Josh Turner will release his first book Man Stuff: Thoughts On Faith, Family And Fatherhood April 29. “In this book you’ll learn a little bit more about how God has shaped and continues to shape me,” Turner says. “You’ll also learn about my wife, my boys and the family I grew up in. I hope you see that the everyday small things in this life really do add up to matter a great deal in the long run. And I hope you’ll smile – even laugh – and gain a little wisdom along the way. Maybe even a lot.” Duck Dynasty‘sJase Robertson will provide the forward. More here.
It’s coming soon. K-State Research and Extension’s fitness challenge — Walk Kansas — is scheduled to begin March 16 through May 10. Now is a great time to begin forming teams in order to meet the registration deadline of March 10.
Linda Beech is Ellis County Extension Agent for Family and Consumer Sciences with Kansas State Research and Extension.
The low-cost fitness program attracted over 18,000 participants across the state last year. It has also become a popular worksite wellness program in Kansas with many employers encouraging– or sponsoring– employees to participate. Last year, more than 225 people participated in Ellis County and logged enough miles to circle the globe!
A kick-off rally and mall walk will be offered March 8 from noon to 2 p.m. at the Mall in Hays to bring attention to Walk Kansas. Shoppers may learn more about the 8-week program, enjoy a self-paced walk in the mall and earn chances to win prizes. Team registration materials will also be available.
Walk Kansas encourages teams of six friends, family members, co-workers or church-mates to log enough exercise to compile 423 miles in eight weeks– equal to the distance across the state. If that seems too easy, teams may select from other more ambitious challenges– to log enough exercise to reach across the state and back (846 miles) or around the perimeter of Kansas. That’s 1200 miles!
Although introduced a decade ago to encourage walking, Walk Kansas has expanded to also count 15-minute intervals of moderate physical activity such as hiking, biking, swimming, water aerobics or other individual and team sports as one mile toward a Walk Kansas team goal.
The team approach helps make this fitness program flexible and fun. A little friendly peer pressure from teammates may be all that it takes to encourage some of us to get moving. Being able to exercise alone or with others, on your own schedule and using your favorite activities also is a plus.
An additional feature of the Walk Kansas program is an emphasis on good nutrition along with exercise. Most Americans could be healthier simply by eating more fruits and vegetables each day. To encourage participants to include a diet rich in these healthful foods, cups of fruits and vegetables will be recorded along with minutes of exercise. The goal for each individual is to consume 4 to 5 cups of fruits and vegetables daily.
Most teams who enroll in Walk Kansas meet their goal. And, people who have participated in the program in recent years often will say they look better, feel better, have more energy, improved sleep habits, lower blood pressure, and notice a difference in how their clothes feel.
Regular moderate physical activity also is known to reduce the risks of heart disease, diabetes and some cancers.
The cost to participate is affordable. A $18-per-team registration fee covers program materials, weekly email newsletters, and local activities. An optional T-shirt — this year’s color choices include turquoise, purple and gray — also can be purchased for an additional $7 for standard sizes, $8.50 for 2X and 3X sizes.
New this year, a student leadership team from Fort Hays State University will offer extra activities to enhance the Ellis County Walk Kansas experience. A dinner and training meeting is planned for team captains and all participants may attend a noon program on easy exercises and a group walk to the KSU Ag Research Center. Full details about these extra activities are included in the Walk Kansas materials.
Registration packets are available at the Ellis County Extension, 601 Main, Ste. A. Teams might pick up a registration packet anytime to be returned with completed registration forms and fees by March 10. For more information, call (785) 628-9430.
More information about Walk Kansas is available on the Ellis County Extension website at www.ellis.ksu.edu. You can also follow Walk Kansas on Facebook at “K-State Research and Extension-Ellis County” and “Kansas State University Walk Kansas.”
Linda K. Beech is Ellis County Extension Agent for Family and Consumer Sciences.
The Ellis County Fair Association announced in a news release Friday the signing of The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band to perform at the 2014 Ellis County Fair. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band will perform July 18, with Logan Mize opening.
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Nearing its fifth decade together, the iconic and influential Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, often cited as a catalyst for an entire movement in country rock and American roots music, continues to add to their legendary status.
With multi-platinum and gold records, strings of Top 10 hits such as “Fishin’ In The Dark” and “Mr. Bojangles,” multiple Grammy, IBMA, CMA Awards and nominations, the band’s accolades continue to accumulate.
Their groundbreaking “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” album has been inducted into the U.S. Library of Congress, as well as the Grammy Hall of Fame. The band’s recording of “Mr. Bojangles” also was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2010.
The band’s members — Jeff Hanna, Jimmie Fadden, Bob Carpenter and John McEuen — continue their non-stop touring in their 48th year together. Their most recent studio release was 2009’s “Speed of Life.”
A Hays couple is moving their photography business from one downtown location to another.
Crossroads Photography, owned by Thomas and Jayme Zimmerman, will be relocating from for former Philip Hardware building on Main Street to 131 W. Eighth.
The building, just east of Quizno’s and north of the U.S. Post Office, appealed to the couple because of its size.
“We had kind of outgrown our studio, and I wanted to be able to provide more options for our clients,” said Jayme Zimmerman, who lives in Ellis.
Crossroad offers a variety of services ranging from wedding shoots and high school senior photos to family portraits and children’s pictures.
Zimmerman’s love of photography began as a 4-H project as a child and was rekindled when a college friend sougght her out for wedding photos.
“Once we did that, it kind of escalated,” she said.
Thomas handles much of the lighting and technology aspects of the business, while Jayme said her forte is posing and focusing the little details that makes images shine.
Jayme said the couple is hoping to have the new Crossroads building ready for a grand reopening for the April Hays Arts Council gallery walk.
The couple is initially leasing the building, but hopes to own it by 2015.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas City, Kan., woman was sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison for trying to drown her two daughters in a bathtub.
Twenty-four-year-old Johnna Green was sentenced Friday for two counts of attempted second-degree murder. She was given 59 months on each charge, with the sentences to run consecutively.
She initially was charged with two counts of attempted first-degree murder after she tried to drown her 1- and 4-year-old girls last April. She pleaded guilty to lesser charges in a plea agreement.
The Kansas City Star reports Green called police to the house, saying “I just killed my kids.” She told investigators she had “perceived” that the girls were “having difficulty with concentrating” and she wanted to prevent that problem.
SALINA — Two all-terrain vehicles, accessories and the trailers they were in have been stolen from the NRCS office parking lot, 760 S. Broadway in Salina.
The theft occurred between 8a.m. Monday and 11a.m. Thursday.
One ATV was a green 2003 Suzuki , and the other was a camo 2011 Kawasaki.
Both were in white horse trailers secured to pickups in the southwest corner of the parking lot. Locks on the hitches were cut.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A 20-year-old Topeka woman was sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison for the shooting death of a Lawrence man.
Brittny Marie Adams was sentenced Friday for the July 2013 shooting death of 51-year-old Gary Edens at his home in Lawrence.
Adams pleaded guilty in January to intentional second-degree murder and no contest to two counts of felony threats against a Douglas County Jail corrections officer.
The Lawrence Journal-World reports Adams and a 29-year-old Wichita man, Johnathan Rush, were arrested shortly after Edens was shot. Rush pleaded guilty in November to federal firearms charges.
Investigators say Adams and Rush went to Edens’ home while searching for two girls who abandoned her in Topeka and took off with her car. A motive for Rush’s shooting has not been disclosed.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) on Thursday spoke on the Senate floor to refute Senator Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) assertion that Americans with stories of struggle under Obamacare are liars and “all of them are untrue.”
On Wednesday, Sen. Reid used a column written by his own political consultant to discredit the stories being told of Americans who have very real struggles and have lost their health care coverage as a result of Obamacare. The Majority Leader went on to accuse those working to bring light to the broken promises of the Affordable Care Act of being “as un-American as anyone I can imagine.”
JUNCTION CITY — Officials are pushing for a 1 percent increase to the community’s bed tax to help fund a proposed sports complex in Junction City.
The Geary County Convention and Visitors Bureau said money generated by the increase would be set aside to fund the complex.
“We felt it wise to start that process now to generate funding and also to support not only the committees belief but support of the project,” said Connie Hall, CVB Director. “The sports complex is still an on going project. This will also help give further investments and things credibility and belief in the project.”
She said the increase would generate approximately $113,000 a year and put the community’s bed tax on par with Manhattan and Abilene.
The increase has received support from the local lodging industry and the Junction City Area Chamber of Commerce.
The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum bows Miranda Lambert: Backstage Access May 16 featuring gowns, costumes, awards and more. The exhibition chronicles Lambert’s 2013, with her tweets providing the narrative thread. “We are looking forward to taking our visitors behind the scenes with Miranda during her amazing successes in 2013,” says Museum Dir. Kyle Young. Backstage Access runs through Nov. 9.
On Thursday, the Hays City Commission awarded bids for the 2014 street maintenance program. The proved include a $219,784 bid to Hi-Plains Sand for chip seal, a $124,872.16 bid to Stripe and Seal for the reconstruction of 11th Street, a $42,400 bid to Sweeney Pavement Maintenance for polypatch, and a $71,509 bid to Stripe and Seal for curb and brick repair.
By awarding the bid, the city will also allocate $75,000 for in-house work and $20,000 for the sidewalk rebate program. It will also leave approximately $44,785 for any unforeseen work or cost overruns.
Public works director I.D. Creech reported the 11th Street repairs will happen in two phases, which will benefit the business owners on the street.
“We talked to the business owners that will be effected by this project and the construction will occur in two phases; an east half and a west half.” John Braun, assistant director of Public Works said. “That was built into the bid documents, that the contractor would be required to do it so that businesses could be accessed.”
Commissioner Henry Schwaller expressed concerned there were still other streets that needed repairs in the Hays area.
“We typically spend a lot more on street repairs. This is quite small, yet our needs are pretty large.” Schwaller said. “There are streets that need a certain level of care, and if we don’t get to them, they’ll just continue to deteriorate.”
City Manager Toby Dougherty said the city usually spends extra funds from the general fund for street repairs, but the plan is to save that money for future projects such as the 13th Street repairs, the possibility of subsidies for the KDOT essential air service program, and for the final design of the airport terminal.
“We would love to have the extra money,” Dougherty said. “I would just caution that we get some of the other things wrapped up and then, assuming we don’t have to spend extra money on those other projects, we will be the first ones coming back asking for additional allocations.”
The money for the street repairs will come out of the gas tax the city collects.
The First Amendment establishes our right to a press free from intrusion, regulation or intimidation by the government.
As to a right to be free from questions by a national “news nanny,” it’s all in how you view the ultimate intent.
Gene Policinski is senior vice president of the First Amendment Center
A few weeks ago, a Republican appointee to the Federal Communications Commission kicked up a fuss — particularly among conservative groups — about a planned FCC study of how journalists make news decisions.
Commissioner Ajit Pai wrote an op-ed column Feb. 10 in The Wall Street Journal saying the commission’s “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” or CIN, meant “the agency plans to send researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run,” starting with a pilot program in Columbia, S.C.
“The purpose of the CIN,” Pai wrote, “ … is to ferret out information from television and radio broadcasters about ‘the process by which stories are selected’ and how often stations cover ‘critical information needs,’ along with ‘perceived station bias’ and ‘perceived responsiveness to underserved populations.’”
Noting that the FCC has the power to renew or deny broadcast licenses, Pai wrote that the voluntary study was anything but that. He wondered why the study also included newspapers, over which the FCC historically has had no authority.
As happens in today’s polarized political environment, liberal observers took a different tack, saying the study was prepared with the help of USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and was simply part of an ongoing FCC obligation to periodically report to Congress on how well the public gets information it needs, and what hurdles may exist to improving that process.
On Feb. 21, the FCC backed away from its plan. “Any suggestion the Commission intends to regulate the speech of news media is false,” FCC spokeswoman Shannon Gilson said. A revised study will be conducted, but journalists and news media owners will not be asked to participate.
So: An outright assault on a free press — with, as the more florid claims said, official “news monitors” in every newsroom? Or a benign bureaucratic survey that began more than two years ago, created in cooperation with the very journalists it was intended to examine?
Lest we forget, there’s nothing in the First Amendment that protects the press from questions, criticism and review, by anybody. But when government does so, it merits extra caution and concern — if not claims that that “media sky is falling.” The government“s record on good intentions and the news media can provide enough cause to worry.
Just seven years after the Bill of Rights, with its First Amendment, was adopted, Congress approved and President John Adams signed a law that provided for prosecution of editors critical of either one. Within a few years the law was allowed to expire, having lost public support after more than a dozen journalists were jailed under the pretense of inciting war with France, which some saw as a mere excuse to eliminate political opponents.
Attempts by the government to restrain the press prior to publication have, through the years, ultimately have been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, notably in the so-called “Pentagon Papers” case in 1971 when the Nixon administration tried to prevent publication of a secret report on U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
And the FCC itself created a prime example of good intentions-gone-wrong with the history of its Fairness Doctrine, enacted in 1949. The commission was concerned then about the concentration of news outlets in a few hands, and the doctrine required broadcasters to provide information and varied views on matters of public interest.
Several decades later, it was evident virtually all electronic news outlets chose the safest path to avoid violating the doctrine: Providing no opinion. Once common “broadcast editorials” disappeared. Discarded by the FCC in 1987, the doctrine was made further obsolete by the proliferation of cable TV stations, and by the diversity of outlets and information available on the Internet — which some says makes the entire commission an anachronism and unneeded.
Still, surveys show that broadcast TV remains the largest single medium by which the public gets news — and both liberals and conservatives find reason to regularly criticize all or part of that news media. Newspapers clearly face financial hurdles — and tens of thousands of jobs in journalism have been lost in the past 20 years.
Yes, how well the news media are meeting their obligation to readers, viewers, listeners and users is a worthy subject of study — and is regularly, by non-profit organizations, private media monitoring groups and an ever-vocal host of individual critics.
Regulators doing that very studying should raise caution, if not the panic voiced by some commentators. Might not a “study of the studies” and reviews of oft-expressed criticism be more efficient and just as informative for that portion of the FCC’s examination of the news media today?
In addition to providing its critics with an easy target, the pilot FCC study also provided its own benediction: “Go forth and CIN no more.”
Gene Policinski is chief operating officer of the Washington-based Newseum Institute and senior vice president of the Institute’s First Amendment Center. [email protected]
Josh Turner will release his first book Man Stuff: Thoughts On Faith, Family And Fatherhood April 29. “In this book you’ll learn a little bit more about how God has shaped and continues to shape me,” Turner says. “You’ll also learn about my wife, my boys and the family I grew up in. I hope you see that the everyday small things in this life really do add up to matter a great deal in the long run. And I hope you’ll smile – even laugh – and gain a little wisdom along the way. Maybe even a lot.” Duck Dynasty‘sJase Robertson will provide the forward. More here.
