Last Saturday evening another permutation of WaterFire was lit on Brush Creek, proving that if you pull out the braziers and start a fire, then surely white folks will appear from all directions once they smell wood smoke.
This version of WaterFire, sponsored by Karen Holland, the woman who brought plastic cows on concrete bases to Kansas City and had the temerity to call it art, was replacing a washed-out version of the a fore-mentioned installation of braziers filled with 5 cords of hickory, oak, and ash. The previous incarnation of Water Fire was taken away by a flood, an indication that artists who purport to be environmentalists don't always know how to read a hydrograph, may also build their homes in a flood plain, and leave huge carbon foot prints.
Upwind of the smoke and on the bright side, most Plaza businesses celebrated the event. Given the overflow crowds, which normally would have been gawking in the Power and Light District on a Saturday evening, tour buses were forced to park 3 blocks away along Mill Creek Parkway as out-of-towners and suburbanites flocked to view art which asked the probing question, "has opera, or new-age music, most influenced the resurgence of bonfires in America?"