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Open Spaces—The Best antidote for Corona Virus Isolation

April 16, 2020 Terri Peterson Smith Leave a comment

Book and travel ideas to inspire “outdoor therapy” and to plan for #travelsomeday.

**Springfield, MO**: The Edwards Cabin at Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield sits in a lush field just outside Springfield, Missouri. www.nps.gov/wicr/incex.htm : Instagram: lovespringfield

Shut in because of the Corona Virus pandemic, opportunities for quiet contemplation, soul searching, and spiritual retreat abound. Too bad I don’t find those pursuits more appealing. Hugs, shared meals, raucous laughter, talking with strangers I meet when I travel, reading a person’s facial expressions without the cover of a mask. Those are just a few of the things I miss during this time of isolation during the Corona Virus pandemic.

In the **Quad Cities**, the Mississippi River takes a bend to run directly east to west for roughly ten miles giving way for beautiful sunrises and sunsets over the water. Legend has it the Father of Waters was so tantalized by the land’s beauty, he turned his head to admire the view. (The Quad Cities are Davenport and Bettendorf in southeastern Iowa, and Rock Island and Moline, in northwestern Illinois.) Credit – Visit Quad Cities Website – http://www.visitquadcities.com Instagram – @visitquadcities

I’ve tried all sorts of remedies for my shelter-in-place malaise—cooking, puzzles, cleaning, Zoom chats and Netflix galore. Yet, the only place I really find solace is outdoors. Nature and open spaces, along with the physical exertion of walking mile after mile, sooth my mind and spirit.

Nature Reading

Psychologists have been studying this phenomenon for some time. Hence the term nature therapy. The Japanese call it, shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing . Nature deficit has also been diagnosed, a “dose of fresh air” prescribed. And writers have written about the beauty and adventure of connecting with nature for years. Now is a great time to tap into their observations of the universe, our environment and our fellow human beings.

**Bismark/Mandan, N.D.**: Step back in time at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park to the 1500s when the Mandan Indians lived at the On-A-Slant Indian Village, or to 1875 when Gen. George Custer and the 7th Cavalry resided in Dakota Territory. Located along the majestic Missouri River, not only does it whisper the history and stories of hundreds of years, but it’s also a breathtaking experience for nature lovers to hike, bike, walk and explore. Photo Credit: Bismarck-Mandan Convention & Visitors Bureau Website: NoBoundariesND.com Instagram: @bismancvb

For literature to inspire your outdoor journeys I recommend Gretel Ehrlich’s The Solace of Open Spaces about her time in Wyoming and Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire about his stint at a park ranger in Arches National Park in Utah. Or, for a more recent read, I enjoyed Richard Powers’ Pulitizer Prize winning book, The Overstory, about a wide-ranging cast of characters whose experiences all relate to trees.

Finally, for approachable nature poetry, you can’t beat anything by Mary Oliver. In her poem, “Wild Geese,” she says that despite our problems, the world goes on.

…”Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”

–Mary Oliver

Dreaming of Places to Go

**Minneapolis**: Theodore Wirth Regional Park is in the shadow of downtown Minneapolis, with plenty of green, open spaces to socially distance and explore the outdoors in the City by Nature. (Note the little deer in the foreground.) http://www.minneapolis.org Instagram: meetminneapolis
Credit: Minneapolis Parks & Recreation Board, Courtesy of Meet Minneapolis

I have friends who haven’t left their New York City apartment for weeks. And who can blame them? I feel fortunate that here in the Twin Cities we have a massive number of parks and recreation areas at our finger tips where we can spread out from one another. I asked some of my friends at convention and visitors bureaus about the outdoor spaces they love to show off to visitors. I started with the Midwest. You may be surprised at the beautiful open spaces they offer, not far from large cities. They make for beautiful viewing and inspiration for places to go in the future.

**Kansas’ newest State Park, Little Jerusalem:** Long ago, this area in Kansas was a great sea. In addition to the present-day wildlife, the remains of swimming and flying reptiles dating back 85 million years have been found here. www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/places-we-protect/little-jerusalem-badlands-state-park/ https://www.instagram.com/kansastourism/

**Wichita, Kansas**: The Keeper of the Plains has become the emblem of Wichita. It includes a plaza where the Keeper sits and a riverwalk that extends around the area. Credit: Mickey Shannon. www.visitwichita Instagram: visitwichita

Petoskey, Michigan: Guests love to walk the Petoskey breakwall – especially during one of the area’s Million Dollar Sunsets. www.PetoskeyArea.com Instagram: Petoskeyarea

**Cleveland, Ohio**: Edgewater Park offers lakefront trails, open green space and panoramic views of Lake Erie and the Cleveland skyline. Credit: Cody York for ThisIsCleveland.com https://www.thisiscleveland.com/locations/edgewater-park Instagram: This is CLE

**Kansas City Missouri**: Jerry Smith Park sits on 360 acres and was previously a working farm. Presently the park supports equestrian and walking trails and provides access to a rich variety of flora and fauna.Website – https://kcparks.org/places/jerry-smith-park/ Instagram: Visit KC

**Iowa:** The Loess Hills, along the western border of Iowa, provide some of the most beautiful scenery, wildlife and overlooks in the country. Photo credit: Iowa Tourism Office. traveliowa.com Instagram: traveliowa

**Lake of the Ozarks, MO**: Ha Ha Tonka State Park at Central Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks was named the most beautiful place in Missouri by Conde Nast Traveler. Ha Ha Tonka’s fourteen walking trails, covering more than 15 scenic miles throughout the park, make it easy for visitors to enjoy solitude while experiencing the honeycomb of tunnels, rock bridges, caverns, springs, sinkholes and other natural areas. Credit: www.FunLake.com. Instagram: funlakemo

**Fort Wayne:** Promenade Park is the Midwest’s newest attraction located in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This one-of-a-kind park joins Fort Wayne’s natural rivers to its vibrant urban center, and features a treetop canopy trail, water features for kids to play in, and many modern amenities.
Photo Credit: Visit Fort Wayne
VisitFortWayne.com/PromenadePark Instagram: visitfortwayne

**The Badlands of South Dakota** is 244,000 acres of awe-inspiring landscape. Great for hiking, a scenic drive, or wildlife watching the Badlands are a perfect escape from people, sights, and sounds of everyday life. https://www.nps.gov/badl/index.htm Credit: Travel South Dakota

**Lincoln State Park in southern Indiana** offers plenty of outdoor space to enjoy. Take advantage of trails, fishing, picnic areas, and more. https://indianasabelincoln.org/listings/lincoln-state-park/ Instagram: @IndianasAbe and @IndianaDNR Credit: Spencer County Visitors Bureau

Missouri

A visit to The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City

February 11, 2020 Terri Peterson Smith Leave a comment

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, celebrates the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Negro National League in 2020.

The Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Baseball Leagues started it all.

Most people know that Kansas City is a great sports town—go Chiefs! But not everyone knows that KC is where the country’s first successful organized black baseball league got its start. So, it’s appropriate that the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is in Kansas City. It’s a great destination for baseball fans and fans of Black History and Civil Rights history, too.

Empowerment and Entrepreneurial Spirit

Exhibit at the Negro Leagues baseball museum tells of the challenges of travel in Jim Crow America

African-Americans began to play baseball in the late 1800s on military , college , and company teams and on professional teams with white players, too. Sadly, by 1900, racism and Jim Crow laws forced them out. So, black players formed their own units, “barnstorming” around the country to play anyone who would challenge them.

In 1920, a few Midwestern team owners met at the Paseo YMCA in Kansas City and joined to form the Negro National League. Soon, rival leagues formed in eastern and southern states, bringing the skillful and innovative play of black baseball to major urban centers and rural areas in the U.S., Canada, and Latin America. The Leagues were known not only for their high level of professional skill but they also became centerpieces for economic development in many black communities.

Telling the Negro Leagues’ Story

Exhibits at the museum introduce teams such as the Kansas City Monarchs, the Birmingham Black Barons, and the Chicago American Giants with mementos that include pristine uniforms of the era. Exhibits show what it was like for teams to travel in the days of segregated hotels and restaurants and “The Green Book” that was a directory of places that welcomed people of color.

A college baseball team sits on the bench during a visit to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City.

There’s a life-size baseball diamond inside the museum with bronze statues of the Leagues’ most famous players and I particularly enjoyed watching members of a college baseball team that was in Kansas City for a tournament as they experienced the museum and and the stories they heard.

Pork Chops

One of the best stories I encountered at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum was that of “clown teams.” Not clowns with red noses but the kind that “clowned around” doing funny tricks such as “shadow ball,” in which the ball was thrown around the field during infield practice at a faster and faster speed. They then threw out the ball and kept doing the same thing without the ball, an idea the Harlem Globetrotters later put into practice.

The most famous of them played for the Indianapolis Clowns. They nicknamed him “Pork Chops” because he ate only pork chops and french fries on road. “Pork Chops” went on to become one of the game’s most celebrated players of any color. He went on to play in Major League baseball, smashed Babe Ruth’s home run record (714), and became the all-time home run leader in the Major Leagues.

“Pork Chops” was Henry “Hank” Aaron.

Jackie Robinson

In addition to Hank Aaron, some of baseball’s greatest played in the Negro Leagues before baseball was integrated. The great Jackie Robinson played for the Kansas City Monarchs. In 1945, Major League Baseball’s Brooklyn Dodgers recruited Robinson from the Monarchs and he became the first African-American in the modern era to play on a Major League team.

It was an historic event in both baseball and civil rights history. But, it prompted the decline of the Negro Leagues. Other Major League teams recruited African American players and their fans followed. The last Negro Leagues teams folded in the early 1960s, but their legacy lives on at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum “Where History Touches Home.”

If You Go: The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is located in Kansas City’s historic 18th and Vine Neighborhood, which is also the city’s famous jazz district. It’s right next to the American Jazz Museum, which is also a great place to visit. Hungry? Pay a visit toto Arthur Bryant’s for its legendary Kansas City barbecue.

Read Up: You’ll find excellent books on the Negro Leagues and their place in American Civil Rights history as well as biographies of some of the most famous players. Here are a few:

Where to Stay

These hotels are fairly close to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. The Crossroads Hotel, the Westin Crown Center Hotel and the Hilton President.

missouri, Missouri

A Visit to the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City

May 16, 2017 Terri Peterson Smith Leave a comment

SONY DSC — The National World War I Museum and Memorial is an iconic landmark in Kansas City.

The United States entered World War I in 1917 and that 100-year anniversary makes this a perfect time to visit the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri. No one is left who lived through it to talk about the “War to End All Wars.” For many the war seems so remote, it’s hard to understand the magnitude of what happened, how it led to World War II and its importance today. That’s a job this museum does well with a gripping array of exhibits, artifacts and art that explains the complex occurrences that led to the war, the unbelievable carnage.

The memorial was built in 1926, but the museum opened in 2006. Visitors enter by walking on plexiglass floor over a field of poppies. You could spend hours here partly because exhibits cover not only the U.S. involvement but that of the many countries involved across the whole world. There’s something to interest everyone from weaponry, to the uniforms and equipment of soldiers and nurses, medical techniques developed during the war and more.

Not familiar with World War I history? Even if you’re not visiting this museum soon, there are several terrific books I recommend: The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman is a non-fiction classic and you can’t beat the classic fiction books All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, Regeneration by Pat Barker and Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks (one of my all-time favorites.) Also suggested, a new book The Last of the Doughboys by Richard Rubin.

Ideas for Book Clubs, Missouri

Finding “Gone Girl” in Cape Girardeau, Missouri

October 3, 2014 Terri Peterson Smith 1 Comment

The bar, the courthouse, the house on the Mississippi river where “I could step right in the sucker, an easy three-foot drop, and be on my way to Tennessee.” For authors such as Gillian Flynn in her huge fiction bestseller Gone Girl, the setting of a novel plays as crucial a role as the characters themselves. It creates atmosphere, foreshadows what is to come, and sets the pace. But when director David Fincher and his location scouts set out to make a movie based on the novel, it was a challenge to find real world places to match those of Flynn’s imagination. They found them in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

The movie, released today, has received some pretty great reviews. So, between the book and the movie, I’m betting that plenty of Gone Girl fans will be looking for her in Cape Girardeau, a lovely river town in southeast Missouri, where the movie was filmed.

In case you’ve missed it all, in Gone Girl, Amy Dunne (played by Rosamund Pike) disappears from the North Carthage, Missouri, home she shares with her philandering husband Nick (Ben Affleck) on their fifth anniversary, leading him to be investigated for her (maybe) murder. “If there are married couples here, maybe you should change seats” rather than sit together, said Ann Tenenbaum, the chairman of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, when the film premiered in New York. “Abraham Lincoln said, ‘Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.’ David Fincher will personally escort us there.” As the story progresses, we learn that this is one crazy couple and we find that the narrator isn’t necessarily giving us the straight story. (To see a fun discussion among readers of the book, see Book Journey‘s spoiler page.) The realistic setting adds to the tension.

"Gone Girl" director David Fincher said that the view from the Common Pleas Courthouse stairs overlooking the river is what sold him on Cape Girardeau, Missouri, as North Carthage in his movie. — “Gone Girl” director David Fincher said that the view from the Common Pleas Courthouse stairs overlooking the river is what sold him on Cape Girardeau, Missouri, as North Carthage in his movie.

Stacy Dohogne Lane of the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau told me, “North Carthage doesn’t actually exist, though there is a Carthage, Missouri. The Mississippi River plays such a big part in the book that they wanted to capture a true Missouri river town. Steve Mapel, the film’s location scout, came to Cape Girardeau in the Spring of 2013 and spent quite a bit of time here doing a very intensive search for specific locations. We had such a good time sitting around our conference table with Steve…he’d say ‘I’m looking for a place that has x, y and z’ and we’d all brainstorm a variety of places that fit within those parameters.” David Fincher has said that the view from the Common Pleas Courthouse stairs overlooking the river is what sold him on Cape Girardeau as North Carthage. Gillian Flynn later told Fincher that Cape Girardeau was the place she had in mind while she was writing the book, and he joked in an article that he wish she’d told him that sooner and saved him some time.

Alas, Gone Girl fans probably won’t find Ben Affleck or Rosmund Pike on the streets of Cape Girardeau but the river town makes a great weekend getaway (about two hours from St. Louis). Beyond Cape Girardeau’s movie role as North Carthage, you’ll find intriguing historic and outdoor sites, antiques and shopping, and it makes a great spot for a girls getaway weekend with wineries, spas and more.

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