<HTML><HEAD> <META charset=US-ASCII http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1400" name=GENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff"> <DIV> <DIV>In a message dated 4/23/2004 11:12:28 AM Eastern Standard Time, dhenwood@panix.com writes:</DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT face=Arial>The long excerpt from Tom Frank's new book on his home state of <BR>Kansas in the April Harper's paints a pretty different picture. As <BR>the opening notes, some of the poorest counties in the U.S. are on <BR>the Great Plains - and went something like 75% for Bush. Towns rave <BR>against fluoridation (no doubt Mitch Cohen & Gary Null would agree), <BR>the state board of ed purges references to evolution from textbooks, <BR>a prominent female politician doubts the wisdom of women's suffrage, <BR>etc. "If Kansas is the concentrated essence of normality, then here <BR>is where we can see the deranged graudally become normal, where we <BR>look into that handsome, confidnet, reassuring, all-American face - <BR>class president, quarterback, Rhodes scholar, bond trader, builder of <BR>industry - and realize that we are staring into the eyes of a <BR>lunatic." And Tom's no coastal elitist either.<BR><BR>Doug</FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV> <DIV>Johnson County is located sothwest of Kansas City on the Kansas side.  The population there is made of professionals and many college educated people that work, not necesarily, in Kasas City, but on the office buildings in Overland Park and most of them come from outside Kansas/Missouri.  When you first move to a job in KC, you are told that the place to be is Johnson County.  They are not typical of the Kansas population.  Johnson County is probably closer, distance wise, to Lawrence, where KU is located.  Again, it may have been that I moved in different circles while I was there since my wife was a leader in La Leche League and the apartment complex I lived in had a lot of KU graduates (I used to call it the KU Halfway house) but \i found it closer to my way of thinking than the Missouri side, which is closer culturaly to the South than to the Midwest.  I haven't been there in about 8 years, so things may have changed, for the better, it seems, according to Chuck.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Sergio</DIV></BODY></HTML>