(Reprint from August E-mail)

Hello Old Friends

Well, here is a quick update about life after my move this past May from Brooklyn Park, MN to Kansas City, KS.  The unpacking here at my new Loft was pretty much over by the end of July. Randy (my Brother) and my Niece Erin were indispensable in getting the move completed and I owe them both a great debt of gratitude for those 3 days of incredible physical work of loading up that U-haul in MN and getting all my stuff down here; plus getting a storage unit for at least a third to half of my stuff too.  At least half my stuff was put in the Loft in early May and the rest in storage. It took me all of June to get the stuff in the Loft unpacked and somewhat organized and then the last day of May I got a U-Haul on my own and loaded up all that was in the storage unit and unloaded it into my Loft and it took all of June to then get that new stuff unpacked and organized. Plus, more stuff to do through July too although all of the really hard physical work was done by the 2nd week of July. 

I lost about 28lbs or so from mid April to mid July when the last of the unpacking etc. was pretty much wrapped up.  Plus, to keep the weight loss going after mid July I began doing morning work-outs at the local YMCA and began to seriously work on my diet and nutrition again.  So since the beginning of April I’ve now lost about 50 lbs.

Of course, besides all the unpacking there was a lot of change of address-phone-email stuff that had to be done with like a 100 companies & agencies.  New Drivers License, Change of address for social security, medical, and tons more.  I had to set up a new Doctor and clinic, a new Psychiatrist and clinic and just a lot of logistics to do too.

I found a good Psychiatrist and case worker plus a nice Drop-In Center called SIDE that is about 3 blocks from where my Loft is.  In fact, pretty much every agency I need to go to sometimes like KCK Public Library, Post Office, Housing Authority, Social Security, medical etc. are all less than 6 blocks from my Loft.  There are a ton of ethnic restaurants in the area within a block or so from my Loft to. Joe’s Barbeque is a great place and has Jazz performance Thursdays and Fridays on their patio. A wonderful bakery and breakfast restaurant, a very extensive sausage shop and the Farmers Marked on Wednesday and Saturday mornings are all like 1 block away too. There are some great thrift stores. The McDonalds opens early at 5am and since I’m an early riser sometimes that works out fine to get a cup of coffee sometimes. There is a very nice lake ‘Big 11 (or 10) Lake’ (Small by MN standards) that is stocked twice a year and great for fishing with a bait shop too that is only 6 blocks from my Loft too.  I may go fishing today hey hey.

One change that I do like but takes a bit of time to get used to is that there are it seems no stores or restaurants in KCK that stay open 24 hours. There are a very few 24 hr gas station/convenience stores and that’s it. The Walmart and other stores here and the Perkins and other restaurants here etc. do not stay open 24hrs like so many do in Minneapolis. Now, before I moved from Brooklyn Park, MN, for the past number of years I had become more and more disenchanted and even beginning to feel a low grade hostility to so much commercialization within the Minneapolis area placing the bottom line so far in front of any real concern for living priorities based in workers, family and community needs.  The conveniences of having 24 hour access is a life based in a priority of consumption and profit and I found this more and more repellent (even if sometimes convenient) so it is very refreshing to live now in a city that does go to sleep at night and has living priorities.

Its taken a while to figure out which grocery stores stock the items I need or want and which ones are discount or more expensive.  I did find that Missouri has tobacco at lower pricing. I still smoke, although I’m still doing only half of what I did 3 years ago after my 1st attempt to quit. So it was nice to find out that Kansas City on the Missouri side still sells tobacco at reasonable pricing; unlike some states that impose a terrible punishing burden that is both extremely cruel and unusual upon people with a very low income who are as yet unable to quit smoking. Anyone who has had to rob public ashtrays understands what I am talking about.   At a Grocery store in Missouri called Red-X that I use for getting many of my foods I can also get a carton of smokes for under $14.00.  Although I do hand make my own cigarettes most of the time and buy a bag of tobacco with paper tubes (much cheaper) ; this changed  circumstance now allows me the luxury of occasionally splurging and buying some pre-made cigarettes and that is very nice.  Eventually after my weight is back to normal range around 180’s I will probably make another real try to kick the habit again but in the mean time it is nice to find some affordable tobacco again.

I still have not found a good grocery store that has bins for stuff like soy nuts and pumpkin seeds etc.  There are some stores in the suburb Overland Park, KS but that is a long drive for me from downtown KCK and so I’m going to try to find some source that is closer.  Since I am near the river there may be some grocery stores not far off on the Missouri side of KC that might have some of these items I’ve yet to locate here.  As yet I have not explored the KC, MO side much so don’t know.

Well. A quick note here on my initial impressions from coming home to Kansas after being up North these past 22 years (since 1985).

The sky is often filled with huge and puffy clouds; dramatic cloud formations abound within a much larger vista than is common in the areas of MN I am familiar with.  The storm fronts too are huge and very dramatic even terrible to look upon sometimes just as I remembered.  Minnesota has a beauty in the subtlety in cloud formations but Kansas has far more of the great dramatics and spectacle of cloud formation and storms.  I have missed that a lot.

The sunrises and sunsets, due in part to the greater vista and wide openness of the sky and cloud formations can be incredibly dramatic and spectacular in their varied and massive color washes.  Although, of course it is sometimes possible to glimpse the Northern Lights in Northern MN and not here in KS so it all balances out in the end I guess.

Hearing the names of places and towns and schools etc. that I grew up with and very familiar with is like finding an old favorite shirt that one thought was lost long ago.  Len Dawson is still doing a sports Cast and Names like Olatha, Overland Park, Lenexa, Metcalf, Ward Parkway, Arrowhead Stadium, and the list goes on and on is like suddenly running into a host of long lost friends constantly all over the place again.

The beginning of August in Kansas is as I remembered. While it was a nice upper 70’s in the Twin cities the other day we were HOT and HUMID! 100 degrees with humidity that is higher than what is typical in MN.  I am not sure why the humidity is higher down here than in MN since MN does have 10,000 lakes and one might think that with evaporation the humidity would be higher there but there must be other factors involved because the first 2 weeks of August in KC are as I recall very HOT and Humid and the humidity here is worse than up north.

The spring rains and thunderstorms were enormous and intense just as I remembered.

The downtown KCK and WY county was not an area I was very familiar with growing up here. I grew up in a suburb in Johnson county. So Exploring this area has been a treat and a whole new experience for me too. Unlike the KC, MO side the downtown in Kansas reminds me a lot of and expanded downtown area akin to Northfield, MN similar to towns with buildings that are generally not more than 2 to 3 stories high.  The skyscrapers are all on the Missouri downtown side.  So this area does have a real small town like appeal in its architecture that is very pleasant.

I have a park across the street and since my large bay windows face out the front I can see the changing weather and the Park go through the seasons very well and that is nice.

I was and still am a bit awed by these Lofts and this Historic building.  It has a nice courtyard I back and a very nice lobby area.

There are Art events like Kansas City Dot Art Walk that happen frequent and regular basis and I will be getting involved in these too since Our Old City Hall building is one of the stops and we have various other Artists living/working here in the Lofts too.

The expansion of the city and all the new areas that have grown over the past few decades is amazing, plus a number of the old stores or even malls that I was familiar with are either closing soon or are already long gone is also quite a change too.

Alright, I know this is a long update already but this is atypical for me to do and only because so much has happened and the positive changes in my life with this move have been quite significant too.

Well, I set up my studio a while back and it is truly a great blessing! I used some of my Grant money to buy a new L-shaped Glass desk from OfficeMax with one extra glass computer-desk module too. It is  a dream Office set up and the Compaq Rack holding most of my audio/visual synthesis and interface music & HW gear is terrific too. The electric piano is hooked up and my computer system and all is working splendidly. I have a Living room area with couch and my easy chair for TV, Stereo, as well as, a large projector screen with projector for demonstration/promotion of my works.  Plus, Star Wars looks pretty cool on the big screen too :)

I have a nice bedroom nook and finally got a less expensive memory foam mattress that I like very much set up.  The kitchen is fantastic and the largest kitchen area I’ve ever had with a very nice counter on one side that creates an entry way into the Loft space.  Eventually I’ll put in a couple of extra tall bar stools on the entryway side of the counter.  It’s a tall counter so it will take a while to find 2 affordable 39” to 44” stools.   Most Bar stools are around 30”.

I’m getting ready to mail my 6 CD’s to an old friend in San Francisco who has very graciously consented to checking them over and possibly writing up some reviews and hopefully some positive criticism on any of the music that catches his fancy. He is both very knowledgeable and articulate in music and I look forward to receiving his input and plan to use some of his feedback within the website and actually within the CD’s inner Jacket.

However, my website and the selling of my music as well as other stuff came to an abrupt halt in May. The server I have been using since David U. first helped me get set up on the Internet called Appleisp.net is now no longer the server I use. They moved their office and equipment to a new Office building I guess in late April and for the past few months after their move there have been some serious glitches with their server software in terms of my website.  Not glitches I terms of security, but other kinds that basically made about half of my website non-functional until those glitches were corrected.  I could not process any sales at all.  So without getting into too much detail, suffice to say they were not willing to let me fix my database and apparently did not see fit to fix it themselves in a timely manner so this past month I simply switched to a new company to remotely host my website. This new company for 9.95 a month is giving me about 150 GB of website storage while the old one had been charging me 19.95 a month for about 1.5 GB plus this new server gives me tons more than the old one so it is a very good thing in the long run.  One of those instances where a blessing is in the ‘guise of a curse I guess. Still. I ended up losing the last 2 years of data in my websites database.  So all the articles, poems, stories etc. that I inputted into certain sections of the site to make the site more attractive and interesting to browse for visitors (2 years of work) are gone too. TS Eliots the Wasteland, and tons of writings including my own in the Writers section of the site all now lost somewhere in Appleisp,net’s database foul up and now gone permanently. Luckily I can input all that data back in but without having a database back up through no fault of my own but that companies misguided policy it will take many months to do that all over by hand. They were completely unresponsive to my emails and phone calls so I simply wrote it off. Now and for the rest of August I am working at setting up my website on the new server and hope to have it operational by September 1st.

If that happens then I’ll begin to focus most of my time on creating animate wallpapers, animate screensavers and some music videos.  If I do some good work at a fast pace perhaps by the end of October I’ll have these new visual creations available on my site. There will be a few that are simply free (freeware), all of them will be downloadable and be fully functional for a trial period; perhaps 30 days (shareware). Plus one will be able to buy the complete collection of works by Rick on DVD with a link for downloading the collection too. At a low price.

I need to make these items obviously before I can sell them; but with this debacle with the old web server and trying to get my site set up again there will be a delay but hopefully not longer than 6 to 8 weeks.  We will see.

OK, there are probably a 100 other things to say that I neglected. Basically life is very good and I am very happy to be here. Now since I spent all morning writing this update I guess I’ll go fishing tomorrow hey hey. Not a lot to add although there probably is but I forgot at the moment.  I do wish that some of my old friends that are musicians could stop in and and check out my Studio.  We’d have a blast doing it.  Having a private Electronic studio (with visual synthesis) has been a dream I’ve been working on since age 10 when I saw my first video synthesizer at the KC Art Institute in 1967. It took 40 years but I’ve got one now and it is ‘Rockin’ cool :)

So I hope all is well with everyone of you and your families and friends.

Till next time

Your Old Friend

Rick