Prairie Chicken Dancer | Lawrence Magazine spring 2015 by Sunflower Publishing

magazine smor.gas.bord / 16 Did you hear them sing? The MLK choir sound.

people / 56

Boys & Girls Club honors community youth.

places / 62

The Gnojeks revive a landmark stone home.

$5 / sunflowerpub.com / spring 2015

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Jenni Leiste Deron Lee

Regular and Alyse Bensel contributing Mick Braa writers Becky Bridson Melinda Briscoe Katherine Dinsdale Mary R. Gage Cathy Hamilton Suzanne Heck Nadia Imafidon Susan Kraus Maggie Lawrence Deron Lee Paula Naughtin Cheryl Nelsen Kate B. Pickert Katy Seibel Nick Spacek Julie Tollefson Nancy Vogel Liz Weslander

from the editor

In case you missed it, none other than President Barack Obama told the nation this January that “Lawrence gets it.” Obviously the context of that remark was part of a political message with its own agenda, right or wrong—but the flattery was entirely on target. From its founding as a Free State, antislavery stronghold, Lawrence has always been a community based on much more than a grid system and a postal designation. Ideas and aspirations were and continue to be essential to the city’s identity. Whatever “it” is—there are people in this town who are striving to define and perfect it. We pick up that theme in this issue with several stories. Deron Lee and Aunt Maggie examine different names that are used to define the essence of the community. Julie Tollefson discovers the region’s connection to silkworms and utopian ideals. Katherine Dinsdale interviews a young dancer interpreting a treasure of our prairies in Native dance. Liz Weslander introduces a pack of hometown heroes making Lawrence better for those around them. In each issue, this magazine devotes its pages to the good aspects of Lawrence. But good stuff is always built first on aspirations and visions for making something better. That is why this edition is our tribute to those in the community who make it possible for others to say: “Lawrence gets it.” Nathan, editor

CONTRIBUTING Lana Grove ARTIST

EXECUTIVE EDITOR Katy Ibsen

Residents gather at Silkville. Photograph courtesy Kansas Historical Society.

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lm features

The PrairieChicken Dance

A timeless whirl of beauty continues in Kansas, in nature and as interpreted by a Native dancer.

The Failed Silk Revolution

French idealism lost out to the weather and wages in a short-lived 19th-century Kansas community

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14 | LM Style STYLE SPRINGS TO LIFE Fresh alternatives allow a bold break from winter

16 | LM Sounds King’s legacy and some heavy-metal banjo create harmonies for spring

departments

Philanthropy, fitness and poetry feature in recent releases by Lawrence authors

52 | People (Anniversary Article) Hanging On to Old Irises

25 | LM Lingo Defining Utopia on the Kaw

Carole Mitchell’s collection of historic irises includes the sublime, the hardy, the bold and the weird

28 | LM Fit coaching track Two assistant coaches help their respective track and field teams make a run for the title

32 | LM Gallery Illustrious Suns, Stars and Heroes Three Lawrence artists provide vastly different takes on the stylized portrait

38 | LM Flavor A Dinner Party Every Night Cooking for two—or 25—comes naturally for Charles Hung

42 | LM Wild The Ducks of Spring magazine Did you hear them sing? The MLK choir sound.

people / 56

Boys & Girls Club honors community youth.

places / 62

The Gnojeks revive a landmark stone home.

LM $5 / sunflowerpub.com / spring 2015

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the bird. the tradition. the art.

Lawrence’s favorite auntie shares her hard-nosed advice for decoding hipster lingo and for righting recycling wrongs

21 | LM Bookmarks

Even before Silkville, Kansans have always dreamed of the “perfect” society

smor.gas.bord / 16

48 | People breaking the code

ON THE COVER Isaiah Stewart, or Red Whirlwind Horse (Tasunke Wamniomni Luta), prepares to demonstrate the prairiechicken dance in a field near Clinton Lake. Photograph by Jason Dailey

The author chronicles how wildlife near his home welcomed the previous year, and hopes for new visitors this season.

45 | Lawrencium! The science of distilling one Lawrence theme into essential information …

56 | People Hometown Heroes We all need one, and fortunately Lawrence has an abundance of them

62 | Places A New Start for the Old Stone House Annie and Dave Gnojek have made this classic 1873 farmhouse their own

smor路gas路bord

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fashion style

Story, Styling & Modeling by Katy Seibel Photography by Jason Dailey

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Style

springs to life

Fresh alternatives allow a bold break from winter

Though it can be pleasantly restful, the quiet hibernation of winter often results in a dull monotony when it comes to getting dressed. Pilly sweaters overstay their welcome. Leather boots get beat up by the elements. The same old coat provides a daily déjà vu. But just as nature emerges from sleep, buzzing with fresh color and new life, you too can awaken your sense of style with spring’s lively litany of trends. My look, composed of a whimsically printed vintage maxi dress and fringed tassel necklace, encapsulates only a few of the endless options. FREE SPIRIT The spring runways are paying homage to the bohemian sensibility of the 1970s. Channel your inner hippie with free-spirited flourishes, including tiedye prints, trapeze dresses, patchwork designs, rich leather (especially suede) and a warm color palette. Pantone’s 2015 Color of the Year, the earthy wine hue coined Marsala, fits right in. You’ll be a festival-ready flower child in no time. LET LOOSE Who says fashion has to be uptight ... or even tight for that matter? Comfortlovers rejoice! Loose, flowing fabrics and long hemlines are the new go-to. Reach for gauzy maxi dresses, carefree caftans, oversize blouses and billowy palazzo pants for an airy aesthetic that’s totally of-the-moment. MY FAIR LADY The spring fashion scene isn’t all laidback and loosey-goosey. If you prefer a more prim point of view, there’s plenty of stylish inspiration for the taking. Crisp white and other soft neutrals, especially worn head-to-toe for a monochromatic look, feel so fresh and clean for spring.

Ladylike white lace, retro gingham prints and tiered ruffles are all seasonal favorites. If you’re getting suited up, opt for cropped trousers. FRINGE BENEFITS Fringe trim, both delicate and dramatic, is appearing in unexpected places—from sweatshirts to evening wear. Whether your look leans Stevie Nicks, flapper girl or somewhere in between, add texture and movement to any outfit with this dynamic detail. GARDEN PARTY Floral prints are always a feature of spring fashion. This year, though, they’re bigger and bolder than ever. Think bright, largescale blooms and exotic tropical palms. Let the print overtake your outfit by wearing matching separates or full-length frocks covered in covetable flowers. As you shake off those winter doldrums, allow your personal style to undergo a metamorphosis. Whether it’s a couple of new pieces, an unexpected combination of old favorites or a complete closet overhaul, a fresh dose of fashion will put some spring in your step.

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sounds / spring harmonies Story by Nick Spacek Photography by Jason Dailey

Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s legacy and some heavy-metal banjo create harmonies for spring.

ELECTRIC OLD-TIMEY Monzie Leo Brummett, the eponymous member of Lawrence-based band Monzie Leo & The Big Sky, is aware his group’s music seems to live in a time warp. “There was a time where I would play the Jazzhaus, and people would ask, ‘Did you write those songs? They sound so old,’” says Brummett, sitting at a barstool at The Bottleneck. “I’m really happy that comes out.” Old-timey themes such as sending telegrams in “Poney”—the lead track to their latest album, Sunflowers, Sunsets, and Sons of Bitches (hats off to you, if you recognize that title as a line from a Kansas-themed 1970s Clint Eastwood film)—contrasts wonderfully with modern references in “Taco Pizza”—which is about taco pizza. Though dead technology and fusion cuisine might seem disparate references, they’re both right in line with the sound of The Big Sky. “It kind of sounds like bluegrass,” Brummett says. That’s a fair admission. Any band with a banjo is likely to sound kind of like bluegrass. Still, Brummett prefers to identify as more of a cosmic-American kind of band, with a Gram Parsons feel. “However, we’re in no way psychedelic, much in the same way that I’m inspired by doom metal but we’re in no way dystopic.” That’s right: doom metal, an influence going back to the first recorded Monzie Leo project, True Cult Hate Folk. “We’ve always loved heavy metal,” says Brummett. “We’ve always loved banjos. Put them together, and you get something like us.” MLK Choir Lawrence has been celebrating the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday since it officially started in 1986. The first year’s program was a rally at Central Junior High School (now Liberty Memorial Central Middle School), but the event has always featured music, and this musical programming has grown in scope over the years. “It started out with the just the local community—just the children’s choir,” says Anita Martin, head of the musical committee for the first Lawrence celebration. “Then it got bigger and bigger, and more exciting, and we decided that we would do both a children and adult choir.” The January 2015 concert, dubbed the Gospel Musical Explosion, was the Sunday evening kick-off to a week’s worth of events that drew upwards of 500 people to the Free Methodist Church. The performance has grown so large that The

opposite Musician Monzie Leo Brummett feels good about his group’s banjo-metal sound.

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Ecumenical Fellowship, Inc., the nonprofit that organizes the event, brings in an outside choir director. This year, Randall Fears returned for his second year as director. Fears, musical director at Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church, grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, and graduated from the University of Kansas. His local ties reflect an aspect of the musical celebration which has been present from the beginning. “All of the youth and adult choirs are made up from the churches and community of Lawrence,” Martin says. The Sunday night concert is one of the pillars of the Martin Luther King program, says Pastor Paul Winn, president of The Ecumenical Fellowship. “[King], as a gospel preacher, keeps us focused, because we too, in like manner, are gospelminded Christians from the soul,” Winn says. Another of the MLK celebration organizers, William Doolan, says music is integral to remembering Dr. King’s message. For anyone who’s ever attended one of the celebrations, it’s nighimpossible to discount the joy and excitement the performances bring. “The music was very important to the civil rights movement, because they sang as they marched, and most of the songs they sang were gospel songs,” Doolan says. “Gospel music is very important to keep moving in righteousness.”

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Pastor Paul Winn, above, says a focus on Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy is essential to the community’s MLK celebrations, as well as the performance of singers, including from left, Charleen Coleman, Anita Martin, Jana Coleman and Gloria Gardner.

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Erin Brown

Philanthropy, fitness and poetry feature in recent releases by Lawrence authors

enneth and Helen Spencer have an obvious legacy at the University of Kansas with the Kenneth Spencer Research Library and the Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art. That’s why writer Kenneth F. Crockett was surprised to learn, while sifting through reams of correspondence to and from the Spencers while researching his first book, Missouri Coal Miners Strike, that the couple’s biography had never been written. “They deserved that their story be told,” says Crockett, who holds a law degree from Washburn and is now a substitute teacher in Topeka. He spent the next five years writing Kenneth and Helen Spencer of Kansas: Champions of Culture and Commerce in the Sunflower State, published last year by The History Press. Crockett writes that when Kenneth Spencer and Helen Foresman married in 1927, their net worth was virtually zero. In those days, Helen packed a lunch pail for Kenneth. The lean years didn’t linger, however. Kenneth added Spencer Chemical to the business holdings of the family and, Crockett writes, “The man who had trouble spelling in school, and the man who continuously worried about whether he was making his father proud, in little more than a decade created a worldleading business.” Spencer also created a charitable foundation which, after his death in 1960 at the age of 58, Mrs. Kenneth Spencer (she adamantly insisted upon that title) worked to continue. “I want to spend every penny—I do not want to leave Kenneth’s accomplishments to the wishes and decisions of others,” she wrote. As Crockett notes, Mrs. Spencer kept her word. The foundation was dissolved in May 1979, having dispersed nearly $15 million to various projects and causes. Erin Brown Hooray for Erin Brown: She is speaking, writing and blogging to change the conversation about women’s body images. Brown’s new eBook, As Is: A 21 Day Practice for Finding

short takes: Poet Laureate March 3, 7:30 p.m. Natasha Trethewey, the 2012-14 U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer-Prize winner, presents an open reading in Lawrence at the Kansas Union, Woodruff Auditorium.

when and where Bookish Bracketology Lawrence Public Library sponsors a Tournament of Kids’ Books to coincide with the 2015 NCAA basketball tournament. Young readers pick the winners at each stage, and the champion book is announced by a Jayhawk player at a special program in early April.

Mountain Retreat April 24-26 Lawrence author Pam Grout gives you the excuse for a mountain weekend as she leads a Denver seminar on her New York Times bestseller, the motivational book E-Squared, at the “I Can Do It!” conference.

No Demise As Mark Twain never said, “News of the demise in popularity of children’s books is greatly exaggerated.” Proof comes from The Toy Store, 936 Massachusetts, where more than half the inventory now consists of children’s books after the addition of a new book-floor last year. “From Boynton to Seuss to Silverstein and the infamous John Green, we have them all,” says Mariah Riling, store bookologist (the archaic term is “book buyer”).

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a Home and Peace in Your Skin, offers three weeks of “tools, new mantras and new mindfulness” to help women and girls “go about the business of being who we are meant to be.” Brown’s blog at iamerinbrown. com tells the backstory, one she deemed too raw for this first book. In short, a rape as a young teenager left her full of shame and disgust. She began eating to soothe the pain. Years went by and the scale eventually topped 240 pounds. In the meantime, Brown married and became pregnant. “The moment things changed for me was on the sonogram table, when they confirmed I was carrying a baby girl,” she says. “I was just terrified. I had hated my body so much for so long, but when ‘the enemy’ was carrying my child, I knew I had to change. I had to start treating my body and life with respect.”

“The moment things changed for me was on the sonogram table, when they confirmed I was carrying a baby girl.” – Erin Brown

The sea change in Brown’s thinking didn’t start after she shed the excess weight, although that is part of her story. “Smaller pants didn’t change my life,” she writes in her book. “What’s made the biggest difference is deciding to stop bullying myself all the time.” The change came, she explains, when she began to learn to live well in the body she had. Brown says she went from being her own worst enemy to taking care of herself. “In order to do that, “ she says, “I had to believe I deserved that sort of care.”

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Brown has more than 100,000 likes on Facebook while her blog, book and speaking engagements have provided her with enough income to quit her day job at Wink Eyewear. She aims to publish hard copies of As Is this spring, hoping the book will “resonate with young teens and mature women alike.” How does Brown talk Patricia Lockwood about body image with her own daughter, who is now 6 years old? “It’s tricky,” Brown tweets have amassed nearly 50,000 says, “because I want to preserve her followers and have been, perhaps, just as innocence in childhood. She knows that responsible for her fame as her poetry. I help women feel happy in their bodies. There is erudite lewdness here, but also She knows that all bodies are good bodies, and sometimes people forget that. perfectly phrased insight: “I want to feel about anything the way dogs feel about I help them remember.” Outside.” Why hadn’t anyone written those lines ever before? Patricia Lockwood Lockwood describes Lawrence, where It has been an incredible year for she has lived since early 2014, as “a small Patricia Lockwood, famously dubbed “The town that has a very vibrant literary Smutty-Metaphor Queen of Lawrence, community, which is not something I ever Kansas,” in a May 2014 profile for The felt to be true in the other Midwestern New York Times Magazine. The poet’s most cities that I’ve lived in.” But literary recent collection, Motherland Fatherland greatness apparently comes at a price—in Homelandsexuals (2014, Penguin Books) a rather Biblical scale. “The weather is was tapped as one of the “100 Notable freaking brutal. It’s like a gigantic locust Books of 2014” by The New York Times made of ice is crouched over us, breathing Book Review, and her poem “Rape Joke” and turning everything to ice. And in was selected for the prestigious Pushcart summer, I’m sorry, do you know about Prize anthology. chiggers? I thought, ‘Oh, a-ha, I’ll have a Lockwood’s writing is delightfully lovely sojourn in the side yard. I’ll lay out inventive (in one poem, she flatteringly on a sheet.’ And I came inside and I was compares the St. Louis arch to a lovely feverish. I had gotten so many bites I had woman’s armpit) but also painfully to go lie down. It was terrible! I thought, personal and barbed, as in these lines from ‘Well, I’m never doing that again.’” “Rape Joke”: The rape joke is that you asked Expect more from this author, who why he did it. The rape joke is he said he didn’t turns 33 this spring and has recently know, like what else would a rape joke say? signed a contract to release her memoir On Twitter as @tricialockwood, with Riverhead Books in 2016. her alternatively cloy, clever and crass

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a Utopi g n i n - Defi

ove n Lee Dero y Lana Gr y b y b Stor ration Illust

Even before Silkville, Kansans have always dreamed of the “perfect” society. Our story in this issue (page 79) about the utopian Silkville community, formed near Lawrence in1870, got me thinking about the word and the concept of “utopia,” which has been a recurring theme in the history of Lawrence and Kansas. Utopia is generally defined as the perfect, ideal society, but the history of the word and the way it has been used, here and elsewhere, suggests something more complex. The word entered the English lexicon in Sir Thomas More’s 1516 book Utopia, which describes a fictional society with no private property, in which there is no poverty and all citizens work only for the good of their community. The word derives from two Greek roots that sound similar but have quite different meanings: eutopia (meaning “good place”) and ou topia (meaning “no place”). The ambiguous meaning of the word is reflected in the ambiguous meaning of the book; interpretations differ as to whether More was promoting this ideal of a perfect society, satirizing it, or both, or neither. This controversy set the terms by which the word would be defined from then on. Throughout history, the concept of utopia has been both romanticized and ridiculed—often

p to U

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depending on one’s view of politics and human nature. In Webster’s, “a place of ideal perfection” is only the second listed definition of the word; the first is “an imaginary and indefinitely remote place”—in other words, “no place.” The third definition is more negative:“an impractical scheme for social improvement.” Oxford shades the word a bit differently, defining it as “an imagined”—not imaginary—“place or state of things in which everything is perfect.” The subtle difference between “imagined” and “imaginary” gives this definition more of a hopeful quality—the implication that utopia is an aspiration rather than an outright fiction. Kansas is an excellent case study for this divided view of utopianism. Ever since its inception, our state has been a hotbed of utopian enterprises—not only Silkville, but other 19th-century projects like the vegetarian Octagon City and the communist Cedarvale community. A century later, Lawrence would become a haven for utopian hippie communes, and the idea for the famous “Drop City” artists’ commune in Colorado was hatched in Lawrence as well. In the Wild West era, of course, Kansas also saw its share of the antonym “dystopias”—lawless, violent cowtowns like

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Caldwell, Trail City and Dodge City, which for a time was known as “the wickedest little city in America.” Today, legendary dystopias like early Dodge are better remembered than do-gooding utopian enterprises like Octagon City. But most of these idealistic, utopian visions were short-lived, and their founders often dismissed as crackpots or charlatans. The history of failed utopian experiments, here and elsewhere, is no doubt part of the reason that the word “utopia,” which ostensibly denotes something positive and hopeful, has just as often taken on derogatory, mocking connotations. “Kansas has been the testing ground for every experiment in morals, politics and social life,” said John J. Ingalls, a 19th-century senator and one of state’s founding fathers, adding that “every incoherent and fantastic dream of social improvement and reform, every economic delusion that has bewildered the foggy brains of fanatics, every political fallacy nurtured by misfortune, poverty and failure, rejected elsewhere, has found tolerance and advocacy.” So are we to conclude from hard experience that, as part of the word’s original derivation implies, “utopia” is really “no

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place”—a mirage, or even a joke? Not necessarily. After all, Kansas itself was a kind of utopian experiment. That same John J. Ingalls who mocked the state’s utopian dreamers, ironically, was also the man who coined our motto: ad astra, per aspera,—“to the stars, through difficulties”—the perfect expression of a certain clear-headed, Midwestern brand of utopianism. Lawrence itself was founded as a kind of utopia—a haven envisioned by reformers from Massachusetts who wanted to halt the seemingly unstoppable spread of slavery. It’s easy to forget that, in 1854, an America without slavery was just a dream—and a farfetched one at that. But even though we can all agree that our town is hardly “utopia,” that utopian dream of its founders came true. Embedded in the very idea of utopia is the possibility, even the likelihood, of failure. The perfect society is unattainable, yet we never stop striving for it—nor should we. If we stop dreaming, the likely result is dystopia. Lawrence will probably never be “utopia,” the perfect place, but as long as we keep striving for perfection, it will remain “eutopia”—the good place.

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Story by Becky Bridson Photography by Jason Dailey

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Creating a naturally beautiful smile designed specifically for you!

Two assistant coaches help their respective track and field teams make a run for the title. High school rivalries have long been part of Lawrence sporting traditions. And this spring, one of the most exciting—though under-the-radar—matchups is renewed as the Free State High School and Lawrence High School girls’ track and field teams make a run for the state title. The last two seasons of 6A division state competition have closed with the Free State Firebirds soaring to victory and the Lawrence High Lions clawing their way to third. The kids handle the competition and the pressure with the poise of seasoned professionals. Their efforts and accomplishments inspire—and they, in turn, are greatly inspired by their respective coaches, who enable these talented athletes to reach championship status. Kiah Mattson Free State High School Within the first few meters of what she hopes will be a long-distance coaching career, Kiah Mattson, also a third-year chemistry teacher at FSHS, shares the unique distinction of winning state championships in multiple sports as a coach— the 2013 cross-country state championship and a track and field state championship, the second in a row for Free State, during her debut coaching term in 2014.

Track Fact: Both Free State High School and Lawrence High School compete in the largestsize division, 6A, at the state track and field championships. “I kind of feel like I just fell into it,” Mattson says. “I feel like I really didn’t contribute a lot. I just stepped in and here we are, state champions. It’s been a lot of fun.” FSHS head coach Jordan Rose says Mattson deserves high praise. “The kids talk about her as having a very high expectation of them,” Rose says. “She doesn’t get frustrated with them. She’s very positive and uplifting when she talks to them. She’s really supportive and compassionate toward the kids.” Rose believes much of Mattson’s success in track and field is due to her involvement and contributions in crosscountry. Many of the cross-country runners rack up mileage out on the track in the spring for Coach Mattson, including 2014 individual state champions Bailey Sullivan (now a freshman at TCU, running both cross-country and track), who repeated as champ in the 1600 meter; and Emily

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Venters, who won the 3200 meter as a freshman as well as the cross-country individual crown as a freshman and sophomore (2013 and 2014). “As they are going through the workouts, even if they’re really tough and really hard, they know that she’s got their back, and she’s trying to do her best to keep them improving, so then they continue to want to do their best for her,” Rose says. “I love being around the kids and watching them be successful,” Mattson says. “It’s more about the relationship you’re building with a kid that comes first, and the coaching comes second to me.” Audrey Pope Lawrence High School Audrey Pope refers to herself as a “secondplace wonder” because she never reached the state championship level herself as an athlete. Nonetheless, as an assistant coach in 2008 she helped the Lawrence High School girls’ basketball team win a state crown. And more recently, she has coached two state-champion 4-by400 relay teams, in 2013 and 2014. The team has benefitted from young talent, including Marissa Pope, Coach Pope’s sister, who returns along with her three relay counterparts to make a three-peat likely in May’s state championship. “They came in on top so young,” says Coach Pope. “You want to make sure they go out on top as well.” Pope says coaching her sister is an “awesome” bonus—with unique responsibilities. “Every once in a while Audrey the sister comes out instead of Coach Pope the coach,” says Pope of working with her sibling. “She calls me Coach Pope. She’s very respectful of me, and she trusts me because she’s seen me do it and she knows I know what I’m talking about.” Marissa Pope’s team in the 4-by-100 relay also finished fifth at last year’s state meet, breaking the school record by 1/100th of a second—a mark that had been set by a team that included her older sister. “Not only are they really good athletes, they’re amazing kids, and they’re really, really smart,” Coach Pope says. “It’s not that I’m the best coach in the world. I’m just able to motivate them. I’m just really good at teaching girls that it’s OK to be competitive, and how to be competitive.” For her efforts and dedication, Pope—now entering her 10th season, was recently named by her peers as the Kansas Cross Country Track and Field Coaches Association assistant coach of the year for sprints. She, in turn, credits much of her success to coaches Jo Huntsinger, Kristin Mallory, Cheryl Hamilton, Kathy Stuntz and Lori Stussie. “I have been very fortunate in having some amazing female coaches over the years,” she says. “I think that’s something we need more of, so I do think eventually I will go that route. But for now, I’m happy where I’m at, being an assistant.”

Kiah Mattson

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gallery / suns, stars & heroes Story by Mick Braa photography by Jason Dailey

Three Lawrence artists provide vastly different takes on the stylized portrait

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Toni Brou / Gabriel Tuxhorn / Torren Thomas

creative image with embellishments, inventions, illusions and distortions says something about how the artist sees, thinks and feels about favorite subjects. The three artist-illustrators here share perceptions of hope, admiration, wonder and humor about people and things that have been strong influences in their lives. The portraits also serve as a pictorial biography of what has shaped their work. Toni Brou With a dozen of her brightly painted radiating hubcap suns having appeared on CBS Sunday Morning, assemblage artist Toni Brou hopes to brighten the day for viewers. Many have seen and acquired her images as reproductions or in original form—attesting to their feelgood attraction. “I don’t get tired of the suns, I just do each one different in different ways—in assemblages, paintings, prints and even on ceramics and dyed fabric scarves,” Brou says. “I used to get vintage hubcaps from a salvage yard, but now mostly people kind of know what I like and leave them on my doorstep.”

“I don’t get tired of suns, I just do each one different in different ways…” – Toni Brou Brou grew up creating art around Dodge City on a hobby farm. Her dad was a self-proclaimed “junk sculptor” whose workbench and tools are still centerpieces in her memory. “We didn’t have cable, but we watched the sky a lot, had flowers, did a lot of digging in the dirt and playing with junk,” Brou says. “So it’s a way to stay a bit connected to that rural life. My assemblage art is a nod to Dad.” Tributes to her mother can be found in works such as Smiling Sun over Sunflowers, which conjures a childhood flower patch that Brou’s mom reserved for her to plant. Hope and healing is a prominent theme in Brou’s art, and her drawings and paintings are often metaphors for personal or family relationships where the subjects seem rearranged or reinvented as time passes. Hope Angel, for example, is one of many angel faces that always seem to start to look like a friend who passed away. Brou almost always creates with real materials— another nod to her dad. While she does make use of

FROM TOP Toni Brou stands against an impromptu landscape scene she created in the Lawrence Magazine photo studio; Brou’s Interior Life blends a landscape and portrait; Brou’s Smiling Sun over Sunflowers features her signature sun-face design.

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digital technology, all her works start with an original creation, and the digital applications are a way to make her images more accessible to a wider public. And the core of her work remains her themes—the symbolism of her imagery, such as the birds that appear in her work. “My birds are very much about my boys when they were little,” Brou says. “The connection goes back to when my late husband was in hospice and there was an aviary in the living room. The birds were a welcome distraction for my boys that made them happier for a bit. My Bird Family Portrait is a result. So, I mostly make art for myself first, working through life experiences. Sometimes you just have to paint your own happy places.” Gabriel Tuxhorn A worn metal storage box sits on a worktable in his studio—that extra bedroom now dedicated to making art. Here, Gabriel Tuxhorn beams with enthusiasm as he opens the lid to share his growing collection of drawings, doodles, watercolors, annotated ideas and other sketches that serve as the springboards to fully developed works on paper or canvas. “I’ve always drawn and painted things like animals, people, faces and imaginary creatures that are part human and maybe part animal or insect,” Tuxhorn says. “I like to focus in on the little things, people and things that otherwise normally go unnoticed.” A native of Dodge City, Tuxhorn was awarded a full art scholarship to the local community college and devoured everything he could about art. Three years ago, he ventured to Lawrence, where he works at Hallmark when not doing his own art. “It’s a lot harder to be an artist than I expected — hard to create new work and be noticed,” Tuxhorn says. “And some of my work is about feeling isolated and choosing a direction that allows me to keep doing art instead of just paying the bills.” A painting called Transient perhaps illustrates the way many of us feel in a new place or situation, under a sky of unknown possibilities and too many choices, while Turning Point takes us to a moment of decision or commitment. Tuxhorn’s wry humor is especially obvious in a cartoonish watercolor of a pigtailed girl holding her struggling cat, who’s almost bigger than she. “I mix a bit of the macabre with cute—not so much to shock or put off people, but to suggest contradictions in what is normal or acceptable,” he says. “I recently rescued a perfectly good folding French easel from someone’s trash, so now I’m anxious to get out and about painting some normal subjects I’ve overlooked while I explore the Lawrence community.”

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Gabriel Tuxhorn, above right, stands in front of a portrait that he has added to Toni Brouâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s landscape. Tuxhornâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work includes, top, Transient and, bottom, Turning Point.

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Torren Thomas If you can’t make fun of yourself, let me help do it for you. This familiar adage can be easily tied to the work of Torren Thomas, who pays homage to his heroes with incredibly polished, but distorted and often humorously demented caricature portraits. “Some people might think that my caricatures are repulsive, garish or too exaggerated, but they’re sort of the faces I know and have grown up with,” Thomas says. “They’re like my personal heroes in music, sports, politics and entertainment. It’s like creating my own comic-book heroes—but better because they really exist! My caricatures are intended to celebrate these people and maybe see them in a new context—to urge everyone to really look, see, think and find out more about them.” A graduate of the University of Kansas with a degree in visual communications, Thomas has worked in most traditional drawing and painting mediums, but now creates almost entirely digitally on the computer and graphics tablet. He’s stepping up to challenge top digital illustrators, with a number of magazine and commercial commissions under his belt. Thomas’ works really speak for themselves. A perusal of his portraits shows a love for popular horror-movie characters, who are revisited in varied forms in many of his subjects. His favorite character is immortalized in Freddy Krueger. There is also a more sensitive and serious side to Thomas on display in Naomi, a portrait of his grandmother, who has been a very important influence on his life. Thomas doesn’t spare himself from his caricatures—he can depict himself with the same exaggerated and enthusiastic perception that makes all his heroes seem more real, or at least down to a worthy un-earthliness.

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ABOVE, FROM TOP Torren Thomas’ portraits include Naomi, a loving image of his grandmother; Thomas stands in front of an acrylic portrait that he created with fellow artists Tuxhorn and Brou; Thomas has created a large base of followers with his pop-culture caricatures, such as Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones.

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A Dinner Party Cooking for two—or 25—comes naturally for Charles Hung Charles Hung makes his home in a Craftsman-style house just west of campus. The dwelling, which he shares with partner Scott McBride Smith, is full of light and warmth, with an abundance of gathering spaces. All of that room is handy, since in addition to smaller dinner parties every other week or so, the couple hosts a large group at least once a month. Guests at the parties include Smith’s piano students—he is the Cordelia Brown Murphy Professor of Piano Pedagogy at the University of Kansas—as well as family and friends. Having students as their guests is important to the men. Piano students in particular tend to be solitary; they practice alone, perform alone. “It’s nice to have a social occasion where they all get together,” Smith says. Hung, who usually prepares food for the guests,

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gets ready for company with lightning speed, even when he has a group of 20 or 25 coming. “If the party starts at six o’clock, I start at four,” Hung says. “I play around with whatever I have in the refrigerator and make a last-minute shopping trip.” He usually starts with an appetizer like pot stickers, egg rolls or shrimp cakes. Main dishes might include grilled meats and vegetables, a rice pilaf or pasta. In addition to cooking for the many parties the couple hosts, Hung makes something delicious for them to eat every day. Their meals often include fried noodles, different permutations of fried rice, pasta and soups. “Our friends are all like, ‘Do you eat like this all the time?’” Smith says. “And I say, ‘Yeah.’” Hung says the fried noodles are simple, but Smith disagrees. “It sounds really basic, but it isn’t,” he says. The wheat noodles are from Los Angeles—Hung prefers a round spaghetti-sized variety from the Quon Yick Noodle Co. called Chinese Style Dry Noodle. And Hung doesn’t just boil them until they are done. Instead, he uses a traditional technique of adding cold water to

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the pot two or three times during the cooking. “The noodle sucks in the cold water and gets more chewy and more texture,” Hung says, adding that the same technique can be used for boiling dumplings. The noodles are fried with sautéed onion, a bit of Chinese oyster sauce, soy sauce and pepper. Other items, such as mushrooms, Napa cabbage or meat, can be added. Hung and Smith, who have been together almost 15 years, moved permanently to Lawrence in 2010 after spending every summer here since 2001 for Smith to run the International Institute for Young Musicians summer music academy. Hung’s interest in food and cooking is very much a family trait. His mother taught cooking classes at her club in Taiwan. She encouraged Hung to prepare very simple dishes, like

fried eggs, when he was only 6 or 7—“because my parents were both not home and when I was hungry I had to feed myself,” he remembers. Hung came to the U.S. from Taiwan when he was 21 to attend California State University, Long Beach, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He then completed a master’s degree in the same field from the University of Southern California. He embarked on a career as an electrical engineer, but after meeting Smith, he turned his focus to music, helping Smith run the summer International Institute for Young Musicians, held at the University of Kansas, as well as Smith’s music business. Hung continues in those roles today and also serves as a translator when Smith makes his semiannual trips to Asia to teach master classes and lecture.

Music, though central to the couple’s life, is not Hung’s main career focus. He is a certified Rolfer and works out of a space above the Craftsmanstyle garage that stands next to their home. Hung’s cooking has also been tapped by Lawrence’s Jade Garden restaurant, where he helped prepare and develop the menu, adapting home recipes for commercial purposes. “Restaurant cooking and home cooking is very different,” Hung says. “Their stove is much hotter and powerful. Something you cook for 20 minutes at home takes three minutes at the restaurant.” When Hung is asked what he tries to do when he entertains, his answer is simple. “Make them happy.” You can try his shrimp-cakes recipe for yourself, and see if it does not bring some more happiness to your life this spring.

kes a C p m i Shr charles

hungâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

This is one of Charles Hungâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most popular and personalized offerings. He has altered the way he prepares the dish over the past years. He used to form the shrimp into patties, then dredge them in panko crumbs and fry them. However, the panko absorbed a lot of oil and also shed crumbs into the pan, making the oil less clear. Now he uses egg-roll wrappers.

Ingredients: 1 pound medium- or large-shelled fresh shrimp (the quality of the shrimp will greatly impact the flavor of the dish, so be sure to get good shrimp) teaspoon salt tablespoon minced ginger 1 tablespoon minced cilantro or parsley 1 egg white

smoking. Add shrimp cake and fry on both sides until golden. Cut into triangles and serve with purchased or homemade dipping sauce. Shrimp Cakes can be served with sauce. Hung makes a simple plum sauce.

Instructions:

Ingredients:

1) Place the shrimp in the bowl of a food processor and briefly pulse it. You do not want to puree the shrimp, just chop it a bit. 2) Add shrimp to another bowl with remaining ingredients. Work the ingredients a bit with a spatula; you want the mixture to get very integrated and a bit sticky. 3) Spread mixture on an egg-roll wrapper, about inch thick. Be sure to go all the way to the edges. Top with another eggroll wrapper and press the layers together gently. 4) Heat oil (Hung uses a Mediterranean blend that includes canola, olive and grape-seed oils) until very hot, but not

cup of rice vinegar cup of sugar 1 teaspoon chili sauce Instructions: 1) Simmer ingredients together on medium until mixture thickens slightly. 2) Place in side dish to be used as topping for shrimp cakes.

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wild / ducks of spring Story by Lee Gerhard Photography by Jason Dailey

The author chronicles how wildlife near his home welcomed the previous year, and hopes for new visitors this season.

ast spring was frosty in the neighborhood, so cold and snowy that we almost despaired that warm and sunny would ever return. Sub-teen temperatures froze over Alvamar Pond several times, making life difficult for the small flock of geese which liked to use it for resting between pulling grass from the rough and leaving messy droppings on the greens and fairways alike. Although it warmed up enough to melt all the snow, spring still seemed just a bit over the horizon. At least until one morning when I jumped a small flight of mallards off the pond on my early-morning walk. As they flapped into the air, voices quiet, the sky seemed to clear and let early sunlight peek into our backyard. So, spring arrived, eventually. When I lived in North Dakota, we could tell spring was near because we heard the ghostly cries of thousands of geese flying north over our house in the early evening. Canada geese were protected, although some people did hunt a few. But they were still rare and novel enough then that people would drive to small lakes on rumors to see a flock. That was nearly 40 years ago. These years, we are inundated with Canada geese. Snow geese are tearing up the Canadian Arctic tundra because there are so many of them grabbing short-lived arctic grasses. They infest golf courses and city parks and ponds all through the Midwest and South. Ask Arizona golfers about Canada geese. These geese have adapted to their protected status in urban settings. Despite being pests part of the time—and they do leave messes and can be aggressive to timid people—the Canada geese are beautiful to watch. They flare their wings as they drift to land, making small splashes, continuing conversations started in the sky. They don’t have many words, but they seem to communicate about all the important things; somehow they communicate well enough to pair off and raise little goslings. The families are fun to watch, as mother goose leads them into the water and seems to teach them about the wide world. Watching them reminds me of Burgess’ children’s stories about anthropomorphic animals and breezes, written near the beginning of the 20th century. In the wild, these geese and others like them are subject to coyote predation. Skunks frequently rob their nests. Snapping turtles sometimes manage to eat a few goslings, and the fox that used to live around Alvamar Pond probably made some of his living from both eggs and goslings. But in urban areas, these are minor annoyances, and the geese thrive. They learn quickly. Some of their traits must be genetic, but there is one I’m not so sure hasn’t been learned. When the pond started to freeze over one night, I watched the geese in the fading light of day. Ice was forming rapidly (and my nose was getting cold). The geese were busily creating their nighttime security, ignoring me as I slipped along the bank above them. There was a clear division of labor. As the ice crept further from shore towards the pond center, the ganders swam around the edges flapping their wings constantly,

keeping the water in motion, breaking up any ice that formed with small waves and keeping new ice from crystallizing. Their female consorts were busy also, switching their little tails, creating ripples in the water and swimming in abstract designs—at least attempting to be part of the exercise, but not expending anywhere near as much energy as the ganders. As darkness descended on the pond, the temperature continued to fall and I headed for home, wondering how the geese would fare overnight. I ruminated over my dinner about why they didn’t just fly to the large bodies of open water nearby. No one answered the question. Next morning, I wandered back out to the pond once sufficient daylight let me see how to avoid slipping on new ice on the grass and walkways. The geese were still on the pond. The circle of open water was much smaller, but there was room for all of the geese. It was quite clear that they had taken turns resting and working during the night, some out on the ice while others continued to keep water open. The new ice was littered with droppings. Once the ice melted, as it did later in the day, I guess the fish got more nutrients than they had previously counted on. By Tax Day, it was cold despite several warm days early on. The sight of ducks on Alvamar Pond warmed me. After most of the geese had departed for bigger water and nests, a small flock of lesser scaup piddled around the pond. They flew off as soon as they spied me, but the next morning, a pair lit on the pond again. Over the next few days, they acclimatized to the presence of golfers and walkers, swimming to the far side when people approached, but remaining on the water. After a few days, only the male showed up, but he was there every day. I hoped that meant his mate was nesting, sitting on eggs. A week later, I spied a flock of blue-winged teal on the pond. They abandoned the pond when I came into view. They swam there the next morning, but flew off again. By the third day, they had seen enough golfers that when I approached the pond, they flew only to the other end. By late spring, there was a flock of six teal and the scaup living there. One morning, there were more big ducks. A flight of seven mallards thundered off the water when they saw me. Maybe they’ll return this year and learn to tolerate us. One of my friends in North Dakota was piqued because by December they hadn’t had their usual winter. By Tax Day, he was not complaining anymore. It’s too cold here for resident ducks to remain year-round on Alvamar Pond. I haven’t noticed them staying through the winter, at least. But spring comes and the ducks stop in our ponds. Soon, it will be time for them to raise ducklings. Maybe a few will linger here and we’ll have resident ducks all summer. Wouldn’t that be nice?

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“

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n ...

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m for

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Butternut Squash

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e on

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“

We are unique in the fact that we do not allow nonlocal products during our main season. Our holiday market is an exception.

• Contains 3.1 grams of sugar per 1 cup serving • 1 cup contains 23% of daily fiber

vs.

Sweet Potato

• 1 cup of sweet potato has 214 % of daily betacarotene

This issue’s theme:

• 1 cup of sweet potato has 52% of daily Vitamin C

Farmers ” Market

—Sally Sanko-Brown, Lawrence Farmers’ Market Coordinator

compiled by Nadia Imafidon

Angie Schoenherr, Master Nutrition Therapist

All Lawrence farmers’ market products must be grown or produced in Kansas, within 50 miles of Lawrence.

• Highly beneficial for eyes, hair, skin and digestive health with large amounts of Vitamin A • Contain 7 grams of sugar per 1 cup serving • 1 cup contains 26% of daily fiber

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honey

wine

ot foo

cheese

d goods ake

Source: Benjamin Garner, former LFM board member who has conducted studies on farmers’ market communications and consumer behavior

farmers’ market?

verage

what brings them down to the

rodu dy p cts

Flavor To build community

Organic production

Sustainability and environmental reasons

Quality of the food products. vendors by the numbers

liv Source: Benjamin Garner

nuts 3

er res ve

l medicin rba

tre og ats

Anthony Randles, of the Kansas Department of Health & Environment did a “rapid market assessment” in 2013 (during peak summer hours and production) and estimated that around 7,253 customers attended one Saturday.

7,253

How many visit?

The average for the Tuesday market is much less, around 135-137 people per week.

135-137

crafts

getable

ro ush o

fruit

At the peak of the season, on average there are more then 2,000 customers at Saturday Market. Source: Sally Sanko-Brown

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2,000

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meat

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crowds of customers!

farmers’ markets in the U.S. total over 8,000, according to the usda

breakdown estimated by Sally Sanko-Brown

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Breaking

the code Story by Maggie Lawrence

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illustration by Lana Grove

Dear Aunt Maggie, Last Saturday, my 5-year-old and I were walking downtown when we passed a college student wearing one of those ubiquitous hashtag t-shirts I see around. “Mommy,” my boy said, “what does L-F-K mean?” Maggie, for the first time in my life I was struck speechless. All I could say was, “I don’t know, honey. Maybe those are the boy’s initials.” That seemed to satisfy him at the moment but I’m petrified the question will come up again. How should I handle it? Mortified on Monterey

Dear MOM, Talk about déjà vu! I was in a similar situation recently with my granddaughter, Lotus. We were passing The Toy Store and she posed the same question. Now, I’m a hip old grandma who knows LFK is a term of endearment for a certain segment of the population. Heck, it was even trademarked by local entrepreneur Leslie Kuluva, who apparently knows civic devotion when she sees it. Lotus is only 4, however, and I’ll be, er, darned if Grandma Maggie is the one to introduce her to language some find offensive. What I said to Lotus was: “LFK? Well, I suppose it could mean anything: Let’s Fly a Kite … Love For Kangaroos … Little Furry Koalas … Lucy, Fred and Kevin? What do you think it means?” Without missing a beat, my little granddaughter replied: “Lotus Feels Kute.” Who was I to tell her she couldn’t spell?

Dear Aunt Maggie, Never in a million years would I have thought I’d need help from an advice columnist, but I am faced with a problem I cannot solve independently. I am an old hippie recycler from way back who used to spend hours in the garage dividing the glass from the cans, the cardboard from the plastic. Once a month, I’d load up my 1975 VW bus (which I drive only on Saturdays and to the Winfield Festival) and haul the stuff to various recycling centers around town. So, I was blissed-out when the City of Lawrence announced its citywide curbside recycling program. I celebrated the delivery of my big, blue bin with a hoppy India pale ale and a heaping bowl of curried rice-ramen. Everything was cool until one day when I lifted the lid and noticed two errant pizza boxes inside. I knew they weren’t mine because I went glutenfree 10 years ago, although I do enjoy the occasional cauliflower-crust pizza, which pairs nicely with IPAs. At first, I shrugged it off, but soon noticed more pizza boxes showing up in my bin on weekends. Then, I received a note from the City informing me that while cardboard is an acceptable recyclable, old food is not. (There were, apparently, scraps of crust inside the boxes.) I live in a mixed and mellow neighborhood of single and multi-family dwellings, and I consider myself a good neighbor. But I’m afraid these fly-by-night pizza eaters are ruining my good standing as a responsible recycler. And they’re killing my buzz, to boot. What can I do, Maggie? At Wit’s End Old West Lawrence

Dear AWE, As one old hippie recycler to another, I agree that our big blue bins rock. Aunt Maggie was getting tired of weaving all those plastic bags into rugs. There are just so many welcome mats a gal can own, you know? The upside is: Your fly-by-night pizza eaters are, on some level, thinking about Mother Earth. The downside: You could be penalized for their ignorance of the rules. Put on your Kojak hat and see if you can discover who the perpetrators are. Park your VW bus in sight of the bin, bring a camera and camp out next weekend. If you can catch them in the act, take their photo, then approach them in a non-threatening way and explain the situation. Sheer embarrassment will likely nip their behavior in the bud. If you can’t stay up late enough to apprehend the culprits, leave them a note on the bin, asking them to cease and desist. No need to get crusty or cheesy. Just ask politely. They’ll get the message.

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Aunt Maggie, or Maggie Lawrence, is the nom de plume of a longtime Lawrencian. You can ask Aunt Maggie to solve your hometown dilemma by writing to her through Lawrence Magazine— as long as you are prepared for Aunt Maggie’s hard-nosed answer.

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Editor’s Note: To mark the 10th anniversary of Lawrence Magazine, we are returning to a few of our favorite stories for the winter 2014-fall 2015 editions. This profile of Carole Mitchell and her iris gardens originally appeared in the Fall 2010 issue. Since that time, Mitchell approvingly notes, iris trends have moved away from the “space age” irises with thick beards, and also away from the darker colors. This year’s trend seems to be pastels or bright colors such as the “Notta Lemon” hybrid which, you can guess, is a citrus-yellow color. But not all is bright in the iris world. Since our story first ran, Mitchell says, iris borers— cannibalistic, iris-devouring worms—have infected the area. Mitchell, who thinks she successfully cleared out the worms from her garden last year, says iris growers must be vigilant against them. Her advice? Seek them out and clip them in two with a pair of scissors.

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hanging on to

Old Irises Story by Nancy Vogel

photography by Jason Dailey

ris grower Carole Mitchell has more than one iris garden: “I have a Dykes garden. I have a historic garden. I have E AGAZIN M E C a dwarf garden. I have a garden of just EN LAWR things I’ve not known where else to put.” Her Dykes garden features iris hybrids that have received the Dykes Medal, named for a horticulturist from England, W.R. Dykes, and awarded annually to an outstanding iris. Mitchell has a complete Dykes collection going back to 1927. Mitchell, a member of the Douglas County Master Gardeners, fell in love with irises in 1973 when her sister sent her some irises rescued from a retiring gardener. Then, in 1993, she attended a national iris convention in Oregon and gained more respect for her secondhand flowers. “I was thinking about getting rid of a lot of old irises that my sister had given me. They were taking up a lot of space and I wanted to expand,” she recalls. “So I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just get rid of these old things.’ So we went to the meeting of the Historic Iris Preservation Society, and they had this little auction. Just about every one of the

plants in that auction were some of what I had. … When they reached $100 a rhizome, I said, ‘I think I’ll hang on to those old irises.’” Mitchell has her favorite irises, such as the “Stairway to Heaven,” a blue and white iris that grows in a stairstep formation, but she says the colors she loves most happen to be whatever is blooming. Irises, for Mitchell, represent beauty and simplicity—part of their attraction. “Anybody who can stick something in the ground can grow an iris,” she says. And not only are they relatively easy to nurture, they tend to be less expensive than other flowers, such as daylilies. “You can spend $175 for a new daylily,” Mitchell says. “Most irises, new introductions, sell for under $100. I don’t think irises are much more than $75 for a brand-new introduction. My historic garden, the ones that are not Dykes, that is my best-growing garden. … And I think it’s because all of the plants in there are tried and true. They’re irises that have been in circulation for years and years and years, and have been proven to be very good.”

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or more branches and at least seven blossoms, according to The American Iris Society. Mitchell says the tall bearded varieties are difficult to protect because they attract iris borers, but they have rewards for those who cultivate them. Mitchell describes their blooms as “spectacular” in size and capable of lasting for up to one month.

From Carole Mitchell’s garden …

Mesmerizer Mitchell says this 2002 Dykes winner successfully features horns, which appear almost as a second bloom emerging from the base of the beard. Like many varieties, “Mesmerizer” is generally bred on the West Coast where the climate and soil differs from local conditions. But show irises can adapt well if the rhizomes are set out in the sun to dry for 10 days prior to planting. Perhaps the best approach for new growers, advises Mitchell, is to transplant an inexpensive iris from a local garden. “The cheaper the iris, the more likely it will grow for you,” says Mitchell. “And also the closer to home you buy it, the more likely it will grow for you.”

San Francisco “San Francisco” is a classic—the original Dykes winner. Unlike most recent winners that have ruffles, flounces and even new protuberances called “spoons,” this iris lacks curlicues and is a very vertical flower, which Mitchell says shows how much the concept of a beautiful iris has changed. “I don’t say ‘improved,’” she clarifies, “because some of it I don’t think is an improvement.” In fact, a few of the trends are “just plain weird,” she says. As an example, she points to recent Dykes winner “Thornbird,” which has horns coming out of the flower’s beard. Mitchell’s verdict? “Ugly.” Cream Chiffon Introduced in 1953, this is a historic variety iris, meaning it has been marketed for a minimum of 30 years. Mitchell says ‘Cream Chiffon’ has a simple, classic structure that combines easy growth, distinction and beauty.

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Point Clear (photograph on page 52) Introduced in 1967, this is an iris that falls under the “Tall Bearded” category. These types of irises must be over 27.5 inches, produce two

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Peda-dog-ical Rex While most dogs are watching their owners leave for work each morning, Rex is donning his work vest and heading off to his own job at Southwest Middle School. A certified therapy dog, Rex the boxer spends his days in Lark Devore’s special-education classroom, where he serves as a calming and motivating presence. Rex completed his on-the-job training as a therapy dog at Schwegler Elementary with Angie Rexroad, his owner, who worked at Schwegler for several years as a special-education para-professional. These days, Rex understands his role so well that Angie simply drops him off at Southwest to do his job. On days when Rex is not working at Southwest, he and Angie volunteer with the Loving Paws Animal Therapy Program, which brings certified therapy dogs into hospitals, the University of Kansas libraries and dorms, and other places where people may be experiencing stress. Here, Angie talks more about Rex and what he does for the community. Rex is doing what he was trained to so since 14 weeks, and he loves it. He gets excited every morning when I put his vest on. When I make my coffee, it’s his sign that we are getting ready to leave, so he goes into the laundry room and looks at the cabinet where all his stuff is. Then he goes to the door and waits for me. On days off, when he realizes that he’s not going anywhere, he’ll sit down on the couch with a heavy sigh. Dogs lower the blood pressure, they are non-judgmental and they give unconditional love—all the things that kids need when they are having a hard day. When Rex goes into the classroom, he walks around and checks out the room, then he goes to one child and leans on them. He knows when someone is hurting or upset. It’s pretty amazing watching that. I think every school should have a therapy dog.

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Story by Liz Weslander

photography by Jason Dailey

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Grown Right Cedar Valley Farms is an organic farm run by members of the Bauman family, who raise poultry using non-GMO feed that they grow or purchase from other local farms. Located in Garnett, the farm has found a strong market in Lawrence. Recently, the organization Slow Money awarded the Baumans a three-year, zero-percent loan of $60,000 to help them fill local demand. This money will go to purchasing milling and storage equipment for non-GMO grains, making it possible for the Baumans to supply GMO-free feed to other small-scale farms in the area. Once they have worked out any kinks in this operation, they plan to form a cooperatively-owned, non-GMO feed “hub” which will further increase the accessibility of nonGMO feed for farmers in the region. Here, Cedar Valley Farms operations manager Rosanna Bauman talks more about the need and demand for non-GMO feed. This is a need that our farm has been aware since we started 13 years ago, but we haven’t had the means to do anything about it until now. Consumers are requesting non-GMO grains for a variety of reasons. Some don’t like the idea of messing with the basic nature of their food; some don’t believe that GMOs have been proven safe; others choose to vote with their food dollar against the monopoly created by GMOs. As a farmer, I don’t believe that GMO technology is a good long-term solution. The continued use of GMO seed is creating “superweeds.” That’s something that I can see standing in my fields; I don’t need a study to prove it. The use of GMO seeds also limits your freedom and choices as a farmer. The organic methods of controlling pests and weeds that we use may take a little more work, but they are effective.

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Terrific Teens The annual Youth of the Year program for the Boys & Girls Club of Lawrence is an opportunity to honor and recognize outstanding teenage Club members who have overcome challenges in life and have developed clear visions for their futures. The winner of the Lawrence Youth of the Year advances to the state competition in Topeka, with regional and national competitions to follow. Here is a brief introduction to Lawrence’s 2015 Youth of the Year nominees. Grace Barr, a senior at Lawrence High School, says her favorite memory of the Boys & Girls Club will be seeing the kids develop with the help of her leadership. In five years, she hopes to be completing her master’s degree. Breanna Bell, a senior at Lawrence High, says her proudest moment was being selected for the Lawrence High FYI Youth Coalition Board. She hopes to one day open a Lawrence hair salon specializing in providing services for African Americans. Christian Espinosa is a senior at Lawrence High whose hobbies include basketball, photography, drawing, viola and his basketball memorabilia collection. On his perfect Saturday afternoon, he would be attending a University of Kansas basketball game with his mom. Jazmen Fowler, a senior at Lawrence High, says her proudest moment was serving as the emcee of a school talent show. In five years, Jazmen hopes to be finished with cosmetology school and working as a real estate agent. Marcya Floyd, a junior at Free State High School, says her proudest moment was walking on stage for the Youth of the Year competition in 2014. In five years, she hopes to be graduating from college. Hannah Moyer, a senior at Free State High School, says her proudest moment was last fall when she had the opportunity to deliver the game ball for Game 6 of the World Series in Kansas City. She loves to play soccer, draw and spend time outdoors.

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OPPOSITE The Lawrence Boys and Girls Club Youth of the Year nominees are, from left: Grace Barr, Hannah Moyer, Jazmen Fowler, Marcya Floyd, Breanna Bell, and Christian Espinosa.

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a new start for the old stone house Annie and Dave Gnojek have made this classic 1873 farmhouse their own

Story by Katherine Dinsdale

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photography by Jason Dailey

s I park my car in the gravel driveway in front of Annie and Dave Gnojek’s old stone farmhouse on Peterson Road, the fast tempo of modern life begins to fall away. I murmur thanks to whoever planted the tall trees around the front circular garden. They are straight and strong, and give me comfort I hadn’t sought or expected. Later, I smile to learn that a previous longtime owner was mightily disappointed when her husband lined the long, shaded driveway with peonies. “For heaven’s sake,” Virginia Edwards reportedly lamented to her husband, Aubrey Carroll (A.C.) Edwards, a University of Kansas English professor and the founder of Modern Drama magazine, as he labored with a spade one afternoon in 1947, “all that fuss and they’ll only be pretty two weeks a year.” Yes, Virginia, but those two weeks of pink froth are stunning, lauded these 68 years hence by passersby and now by the Gnojeks as well. Worth it, we think. And the 1873 stone house you and the mister purchased in 1947— the house you called home until the two of you died, both just short of 100 years old—still beckons.

“You don’t want that house.” – Uncle Steve with well-meant advice to Annie and Dave Gnojek After the deaths of A.C. Edwards in 2009 and Virginia in 2010, the house sat empty until Annie Gnojek’s uncle, architect Steve Malin, bought the property with several other family members. He hoped to build his own house on another part of the land and had no specific plans for the old farmhouse on the 10-acre property. Annie was on a girls’ weekend with relatives when the group decided to grab the keys to the house and take an impromptu tour. Annie brought Dave through a few days later. “Oh my gosh,” Dave remembers thinking when Annie first described the house—a house likely to be recognized by anyone who lives or frequently drives through northwest Lawrence. “It’s that house.” Seeing the inside of the house for the first time tempered their infatuation. Every flat surface was wallpapered, even the ceilings. Cracks in the plaster walls showed clear through to the limestone. There was evidence of extensive water damage. Uncle Steve told the young couple, “You don’t want that house.” But when they persisted, he softened. Malin agreed that the two could take a whirl doing repairs and restoration work, paying for it all themselves; and if at any time they wanted to walk away, he would just keep any value they’d added to the house. Dave credits “temporary insanity” for the initial decision to begin work on the house. Annie says she had cold feet, too. “I knew we didn’t have a clue how to renovate this house.” But the fine arts performance graduate (Annie tours with a quartet and runs a flute studio with more than 35 students out of their home) and the

The Gnojeks have worked to preserve their home’s original stonework and interior wood, while taking advantage of the wide, roomy interiors.

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The Gnojeks, including from left, Annie, Oscar and Dave, enjoy living in a home they describe as “sturdy and classic.”

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graphic artist and art director (Dave works in the office of marketing communications at KU) began a mental roll call of knowledgeable family members, including a cousin who is a historic mason and another cousin who is an engineer. “We invited them to look at the house and kept waiting for one of them to find a reason we should not buy it,” Annie says. “We kept waiting for one of them to say it was a disaster. No one did.” Instead, Annie says, they were all amazed at the workmanship. “It was a perfect storm for us,” Dave says. “We both knew that this was the only time in our lives we’d have a chance like this for a house like this. We decided to go for it.” “Until then, we’d been the types who call a plumber to replace a washer,” Annie says. Together, they learned, step by step. “We put in everything we had and every second we could spare,” Dave says. “We learned to patch plaster and tile bathrooms. We stripped and sanded the floors. We had the circa-1920 wiring replaced by an electrician and also had professionals replace the plumbing and furnace, but everything else we did ourselves.” The Gnojeks wrote a blog detailing their restoration project at stonehouse.designojek.com. “It is a farmhouse with clean lines,” Dave says. “It is sturdy and classic, a style that fits us.” Although much of the house décor is traditional, the Gnojeks have mixed in some modern and industrial touches. Creamy white molding and dove gray walls welcome the sun streaming through the windows in the living room. Throughout the house, visitors can see brightly colored photos and artwork—Dave’s original works and those of friends. “We try to keep our art as local as we can,” he says. The Gnojeks, with their young daughter, Isla, 6, and son, Oscar, 3, have lived in the house since the spring of 2013, 10 months after beginning the renovation. Throughout the renovation, they continued making discoveries about their new home. One day, a niece of the Edwardses happened to be in Lawrence visiting from Colorado. She heard that the Gnojeks had bought the old house and wrote them a welcome note, explaining that she wanted to give them some paperwork about the house. She also told them the story about how the peonies were planted. A few months later, Dave and Annie, vacationing in Colorado, were able to stop and meet the niece, presenting her with a connection to the old family home—peony roots divided from A.C. and Virginia’s original flowers.

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lm features

68 The Prairie-Chicken Dance A timeless whirl of beauty continues in Kansas, in nature and as interpreted by a Native dancer.

79 The Failed Silk Revolution French idealism lost out to the weather and wages in a short-lived 19th-century Kansas community

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Story by Katherine Dinsdale

Photography by Jason Dailey

the prairie-chicken dance

A timeless whirl of beauty continues in Kansas, in nature and as interpreted by a Native dancer.

Chicken Dancing @ Oglala Nation, ink, color pencil and archive paper by Isaiah Stewart

There are many wild animals that capture our imagination with capabilities that are uniquely graceful, odd or magnificent. Think of the effortless sprint of the cheetah, the cumbersome lope of an elephant or the splashing breach of a whale. The greater prairie chicken, whose habitat extends through portions of southeast Kansas, is one of those animals. Each spring, these birds return to locations where generations of their ancestors have gathered in the past to begin a series of courtship dances of singular beauty. The dance, done by the males to win mates, can be observed this spring by anyone who wants to see the wonder of nature played out in the local prairie. It has inspired birders and communities native to the lands. In the first section,“In Nature,” writer Katherine Dinsdale explores the prairie chicken dance on a guided birding tour of the birds’ breeding grounds with experts such as David Kraft, a specialist with the Agriculture Department’s Natural Resources Conservation Service who describes the prairie chicken dance as a “unique attention-grabber.” In the second section, “Native Interpretation,” Dinsdale interviews Isaiah Stewart, a Lakota dancer who came to Lawrence via Haskell Indian Nations University and the University of Kansas. Stewart is recognized for his equally dramatic and athletic interpretation of his culture’s prairie chicken dance. Stephen Yellowhawk, the Black Hills pow wow board president, has described the young dancer’s style as a “beautiful display … simply amazing.” For thousands of years, the prairie chickens have danced across these lands. Not for us, but for themselves. Nonetheless, we hope the two perspectives in this story help us appreciate the grace of the prairie chicken dance—a wonder of nature that happens to be on the land we now share. -LM editor In nature Yes, un-huh. Yes, un-huh. We heard them say it over and over, with growing, then fading intensity; growing and fading again. It was the boom of the birds, the signature love song of male prairie chickens looking to get lek-y. A lek, of course, is a place in the prairie where the male Tympanuchus pallidicinctus gather year after year to strut their stuff and win a mate. Every once in a while the Yes, un-huh would be answered with an impatient, What? What? My husband, Bob, and I, along with David Kraft, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service State rangeland management specialist, and Bob Culbertson, wildlife biologist with the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism, were an invisible audience to the players of this ancient courtship drama. We watched more than 20 gobbling birds dancing and crying out in the pre-dawn darkness, putting on a chick flick like none other we’ve seen.

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We s p o t t e d t h e f i r s t d u s k y shapes landing around the lek. We b a r e l y m ove d t h e n e x t t wo hours, transfixed and enchanted by the ritual of the birds.

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This was during March Madness a couple of years ago, and the desk clerk at the motel where we stayed the night before questioned why in the world we’d left Lawrence when KU was still in the tournament. I didn’t bother to explain that our road trip to southwest Kansas was my Christmas gift. Who wants basketball? Who wants diamonds? I got fowl romance. We arrived at the lek at 5:30 a.m., parking our car on a dark dirt road somewhere near Gridley. Our gracious wildlifespecialist hosts welcomed us quietly, offering a thermos of coffee and some homemade sweet rolls. We wrapped extra blankets around our folding chairs and settled inside a cardtable-sized blind. At first, I worried the birds wouldn’t show. I could see nothing all around but rolling prairie and more darkness. Then, Culbertson and Kraft began hearing the cries of incoming birds. We spotted the first dusky shapes landing around the lek. We barely moved the next two hours, transfixed and enchanted by the ritual of the birds. As the sun began to rise, we could better see the male birds before us. Chicken-shaped, but grouse by classification, their heads display feathered black spikes that resemble rabbit ears when fully erect, and you can bet they are erect when the birds are a-courting. On their tails is what looks like a similar white set of bunny ears. Their throats have a sun-orange air sack that they inflate to the size of a large orange while they shimmy and stamp their legs during the courtship dance. The choreography of this early-morning display is extraordinary. Males charge one another like bulls, black spikes lowered like horns as they run 30 or more feet towards each other. They stop, just a foot apart, and make a couple of vertical jumps. Then they flap and fly at each other repeatedly, but never making enough contact to inflict any trauma. They scream at each other: What? What? They continue the Yes, un-huh, yes, un-huh. And then, at precisely the same moment, the two turn away from one another and wander off into the crowd. The dance is repeated again and again, with different matchups of males. As the morning brightens, the females began to appear, slowly gliding in and looking bored. I fully expected them to be filing their nails and chewing gum. These girls are smaller and more drab than their Romeos, but they appear utterly unimpressed with the screaming, the What, what? and even the Yes, un-huh. Suddenly, some in our group spot a male and female mating. The moment is over before my eyes can search out the two. Our guides say that the female won’t be back for the rest of the season. She’ll build her nest in nearby grassland and then raise her clutch. The dominant males will stay at the lek, however, trolling for girl chickens day after day, from late March to early June. Once the sun is up and we’ve seen enough avian courtship, we stand up, stiffly, still in our blind. Like a giant camo-colored eight-legged land turtle, we quietly shuttle our whole shelter away from the lek. The prairie chickens in love don’t seem to notice.

n a t i ve

i n terpr etatio n

Isaiah Stewart, an Oglala Lakota and competitive prairiechicken dancer, has calm brown eyes, a strong physique and a steady, humble presence. Stewart, who is 30, has been in Lawrence seven years. He has an associate degree from Haskell and a bachelor’s in fine arts from the University of Kansas, where he is now a graduate student in painting. His native community is part of the Lakota Nation of Pine Ridge, South Dakota. His wife, Melissa Stewart, also a Lakota, works in procurement at KU. Thirty seconds into our interview, I realize it’s a gift to meet Red Whirlwind Horse, Stewart’s Lakota name; to be reminded, even before I see him dance, that a full appreciation of nature—today we’re focusing on prairie chickens— notes joyfully both the comic and the majestic, the boisterous and the sacred. They are one and the same.

LM: Can you tell the story of the prairie-chicken dance? Isaiah Stewart: The history of the dance has been passed down in songs, just as songs tell of our origins even before we were human beings. Once, a boy watched prairie chickens dance in the early morning. He saw that they were happy, dancing and strutting to show their mates their pride and style. One prairie chicken promised to teach the boy how to dance, but said, sorrowfully, that this teaching would cost him (the bird) his own life. Indeed, the young man killed the prairie chicken to feed his hungry family. Later the prairie chicken appeared to the boy in a dream and instructed him how to dance. The dance became a ceremonial rite, first for the Blackfoot people, and it has since spread across Indian country. LM: What is your background in dancing? IS: I started dancing at age 2 or 3 in an outfit that had been handed down from my older brother. I stopped dancing at age 10 and didn’t dance again until I was 19. Then, I watched a friend, who was also an Oglala Lakota, do the prairie-chicken dance. I watched the way he moved and shuffled his feet, and I realized that just watching made something inside me happy. It was exhilarating. During my childhood, I lived in an all-white community. The only native culture I had around me was my immediate family. But as a young adult, I knew something was calling me to develop my dancing. Now I dance on a professional level, in competitions and powwows all over the nation. LM: Is there a chicken-dance circuit? IS: Actually, yes. It is similar to the rodeo circuit. There are hundreds of prairiechicken dancers of all ages across the country. Those who have been around the dance many years adjudicate our competitions. Sometimes the judges are grandmas, singers or people who danced in the ‘80s. They score dancers on their outfits, their style and their timing.

LM: What does one wear to do a chicken dance? IS: I constructed my ceremonial dress myself, sewing brightly colored pants and a shirt that can be easily seen in the arena. I wear a feather bustle of hawk feathers. I did my own beadwork that matches my tribe’s traditional colors and designs, and has a direct relationship to our ceremonial beliefs. Each color has significance for me as a man. Red, for example, reminds me to have a heart and to be brave. LM: How do you prepare to dance? IS: I put on each piece carefully, making sure all my feathers are straight and clean. Right before the master of ceremonies calls the dancers, I take up my eagle-wing fan and my horse stick, which carry courage and strength for me. I tune everything else out in my mind. LM: What is the dance like? IS: The song for a chicken dance has a ruffled beat. As it begins, I listen and do what the song tells me to do. I’ve learned from watching how all those from the Winged Nation move. I know how a prairie chicken acts, how he has fixed-head movements. He puffs out his air sack, scratches the ground and sticks out his chest. I strut to the beat. I have my own style, and the thing that makes my dancing unique is that I like to make eye contact with individuals in the audience. I want them to see me. I smile or make faces at them. Sometimes I yell, if I am really feeling the song and beat. Our tradition teaches that we are not supposed to keep the sound in, but are supposed to express it. LM: How do your audiences react? IS: They have different feelings. Some tune in and smile back at me. Some follow me all around the arena with their attention. I want them to feel happy. I want to give those who are handicapped or elderly or ill the strength and the courage to dance. LM: Why is the dance so important to you and to others? IS: I am able to express myself through dancing and give a piece of myself to others

in hopes that they can, in turn, give that good feeling to others in other places. Sharing this dance and culture is a gift from the Blackfoot people, and I try to honor them the best that I can. LM: Would you teach me to dance? IS: Prairie-chicken dancing is taboo for non-Natives. Also, although women danced in the beginning years of the dance, they do not participate now. The prairie-chicken dance is not to be taken lightly. The Lakota beliefs and language is totally different from that of non-Natives. Those with Christian beliefs and upbringing have a hard time understanding that this was here for generations before Christianity. LM: Do you plan to pass this tradition on to your children? IS: Yes. My daughter, whose native name is Sunshine Woman, is 9 months old. I want her to see me dancing and going to ceremonies. I want her to grow up with that culture surrounding her more so than I had it as a child. LM: Some of your painting, beadwork and other artwork is displayed on Tasunke Luta Studio, your blog. How do you describe your work there? IS: I do art that is focused on oral history and my experience as a Lakota man. My work includes traditional charcoal sketches of dancers and historical figures. I also do beadwork and construct ceremonial dress. After some of my friends mentioned that they’d like to attend a school for “all things powwow,” I came up with the idea for Wacipi State Clothing Co. “Wacipi” means “dance” or “gathering” in Lakota and lets everyone know that the wearer is indigenous without coming right out and wearing a shirt that says “Native.” Wacipi is a state of mind. LM: Why did you choose to continue your education at KU? IS: I love Lawrence. Many cultures are striving toward education, and that makes Lawrence a magical place.

OPPOSITE Isaiah Stewart performs a prairie-chicken dance, wearing native regalia and beadwork that he created.

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Where to see: In Lawrence, Isaiah Stewart will dance at the 2015 Haskell Commencement Pow Wow, May 8-9, a celebration of education and Native culture that is free and open to the public. For times/location and any weather-related announcements, call (785) 749-8404 or go online at Haskell.edu. Videos of Stewart’s past dances are also posted online; search for “prairie chicken dance Isaiah Stewart” to see several of his appearances at various pow wows.

Where to see:

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Bob Culbertson, wildlife biologist with the state of Kansas, says finding a lek on privately owned land and wrangling an invitation to view prairie-chicken courtship there is the best bet for seeing some action. But if you don’t have your own private lek, the Konza Prairie Biological Station and the Konza Environmental Education Program offer ring-side (observation blind) seats for greater prairie-chicken courtships viewing beginning before dawn Thursdays through Sundays, March 19-April 19. The cost is $25 per person and reservations are required. See http://keep.konza.ksu.edu/visit/blind.htm or call (785) 587-0381 for more information.

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The

Failed Silk Revolution Story by Julie Tollefson

French idealism lost out to the weather and wages in a short-lived 19th-century Kansas community

Radical ideals. Salacious rumors. And, ultimately, failure.

In the last half of the 19th century, a ranch 50 miles southwest of Lawrence was home to an experimental community notable for two things: utopian socialism and silk production. This “intentional community”—what people used to call communes, though that word has fallen out of favor—became known as Silkville. Its founder, a Frenchman named Ernest Valeton de Boissiere, held strong and sometimes unorthodox beliefs. After coming under fire in New Orleans for his financial support of an orphanage for black children, de Boissiere sought a place that would be more accepting of his liberal ideas. He found it in post-Civil War Kansas. De Boissiere purchased more than 3,000 acres south of Lawrence in Franklin County and set about establishing his ideal community, based on the socialist writings of Charles Fourier, whose plan for self-sustaining utopian communities inspired dozens of communes in the mid-1800s. “The Fourierist movement in the U.S. was kind of a short-lived thing,” says Timothy Miller, professor of religious studies at the University of Kansas, who has long studied intentional communities. “No one in the U.S. even came close to having the right setup for it.” But de Boissiere was undaunted. In 1869, he issued an invitation to potential members, and before long, Silkville attracted its first residents, mostly French immigrants, who paid a $100 deposit per person to join de Boissiere’s experiment. Silkworms and socialism “De Boissiere was really excited about the possibility of raising silkworms in Kansas,” says Deborah Barker, executive director of the Old Depot Museum in Ottawa, where a display features photos, silk and ribbon from Silkville’s heyday. De Boissiere brought in silk weavers and weaving equipment. He planted thousands of mulberry trees, the preferred food source for the finicky worms. And he built native stone buildings,

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OPPOSITE top View of Silkville, during the period when Ernest Valeton de Boissiere and his associates were trying to create a utopian silkagriculture community. Bottom A group of workers, mostly French immigrants, gather at Silkville. Charles Sears, who was one of America’s most experienced organizers of utopian communities, is on the far left. Photographs courtesy Kansas Historical Society.

Not one worm died; not one sick; all made their cocoons. --L.S. Crozier, Silkville silk grower, in 1878 Report of the Kansas State Board of Agriculture

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God has provided [beavers, bees, wasps and ants] with a social mechanism which attracts to industry, and causes happiness to be found in industry. Why should He not have afforded us the same favor as these animals? - Charles Fourier, socialist philosopher

some of which are still standing, to serve as housing for Silkville members as well as barns, storage and a cocoonery. The main house—a “phalanstery” in Fourierist lingo, but neighbors called it “the chateau”—was huge, its 60 rooms capable of accommodating 100 people. De Boissiere’s ambitions received a boost when his good friend Charles Sears, a veteran of one of the nation’s most successful Fourierist communities, joined Silkville and took charge of the silk culture operations in 1875. Sears also strengthened the Kansas community’s ties to New York’s Oneida Community, well known for its members’ practice of “complex marriage”—free love—and other radical ideas. Did free love bloom on the prairie? Well, probably not. “All kinds of rumors surrounded this place quite needlessly,” Barker says. Its ties to the Oneida Community notwithstanding, Silkville “was a very staid It all starts with a tiny worm. group,” she adds. “The idea Silkworms are about a tenth of an inch long at hatching. that there was free love They feed voraciously on piles of mulberry leaves and, when floating around because they they’ve reached about 30 times their original size, they encase were French is ridiculous.” themselves in a chunky cocoon spun of a single strand of silk. At that point, the silkworm’s job is done, and sericulturists Silk in the Wheat State take over. First, they boil or steam the cocoons to kill the De Boissiere’s efforts silkworm and loosen the silk thread, making it possible to to establish sericulture as a separate it into strands. Timing is important to avoid damage cottage industry met with to the silk strand. mixed success. “If you wait until the animal eats his way through it and His silk was recognized becomes a moth, it’s ruined,” says Deborah Barker, executive for its outstanding quality director of the Old Depot Museum in Ottawa, where dried at the World’s Fair in cocoons and raw silk are part of the Silkville display. Philadelphia in 1876, but it In the late 1880s and early 1890s, the idea of profitably struggled to make costs. producing silk in Kansas captured the interest of public and For one thing, his politicians alike, and not just at Silkville. exacting standards for dyes The state legislature established a State Board of Silk ensured that the cost of Commissioners in 1887 and a silk station at Peabody charged producing silk would be with promoting sericulture in the state. The station planted prohibitively expensive, mulberry trees, raised buildings for different processes especially compared to the associated with producing silk, and provided advice to people fabric the United States across the state who were interested in raising silkworms. imported from Asia. By 1897, though, the legislature was ready to abandon “He didn’t like American its efforts, and Kansas’ attempts at sericulture met the same dyes,” Barker says. “He fate as others scattered across the United States.

A sericultural history

OPPOSITE top Silkville workers stand outside the community’s central stone house. Bottom De Boissiere (fourth adult from left) stands with members of the Silkville community after a rabbit hunt. Photographs courtesy Kansas Historical Society.

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The lure of communal living

Tim Miller

Though Kansas history may be better known for rowdy cowtowns and isolated homesteaders, Silkville is far from the only utopian community to take root in the state. Tim Miller, professor of religious studies at the University of Kansas, can name nearly 90 Kansas groups that meet his definition of “intentional community”: five or more unrelated people who come together around a central purpose, live together either in one building or adjacent buildings and have some level of economic sharing. His list ranges from student-housing co-ops and religious communities to experimental settlements such as Silkville and the badly underfunded Octagon City, a failed utopian vegetarian colony built around an octagonal town center. At the heart of each: idealism. “There’s a real element of rejection in it,” says Miller, whose most recent book, The Encyclopedic Guide to American Intentional Communities, briefly describes 3,100 such communities in the United States from the beginning of European settlement to the present. “There are people who feel alienated, who don’t like the disjointed, disconnected way of life that we basically have in this country.” The draw of communal living, however, is rarely enough to sustain the organizations. And many fall apart for unexpected reasons. Miller was briefly a member of an intentional community in western Douglas County. In his case, the group’s land remains in place, jointly owned. But the members gradually drifted away, each for their own reasons. “My biggest reason for leaving was not about the communal setup,” Miller says. “It was that I got tired of driving back and forth to town. I like being where I can walk.”

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shipped all this stuff to France, had it dyed and shipped back.” De Boissiere also faced difficulty in retaining members. Many of Silkville’s residents spoke only French when they arrived in Kansas, but “as soon as they learned enough English, they learned that for the same amount of money they’d invested in Silkville, they could go get land,” Barker says. “In the American way, they took right off.” By 1886, the community abandoned silk culture, and in 1892, de Boissiere gave the entire ranch to the Odd Fellows Lodge, which used the phalanstery as an orphanage for a while. Later, after an ownership dispute and extended court fight, the land fell into private hands. It’s been a working ranch ever since. Silkville Ranch Today, Joe Bichelmeyer, along with his wife, Marty, and his brother Jim, raise commercial Angus cattle on the land that once held de Boissiere’s community. Their Silkville Ranch supplies Bichelmeyer Meats, the family-owned business that has operated since 1946 in Kansas City, Kansas. Though fire and tornado have taken their toll, several of the original Silkville buildings built by de Boissiere remain. The main house, destroyed by fire in 1916, was rebuilt in part, so now it’s about a third the size of the original. The cocoonery, reduced by a level after a tornado damaged the top floor, is now the stable and tack barn. The shop and feed barn is still used as a shop as well as storage. The only building not in use is Silkville’s one-room schoolhouse, which sits apart from the other ranch buildings on Old 50 Highway a few miles south of Williamsburg. Though utopian Silkville faded from existence more than a century ago, some of the mulberry trees planted to feed the silkworms still thrive and a number of native stone fences cross the interior of the ranch. People—some curious, some with family connections to the old settlement—still visit. But the land, like much of Kansas, is now firmly cattle country. Despite meticulous planning and ardent dreaming—it never would be a place for the silkworms to roam.

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