There are some things I miss about Kansas.

I don’t miss the 100 degree summer temperatures, or the sub-zero winter temperatures. But I do miss the thunderstorms, without missing the damage they can cause.

Where I live, it rains all the time (through December 1, we’ve had 121 inches and we’ll likely end the year with close to 140. Nonetheless I laugh when they talk about how hard it rains, because thunder is a rare occurrence and gully washers are unheard of, here in the land of rain.

Even so, day after day of rain almost forces the conversation. So last week, when I got an email newsletter from Kansas musician Ann Zimmerman, I wrote back. I asked, “Do you have any songs about rain? It’s rained here for nine days straight.”

Ann is a Kansas musical treasure. She has three albums to her credit, but to hear her in person is an opportunity not to be missed. Of course, she doesn’t play the giant stadiums--usually more intimate surroundings, like grade school classrooms on Kansas Day, or the Prairie Festival at The Land Institute in Salina, or dinner at Mayberry’s Restaurant in Washington, Kansas, but she has developed--or maybe it came naturally--a real flair for connecting with small audiences. One reviewer wrote that wherever she went, Ann “turned each audience into her backup choir.”

Ann’s music fits a very broad category you might call folk. She researches music history and revives old folk songs, but composes new ones that accurately reflect a fresh look at life. She has researched and performed Kansas tunes and is now researching tunes of the American Revolution for possible performance, but her own song Exile superbly captures the modern dilemma of a man who grew up on a farm, wanting to become a farmer, but ended up doing something else because the economics of farming were too harsh: “He knows how an exile feels…”

So Ann is one of the things I miss about Kansas. But since she does travel the world and occasionally gets played on small or public radio stations, I might hear her again, yet. But I heard her four times live, twice in Garnett, and each time was magic.

So she answered my email: “What did you expect, moving to a rainforest?”

Well, I did know what I was getting into and I have no regrets. My creative mind thrives on rainy days, just like the gloomy-introspective philosopher Kierkegaard thrived in dark, wet Denmark. Nonetheless, Ann did have a song about rain.

“Praying for Rain,” it’s called. So I dug through my box of compact disks, still packed, and found the album (Canned Goods) and gave it a spin. Praying for Rain is track one, so I didn’t have long to wait.

It begins with the sound of locusts singing in the night, then, “By nine in the morning there's a haze in the distance; The dew from the night has long faded away…,” and goes on to say, “It's hard to care much about hell and damnation When the crops are in ashes.”

Yes, it’s a song about a harsh climate, one that I do not always miss. Yet it is a beautiful song, reminding me that in spite of, perhaps even because of the harshness, Kansas is a beautiful place worthy of being missed.

Even more, it’s a place where the people are beautiful, perhaps because they have learned to endure.

Yes, there are some things about Kansas that I miss.

— George R. Pasley
see what else I've written at
http://poetspeaks.typepad.com/