Sunday
There are a lot of reasons Kirksville residents enjoy complaining about Kirksville, especially those of us who are transplants, who never imagined ourselves living in Missouri, let alone this little place surrounded by flat prairie lands.
The us I refer to, of course, can only be people with whom I converse, most of us who ended up here affiliated with the University, because in academia, we follow the jobs.
I have lived here for ten years. And even though I am happy join in with the complaints, it is a good, safe place to raise my three boys, and I have always known that the people here are fantastic.
I just didn't know before this weekend just how many fantastic people there are.
Here are some of our Kirksville complaints:
It's too small. Basically, you can drive all the way through it in ten minutes, depending on whether you hit the stop lights the right way. We have a small number of good restaurants. We are very happy to have them, but sometimes we crave curry or Thai or the experience of walking through floors and floors of a good bookstore. When we leave Kirksville for vacations, we plan where we will eat: Greek, Ethiopian, SUSHI, and savor the memories of those meals on our returns.
But the very limitations of Kirksville also give way pretty immediately to the strengths. Those of you reading the blog may have noticed that I did not have to offer directions, nor even an address for the DuKum Inn, location of the benefit. Everybody knows where it is. It's right across from the Wooden Nickel, which is a restaurant/bar where you can get Chicken Kreps, named for the Kreps family, of whom Clifton plays for Deadwood, and played at the benefit.
Around the corner is Washington Street Java Co., whose owner, Julia, donated brownies and cookies. Julia is also my neighbor, lives one street away from me. You may have noticed that I often refer to "The Coffeeshop," and running into people there. This is, obviously, because there is not more than one coffeeshop to refer to... (Okay, in all fairness, there is one more now, but I haven't been there, because I go to The Coffeeshop).
Around the other corner is Il Spazio, the new restaurant and brew pub, owned by Brad and Jeff, who also live one street away from me, down the street from Julia. Brad and Jeff live in the house I looked at 5 times and whose picture I had saved on my desktop as "My house." Until I saw this house once and hadn't even tried the dishwasher before I made my bid on it on a Sunday. That Sunday morning, Brad and Jeff came to the house I live in and loved it, but somebody had JUST made a bid...
Are you getting some feel for how interconnected we all are? For how small this town is? For just how devastating it is to us when one of our own is stricken by tragedy?
Last night I went and saw a production of The Laramie Project at the University. I was thinking of how the Matthew Shepard murder divided the city of Laramie, which was just as small and inter-connected as we are-- the parallels were chilling. I happened this morning to be thinking out loud about these things and laughed as I realized I was musing on the telephone to... the director of The Laramie Project. Whose children are over right now playing with my children. Except that we have the same family dynamics, which are not your typical family dynamics, which I won't explain here, but which really cause one to wonder, How do you define a family?
I would challenge anyone present at the benefit Friday night to say that we were not Linda and Don's family.
I absolutely loved to make fun of Hillary Clintons' book It Takes A Village when it first came out because I was feeling rather possessive about raising my children. How many times I've had to eat crow because of that...
So, at 6 p.m., it began. I was supposed to be at the DuKum to set up at 5:30, but of course, I was running late, like you do when your first and primary and ultimate responsibility is the care for the children you gave birth to.
I arrived very close to 6:00 p.m. and we were deciding who would sell the cookies and brownies and how to ask for donations for Il Spazio sushi, how to thank everyone. I found out the Craig had offered to donate 25% of the drink profits from upstairs to the Bindners. Wow. Craig's generosity has no boundaries. He gave us the space for free, which took business from him downstairs, and then donated part of the profits. He didn't have to do that. But somehow we knew ahead of time that he would.
Even before we had completely gotten the food set up, and the first band was warming up, the people started coming up the stairs.
Now, you must understand that Royce and I were almost having a heart attack. Despite a nap, I was so exhausted, I could barely put two words together. We were so nervous that nobody would show up. We had been convinced that if we opened the doors at 6 pm we would be twiddling our thumbs and drinking nervously for an hour before the first stragglers arrived.
Well.
I've been wrong before.
By 6:30, the room was full, and I was being summoned to speak for the TV Crew, and the photographer from the paper was there. I kept saying, "I wish the Bindners could see this crowd!" People brought their children, and even though we had decided that asking people who had so generously paid to come in not to smoke upstairs was too much to ask, people went downstairs to smoke on their own volition. People thanked us for starting so early in the evening so they could come. My own babysitter generously agreed to take two extra children for the evening, brought them videos, and taped the news at 10:00. Thank you, Erin. I regretted not bringing my children briefly-- but I was so exhausted and nervous anyway, having Tommy Hatala to chase and keep away from the brownies and the bar and the equipment-- well, sorry son, you were better off at home! Or at least, I was. My children have seen the videotape. Their observation was that it was dark.
It seems like before I knew it, the Bindners were there, Linda and Tom, Don's parents, Dean, his 18 year old brother who was absolutely chagrined by his ID bracelets and the two very large M's marking him unmistakeably as a Minor, Diane, Don's sister, and her toddler daughter Gwyn who danced her little heart out.
Mary came later, and I pointed to her and told my medical student friends, who had shown up at 5:30 to help set up, "That is what Linda looks like." Not really, if you know them well, but she's a very good fascimile :).
The music was fantastic, and the sushi just kept coming. Jeff and I had contests to see who could eat the most wasabe. We ate the same amounts, but somehow I was told I lost-- maybe the choking and crying had something to do with it...
People sat and talked and laughed and drank and listened to great music and Christine and I looked around at the rooms filled with people, with more waves coming through the door (look, those five students, that's $50-- sorry to be so mercenary, but underlying the entire evening, we were constantly aware of why we were doing this) and said, (she probably said it, but we were both thinking it simultaneously, and I don't remember who said it), "We can never ever ever complain about living here again."
I was so grateful that Don's family got to see it for themselves, because I think it was something that you had to witness. All of the people were in that room, had paid money to be in that room, because they cared about Don and Linda. Even people, cadres of medical students, who had never met Don and Linda, had been so moved by their story, that they came. They came and they gave.
And then, around 9:00 (I really don't remember-- by 8:00, I was exhausted and it felt like 10:00, but then a sympathetic friend gave me a great back massage, and I got a second wind), I just happened to look at the stairway, and I saw Don Bindner in a white T-shirt and jeans, slowly climbing the stairs by himself.
I try to over-analyze everything so I can understand it, but I have not yet figured out why that was so incredibly moving to me.
It occurs to me that perhaps it's because Don has in many respects been enduring his part of this alone, as exemplified by him alone, simply dressed, climbing the stairs, the Myth of Sysyphus as Claire put it, but for one evening, relieved of the rock he must roll. And he walked from his aloneness on the stairs and into a room full of music and people and love.
There are a lot of reasons Kirksville residents enjoy complaining about Kirksville, especially those of us who are transplants, who never imagined ourselves living in Missouri, let alone this little place surrounded by flat prairie lands.
The us I refer to, of course, can only be people with whom I converse, most of us who ended up here affiliated with the University, because in academia, we follow the jobs.
I have lived here for ten years. And even though I am happy join in with the complaints, it is a good, safe place to raise my three boys, and I have always known that the people here are fantastic.
I just didn't know before this weekend just how many fantastic people there are.
Here are some of our Kirksville complaints:
It's too small. Basically, you can drive all the way through it in ten minutes, depending on whether you hit the stop lights the right way. We have a small number of good restaurants. We are very happy to have them, but sometimes we crave curry or Thai or the experience of walking through floors and floors of a good bookstore. When we leave Kirksville for vacations, we plan where we will eat: Greek, Ethiopian, SUSHI, and savor the memories of those meals on our returns.
But the very limitations of Kirksville also give way pretty immediately to the strengths. Those of you reading the blog may have noticed that I did not have to offer directions, nor even an address for the DuKum Inn, location of the benefit. Everybody knows where it is. It's right across from the Wooden Nickel, which is a restaurant/bar where you can get Chicken Kreps, named for the Kreps family, of whom Clifton plays for Deadwood, and played at the benefit.
Around the corner is Washington Street Java Co., whose owner, Julia, donated brownies and cookies. Julia is also my neighbor, lives one street away from me. You may have noticed that I often refer to "The Coffeeshop," and running into people there. This is, obviously, because there is not more than one coffeeshop to refer to... (Okay, in all fairness, there is one more now, but I haven't been there, because I go to The Coffeeshop).
Around the other corner is Il Spazio, the new restaurant and brew pub, owned by Brad and Jeff, who also live one street away from me, down the street from Julia. Brad and Jeff live in the house I looked at 5 times and whose picture I had saved on my desktop as "My house." Until I saw this house once and hadn't even tried the dishwasher before I made my bid on it on a Sunday. That Sunday morning, Brad and Jeff came to the house I live in and loved it, but somebody had JUST made a bid...
Are you getting some feel for how interconnected we all are? For how small this town is? For just how devastating it is to us when one of our own is stricken by tragedy?
Last night I went and saw a production of The Laramie Project at the University. I was thinking of how the Matthew Shepard murder divided the city of Laramie, which was just as small and inter-connected as we are-- the parallels were chilling. I happened this morning to be thinking out loud about these things and laughed as I realized I was musing on the telephone to... the director of The Laramie Project. Whose children are over right now playing with my children. Except that we have the same family dynamics, which are not your typical family dynamics, which I won't explain here, but which really cause one to wonder, How do you define a family?
I would challenge anyone present at the benefit Friday night to say that we were not Linda and Don's family.
I absolutely loved to make fun of Hillary Clintons' book It Takes A Village when it first came out because I was feeling rather possessive about raising my children. How many times I've had to eat crow because of that...
So, at 6 p.m., it began. I was supposed to be at the DuKum to set up at 5:30, but of course, I was running late, like you do when your first and primary and ultimate responsibility is the care for the children you gave birth to.
I arrived very close to 6:00 p.m. and we were deciding who would sell the cookies and brownies and how to ask for donations for Il Spazio sushi, how to thank everyone. I found out the Craig had offered to donate 25% of the drink profits from upstairs to the Bindners. Wow. Craig's generosity has no boundaries. He gave us the space for free, which took business from him downstairs, and then donated part of the profits. He didn't have to do that. But somehow we knew ahead of time that he would.
Even before we had completely gotten the food set up, and the first band was warming up, the people started coming up the stairs.
Now, you must understand that Royce and I were almost having a heart attack. Despite a nap, I was so exhausted, I could barely put two words together. We were so nervous that nobody would show up. We had been convinced that if we opened the doors at 6 pm we would be twiddling our thumbs and drinking nervously for an hour before the first stragglers arrived.
Well.
I've been wrong before.
By 6:30, the room was full, and I was being summoned to speak for the TV Crew, and the photographer from the paper was there. I kept saying, "I wish the Bindners could see this crowd!" People brought their children, and even though we had decided that asking people who had so generously paid to come in not to smoke upstairs was too much to ask, people went downstairs to smoke on their own volition. People thanked us for starting so early in the evening so they could come. My own babysitter generously agreed to take two extra children for the evening, brought them videos, and taped the news at 10:00. Thank you, Erin. I regretted not bringing my children briefly-- but I was so exhausted and nervous anyway, having Tommy Hatala to chase and keep away from the brownies and the bar and the equipment-- well, sorry son, you were better off at home! Or at least, I was. My children have seen the videotape. Their observation was that it was dark.
It seems like before I knew it, the Bindners were there, Linda and Tom, Don's parents, Dean, his 18 year old brother who was absolutely chagrined by his ID bracelets and the two very large M's marking him unmistakeably as a Minor, Diane, Don's sister, and her toddler daughter Gwyn who danced her little heart out.
Mary came later, and I pointed to her and told my medical student friends, who had shown up at 5:30 to help set up, "That is what Linda looks like." Not really, if you know them well, but she's a very good fascimile :).
The music was fantastic, and the sushi just kept coming. Jeff and I had contests to see who could eat the most wasabe. We ate the same amounts, but somehow I was told I lost-- maybe the choking and crying had something to do with it...
People sat and talked and laughed and drank and listened to great music and Christine and I looked around at the rooms filled with people, with more waves coming through the door (look, those five students, that's $50-- sorry to be so mercenary, but underlying the entire evening, we were constantly aware of why we were doing this) and said, (she probably said it, but we were both thinking it simultaneously, and I don't remember who said it), "We can never ever ever complain about living here again."
I was so grateful that Don's family got to see it for themselves, because I think it was something that you had to witness. All of the people were in that room, had paid money to be in that room, because they cared about Don and Linda. Even people, cadres of medical students, who had never met Don and Linda, had been so moved by their story, that they came. They came and they gave.
And then, around 9:00 (I really don't remember-- by 8:00, I was exhausted and it felt like 10:00, but then a sympathetic friend gave me a great back massage, and I got a second wind), I just happened to look at the stairway, and I saw Don Bindner in a white T-shirt and jeans, slowly climbing the stairs by himself.
I try to over-analyze everything so I can understand it, but I have not yet figured out why that was so incredibly moving to me.
It occurs to me that perhaps it's because Don has in many respects been enduring his part of this alone, as exemplified by him alone, simply dressed, climbing the stairs, the Myth of Sysyphus as Claire put it, but for one evening, relieved of the rock he must roll. And he walked from his aloneness on the stairs and into a room full of music and people and love.
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