FROM THE EDITOR
C O N T R I B U TO R S
Mary Henn
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
This month’s news feature on the Kansas opioid epidemic was written by Associate Editor Mary Henn, who was recently featured on Crime Stories with Nancy Grace for her essay on Angela Green, which appeared in Kansas City earlier this year.
Kim Horgan
WRITER/PHOTOGRAPHER
Our cover package features heavy contribution from longtime contributor Kim Horgan, an adventurous traveler based in Prairie Village who always comes back with great recommendations from her journeys.
Liz Schroeder
EDITORIAL INTERN
This month’s issue also includes a story about how small-time investors should look at inflation. It’s written by Liz Schroeder, our summer intern who is an MFA candidate at UMKC.
16
KANSAS CITY SEPTEMBER 2022
ILLUSTRATIONS BY VICENTE MARTÍ & JOANNA GORHAM
I
spent most of the last month on the road. Not for our September cover feature on great small towns around Kansas City, but because I love traveling—especially during the height of summer humidity—the remote work routine has opened that possibility in a way I’d never dared hope before the pandemic. My parents were both teachers, so I grew up doing epic summer road trips that left me a little disoriented when returning to my regular routine. It turns out I’d missed that. I’ll spare you the details of my trip, but I started writing this note while seated at the Starbucks at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, which had wifi as fast as my house and an amazing view of lower Manhattan. Manhattan is, of course, as far as it gets from small-town Kansas or Missouri. Except it’s really not. Everywhere, I’m increasingly convinced, is a small town. I was walking around the West Village when I was struck by the busy patio at a very cool bar called the White Horse Tavern. I’d never heard of the place, but it claims to be NYC’s second-oldest bar and is best known as the favorite haunt of the poet Dylan Thomas. I started reading up on the White Horse and discovered that it had been the flashpoint in a bitter neighborhood battle over gentrification that culminated with neighbors staging an Irish wake on the streets in protest of the bar’s sale. Like I said: Everywhere is a small town. What makes smaller small towns—some of the dozen featured in this issue have only a few hundred residents—so fun to visit, for me, isn’t just that the pace of life feels a little slower. It’s that you can spend a couple of days there and leave feeling like you have a real sense of the people and place. I had that experience when spending some time in Hermann last fall. After a few days of wandering around in the rain drinking, looking and talking, I hopped on the train back to KC feeling like I’d made new friends and come to understand the unique culture of a corner of the world I’d never been to. Our frequent contributor Kim Horgan wrote about Hermann for this issue, but I took from her piece that she’d had a similar experience on a more recent visit. A dozen spots in this month’s feature all offer an opportunity to breathe some clean air and get a new perspective for a few days. Especially now, as the busyness of autumn schedules starts to hit, I hope you’re able to sneak away for a few days of renewal in Martin Cizmar one of these towns or somewhere else that EDITOR IN CHIEF MARTIN@KANSASCITYMAG.COM freshens your spirit.
