The Day After Kansas Day

Monday’s international and national news cycle was relatively slow by recent standards, which was fine by us, as our own personal Kansas Day here in the relatively big city of Wichita, Kansas proved exhausting.

Our own Kansas day began just a few short hours after the time our nocturnal selves would usually be going to sleep, as we had to get our aging Dad, who is still the very best man we’ve ever known, to an early morning foot doctor appointment at one of those newfangled medical facilities way over on the east side. As we we drove across the crowded and slow-moving 13th Street from near-west Wichita to the Canal Route and up to the the K-96 bypass highway that cuts a few precious moments off the drive to Hillside and Oliver and then to the once-far-eastern Woodlawn  to our parents’ swank retirement home approximately halfway between Woodlawn and the once off-the-edges-of-the-Wichita-map Rock Road we tried to our best to avoid a half-awake traffic accident as we listened to an old friend of ours on his early morning broadcast on the local right-wing talk radio station.

So far as we can tell from our occasional early morning broadcasts or our long friendship our old friend is usually politely apolitical, as is the more senior early drive-time radio partner who also seems a likable enough sort of Kansas fellow from our occasional encounters, and on our weary-eyed trek east they mostly talked about how this particular cold but tolerably-cold Kansas day was Kansas Day. Kansas Day marks when the Kansas territory emerged from the “Bleeding Kansas” atrocities that resulted from the pre-Civil War abolitionist struggles and joined the United States as a free state where slavery was forbidden and all men were cerated equal and that original conception of the Republican party ruled, and to this day it still invigorates our Kansas souls even more than a couple of cups of coffee. The “Steve and Ted Early Morning Show” also noted that Monday is the entire nation’s “Curmudgeon Day,” and that also helped us keep awake on our way to the still-far-east Woodlawn exit.

We arrived in time to drink a couple of cups of coffee from the newfangled coffee-maker our parents’ swank retirement home has provided, which also helped, and after that we had the best man we’ve ever known arrived at his foot doctor appointment in a familiar near-eastside location early enough to negotiate all the medical insurance regulation folderol and get his foot treated on time. After that, our Dad and we headed back to Woodlawn to visit one of those newfangled medical facilities where our Mom, the best woman we’ve ever known, was recuperating from the flu. It’s just the flu. but our Mom is the best woman we’ve ever known and she’s 83 years old and we keep reading in the ongoing news about how vicious this season’s scarier-sounding influenza epidemic is, so we were admittedly worried. The good news is that she looked and sounded and felt better than she had before she admitted herself to that newfangled medical facility, and she insisted that both our own sorry selves and the best man we’ve ever known go home and take a much-needed break.

Our Dad, who as we’ve already stated is the best man we’ve ever known, apparently spent the afternoon fussing over the sorts of damnable details that Mom would usually attend to, while we thought better of the matter and spent much of the Kansas Day afternoon napping in a deep-dreaming state where slavery was abolished and all men were created equal and that original conception of the Republican party still held sway. After that we we made our way back to the east side to view the Kansas Day screening of a documentary account of the origins of “Home on the Range,” a beloved American folk song and Kansas’ official state song, which was being screened by our folks’ swank retirement home.

Mom had insisted we be there for the screening, as she’d invited a couple of our folks’ longstanding and truly great old Kansas friends and their delightful daughter to be there with us, and they not know she was in in the hospital with the flu lest they decline to attend. Those olds friends of our beloved folks’ beloved friends of ours along with their daughter, as was their dearly parted son who was also a great Kansas guy, and we wouldn’t have missed it on any day. One of the two Kansas guys who was responsible for the pretty-darned-good-documentary about “Home on the Range” is also an old friend, of course, who once co-wrote a book with us about the once-great Kansas country music radio station FFDI, and his mother-in-law also loves in the swank retirement home as our parents, which is is where we usually seem him these days, and his co-producer also seems a very likable Kansas guy, and another couple of our of dear Kansas friends were mentioned in the credits, and we were glad our Mom insisted we attend this Kansas Day event.

After that we felt entitled as dutiful sons to a beer at the relatively east-side and very ghetto Kirby’s Beer Store, where we wound up in a nice conversation with a Kenyan guy who who had immigrated from Kenya to Wichita many years ago, and that wound up in a delightful conversation. We recalled how our one of boyhood hometown heroes was the great middle-distance runner Jim Ryun, and how his greatest rival for best-in-the-world status was the pioneering middle-distance running Kenyan Kip Keino, he recalled how he’d also followed that classic sporting rivalry from his own local perspective, and we clicked glasses as we recalled how the rival had ended in a lasting friendship.

On the day after Kansas Day anything seems possible here in Kansas, no matter what what else crops up in the news cycle in the rest of the world, and despite everything we expect that our beloved Dad and Mom and the state of Kansas and our own sorry selves and all our dear friends and all the rest of you will somehow muddle through until God grants us a perfect state where slavery is abolished abolished and that all men and women are d equal and the highest principles still  somehow hold say.

— Bud Norman

Java Jive

Last week entailed our annual three night run on the local amateur stage, and it was so exhausting that we’ve decided to forgo our usual trenchant analysis and simply run the satirical skit we composed and starred in. It’s premised on a few-weeks old story about the Starbucks coffee shops making it a policy to discuss race relations with its customers, and we already groused about it a few weeks ago in a columned headlined “Black Coffee, White Guilt,” but we’re still annoyed by the company’s self-righteous racial hectoring, even though we’ve never patronized any of its zillions of shops, and it got some laughs on each of our three nights, and we’re plumb puckered, so we’ll go ahead and once again present the script, which was dubbed “Java Jive” in the program.

The scene opens on any old Starbucks, where a CUSTOMER is yawning as he finally takes his place at the counter where a pretty young smiling and chirpy BARISTA greets him:

BARISTA: Good morning and Welcome to Starbucks. I’m Julie, you’re barista.

CUSTOMER:”Barista,” you say? I’m afraid I might not be speaking to the right person, then. I just wanted a cup of coffee.

BARISTA: I’d be glad to help you, sir. What would you like?

CUSTOMER: Just a cup of coffee, please. You know, a cuppa joe, a mugga java, a jolt of the ol’ caffeine.

BARISTA: We have a wide variety, sir. Would you like a tiramisu latte, our signature espresso with hints of cream mascarpone, finished with our whipped cream and a dusting of rich chocolate powder? Or perhaps a caramel flan latte, an espresso with steamed milk and caramel flavors of creamy flan, topped with caramel-infused whipped cream and flan drizzle?

CUSTOMER: I’m not much for flan.

BARISTA: Then how about a tiramisu Frappuccino blended beverage, a coffee blended with creamy mascarpone flavor, milk and ice, topped with whipped cream and a dusting of rich cocoa powder? We also have caffe Americano, caffe latte, caffe mocha …

CUSTOMER: I was really hoping for just a cup of coffee. You know, a plain old hot-water-run-through-coffee-grounds cup of coffee. Do you having anything like that?

BARISTA: But of course, sir. We are a coffee shop, after all. Would you like that blonde roast, caffe mist, our featured dark roast, or our clover-brewed coffee?

CUSTOMER: I’m sorry, but I grew up in an age when we only had three channels on TV and two kinds of blue jeans, and I’m afraid I’m a bit overwhelmed by all these choices. Could you please just sell me a cup of coffee? Just black coffee, no cream or sugar or flan or any of that stuff.

BARISTA: I understand, sir. What size would you like?

CUSTOMER: At this point, I’m going to need the biggest you’ve got.

BARISTA: Very well, sir. that would be our “venti.” And would you care to engage me in a meaningful discussion about the state of race relations in America?

CUSTOMER: Uh, no, not really. Thank you, though.

BARISTA: Are you sure, sir? It comes with the price of the coffee, and it will finally give me a chance to put my multi-cultural studies degree to use. It was very expensive, you know.

CUSTOMER: I’m sure it was. Still, I’ll be quite content with just the cup of coffee, thank you.

BARISTA: It’s our company policy to engage customers in conversation about racial issues. You don’t object to that, do you?

CUSTOMER: Oh, no, not at all. I mean, I’m all for racial equality and social justice and all that jazz, but really, I just wanted a cup of coffee.

BARISTA: Don’t you think it’s time America had a serious conversation about race?

CUSTOMER: America has been having a conversation about race for more than 200 years, not to mention a Civil War and a civil rights movement and all those miniseries and Academy Award acceptance speeches.

BARISTA: But we haven’t had the conversation where whitey agrees to pay reparations.

CUSTOMER: But you’re white, and your whole multi-national corporation, and your one-percenter CEO with this annoying policy, and almost all of your customers, they’re all white.

BARISTA: At least we’re remorseful. I think you need to check your white privilege.

CUSTOMER: White privilege? Lady, I haven’t been laid in months. Find me one brother who will say that. And what the hell good is white privilege if you can’t get a cup of black coffee without two lumps of white guilt?

BARISTA: Sir, your micro-agressions are not appreciated here. Starbucks is a micro-aggression-free space, and if you persist, I’m afraid I’ll be forced to ask the security guards to beat you to a bloody pulp.

CUSTOMER: I’m sorry, I just wanted a cup of coffee, and I’m afraid that a thorough discussion of the past 400 years of American history will make me late for the racial sensitivity training seminar at my office. Besides, I’m not even white.

BARISTA: Really?

CUSTOMER: Yes, I self-identify as a Uygher-American, and as I understand the new rules you’re supposed to regard me however I self-identify.

BARISTA: A Uygher? The Turkish ethnic group of eastern and central Asia?

CUSTOMER: That’s right, but we pronounce it “Uyg-ah,” and you don’t get to stay that.

BARISTA: Please forgive me, sir. Here’s your coffee, and that’ll be six dollars. You know, we don’t get a lot of Uyger-Americans in here.

CUSTOMER: And at these prices, you won’t get a lot more.

(Lights fade.)

— Bud Norman

Black Coffee, White Guilt

At the risk of sounding like the unfashionable cheapskate old fogies that we are, we confess we have never once patronized a Starbucks coffee shop. Instead we brew our two essential cups of morning coffee with a teapot and one of those conical things with the paper filter and two spoonfuls from a can of the local supermarket’s most inexpensive ground, and in the happy solitude of our kitchen table we savor its bitter taste and stimulating effects at a fraction of the price and without any conversation about race.

The conversation about race apparently now comes with the high price of a cup of coffee at Starbucks, according to press reports. It seems the 60-something white guy who runs the company has lately been concerned about the state of race relations in America and therefore instructed the “baristas” at his company’s store to engage the customers in heartfelt chit-chat about that “police shooting of an unarmed black teenager” and the rest of America’s racist sins. We put “barista” in quotation marks because it strikes us as such a highfalutin term for a coffee-slinger, and “police shooting of an unarmed black teenager” in quotation marks because he’s talking about such a clear-cut case of self-defense that even The Washington Post’s most exquisitely racially sensitive writer now admits it, but the press reports treat this cacophony as everyday language. They further note that the Starbucks “baristas” are writing some “hashtag” on the coffee cups with “Sharpies,” which is also apparently common parlance, and all the more reason to retreat to the solitude of our kitchen table.

At least the reports also indicate that Starbucks’ new policy has already met with widespread disdain. Many people have been “tweeting,” another one of those damnable neologisms requiring quotation marks, that the policy is patronizing toward minorities and insufficiently groveling toward the most up-to-date racial sensitivities. One widely “re-tweeted” “tweet” showed a smilingly caucasian waitress and the caption “Let’s discuss the disenfranchisement of your people that has allowed me to prosper.” Another offered “May I have a latte and an explanation for why your people continue to plunder my country.” Yet another suggested that the “hashtag” campaign “is what happens when a 1%-er without any actual anti-racist education or training has mid-life ‘white man’s burden’ crisis.” We wonder how the disenfranchisement of anybody has allowed Starbucks’ relatively meagerly paid waitresses to prosper, and we’re not at all sure what countries the corporation is plundering, but we do rather like the line about the executive’s mid-life “white man’s burden” crisis. If such more-progressive-than-thou self-righteousness is what it takes to force Starbucks’ retreat, we’re all for it.

The right doesn’t seem to be “tweeting” about it so much, presumably because they abhor the newness of the medium and brew their own coffee at home, but we’re also sympathetic to its largely unstated complaint that the even trendiest yuppie on his way to a multi-cultural sensitivity training session should be able to buy a cup of joe without having to hear some queer studies or gender studies or something or another studies graduate yammering on about race and class and gender and oppression and corporations and the rest of that nonsense they racked up $40,000 of debt learning about to get a job as a “barista” at Starbucks. That conversation Starbucks is hoping to provoke will involve the customer apologizing for his skin tone and that cop defending his life and getting absolution as part of the steep price of a cup of coffee, and somebody should object to that.

Besides, the formerly simple task of ordering a cup of java is time-consuming enough these days. After all the rigmarole about cream and sugar and foam and double mocha and beans from a certain region of Columbia and all the rest of it, adding in a discussion of the past 400 years of racial relations will make you late for that multi-cultural sensitivity training session.

— Bud Norman