In The Cigar Box

A six foot tall white rabbit wearing a black and white polkadot vest or a turquoise chiffon skit stands on the sidewalks and street corners of the Country Club Plaza, a Kansas City landmark.  There are nine of these rabbits holding court in the shopping center that gave rise to the idea of shopping centers.  Most years, unlike the current one, early spring in Kansas City is a time of warm days, cool nights, gentle breezes, abundant sunshine with flowers budding and trees beginning to display green where only bare limbs have been for several months.  The rabbits, the weather and the genteel setting combine to be a happy respite for families strolling as twilight comes during the week or in full sun on Saturday or Sunday. For Kansas Citians, the aura of Easter is a time for gaiety, renewal and rebirth.  The Easter Rabbits appeared on the Plaza in the 1930s, a time when the people of our city and of this nation were in great need of all of those things.  The ...

Taken apart the name of this particular tree brings visions of a strong hand capable of a warm gentle touch.  Sinewy wood and wisps of soft cotton are blended into one majestic creation that sways but stands firm against the wind.  Its branches offer shade to the walker who passes under its branches. Cottonwoods love to be beside a stream or a lake but have found the fortitude to live on inhospitable soil.  They can grow on slopes or flatlands and can withstand extended periods when rain is scarce.  They are low-tech organisms - water, sun, soil and seed - they survive and regenerate.  With a lifespan of a hundred years, their height in feet can match their age and the canopy of shade they cast forms a circle from sixty to a hundred feet in diameter. These trees are dioecious.  The females produce the cotton covered seeds and males make the pollen that rides the breeze searching for a welcoming seed.  Along the way in the season for pollenati...

March 18, 2013.  The cake has a single candle with a small flickering flame (except there isn’t any cake because it generates too many points on Weight Watchers).  One year old.  When I started this blog, I really didn’t know what a blog was or what kind of people were bloggers.  Other than family kindnesses, it seemed unlikely that people would read the ramblings of one old man telling some stories or offering some life lessons that might one day speak to his grandsons.  But we began this journey a year ago.  Sixty three posts and about six thousand hits later, I’m still writing and many of you continue to return to the cigar box. Visits to the cigar box have come from Russia almost two hundred times.  Hundreds more have visited from scattered spots covering the globe.  At last count these posts have traveled to at least twenty five countries. I cannot guess what led each reader to this speck in cyberspace but I am grateful for every set of...

Tony Kushner, in his remarkable screen play for Lincoln , wrote words that display President Lincoln’s talent as a humorous storyteller whose stories laid bare the foibles of human behavior.  One of the stories from the movie was about a lawyer from Jefferson City, the capitol of Missouri.  Hearing Daniel Day Lewis speak as Lincoln added to the nudge to the side of the head delivered by the story. It seems in this story that there was a lawyer in Jefferson City who owned a parrot.  The parrot was given to announcing each day that this day would be the day that the world would end.  Always annoyed, the lawyer tolerated this daily drone until he could stand it no longer.  Upon reaching his limit the lawyer drew his revolver and ended the parrot’s life and, as Lincoln then said, thus making the prophesy true at least for the parrot. Now having spent a couple of decades in Jefferson City working with the legislature and the state board of education, I coul...

Time ran out.  The score board hanging above the center of Norm Stewart Court showed 93 to 63.  A few minutes passed but the victory was ours.  Three seniors had played their final game in Mizzou Arena and everyone present knew it was the best team victory of the year. Over half of the crowd lingered.  Wee's favorite was standing in the center circle following his final game.  He's the player who wanted to say the words that would do justice to the emotions welling inside him.  Participating in athletics creates such moments.  Last night Laurence Bowers, L-Bo, would complete his five year journey.  It was a time when a young man would become a man, when a student would complete his degree, when an athlete would experience the cost of injury and the price for rehabilitating and rebuilding his body. He learned the power of mental fortitude.  In excellence, he never lost humility. The words he spoke were drenched in praise, thanks and ...