Kansas Girl Quotes

Toto did not really care whether he was in Kansas or the Land of Oz so long as Dorothy was with him; but he knew the little girl was unhappy, and that made him unhappy too.

Sallie Mae sounds like a naive and barefoot hillbilly girl but in fact they are a ruthless and aggressive conglomeration of bullies located in a tall brick building somewhere in Kansas. I picture it to be the tallest building in that state and I have decided they hire their employees straight out of prison.

Never underestimate a girl from Kansas,

I cannot understand why you should wish to leave this beautiful country and go back to the dry, gray place you call Kansas." "That is because you have no brains," answered the girl. "No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home." The Scarecrow sighed. "Of course I cannot understand it," he said. "If your heads were stuffed with straw, like mine, you would probably all live in beautiful places, and then Kansas would have no people at all. It is fortunate for Kansas that you have brains.

Where am I?” I ask. “Where are my parents and my brother? Where’s my home? And who are you?” He blinks a couple of times before smiling faintly as though something has just amused him. “I’m afraid you’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.” Wizard of Oz references? I’m somewhere, I don’t know where, and that’s the best I get? Well, I’m not some dumb little girl willing to put up with that, and he certainly isn’t any kind of wizard. - Celestra Caine, FADE by Kailin Gow

We're not in Fairyland! We're in Kansas!

Every year, Kansas watches the world die. Civilizations of wheat grow tall and green; they grow old and golden, and then men shaped from the same earth as the crop cut those lives down. And when the grain is threshed, and the dances and festivals have come and gone, then the fields are given over to fire, and the wheat stubble ascends into the Kansas sky, and the moon swells to bursting above a blackened earth. The fields around Henry, Kansas, had given up their gold and were charred. Some had already been tilled under, waiting for the promised life of new seed. Waiting for winter, and for spring, and another black death. The harvest had been good. Men, women, boys and girls had found work, and Henry Days had been all hot dogs and laughter, even without Frank Willis's old brown truck in the parade. The truck was over on the edge of town, by a lonely barn decorated with new No Trespassing signs and a hole in the ground where the Willis house had been in the spring and the early summer. Late summer had now faded into fall, and the pale blue farm house was gone. Kansas would never forget it.

I feel like Dorothy, back in Kansas, a black-and-white girl in a black-and-white world, with memories in color.

My name is Amy Gumm—and I'm the other girl from Kansas. I've been recruited by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked. I've been trained to fight. And I have a mission: Remove the Tin Woodman's heart. Steal the Scarecrow's brain. Take the Lion's courage. And—Dorothy must die.

Salvation Amy from Flat Hill, Kansas. Just a trailer-park girl with a bunch of stupid dreams that would never come true.

Sallie Mae sounds like a naive and barefoot hillbilly girl but in fact they are a ruthless and aggressive conglomeration of bullies located in a tall brick building somewhere in Kansas. I picture it to be the tallest building in that state and I have decided they hire their employees straight out of prison. It scares me.

Yes, she was the girl playing basketball with all the boys in the park, collecting cans by the side of the road, keeping secret pet kittens in an empty boxcar in the woods, walking alone at night through the rail yards, teaching her little sister how to kiss, reading out loud to herself, so absorbed by the story, singing sadly in the tub, building a fort from the junked cars out in the meadow, by herself in the front row at the black-and-white movies or in the alley, gazing at an eddy of cigarette stubs and trash and fall leaves, smoking her first cigarette at dusk by a pile of dead brush in the desert, then wishing at the stars--she was all of them, and she was so much more that just just her that I still didn't know.

In the empty Houston streets of four o’clock in the morning a motorcycle kid suddenly roared through, all bespangled and bedecked with glittering buttons, visor, slick black jacket, a Texas poet of the night, girl gripped on his back like a papoose, hair flying, onward-going, singing, “Houston, Austin, Fort Worth, Dallas—and sometimes Kansas City—and sometimes old Antone, ah-haaaaa!” They pinpointed out of sight.

Say, kiddies! Today we're studying Wacky Geography in Mid-World. You see, boys and girls, in Mid-World you start in New York, travel southeast to Kansas, and then continue along the Path of the Beam until you come to the Dark Tower...which happens to be smack in the middle of everything. First, fight the giant lobsters! Next, ride the psychotic train! And then, after a visit to our snack bar for a popkin or two...

With a Western Kansas contingent was another musician, seemingly from a small town. He carried a mandolin. He wore a green hat and green clothes which had pearl buttons on them wherever they could be put — cuffs, lapels, pocket flaps. In his tie was a small gold vanity pin which looked as if a fluffy-haired 16-year-old girl in a white dress had placed it there the night before the lad had started away for the wars.

I took the Washington bus; wasted some time there wandering around; went out of my way to see the Blue Ridge, heard the bird of Shenandoah and visited Stonewall Jackson’s grave; at dusk stood expectorating in the Kanawha River and walked the hillbilly night of Charleston, West Virginia; at midnight Ashland, Kentucky, and a lonely girl under the marquee of a closed-up show. The dark and mysterious Ohio, and Cincinnati at dawn. Then Indiana fields again, and St. Louis as ever in its great valley clouds of afternoon. The muddy cobbles and the Montana logs, the broken steamboats, the ancient signs, the grass and the ropes by the river. The endless poem. By night Missouri, Kansas fields, Kansas night-cows in the secret wides, crackerbox towns with a sea for the end of every street; dawn in Abilene. East Kansas grasses become West Kansas rangelands that climb up to the hill of the Western night.

KANSAS CITY JAZZ: RECOMMENDED LISTENING Count Basie, “Jumpin’ at the Woodside,” August 22, 1938 Count Basie and Lester Young, “Oh, Lady Be Good,” October 9, 1936 Count Basie, “One O’Clock Jump,” July 7, 1937 Billie Holiday (with Lester Young), “I Can’t Get Started,” September 15, 1938 Kansas City Seven (with Lester Young), “Lester Leaps In,” September 5, 1939 Kansas City Six (with Lester Young), “I Want a Little Girl,” September 27, 1938 Andy Kirk (with Mary Lou Williams), “Walkin’ and Swingin’,” March 2, 1936 Jay McShann, “Confessin’ the Blues,” April 30, 1941 Bennie Moten, “Moten Swing,” December 13, 1932 Mary Lou Williams, “Clean Pickin’,

On the rare occasions when a reporter asks if a criminal is an immigrant, government officials summarily dismiss the question as if it would be racist to discuss the defendant’s nation of birth. Ricardo DeLeon Flores killed a teenaged girl in Kansas after speeding through a stop sign and crashing into two cars. “When asked whether Flores was a U.S. citizen,” the local Kansas newspaper reported, “Deborah Owens of the Leavenworth County Attorney’s Office said she had no knowledge of his citizenship status.”33 Was the Spanish translator a hint? The ICE officials showing up in court? His Oakland Raiders T-shirt? Two families’ lives were forever changed by the reckless behavior of someone who should not have been in this country, but the prosecutor refused to tell a reporter that Flores was an illegal immigrant. Owens must have felt a warm rush of self-righteousness, thinking how much better she is than all those blood-and-soil types who want to know when foreigners kill Americans.

We were working on the idea about dogs’ Internet searches, and first we debated whether the sketch should feature real dogs or Henrietta and Viv in dog costumes (because cast members were always, unfailingly, trying to get more air time, we quickly went with the latter). Then we discussed where it should take place (the computer cluster in a public library, but, even though all this mattered for was the establishing shot, we got stalled on whether that library should be New York’s famous Main Branch building on Fifth Avenue, with the lion statues in front, a generic suburban library in Kansas City, or a generic suburban library in Jacksonville, Florida, which was where Viv was from). Then we really got stalled on the breeds of dogs. Out of loyalty to my stepfather and Sugar, I wanted at least one to be a beagle. Viv said that it would work best if one was really big and one was really little, and Henrietta said she was fine with any big dog except a German Shepherd because she’d been bitten by her neighbor’s German Shepherd in third grade. After forty minutes we’d decided on a St. Bernard and a Chihuahua—I eventually conceded that Chihuahuas were funnier than beagles. We decided to go with the Florida location for the establishing shot because the lions in front of the New York Main Branch could preempt or diminish the appearance of the St. Bernard. Then we’d arrived at the fun part, which was the search terms. With her mouth full of beef kebab, Viv said, “Am I adopted?” With my mouth full of spanakopita, I said, “Am I a good girl?” With her mouth full of falafel, Henrietta said, “Am I five or thirty-five?” “Why is thunder scary?” I said. “Discreet crotch-sniffing techniques,” Henrietta said. “Cheap mani-pedis in my area,” Viv said. “Oh, and cheapest self-driving car.” “Best hamburgers near me,” I said. “What is halitosis,” Henrietta said. “Halitosis what to do,” I said. “Where do humans pee,” Viv said. “Taco Bell Chihuahua male or female,” I said. “Target bull terrier married,” Viv said. “Lassie plastic surgery,” Henrietta said. “Funny cat videos,” I said. “Corgis embarrassing themselves YouTube,” Viv said. “YouTube little dog scares away big dog,” I said. “Doghub two poodles and one corgi,” Henrietta said. “Waxing my tail,” I said. “Is my tail a normal size,” Viv said.

There was Irena, less than five feet tall, standing behind her chrome walker, smiling, her coal-dark eyes surprised. She wore a black dress and a black headband across her pure white hair. Irena’s smile turned puckish, the tip of her tongue flicking across her lips. Liz began to clap, then Megan and Sabrina, right behind her, and like pond ripples their applause spread into the living room. Was it for Irena? For the Kansas girls? For the moment? Irena motioned with one hand – come to me. And they did so, cautiously, for Megan thought her frail as crystal. Irena looped her arm around Megan and pulled her cheek down to her own. Liz and Sabrina stood by Irena’s walker, Liz’s hand covering her mouth, shocked to be there. Tears streaked Megan’s cheeks. Abruptly, the applause stopped, as if only silence was suitable for this moment.

I felt like the Kansas girl who was picked up by that twister and set down in a dream.

On Monday, November 29, nineteen-year-old Eugenia Dennis, billed as the “Amazing Girl Psychic,” arrived from Kansas for a week-long engagement at Seattle’s Coliseum Theatre. Miss Dennis’ telepathic powers had brought her international renown. No less a celebrity than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had proclaimed her “the eighth wonder of the world.

I’m reminded of a dream that the aunt of a friend of mine had; the woman’s name is Cleo and she grew up in Kansas during the Great Depression. In the dream, she is lifted to Heaven when just a child. There, she is greeted by an angel who says, “Take my hand and I will show you to your new home.” The angel and Cleo stroll through Heaven’s shining streets, more radiant than anything the small and nervous girl had seen. However, instead of stopping before one of the lovely houses, they keep walking, then walking some more. The lights begin to dim, the houses are smaller now and the streets not so smooth. Finally, they arrive at a tiny hut near the edge of a dense forest with just enough light to see. Cleo asks, “Is this my new home?” The angel replies, “I’m afraid so; you were just barely good enough to get in.

If a young man is interested in a young woman, he starts by praying about the relationship. With a go-ahead from the Lord and his parents, he then approaches the girl’s parents. The parents pray and, if the young woman has a reciprocal interest in the young man, her father talks through courtship and its expectations with the fellow.5

When the fugitives arrived in Lawrence, most had only the clothes on their backs, and in many cases those were rags. “They were strong and industrious,” Rev. Cordley wrote, “and by a little effort, work was found for them and very few, if any of them, became objects of charity.” But while they were eager to make their new lives in freedom, they needed help translating their industriousness into livelihoods. Nearly all were illiterate because most slaveholding states had strict laws making it illegal to teach slaves to read or write. Fugitives arriving in Lawrence equated learning with liberty, so their thirst for education was overwhelming. But the town’s fine educational system was not able to accommodate the number of eager new students. Mr. S. N. Simpson, one of the town’s 1855 pioneers, had started the first Sunday schools in town when he arrived, and he conceived a system of education for the fugitives based on his Sunday school model. Classes would be taught by volunteers in the evenings, and the curriculum would include basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, along with lectures designed to help them establish themselves in the community. The people of Lawrence were as excited to teach as their students were excited to learn, and enough volunteers were available to split the first class of about one hundred men and women into groups of six or eight.214 Josiah C. Trask, the editor of the Lawrence State Journal, spent an evening in January 1862 visiting the school and devoted an article to his observations. Eighty-three students, taught by twenty-seven teachers, met in the courthouse. “One young man who had been to the school only five nights,” Trask wrote, “began with the alphabet, [and] now spells in words of two syllables.” He observed that there was a class of little girls, “eager and restless,” a class of grown men, “solemn and earnest,” a class of “maidens in their teens,” and “another of elderly women.” Trask observed that the students were “straining forward with all their might, as if they could not learn fast enough.” He concluded, observing that all eighty-three students came to class each evening “after working hard all day to earn their bread,” while the twenty-seven teachers, “some of them our most cultivated and refined ladies and gentlemen,” labored night after night, “voluntarily and without compensation.” It was “a sight not often seen.”215

Sidney provides the commentary on the DVD, and he tells us that he wanted “a train song.” Warren and Mercer gave him much more than that, for “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe” is really an “entire town song.” It starts in the saloon—an important location, as it will be at war with the restaurant the Harvey girls wait table in—then moves to the train’s passengers, engineers, and conductor as it pulls in and the locals look everyone over, especially the newly mustered Harveys themselves. Warren’s music has imitated the train’s chugging locomotion, but now comes a trio section not by Warren and Mercer (at “Hey there, did you ever see such pearly femininity … ”), and the girls give us some individual backstories—one claims to have been the Lillian Russell of a small town in Kansas, and principals Ray Bolger and Virginia O’Brien each get a solo, too. The number is not only thus detailed as a composition but gets the ultimate MGM treatment on a gigantic set with intricate interaction among the many soloists, choristers, and extras. But now it’s Garland’s turn to enter the number, disembark, and mix in with the crowd. According to Sidney, Garland executed everything perfectly on the first try—and it was all done in virtually a single shot. Fred Astaire would have insisted on rehearsing it for a week, but Garland was a natural. Once she understood the spirit of a number, the physics of it simply fell into place for her. In any other film of the era, the saloon would be the place where the music was made. And Angela Lansbury, queen of the plot’s rowdy element, does have a floor number, dressed in malevolent black and shocking pink topped by a matching Hippodrome hat. But every other number is a story number—“The Train Must Be Fed” (as the Harveys learn the art of waitressing); “It’s a Great Big World” for anxious Harveys Garland, O’Brien, and a dubbed Cyd Charisse; O’Brien’s comic lament, “The Wild, Wild West,” a forging song at Ray Bolger’s blacksmith shop; “Swing Your Partner Round and Round” at a social. Marjorie Main cues it up, telling one and all that this new dance is “all the rage way

and corporate power, in the states, in the nation, could use its money to still get what it wanted.” The Alliances were not getting real power, but they were spreading new ideas and a new spirit. Now, as a political party, they became the People’s party (or Populist party), and met in convention in 1890 in Topeka, Kansas. The great Populist orator from that state, Mary Ellen Lease, told an enthusiastic crowd: Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street and for Wall Street…. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags…. the politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children … starve to death every year in the U.S. and over 100,000 shop girls in New York are forced to sell their virtue for bread…. There

That evening, Nina could see the jacarandas were having their usual giddy effect: Every May, jacaranda trees burst into flower in an improbably riotous display of color. Ranging from deep purple to the palest violet, they bloom together on some prearranged schedule, so one night Angelenos go to bed in Kansas and wake up in Oz. They’re all over the city, hundreds of them, but until they bloom, they’re totally unremarkable. Like dozens of transformation scenes in movies from My Fair Lady to Mean Girls, jacarandas are the previously plain girl who suddenly gets a makeover and emerges triumphant to turn everyone’s head.

A little girl came home from school after an early lesson in the evolution of humans. She asked her mother, “Do we come from apes?” The mother paused and said, “Well, in a sense. We arose from monkeys and apes.” The little girl asked, “Well, where do monkeys come from?” The mother thought for a moment and replied, “The Kansas State Board of Education.

Where The Kids Are" I can't blame it all on you Cause I'd be wrong All in all, all all, in all You're such a beautiful girl Don't take my chances Smile for the lenses Live it up, you're growing up Parties in the wilderness of life Light it up, just give it up Where the kids are running free tonight The cars on the avenues Can wait in line All in all, all all, in all Lived out this innocent time Gold roads leave Kansas Scarecrow loves dances Live it up, you're growing up Parties in the wilderness of life Light it up, just give it up Where the kids are running free tonight They're running free tonight They're running free They're running free tonight Live it up, you're growing up Parties in the wilderness of life Light it up, just give it up Where the kids are running free tonight Live it up, you're growing up Parties in the wilderness of life Light it up, just give it up Where the kids are running free tonight Where the kids are running free tonight Where the kids are running free

Tornado or no tornado, a girl from Kansas doesn't let much get to her.

It's either school, a job, or a girl, she said. Or death. Those are the only reasons for coming to Kansas. Unless you're born born here of course. Then it's a matter of escaping." She smiled, letting Cliff know this was a joke.

It seemed for a few weeks that they had come at last to the place they had supposed they would get in their first few months of love, when he was a brash young cowboy and she a pretty buffalo girl. It was what they had talked of in Kansas; finally, in Montana, it happened, or seemed to. But then he had begun to feel like cowboying again, and had ridden off one morning as if their time together had been nothing—as if it were common.