Naked Harassment

Naked Executives like to get, well, naked, and sexually harass employees. Click on title above for the link. I don't condone the sexual harrassment, but I'm in love with their product nonetheless. This juice maker has created such a niche that Pepsi Co. has decided to add its line to their product list, which includes Lays potato chips, Pepsi-cola, Rice-a-Roni, Tropicana juices, Quaker Oatmeal and Gatorade, all products I've consumed in the last year.

I first discovered this healthy nectar back in the summer of 2004 when I was living on my friend Amy's couch in the Broadway-Gillham neighborhood of East Westport. She went up to Wild Oats one day and came back with a strange protein shake concoction that turned out to be Naked's Protein Zone, which offers 34 grams of protein and is made from apple, pear, banana, and pineapple juices/purees with some coconut milk thrown in for good measure. My initial reaction was that the brew was hideous tasting, and I swore the stuff off. But on subsequent visits to Wild Oats, the other flavors caught my eye and pretty soon I was experimenting with the Green and Red Machines. It wasn't until I came down with a cold in the following winter that my fate of Naked Devotee was sealed. Looking for any advantage against the common cold bacteria, I purchased a Power C based on its Vitamin C content, which was 20x the RDA recommended daily dosage of 60-95 mg.

I have since moved on to other Nakeds and have liked most, and even loved some. I drink a Blue Machine every morning after
a particularly grueling night of drinking because the B Vitamins help the hangover and are essential for liver health. I have other friends who are devotees too, including one who says that he uses Nakeds as meal replacements, sometimes eating nothing else in a day besides two or three "superfood" Nakeds. As of today,I've tried 14 of their 26 total beverages. My favorite? Right now it's a toss-up between Power C, Blue Machine, Gold Machine, Mighty Mango and the Green Machine. I haven't given much attention to their Pomegranate and Acai Berry offerings mainly because their availability is limited here in Kaycee. But I imagine their distribution will be widespread once the Pepsi sale is finalized and the takeover complete. Juice lovers have been assured that there will be no change in the quality of the product we've grown to love and sometimes depend on for good nutrition and feeling good. Here's to Naked, just let the ladies be.

Arthur Bryant's BBQ

Is Henry Perry the undisputed founder of Kansas City-style barbeque? Forget Rich Davis and that KC Masterpiece sham sauce, Perry was an innovator who grew up near Memphis and took the Memphis tomato-based sauce to KC and spiced it up a bit in his 19th and Highland restaurant that used to be a trolley barn. But wasn't the subsequent sweetening of Perry's spicy sauce the groundbreaking moment when the KC-style was born? Upon Perry's death in 1940, one of Perry's employees, Charlie Bryant, took over the restaurant. Charlie's brother Arthur then inherited the business, changed the name to Arthur Bryant's and sweetened the sauce with molasses so it would be more tolerable on bread.







ARTHUR BRYANT


George Gates, another former cook of Perry's, opened up his own restaurant in the 18th and Vine neighborhood and added more molasses to the sauce to make it even sweeter than Bryant's. Thus a new movement in barbeque got rolling and nowadays we have a variety of Kansas City-style sauces, including Davis's infamous KC Masterpiece, which is now owned by the food division of Clorox. There certainly have been many innovators since Bryant and Gates sweetened Perry's original sauce, such as Jack Fiorella's unique take on hickory beans and the pungent aroma and taste of Oklahoma Joe's Night of the Living Dead BBQ sauce. But my question here is when was KC-style born? I would have to say it was when Arthur Bryant added molasses to Perry's spicy, tomato-based sauce.

Swope Park

It's deep Fall now in Kansas City, the leaves have turned brown and brittle, clogging the curbs and cluttering the sidewalks. Some trees are completely bare and a lot more are getting there. The grass is still green though as afternoon highs still linger in the upper-50's. For the urban naturalist in Kaycee, no better spot exists to monitor these changes in the seasons than the Swope Park Glades in East Kansas City. Many of you are probably familiar with Swope Park and its famous attractions: The Zoo, Starlight Theater, the huge stone shelter houses, two golf courses, the lagoons, the soccer fields, the swimming pool, the baseball diamonds, the Lakeside Nature Center and the frisbee golf course. But my favorite features of the 1,769-acre park are the glades and walking trails that traverse through them. (Although the Blue River Glade are not technically part of Swope Park, they are close enough, and for the purpose of cohesion I've lumped it together with Rocky Glade.)
It has been claimed that Swope Park is the second largest municipal park in the United States behind New York City's Central Park. I've also heard claims for third largest behind Central Park and Philadelphia's Farimount Park. Wikipedia claims that the park is actually the 29th largest municipal park in land mass, which really could wound the pride of Kaycee boosters. I know for certain that Los Angeles's Griffith Park contains 4,217 acres within its boundaries, including a zoo, a planeterium and the Greek Theater.
Size aside, Swope Park is unique for the wild ecosystems it provides urban hikers. Ecosystems like the limestone glades at Blue River and Rocky Glades, two of the northernmost occurences of such ecosystems in Missouri. Limestone glades are much more common in the Ozarks in which wildflowers like Indian Paintbrush and pale purple indigo bloom.
From the KC Wildlands' website www.kcwildlands.org:

"Gnarled chinquapin oaks nearly 300 years old sit atop slab-like outcroppings of Bethany Falls limestone. A prairie-like flora of grasses and wildflowers provides rich color and texture through most of the year. This community is managed through periodic prescribed burning. The glade is threatened by several exotic plant species, especially shrub honeysuckle."

You'll hear the name shrub honeysuckle a lot if you hang around local conservationists or take part in a Kansas City nature clean-up because these exotic plants spread quickly over and around native flora.


The shrub honeysuckle can be an unfair competitor for light as native saplings suffer under the stifling canopy of the expansive plant. The small red berries which contain the honeysuckle's seeds are eaten by mammals and birds who then transport the seeds over many miles. Other exotic species in the area like Winter creeper and Japanese honeysuckle and native invasive species such as the eastern red cedar, the mulberry and poison ivy all distribute their seeds within berries.

There are limestone cliffs and boulders for climbing and bouldering, and the cliffs offer nice vistas of the wooded creek valley below and other high points in the area, such as the landfill to the west and the cellphone tower to the southeast. If you continue on the trail past the glade areas and along the cliffs, it will eventually lead you to the edge of the Blue River Golf Academy Course and past some old farm equipment buildings. This is probably a good place to turn around because it's a signal you are leaving nature and entering the world of rust, junk and the white trash.
In addition to the glades, there are rich mesic forests and wetlands along Oldham Road which would be worthy of checking out. Rocky Glade is off of Oldham Road also, although this glade isn't as large or advanced in its restoration as the Blue River Glade. If you are heading east on Oldham Road, the Rocky Glade is on your left (North), on top of a south-facing slope after shelter house #7 but before you reach a public-denied access road which takes park employees back to parks and rec buildings and the Camp of the Woods facilities. Blue Glade is accesible off Blue River Rd. south of Oldham/Gregory but north of 85th Street. Look for a trailhead on your left (east) if you are heading south from Gregory.

StockYards

Ahhh, the KC Stockyards, what made Kansas City KC. Those and the railroads, I'm told, but I'm no old timer, I'm just a young whippersnapper who loves beef and bbq and appreciates the connection between the stockyards and our city's improvement on Memphis bbq. I've been reading a lot of Kansas City history lately and have to say that the city sounded better back in the day than it does right now. And I don't think it's because historians coat the history in a romantic gloss; I think the town was chaotic, violent, drunken, raging, open late, musical and riotous--the historians make it sound like Mardi Gras 24/7.
I know corruption is bad politics, but unless I crossed the guy or was a member of the "rabbit" political machine, Tom Pendergast appeared to be the right man at the right time. The "wide-open" Kansas City attracted con artists, no doubt, but it also attracted talented musicians who appreciated a paying audience that appreciated music. In many ways the "wide-open" Kansas City of the early 20th century sounded like the New Orleans of today, or New Orleans pre-Katrina. That town has the type of nightlife and support to pay musicians a decent wage, and there are always gigs.
There is no doubt that Kansas City is a COWtown; the stockyards built this metropolis, this outpost on the Great Plains, this crossroads between the wide-open West and the dense East Coast. They shipped a lot of cows, sheep and hogs through here on their way to the plates of East Coast diners. The stockyards have been closed since 1991 and declining since the great flood of 1951. The agricultural business model changed as stockyards moved closer to the cattle farms and feed lots. The railroad too declined as shipping changed its paradigm from trains to diesel trucks and airplanes. KC is still a thriving town, but our ties to the romantic past are only present through Disneyfied reproductions like the artistic cows on the Plaza, the 18th and Vine Jazz District and Museum, model train stores and KC Masterpiece BBQ. Of course there still are excellent bbq restaurants in Kansas City: Gates, Arthur Bryants, Oklahoma Joe's, JackStack BBQ, LC's, but the city now has really no current identity to project in this age of shameless hometown promotion. So we fall back on our past glories or romantic traditions, eating a pulled pork sandwich while listening to the Bird blow his horn. And I don't think the Power and Light District can restore that tradition or change the fact that our bars are quite dull. Sure we can see some white boy blues, an occasional jazz great, the art school hipsters have their indi rock and local noise and there still are some local musicians commited to making some great music, but I think we've lost something here. Maybe the old KC overextended itself back in the "Paris of the Plains" days, maybe we're settling down to a status of a small big town that's not really a player on the national scene. If I'm not happy I could just move to Chicago...but then again, Chicago has its own issues, great and exciting as it is.

Meskhetian Turks

My new favorite ethnic people are the Meskhetian Turks, who like the Gypsies
have been struggling to find a permanent homeland for sometime. The Russian
Empire acquired their original homeland in 1828-1829. In 1944, Stalin
forced the ethnic group, along with Kurds and Khemshils (Muslim Aremenians),
some 120,000 in all, out of Meskheti-Javakheti region of Georgia and into Central Asia
(present day countries include Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan). The only reason
I could find for Stalin's dispicable relocation program was that he questioned the Meskhetians'
loyalty to the Soviet Union in the case of a possible conflict with Turkey. 15,000 people
died en route to their new home. Until 1956 the Meskhetian Turks were placed under
special resettlement restrictions that included having to carry special ID cards designating
them inferior citizens under the law, no freedom of movement without special permits and no
choice in their work assignments. Because of their legal status and difficult conditions, many
Meskhetians suffered from inadequte medical care and nutrition. After 1956, Meskhetian Turks
launched a movement for repatriation to Georgia but this proved unsuccessful; another attempt
was made to emigrate from Russia to Turkey but this too failed. In 1989, a pogrom in the Ferghana Valley of
Uzbekistan caused more death and heartache for these people, and another relocation of the Meskhetian
Turks sent them to Krasnodar Krai region in Russia and Azerbaijan. The relocation happened so quickly that
many Meskhetians were unable to sell off their property or leave with the proper documents necessary in the former
Soviet Union for departing an area.

"The local government [in Krasnodar Krai] refused to grant permanent residency to a majority of the Meskhetian Turks and the rights to hold most jobs, attend higher education and own property that goes with such legal documentation. Their lack of legal protection exposed them to Cossack intimidation and police harassment. Officially stateless the displaced Meskhetian Turks did not qualify for refugee status according to the United Nations because they never crossed an international border. They remained in a legal limbo unable to return to Georgia, immigrate to Turkey or even go back to Uzbekistan." [from J. Otto Pohl's blog Otto's Random Thoughts]

In 2004 the U.S. government offered asylum to thousands of Meskhetian Turks from the Krasnodar
region and relocated them to over 60 American cities.There is genuine debate about the historical
roots of these people: Are they ethnic Georgians who adopted Islam or ethnic Turks who settled in Georgia
during the expansion of the Ottoman Empire?

Haven't found out yet if there are Meskhetian Turk refugees in KC or not, but I am actively on the case. These
are not your normal ethnic Muslims, the women commonly wear head scarves but it's just as common to see
men swigging vodka during weddings and parties.