Topeka does not have the fame of Kansas City, yet it is here that the state's laws are decided. A capital nestled in the prairie, it lives among official buildings, residential neighborhoods and schools, far from clichés of skyscrapers or grand avenues.
You read dates, mottoes, symbols that point as much to the state as to the city.
In the Midwestern wind, Topeka's flag does not appear in movies or on tourists' t-shirts. It simply signals a level of decision-making: here, amid the fields and grain silos, the politics of a state that many cross without really looking at is being built.