Kansas City and told of the task of taming the riverfront bluffs in the mid-1850s. I found the stark riverfront and industrial zone unwelcoming, but Wendy liked it, posing atop a giant round concrete platform adjacent to the trail.

I wanted to drive along Cliff Drive northeast of downtown, but it was at least temporarily closed to vehicular traffic, and the surrounding area was too sketchy for me to feel comfortable with a long walk along it. A petition seeks to close the drive to vehicles permanently; I don’t live there, so I only have the out-of-towner perspective that I’d rather drive it than walk it. A beautiful sunset compensated for the inaccessibility of the planned cliffside drive.

Wendy and I also visited The Scout statue overlook of downtown after dark to see the lights and the red glowing flame effect atop the tower at Liberty Memorial. The cold and the lack of a tripod prevented me from getting a sharp panorama, so we drove over to Liberty Memorial for a closer look at the tower and its top as well as nice views of Union Station and the old Western Auto sign. I was able to steady myself there for a sharper panorama of downtown Kansas City.

Heading Home with a stop in the 1950s

On our way back home, we stopped at the Johnson County Museum in Shawnee to tour their 1950s All-Electric House. The colors, fabrics, materials, and items of that era have been faithfully gathered together or reproduced in it. Some of the “modern features” were laughable, such as the switch to slide back a painting and reveal the black-and-white tube TV behind it, but some of the home automation features were quite similar to today’s Smart Home ideas. I think the real highlight of Shawnee for Wendy and me was their large Russell Stover store, where I stocked up on half-price milk-chocolate-coated marshmallow Santas.

Kansas City is always fun, and Wendy and I both look forward to returning there someday. Winter’s cold grip will probably keep us off the trails for awhile, but a wonderful New Year awaits.

Click here for a slideshow of this trip

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Winter Break Began in OKC

Posted on December 22, 2014 by Granger Meador

December 20-21, 2014

Featured in the slideshow:

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Overcast Day at Kight Hill

Posted on December 14, 2014 by Granger Meador

December 13, 2014

It was an overcast and somewhat dreary day, but Wendy and I needed a hike to help us recover from a burdensome week at work. We did not have the energy nor time to venture far, but I didn’t feel like re-treading the trails at Osage Hills or up at Elk City. So we drove 45 minutes southeast to Lake Oologah for my second visit, and her first, to Kight Hill.

The Will Rogers Country Centennial Horse Trail provides up to 18 miles of equestrian pathway along the south shore of Lake Oologah. The south end has a couple of miles of trail out on a hilly peninsula projecting into the lake. Websites and maps incorrectly refer to it as Kite Hill, not realizing it is actually named after H. Tom Kight, the Claremore legislator who sponsored the establishment of the Oklahoma Military Academy, now Rogers State University.

We parked at the end of the side road by the Outpost Mobile Home Park and trod the rather boring mile-long straight-away to the peninsula. The trail was slightly soft from an earlier light rain, but not too muddy despite the churning from horse hooves. We’d seen a herd of horse trailers at the official trailhead nearby.

So it was no surprise that we encountered a group of riders, who greeted us. The leader complimented us on our protection against hunters: I was wearing a bright orange knit hat and Wendy was in a bright orange vest. Deer gun season ended last weekend, but I figured some scofflaws might be a threat. After the riders departed, Wendy spotted a shotgun shell on the trail, and toward the end of our hike we would hear repeated shotgun blasts nearby.

The churned mud and horse manure impeded my enjoyment of Kight Hill, but I was glad to be out on a trail with frequent views of the lake. I spotted some rocks projecting out of the lake just before the trail turned away southward. The sky was finally showing some strips of blue amidst the clouds.

On the west part of the hill trail we could plainly hear the distant roar of the power plant, while on the south part the plaintive wail of train whistles and rumble of the rails of the many trains which intersect Claremore called out across the darkening afternoon sky.

We saw several snapped trees along the trail, with stairsteps of fungi decomposing them. When the main trail finished circumnavigating the hillside and climbed up top, I took a fork that led us away from the upper loop I had trod three years earlier. Soon I recognized Trail H, which I’d used for a steep descent on the earlier hike. This time my MotionX GPS app’s satellite map reassured me that the main path would eventually loop back down and Wendy and I took that longer, but still steep, way down.

We ended our trip with a tasty meal at the nearby Hammett House in Claremore, where I enjoyed a small steak and Wendy thoroughly enjoyed her seared pork loin with honey mustard glaze and cranberry relish. It had not been a good day for photographs, but at least we were back on the trails as we headed into finals week and then a much-needed Winter Break.

Click here for a slideshow from this day hike

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Thankful for Quartz Mountain and the Wichitas

Posted on November 30, 2014 by Granger Meador

November 27-29, 2014

Warm and sunny days on Thanksgiving Break 2014 allowed Wendy and me to take short hikes around Baldy Point at Quartz Mountain and The Narrows in the Wichita Mountains in southwestern Oklahoma.

On Thanksgiving Day we drove down to Oklahoma City to visit my parents before heading on down to the Quartz Mountain Resort for a couple of days, following up our previous visit in June 2013. Wendy had asked to return to what I consider the best of the state resorts. We enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving meal at the lodge’s Sundance Cafe that evening, although, of course, it couldn’t compete with my mother’s home cooking earlier in the day.

Quartz Mountain’s Future in Doubt

I’m sad to see the resort is enduring a state feasibility study in this time of ill-advised income tax cuts and business tax breaks. Wendy and I can attest to how schools have suffered mightily because of the shortsighted fiscal policies of our legislators and governor, which have put immense stress on all state services. The rich folks who get almost all of the benefits from state income tax cuts can afford fancy private resorts, but the rest of us rely heavily upon state lodges and state parks, which are especially important to day hikers like me. The severe drought has only made things worse for Quartz Mountain, with Lake Altus barely above its conservation pool level and dead as a fishery. If you’ve stayed at Quartz Mountain Resort and would like to keep it operating, take the survey to help with the feasibility study.

Baldy Point

On Friday morning we had breakfast at the lodge restaurant and then were ready for a day hike. We had already hiked the trails around the lodge on our previous visit, so I drove us westward to Baldy Point, which I’d hiked back in December 2010. This time Wendy and I would almost completely circumnavigate the hill, which rises over 260 feet above the surrounding farm fields. We would ascend on its gentler northern slopes, rather than the steep southern side which attracts rock climbers.

This time I could not locate the Summit Trail at first; it was faint and overgrown. So we started out on the broad trail along the southern base of the hill, which leads through cedar and mesquite trees with frequent openings to the southern face. Where I see a crack in the rock, a climber sees a challenge. As usual, I was more focused on large features and vistas, with Wendy discovering berries, odd-looking plants, and crystalline rocks as we rounded the hill onto the Cedar Creek Trail. Most of the trail signs have been wiped clean by time and neglect, and the Cedar Creek area has been literally burned out in the drought.

The burned trees meant we were not tempted to walk the Cedar Valley Trail, and the Black Jack Pass Trail was closed due to hunting. So we ascended the northern slope of the hill, onto unfenced private property, for a sweeping view of the valley below and the fields and granite hills to the west. We descended and walked east to the area’s other trailhead before returning west through the mesquite forest.

I finally located the Summit Trail’s faint path, and we made our way around the west end of the summit. Wendy had remarked earlier how she’d love to pitch golf balls from the slopes and was laughing when she found a golf ball along the trail. She also spotted a buffalo gourd, which she cracked open on a tree to examine its fibrous interior. At the time we had no idea what the gourd was, but my mother’s guidance and Wendy’s exhaustive internet research identified the plant and its uses.

Prickly pear cacti spilled from a huge boulder as we ascended the western slope, where Wendy was feeling adventurous and crawled through gaps in the rocks. I found a pivot rock, and we turned back once it was clear we’d nearly made it back around the hill. Our 2.7 mile hike thus included two forays a couple of hundred feet up the slopes.

From on high we’d seen the Lake Altus Dam, so we drove over to see it and the lake. Then we returned to the lodge to relax, taking a walk along the Twin Peaks Trail before dinner. Afterward, Wendy got a kick out of Suzanne Klotz’s The Dancer of Illusion mixed media work on a corridor wall, and we later encountered a half-dozen deer on a walk around the lodge buildings.

The Manchurian Candidate

We ended the day with me treating Wendy to the classic 1962 movie The Manchurian Candidate on the DVD player I’d brought and hooked into the lodge television. It is a disturbing and unusual film, with Angela Lansbury giving the performance of her career as the domineering mother. Her intensity is truly frightening when the film makes its big reveal. It is hard to believe she was only three years older than the actor portraying her son, let alone that this is the same actress who played Miss Price in Bedknobs and Broomsticks and was Jessica Fletcher for 20 years. Wendy and I loved how director John Frankenheimer captured her twitching cheek on the stage in Madison Square Garden as she awaits the climactic shot.

The Narrows

The next morning, after a final breakfast at the lodge, we drove eastward through Kiowa county. Wendy had been fascinated by the cotton fields in the area, and we stopped by a huge bale near Roosevelt so she could get a close look and feel. My mother and her siblings picked a great deal of cotton back in the day, as did members of Wendy’s family. The mechanical picker has thankfully brought an end to that hard labor, but the economies of scale consolidated the small cotton farms.

We were headed to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge to hike. The oaks in the refuge still had some autumn colors, and we first stopped at the refuge’s Prairie Dog town, watching the dogs watch us and listening to their high-pitched barks. There have been at least six colonies of Blacktail Prarie Dogs at the refuge over the years. One of my favorite photographs is a snapshot I took of wildflowers at one of those colonies back in 1989.

The highlight of our day was a hike 1.3 miles out and back on The Narrows, a short but rigorous trail along West Cache Creek.

We found a record number of cars at the Boulder Camp trailhead, and I took us down the trail’s right fork along the low route before we made the steep ascent for a view of the narrow channel below, the vista to the north and lovely cliffs to the east, and the Narrows to the south.

We heard a group of repellers celebrating their successful ascent farther down the creek and could see fellow hikers high above the chasm up on Eagle Mountain.

A nearby hiker gave scale to the view south. We descended partway down the hill for the views and then turned back, since Wendy was not inclined to bushwhack down The Narrows as I did back in 2010, reaching the junction with Panther Creek.

We happily returned along the trail, soon passed by an energetic Army guy running along the rough trail while carrying a heavy load of rappelling ropes. Later we encountered a large Asian American family which had scampering kids and teens out front, followed by the parents, one of whom was belting out Motown’s Ain’t No Mountain High Enough on a boom box, with a clumsy teenager who bounced her way among us, and at last the polite elders in the back. It was quite a show!

We enjoyed dinner with my folks in Oklahoma City before returning to Bartlesville. It was great to get away from our mutual school workloads for a few days before facing the hectic final weeks of the semester. We’ve both been so overwhelmed by schoolwork, with big projects still working their way down the pipeline, that I suspect our Winter Break will feature a few nearby get-aways rather than one long trip.

Click here for a slideshow from this trip

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He Won’t Miss Us, But We Will Miss Him

Posted on November 16, 2014 by Granger Meador

November 15, 2014

Glen Campbell

Back when I was little, I would watch The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, which aired from 1969 to 1972. I’d have my toy guitar slung around my neck and pretend to play and sing along with him. While my mother listed Johnny Cash as one of my favorite television shows in my application to attend kindergarten (along with Captain Kangaroo and HoHo the Clown), I remember Glen Campbell’s performances better than Johnny’s. Glen had that sweet and cheerful persona, big grin, and striking hair. I consciously imitated that hairdo; it would take premature baldness to put an end to my long bangs.

Glen’s singing and guitar playing was a highlight for me as a little boy, although I begged my mother for years to take piano lessons rather than wanting to learn to play a guitar. I finally started those piano lessons at age four, wanted to be a piano teacher through my elementary school years, and earned seven National and five International Piano Guild pins before I left home for college. I neglect my grand piano these days, but have bought over 13,000 songs over the years; listening to music is one of the greatest pleasures of my life and hardly a day goes by without me indulging in it.

Glen and his guitar

Glen Campbell also fell in love with music as one of many children of an Arkansas sharecropper family which was impoverished in material goods but rich in music. Glen’s father bought him a $5 guitar at Sears when Glen was four years old. Glen became an accomplished public performer, dropping out of school when he was 16 to seek a musical career out west. He was one of the Los Angeles, CA session musicians termed The Wrecking Crew, playing on over 600 tracks for artists from Frank Sinatra to the Beach Boys, filling in for Brian Wilson for six months.

In 1967, Glen’s solo career skyrocketed. He racked up an amazing four Grammys, with his performance of John Hartford‘s Gentle on My Mind winning two in the country & western categories and Jimmy Webb‘s By the Time I Get to Phoenix winning two in pop. In later years he won more Grammys and other music awards. Hits you might recognize include:

Gentle on My Mind (1967; Hartford)
By the Time I Get to Phoenix (1967; Webb)
Wichita Lineman (1968; Webb)
Galveston (1969; Webb)
Rhinestone Cowboy (1975; Weiss)
Southern Nights (1977; Toussaint)

I especially like his live performance of Classical Gas.

Glen’s personal life was tumultuous, with four marriages, affairs, and alcohol and cocaine abuse. But he found lasting happiness after 1982 with Kim Woollen, who was a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall. She has stuck by him through rough times, and is now seeing him through the long goodbye of Alzheimer’s disease.

I’d heard about Glen’s announcement of his Alzheimer’s diagnosis a few years back and heard he had a goodbye tour. Here’s a farewell piece from CBS in February 2012:

Contrast Glen’s unprecedented decision to continue to perform even amidst his worsening Alzheimer’s to the recent passing of the beloved Tom Magliozzi. Tom and his brother Ray, Click and Clack to us fans, mysteriously quit recording new episodes of their Car Talk radio show a few years back. Only with Tom’s death did we learn he quit because of Alzheimer’s. I’m so very glad that Glen could be so public about his problem as he faded away; only with the tremendous support of his family and friends, and a Teleprompter, could he keep performing so long.

But I’ll be frank with you; I did not give Glen’s condition or his farewell tour much thought until this weekend. His dark years and backsliding led me to view his farewell with cynicism. As always with me, there is nothing like music to tear away the hard crust and open me up to love once again. Tears washed away my bitterness about him this week when I heard one of Glen’s final songs, the heartbreaking I’m Not Gonna Miss You.

I’m still here, but yet I’m gone
I don’t play guitar or sing my songs
They never defined who I am
The man that loves you ’til the end

You’re the last person I will love
You’re the last face I will recall
And best of all, I’m not gonna miss you
Not gonna miss you

I’m never gonna hold you like I did
Or say I love you to the kids
You’re never gonna see it in my eyes
It’s not gonna hurt me when you cry

I’m never gonna know what you go through
All the things I say or do
All the hurt and all the pain
One thing selfishly remains

I’m not gonna miss you

There is such a brutal and daring truth in those lyrics. He recorded it in January 2013; as I write this post in November 2014 Glen is living in a Alzheimer’s care facility. He has lost most of his ability to speak and can no longer play his guitar. One of his daughters, Ashley, was quoted:

The other day when I went to visit him, I walked into the room and his face lit up. He walked over to me and gave me a big hug, and whispered in my ear, ‘I remember you.’ I didn’t want to ever let go.

I don’t want to let him go, either. There is documentary film now in release, I’ll Be Me, about his final tour. He was using a teleprompter to recall the lyrics, but he could still sing and play quite well.