My high school class from South Haven has a group text where we share things going all the way back to a time when the world was so different than is the case today. Yes,…

On an April afternoon in a small Midwest town, I stood on the side of a busy street with around 500 of my neighbors and community members to protest the current administration and to defend…

The first thing you need to know about President Donald Trump’s decision to deploy National Guard troops in California is that this moment was always coming.  Always.  Back in 2023, long before Trump was elected…

It was around this time two years ago that I had to say goodbye to my dad. Father’s Day has felt different ever since. He was a gentle man of conviction who loved his family…

Equipped with a bucket and rag, I went down to the creek’s bank Wednesday evening seeking atonement. Early last summer, I had planted two viburnum bushes about eight feet from the water’s edge.  Two things…

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, / That wants it down,” Robert Frost observed in his poem “Mending Wall.” I am one of those somethings. When the speaker of Frost’s poem wonders what…

In the never-ending battle for LGBTQ rights, two things happened Tuesday half a continent apart.  One made me more proud to be a Wichitan. The other made me less proud to be an American.  In…

In 2021, Kansas Tourism launched the Sunflower Summer program, opening the doors to our state’s zoos, museums, nature centers, and historical sites to Kansas families — for free!  Designed to help young Kansans explore and…

Several years ago, a colleague teaching at Miami University, a large state school in Ohio, kindly invited me to give a talk there. After picking me up at the airport, he suggested that we have…

The $4 billion Panasonic battery factory in De Soto should have been a first-of-a-kind project for Kansas and the Midwest.  In addition to the estimated 4,000 new jobs coming to town, Panasonic and the state…