[06.24.01 KANSAS CITY] Silos can be used to launch grain or missiles. Choose your payload. [BIGGER]

[KANSAS CITY] :: RESEARCH/
KEYWORD fire+music
ENTER/
DISPLAY/html…
There are over 200 songs with the title 'Fire'. Two-hundred years ago, fire was a common occurrence on these grassy plains. At the end of summer, lighting strikes would often ignite the dry tall grass and the flames would sweep across the prairie, clearing the land. Only the hard-cased seeds of grass would survive and then come to life when the spring rains came. And it was the grass that fed the vast herds of buffalo, which provided sustenance for the Indians of the plains. They are all gone now. The land has been converted into one, vast, grain-producing machine and we have become separated from our source of food and it's preparation. Meat is placed before us in neatly wrapped packages, either ready to cook or ready to eat. We have even altered the image of the food into anthropomorphic cartoon characters… "Eat Me!" exclaims the Gingerbread Man. Individual responsibility has been delegated and we no longer see our reflection in living eyes before we kill.

That is not to say that we should force a change in diet on others. Even Danger has had roadkill with wine. On this trip, I have seen fried gizzards at fast food outlets, microwaveable bags of pork rinds at gas stations, cans of alligator stew in supermarkets, and whole turkeys fried in 55 gallons of boiling fat at roadside stands.

Understand your place and time in the evolution of food processing and accept that responsibility. Eat only what you are willing to kill and kill only what you are willing to eat. This should apply to food and war.

Kansas City is a very large small town. It has vast underground man-made caves, which were once used as cold storage when it was the beef capitol of the nation and the Armor meat packing plant processed thousands of tons each day. Now the stockyards are gone, most of the cattle production has moved offshore and Hallmark greeting cards is one of the largest employers in town.

	[06.24.01 KANSAS CITY] Bret.		[06.24.01 KANSAS CITY] Marla.		[06.24.01 KANSAS CITY] Lev.

	[06.24.01 KANSAS CITY] Kevin.		[06.24.01 KANSAS CITY] Stacy.

I established voice communications just hours before docking and we pulled together a small group of burners at a local restaurant called the Golden Ox… a nice, but slightly run down, middle-America steakhouse with red naugahyde booths. It's the kind of place frequented by your grandparents/parents whenever the occasion arose to 'eat out'. It was in the same 50's style as the abandoned Mapes Sky Room in Reno, which I explored one night after too many drinks at the Area 51 bar.

[06.24.01 KANSAS CITY] Barry has seen the light and he proudly displays his key to the temple. [BIGGER]

We spent several hours in the Golden Oz before the doors closed. It was midnight when I cranked up the Silver Seed and rolled out through the streets of a quiet, Midwest city preparing itself for the Monday morning grind. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

-Danger Ranger

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