On a summer morning in 1961 I wished I was fishing. Instead, I was beside the old water cooling tower north of Monarch’s cement plant pulling on a thick rubberized suit and bulky headgear. This…

A confession: I voted by mail recently. And it didn’t feel dirty at all. Like every voter, I had been warned against the practice by President Donald Trump. “Mail-in ballots are very dangerous,” he said.…

Another virus is infecting the world in the wake of COVID-19 and it is hitting the United States with particular virulence. A plague of conspiracy theories is attacking scientific facts about the pandemic, and replacing…

Now that he’s retired from teaching school for 40 years, Humboldt’s Mike Bruner has decided to run for office.  On Wednesday, Bruner filed to run for the state senate. With the filing deadline on June…

Wispy clouds slowly turned to shades of pink and muted red as the sun emerged over the eastern horizon. Coming alive atop the peaked tin roof of an old barn, three turkey buzzards stretched awake.…

The Topeka Capital-Journal published a stunning story this week on foster care in Kansas. It begs the question: Why hasn’t the legislature prioritized foster care oversight and reform in the last decade? From 2016 to…

As the COVID-19 crisis unfolds across the globe, one lesson is emerging: markets are extremely fragile, and critically needed help will come not from business but from governments. Neoliberal pundits and conservative economists have insisted…

COVID-19 arrived, it started killing us, we had an American shutdown unprecedented in history. And as we maybe, just maybe, start edging our way out of it, we are almost certainly going to start altering…

With the stealth of a cat on the prowl, the young hunter ever so slowly inched his way through knee-high grass along the Neosho River, north of where Humboldt is today. His skin was deeply…

A hundred years ago, I’m guessing a few Iolans had threatened among themselves to tar and feather Dr. J.S. Sutcliffe, the Allen County Health Officer, who had the authority to determine how long the county…