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From alcohol to pain-relieving pot, Prohibition runs deep in Kansas
Amy Reid is serious about medical marijuana. She’s a Wichita registered nurse and president of the Kansas Cannabis Coalition. She describes herself as a cannabis navigator for her patients, and she is all business when it comes to advocating for medical weed. I couldn’t help but chuckle when she told me the name of a […]
It’s September 12. What now?
It’s been 20 years and a day since 9/11 changed us. The last troops have only days ago been airlifted from Afghan soil, ending America’s longest war, a conflict that was waged not against an enemy but a tactic. The Global War on Terror, of which Afghanistan and Iraq were the major theaters of operation, […]
Who got rich from February’s cold wave? We may never know.
When the historic cold came stealing around Valentine’s Day, there were two things I knew for certain. The first was that the kitchen pipes in our 120-year-old house in central Emporia were likely to freeze. The second was that consumers would be footing the bill for the most predictable economic disaster ever. It was the […]
Rage against the vaccine? Oh, the humanity.
Rage is a useful emotion if you’re the greatest of ancient Greek warriors — Sing, O Goddess, of the rage of Achilles! — but it has its limitations for those of us not descended from kings and sea nymphs. While justifiable outrage has been instrumental in moving the arrow of history ever closer to justice, […]
On the frontier, trains brought progress. They still do.
When the first passenger train to Wichita arrived the night of Thursday, May 16, 1872, it seemed the entire town had waited up to meet it. Rolling up to the wooden depot on Douglas, the steam train and its 44 occupants were met by a cowboy brass band. Jubilation is not a strong enough word […]
The hidden history of Kansas is the story of enslaved people. Let’s say their names.
Shawnee Indian Mission is a bit of the 1850s frontier in the midst of one of the richest suburban neighborhoods in the country. Just a block away is the buzz of traffic on Shawnee Mission Parkway, and the homes in the area cost more than most of us can afford. But for $5, Wednesday through […]
Kansas redistricting should be fair. What’s been dumped on us is not.
I’ve never liked Fridays. Chalk it up to superstition, but there’s something about a Friday that gives me the creeps. It makes me think twice about scheduling anything important on a Friday. Some of it goes back to my reporting days, because sources have a way of tossing bombshells into the inbox just before the […]
Friday is the 76th anniversary of Hiroshima. Doomsday is closer than ever.
Let me tell you a story of witness and heartbreak. Friday is the 76th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and that’s where our story is forever frozen in time. Unlike memories, which are malleable, fade with age, and eventually die with us, photographs bear perpetual witness. That’s why photo captions, ideally, should be […]
Vaccination rates are flat while COVID cases rise. Let’s stop compromising with crazy.
If you’re old enough to have a small scar on your upper arm from receiving a smallpox vaccination as a child, congratulations — you’re part of a global, multi-generational effort that, for the first time in human history, eradicated a deadly disease. Smallpox, which had been around for at least three thousand years, probably killed […]
The Chase County Courthouse is a Kansas icon. The jail in its shadow is a disgrace.
If you’ve ever strolled downtown in Cottonwood Falls, you’ll remember the charming courthouse perched on the square at the south end of the brick street. Charming is not a word I use often, but there’s no doubt about it: The Chase County Courthouse is downright charming. With its local limestone walls, red mansard roof and […]
We must change our relationship to water, or lose it forever
Out past the 100th meridian things get dry damned quick. The meridian traditionally marks the line where the west begins and agriculture is difficult without irrigation. You can find it easily on a map of Kansas. Just look for Dodge City, in the lower western third of the state. The meridian runs right through town. […]
The road to the Jan. 6 insurrection goes back to Kansas — let’s reverse its course
When Timothy McVeigh made the bomb that would take down the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, he did it in plain sight, at a state park in Kansas. McVeigh and at least one co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, mixed 4,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate — a common fertilizer — with diesel fuel, […]