KU recruits Illinois better than Illinois
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Alaska. Everyone should visit at least once. Just the drive from Anchorage to Seward is a special experience. Much of the 120 mile drive is nothing but beautiful wilderness. Other than your vehicle and the road you are driving on there isn’t a hint of man or civilization anywhere around you. I drove an hour without seeing another car.
And as a tie in back to recruiting. I flew my father in from KC to join us. Mario Chalmers was on the plane with him having just finished a KU visit. We were very tempted to speak to him, but I was afraid it might violate some NCAA rule.
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Totally enjoyed your read on Kansas.
I love the waves of wheat and high grass plains. I love watching some of my Native American friends perform as “grass dancers” at powwows.
I love the artwork from a generation ago (maybe a couple of generations) from the Prairie Print Makers.
I love the artwork of current Kansans that appreciate Kansas… like my good friend, Lyle Allen White, and his modern day interpretation of the plains and the people that live in this “ocean” through his book “Pioneer Spirit.”
I wouldn’t want to be from anywhere else. I’ve traveled the world, and seen plenty of awesome places, people and culture. They are great, too, and I’m sure they are happy where they are from.
I’m happy being from Kansas!
I largely keep my happiness a secret because I’ve witnessed (first hand) how some other States to the west of us suffered from becoming “hot spots” by crowds of people looking for a new place to live because they were unhappy where they were. Consequently, these same people go with the herd and become unhappy in their new land and eventually leave, but not until they have largely destroyed key elements of that place.
So it is all of our duty to defend our State. Talk it down to everyone who doesn’t live here. We’ll be just fine and we will still get a healthy growth of incoming people who truly want to contribute to our State.
Let the crowds chase their own tails in other States. We’ll settle for a State that has steady, realistic real estate prices and cost of living, steady government and steady people!
I hope I didn’t offend anyone… that is not my intent. But I’d rather live in a quiet place and read all the loudness of other places in the newspaper.
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@nuleafjhawk hehehehe…
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@drgnslayr Slayr I’m with you. I enjoy my adopted state of Louisiana, it’s food, history and it’s got some real down home, down to earth people. However, I do miss Kansas. Although, as I’m getting older, shoveling snow is not something I miss. (beer)
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Ha… I hear you! Snow is a bummer… but without a hard freeze the bugs go crazy the next summer! And the freeze helps sterilize the soil from unwanted bacteria. That’s why you don’t want to eat lettuce on your trip to Mexico, or you’ll experience most of your trip in a toilet! (been there, done that)
We live on a block that goes 3 blocks long and I probably know 90% of the people on these 3 blocks by name. The other 10% are new and I’m sure I’ll get to know them, too.
This morning there were two dogs running loose that were obviously someone’s critters so I chased them down with another neighbor and we located the owner.
The only way I can go to the grocery store and get in and out is to go late at night… otherwise, I’m bound to see several people I know and will chat it up while my ice cream melts and my pregnant wife is screaming for her ice cream!
That’s just the way it is here. I’m not some super social person… people are just downright friendly!
That’s the way I want to live my life.
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I wish you would take a crack at a memoir in two parts. Part One would be your Odyssey from America to Europe. Part 2 would be your journey through Europe as player, soldier, and sports business man. Part Three would focus on your return to a life back in Kansas. This is a mythic and an underreported experience. I am not sure whether it would have much of a market or not, but it seems an important, revealing and under documented path of experience. I particularly like the angle of your devotion to gardening, small agriculture and healthy eating as a means of coping with the adverse side effects of your time as an athlete, plus the spiritual side of it as well. What appeals to me specifically is that it would be a non-fiction story of a modern Odysseus–the athlete, instead of the warrior–that went abroad. And if I recall correctly, you served in the military also. It would be a particularly interesting thread to include if you coincidentally happened to do any time as a military intelligence person inserted into European basketball either as a player, or a business person, to be a listener in the very complicated world of European professional sports ownership and European Big Gaming, which is reputedly used for laundering black monies and drug monies and terrorist monies and so on. But even without that flashy angle, I still like the human life phases that your story would demonstrate in a fresh way.
I know other Kansans that have moved back and have been very grateful that they did, but I don’t know any that have ever had the interesting combination of sports business and a return home to the kind of life you have apparently chosen to lead in Kansas. I tried to return a time or two, but the stars did not align to enable it. But I think your story would appeal to me even if I were not from Kansas.
A big market publisher might want Part I and 2, but not Part 3. I’m not sure. A small market publisher might want both. Surely there ought to be a small Kansas publishing house that would want to document your unique experience and its connection to the state. But I suspect the right editor might see a broader market for it.
You might try pitching the book idea to some publishing houses there in Kansas and see if you get a nibble.
Suggested Title: “Odysseus in Shorts: The Long Journey of an American Basketball Player to Europe and Back.”
Rock Chalk!
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Thanks for the flattering comments.
I didn’t serve in the armed forces, but I did have a period of working on DOD installations. My dad and uncles were all the brave souls who went to battle.
I have to tell you… in the 20 years I spent there I always came back for my Kansas summers. I just couldn’t live without it. And when I had a girlfriend, she would come with me. Also, several of my buddies visited me in Kansas, too. Every woman that came here cried hysterically when they left because they had never been somewhere where people were so friendly.
I do think people are attracted to their own familiarity. I just feel fortunate that I have embraced where I’m from and I feel a bit sorry for people who don’t embrace where they are from because no matter what, it is part of your identity!
One of the main nicknames I picked up abroad was “Kansas.” I kind of liked it!
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At 35 I left Kansas for an better career opportunity in my field. I was also motivated by the weather. A trip to Australia in January (summer down under) was enough to convince me to move to the sun belt. Oil & Gas work put me in California & Texas where I’ve been able to keep working. But I’ve always been back every summer to see family and friends. Kansas is a great place, and the people are wonderful.
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I’m getting feeble and uncool. I did not recognize the reference “La-Bas”, so googled it and there were many possible references. Did you have one in particular in mind for our dear @drgnslayr ?
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Sorry about recalling incorrectly about the military. Still think your story is worth telling.
And what the hell! I’ve accidentally given myself a good idea for a story: a American basketball player that falls into being an informant in, say, Berlusconi’s Italy, then gets wrapped up in fixing of Italian basketball games, and then has to run for his life with a beautiful woman, of course, to Locarno, and then perhaps cross over the border. Sort of Robert Ludlum in a jock strap! A Farewell to Arms in tennies. I like it.
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@jaybate-1.0 Only the strange mind embedded in the jaybate cranium cavity could come up with a plot and title of Farewell to Arms in Tennies. (beer)
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Uhm, I’ll take that as a compliment.
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@jaybate-1.0 It’s just “There and Back Again” (of Hobbit fame) with “There” translated into French. Didn’t mean to be obscure.
Hobbits were the ultimate X-axis players in Middle Earth!
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@jaybate-1.0 Since @wissoxfan83’s original thread has been totally hijacked, did you ever get the chance to read or watch Lone Survivor?
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I would fork this thread to a new one, but I am not sure what I would call it! I guess it took the ontological turn with Jaybate’s missive. It sure is entertaining though!
maybe I should simply call it “Kansas”
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Maybe TT is employed by the NSA. He’s now signed to play in Russia. I’m trying to visualize a flubby Putin chasing after TT and quickly getting winded. The goal was less to spy and more to just see if we could stroke out Putin.
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Howling!!!
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I have not yet seen it, but in frustration of not seeing it, I have read a lot about Luttrell and his book, about the conflicts between Luttrell’s book and the Marine Corp’s version of the event, and about the movie being fairly faithful to the book. My appetitive is thoroughly whetted to see the movie now. I also have a ton of thoughts about the event, and long wake of it, but after writing them, decided I needed to see the movie before posting anything. Regardless, thanks very much for calling this tragic, heroic, sad, complicated episode to my attention. Because the wars for control of the Eurasian Center Point are really only just beginning, it is hard to foresee what the long term historical importance of Luttrell’s story will be, but if USA/UK were to concede the Eurasian center point now and withdraw and dig in to hold Africa, Luttrell’s story might become as iconic of the Near East/ South Asian/North African regime change war era since 9/11, as My Lai Massacre became for the vast 1954-1973 American involvement in Vietnam. Wars often generate brief events that subsequently become highly symbolic (and reductive) icons of the entire hopelessly complex event of a war, for better or for worse. My dad often complained that the guys that put the flag up on Mt. Surabachi, either the first time, or the staged time, weren’t nearly as important as the guys that fought there way up the damned thing, or went into caves in Cushman’s pocket, if I recall that name correctly. But symbolism and iconography are not about literal events, they are about a mythic arc between events and the collective imagination of a people and they speak in a mysterious language to the collective heart of a people and not to the actuality of any one event in relation to others. Wars are apparently filled with countless acts of heroism and countless acts of evil and blundering, and so these kinds of stories like Luttrell’s, their perhaps equalled many times in other circumstances that we will never know about, some how nevertheless speak to us deeply and in ways we can never fully understand,whether we were in the war zone, or back home.
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@brooksmd I’ve not seen the movie, but have read the book “Lone Survivor”. Also SEAL Target Geronimo, No Easy Day, SEAL Team Six, & SEAL of Honor. (improper punctuation) Didn’t take the time to watch it when on dish ppv, & really since I am not crazy about Wahlburger, didn’t want to be disappointed cause the book kicks ass. Wahlburger was OK playing Irish Mickey Ward in the fighter, but Christian Bale & Amy Anderson were collosal, & a superb supporting cast is really what made that an outstanding movie. My boys & I watched Mickey Ward fight welterweight for years on espn a couple of decades back, so I really did like that one. The wife & I may have even seen him fight at the old Showboat in Vegas, but went to so many fights out there I just don’t recall if he’s one of them. All great authors make drama/satire/humor from either ordinary or abnormal situations so people will read or their work will sell, so the he said/she said stuff between interested parties is mostly irrelevant to me. I just like reading a good book & LS is damn good IMO. My opinion is also that which believes some people on this board should stop calling others out when they don’t necessarily agree with that type humor or satire like we consistently see from others. Personally I happen to enjoy it & will add that fine writing impresses the krap outta me, minus blatant sarcasm, of which I am usually one of the most guilty.
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Ah, I forgot about Tolkien’s little people. I am over the hill for sure, when I forget that. Sorry.
And I am so relieved that that was your intent. For my initial search lead to this link…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Là-bas_(novel)
A rather dark book–another I had forgotten about–this time mercifully.
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@brooksmd This is why I talk about Wisconsin so much! I do enjoy aspects of Louisiana, but I sure do miss it up north!
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I really just wanted to know why Illinois can’t recruit it’s own players! Now I have what I majored in at KU, a geography blog.
Besides KU basketball I spend inordinate amounts of time fixing, at least in my mind or on replies to articles, geographical errors in movies, TV shows, best of lists (like the other day when they showed a picture of Door County WI, but there was no way it was actually Door County), driving random roads on Google Earth in far flung places like Botswana,
I watch airplanes in the sky and try to figure out what city they might be flying to, and looking at webcams to see what the view is like from the top of Table Mt in South Africa. I pore through my NG magazines, looking at the interesting photo’s first and then perusing the mostly interesting articles. I stare at maps and wonder why God couldn’t have seen fit to have me live in a place like the incredibly beautiful Italian coast, or the lakes and moors of Scotland, or even just on a hilltop in big sky country with a view of the Absaroka’s or the Sawtooth Range in Idaho.
I look at maps and wonder if anyone else knows that the first (territorial) capital of Illinois is actually west of the Mississippi River or that the Mississippi River drains land from Montana to New York. I know people know about Lake Huron, but did you know that it and Lake Michigan are the same body of water making it, and not Superior, the worlds largest fresh water lake. Thus there’s only four Great Lakes. And who hijacked geography and added Southern Ocean to the maps?
But then I contemplate my place in this world and realize how fortunate I am to be born here, anywhere in this country actually, and not be born in a place like Somalia, or in 90% poverty rate Calcutta, or in North Korea, a place that has enjoyed no freedom since before the Japanese invaded them in the early 20th century.
Which brings me back to basketball because I was fortunate as well to choose KU and become a citizen of Jayhawk nation, a decision that has brought to me a lot of fun and friendships over the years.
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@wissoxfan83 had me dreaming, thanks!! I could learn a lot from you.
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@wissoxfan83
What nice and refreshing outlook in an age where form and appearance is preferred over substance; I guess the new term is “optics.”???
It reminds me of…
All of us get lost in the darkness
Dreamers learn to steer by the stars
All of us do time in the gutter
Dreamers turn to look at the cars
From “The Pass” by Rush
Which is loosely based on Oscar Wilde’s quote "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
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@JayHawkFanToo Rush Limbaugh writes poetry? Who’d a thunk it!
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@wissoxfan83
That would be the band “Rush” and not Rush Limbaugh…:)
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@wissoxfan83
Way to go!
Another one found his voice.
It happens every once in awhile here.
And it is so beautiful.
Hang on to it.
Use it.
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@drgnslayr said:
" Every woman that came here cried hysterically when they left …"
Hopefully they weren’t tears of joy. lol
