Hyde Park

I spent the weekend in Kansas City with my mom and my wife. My wife danced in an Irish dance competition called a feis and my mom and I watched in amazement. There is something spectacular about a single Irish dancer in full, shiny regalia with the dress, shoes, headband and the curly wig. But a whole room full of the dancers is really a sight to behold! My wife did quite well in the competitions, two 2nds, one 3rd and one 1st. Naturally, she was also the prettiest dancer in the whole contest.

We stayed at the Hyatt Regency in the Crown Center, and at some point, I made the connection between this hotel and the site of the terrible collapse of the Skywalk. The whole time we were there, I tried to understand where the feature would have fit into the spacious atrium of the hotel, which is now only distinguished by a grand piano on a round pedastal, a modest fountain and an impressive 3-dimesional sculpture of hanging glass orbs like many drops of dew on a perfectly uniform matrix of cobwebs.

I vaguely remember the news coverage of the event one morning when I was in elementary school. But my research upon our return home Sunday yielded evidence of the worst structural engineering failure in U.S. history: 114 deaths, 200 serious injuries, countless lawsuits and an evening in July of 1981 that became a nightmare for a whole city. To this day, there is evidently no recognition of the events of that night, no bronze plaque or so much as a cursory nod to those who died at this spot.

On a much lighter note, this is a picture of myself with my 92 year old 1st cousin, 2 generations removed. Walter went to high school with my grandpa Pierce in Golden City, Missouri. I never knew Pierce at all, so to hear about him secondhand seems to help bring him alive for me. Walter is a remarkable specimin of robust vitality, sharp intellect, ironic humor and local trivia of his neighborhood in Hyde Park, roughly six blocks from downtown Kansas City. I first met Walter at a family reunion in Lamar in 2005 and then stayed the night in his backyard on my way to have an uilleann pipe lesson with Kirk Lynch in Weston, Missouri. Besides the tiny piles of doggie doo in his backyard, his turf was a wonderful welcome mat to my tent, where I slept soundly zipped into my sleeping bag in downtown Kansas City.