LDS CHURCH HISTORY SITES NEAR KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI

One of the reasons I was excited for the AP scoring move from Louisville to Kansas City was that it put us closer to some LDS Church history sites. Mormons have a way of finding each other in large crowds, and the AP English scoring group is a very large crowd. However, over the past few years my LDS friend from my hometown and I had identified and befriended several other Mormons, and in 2014 when we heard about the location change, we decided a group of us would rent a car the following year so that we could go on some evening excursions as soon as we were turned loose at 5:00.

There were five places we wanted to go: Independence, Liberty, Far West, Adam-Ondi-Ahman, and the LDS Temple in Kansas City. We were fortunate that everywhere we wanted to go was open late, unlike many of the tourist attractions in Kansas City. It took two different trips to see everything we wanted to see.

(Note: The 1 h 19 min marker on the map is the distance from Kansas City to Adam-Ondi-Ahman)

On our first foray we made it to Independence, Liberty, and the the Kansas City Missouri LDS Temple.

PLACES TO EAT IN AND AROUND KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI

Kansas City is an eating town. A guide told us that it has more barbecue per capita than any other city in the world. To be ranked as a good barbecue place in KC is like being ranked as a good art museum in New York City or Paris. Going back for another year of AP scoring would be worth it just to be able to try a few more restaurants. In the short time I was there, however, I managed to try the five listed below.

1. FIORELLA'S JACK STACK BARBECUE

When we asked around at the AP Reading where we should eat, this restaurant at 101 W. 22nd Street is the place we kept hearing about. It is ranked #7 out of 1,186 restaurants in Kansas City by TripAdvisor, and it deserves its high rating. When I went there with my AP friends, I had burnt ends, a dish I'd never heard of, and sides of cheesy corn and baked beans. Burnt ends, a unique part of Kansas City barbecue, are flavorful bits cut from a beef brisket. It was a dish that I loved at first bite:

And the cheesy corn, ah, the cheesy corn! So good that I came home and looked up a recipe to make it myself. It can be found here.  

When Bob came in to town at the end of my scoring week, I made sure I took him to Jack Stack's. He liked it so much that we went back for a second visit before we flew home. Bob going to the same restaurant twice when there are 1,183 other options? That's a ringing endorsement!

Here are a few other cuts we enjoyed. This is crown prime beef short rib:

And this beauty is a combo that adds beef ribs and lamb ribs to the crown prime beef short ribs:

Bob rates the barbecued beans among the best he's ever had, so I made those at home as well, using this recipe. It calls for some of Jack's barbecued brisket, which of course I didn't have, so I substituted bacon instead. It was good, but not quite as good as the real thing.

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI: NELSON-ATKINS MUSEUM OF ART

Kansas City, with population of under a half million, has the cultural resources of a much larger city. I was especially impressed by its world-class museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. William Rockhill Nelson, the publisher of the Kansas City Star newspaper, directed that after his death (which occurred in 1915), his fortune should be used to establish an art museum. Mary Atkins, a schoolteacher and widow of a real estate developer, had already bequeathed $300,000 in 1911 to establish an art museum. Trustees of the two estates decided to combine the money, along with a few other small bequests, to make one major museum.

The Neoclassical/Beaux Arts main building was completed in 1933 at a cost of $2.75 million. It was the peak of the Great Depression, and great pieces of art flooded a market devoid of buyers. However, money from the bequests for the museum was still plentiful, even after paying for the building. Lots of available money and lots of available art was a fortuitous combination. The Nelson-Atkins grew quickly into a major art museum with one of the largest collections in the United States.

Acres of grass provide a park-like setting in front of the museum. In the distance, we noticed what looked like a giant badminton birdie. In fact, that's exactly what it is. In 1991, American artist Claes Oldenberg and his wife Coosje van Bruggen were asked to create an outdoor artwork for the museum. According to the duo's website:

While visiting the galleries [of the Nelson-Atkins Museum], Coosje was attracted to the headdresses worn by Native Americans in a painting by Frederic Remington, which led to our initial concept of large feathers scattered over the lawn as if dropped from the wing of a huge passing bird. As we proceeded to research the site, we came across an aerial photograph of the museum grounds that reminded us of the layout of a tennis court. We imagined the building as a net, with balls distributed over the grounds, but soon determined that the ball shape would be too repetitive. What if, as Cossje suggested, feathers were combined with the ball form to become a shuttlecock, a lyrical object, with the ability to float, spin, fly, and land in many different ways? We proposed three 17-foot-high shuttlecock sculptures for the lawn, each in a different position. Although their placement appeared to be random, the shuttlecocks were actually located at strategic points that would bring the far reaches of the site together. A fourth shuttlecock, in an inverted position reminiscent of a tepee, "landed" on the other side of the museum.

I wouldn't have made any of those connections on just seeing this lone birdie (two of the other birdies being in temporary storage and the other one being on the other side of the building), but my visceral response to the birdie was one of pure enjoyment. I loved the familiarity of the ordinary object, the exaggerated size, and its whimsical placement in an impossible upright position.

Whimsy is a good word to describe another outdoor art installation, The Four Seasons by Philip Haas, based on the paintings by Guiseppe Arcimboldo, which we had seen three years before in Vienna. 

Here are spring and summer:

 . . . fall and winter:

Unfortunately, this is a traveling, not a permanent, exhibit, and it was scheduled to leave in October 2015. However, it has been so popular that the Nelson-Atkins people extended the sculptures' visit until mid-April 2016. 

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI: NATIONAL WORLD WAR I MUSEUM

One of Kansas City's biggest claims to fame is the National World War I Museum and Memorial, which Congress designated America's official World War I Museum in 2004.

The story is that in a fit of post-war patriotism, Kansas City residents raised $2 million for a war memorial in less than two weeks, an astonishing sum in those days. When construction was completed in 1926, the museum was dedicated by President Calvin Coolidge. All five Allied Forces generals attended the dedication.

The memorial is built in the Egyptian Revival style and is marked by a massive obelisk called the Liberty Memorial Tower. It soars 268 feet and has an observation deck on the top. The current museum, which was added later, is partially underground and is accessed by large doors below the tower.

View from behind

The inscription on the base of the Tower, seen below, reads, "In honor of those who served in the World War in defense of liberty and our country."

  

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI: AP ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION READING 2015

For the past four years I've joined a valiant force of high school AP English teachers and other college writing teachers like myself to score the infamous AP English Language and Composition tests. I've written about it on my personal family blog in past years, but there is enough travel and tourism involved that I think it is worth a mention here. Rather than reinvent the wheel--or rewrite the post--I am going to borrow some of what I have already written from my previous posts on my other blog.

For my first three years the reading took place in Louisville, Kentucky, a city I hadn't been to previous to my AP experience. This year the English Lang & Comp scoring was moved to Kansas City, Missouri, another new city for me. I had gotten pretty comfortable in Louisville and felt like I'd seen what I wanted to see there, so I was really excited about the move. Incorporated in 1853, Kansas City now has a population of about 470,000. While that is about two-thirds the population of Louisville, I figured there would still be plenty to see and do during our free time in the evenings.

A little bit of background on the AP Reading here would probably be helpful. Friends and family look pretty skeptical when I tell them that I really enjoy the AP scoring work. Honestly, it's rather hard to believe it myself. After all, I am the Queen of Grading Avoidance when it comes to my own students' papers, but there are many things that are wonderfully rewarding about the AP scoring experience.

First, the AP Reading gives me a family of about 2,000 other English teachers for the eight days we are together. (Yes, EIGHT CONSECUTIVE DAYS of reading essays from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.) We trade quips and tips about our teaching experiences, and during those eight days I feel the camaraderie that is sadly lacking for adjunct professors at community colleges. 

Second, I am amazed by attitude of these teachers. Everyone arrives on time in the morning. We work hard, focusing on the work in front of us. There is no goofing off during our work sessions--no whispering, no texting, no photography, and absolutely no use of any form of social media in the scoring rooms. Okay, so there might be an occasional person staring blankly into space for short periods of time (Who, me?), but for the most part the work ethic is pretty incredible, which I think says a lot about America's teachers, and I love being part of that. (Our table leaders do supply us with copious amounts of chocolate and other treats. Any person who has graded stacks of papers knows that constant munching is the key to focus.)

Third, the College Board (the nonprofit corporation that runs the AP system, the SAT/PSAT tests, etc.)  treats the readers very well. It pays all our travel costs and gives us a pretty good stipend. There are so many of us that we take up two hotels. This year we were split between the Westin and Sheraton, both first-class places.