MANHATTAN -With a heavy heart, the Riley County Police Department on Friday announced in a media release the passing of K9 Dino.
He had experienced deteriorating health issues due to his age.
The police department announced Dino’s retirement in December 2014 after a career of 11 years serving the Manhattan and Riley County community.
Dino spent his retirement at home with his handler, Officer Aaron Wright and family.
Dino and Officer Wright were a key part of numerous drug investigations and helped the department seize over 16,200 grams of illegal drugs as well help make 435 arrests, since 2006.
MCPHERSON -The McPherson County Sheriff’s Office reported in a media release they are asking the public to assist them in locating a man missing from Salina.
According to his family, Christopher Howell, 25, was last seen at the Ambassy Hotel in Salina during the week of May 6th, after being dropped off by a relative.
He was planning on taking a bus to visit another relative, but never arrived at that relative’s location.
Howell is 6’4″ tall and weighs 182 pounds. He has brown or dirty blonde hair and brown eyes. He may have grown out a beard that would be red in color.
If you have any information regarding Howell’s disappearance or know of his whereabouts, please contact the McPherson County Sheriff’s Office at 620-245-1225.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The dean of Wichita State University’s College of Engineering has apologized to students for failing to warn them earlier about fee increases.
The Wichita Eagle reports Royce Bowden emailed 3,000 students from his college this week, apologizing that more information wasn’t communicated sooner about the fee hikes.
The expanded fee charges both engineering and health professions students $50 per credit hour for every class they take. They had been paying the $50-per-credit-hour fee only for courses they take for their major.
About 75 engineering students have called student leaders expressing shock at bills that, in some cases, added more than $1,000 to the student costs.
Wichita State spokesman Lou Heldman says the university president plans to meet with student leaders soon to answer questions.
PLAINVILLE – Dessin Fournir Cos., one of America’s leading luxury furniture, lighting and textile design firms, this week announced that OJ Van Maele of Tielt, Belgium, has been acquired by the newly formed Garnell-Lake investment group, which was created by Dessin Fournir Companies’ Co-Founder & CEO Chuck Comeau and a group of design industry leaders from around the country.
OJ Van Maele is one of Belgium’s oldest and most respected linen mills and a favored resource of designers, both domestic and international. Founded in 1906 and run today by CEO Carl Holcomb, who will stay on at the helm of the firm, the company is a producer of luxury textiles and wall-coverings, which are exported globally. While their exquisite linen makes up most of their production, the company also works with other natural or exotic fibers as raffia, horsehair, abaca and more.
Like many in the industry, Comeau has been a fan of OJ Van Maele for many years and recently learned of the company’s distress, which was traceable to the financial issues of the last decade. Determined to help the company, he reached out to a number of design world luminaries, all of whom felt as strongly as he about helping to preserve what could quickly become a lost art form. From there, the Garnell-Lake investment group was quickly formed to raise the necessary funds. Besides Comeau, the group includes Randy Powers/J. Randall Powers Design; Shea Soucie/Soucie Horner; Suzanne Tucker/Tucker & Marks; Tim Marks/Tucker & Marks; Suzanne Kasler/Suzanne Kasler Design; Winton Noah/Ainsworth Noah; Hal Ainsworth/Ainsworth Noah;Kerry Joyce/Kerry Joyce and Associates; Doug Kinzley/Kneedler Fauchere; and George Massar/Kneedler Fauchere.
Preserving an artistry that is devoted to old world craftsmanship is a personal goal of Comeau’s, as well as all of his partners in this venture. The entrepreneur’s vision has always been at the core of Dessin Fournir’s philosophy – “we have chosen to preserve an Old World legacy of craftsmanship elsewhere forgotten,” said Comeau. “We are passionate about preserving the traditions of hand craftsmanship and the use of only the finest materials and master craftsman skills. With the help of a handful of industry VIPs, we are now able to preserve the old world craftsmanship of Van Maele and the world will continue to experience some of the most finest textiles known to mankind,” added Comeau.
The acquisition will allow the renowned Belgian linen mill to continue to build on its 109 year-old legacy of luxury weaving, superior design and craftsmanship. Going forward, it will operate under the new name of “Van Maele Weavers” and will be run as a separate entity, reporting directly to the investor group.
About Dessin Fournir Companies:
Dessin Fournir Companies, founded in 1993 and based in Plainville, KS, is a highly curated collection of to-the-trade luxury furniture, textiles, lighting, and accessories companies. Under the Dessin Fournir Companies’ umbrella are the following brands: Dessin Fournir, Gerard, Kerry Joyce, Classic Cloth, Rose Cumming, Palmer Hargrave, Fritsch, Therien, Quatrain, Erika Brunson, and, most recently acquired, Kenneth Meyer of San Francisco.
In addition to overseeing the design, manufacture and marketing of these prestigious brands, Dessin Fournir Companies represents a handful of top-tier firms in their New York and Chicago showrooms, including Conrad Shades, Kneedler Fauchere Imports, SHIIR Rugs, Stephen Antonson, Kerry Joyce Textiles, and Van Gregory& Norton. Visit https://www.dessinfournir.com for more information.
Bob Lord, a veteran tax lawyer and former congressional candidate, practices and blogs in Phoenix.
Donald Trump alienated millions of voters with his ugly attacks on Mexican immigrants and John McCain’s war record. But he rocketed to the top of GOP presidential polls anyway.
Is Trump’s racism driving this surge? Maybe. But I’d argue it’s something else: his relentless, self-aggrandizing celebration of his own wealth.
Recently, Trump estimated his net worth at over $10 billion. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index pegs this fortune way lower, at $2.9 billion, while other estimates clock in at only $1.5 billion. In any case, Trump is “really rich” — as he bragged when he launched his presidential bid.
I’d put Trump’s obsession with money at the root of all the ugly traits he personifies. His base desire to accumulate — and to publicly display — obscene wealth divides his world into what he sees as worthy winners and unworthy losers.
According to Trump’s guiding philosophy, winners like him deserve everything they have. Only losers, as he sees John McCain, get captured. Americans are winners. Mexicans and Chinese are losers — who, Trump says, must be kept away with border walls and stiff tariffs to make them “behave.”
Trump’s over-the-top boasting reflects a long-trending change in how those at the very top see their own wealth. It also echoes an evolution in how the rest of us view people whose fortunes, as the playwright Edward Moore put it, run “beyond the dreams of avarice.”
When Forbes first published its list of the 400 wealthiest Americans in 1982, many of the rich people who made the list were embarrassed at having their extreme wealth exposed. Heirs to the Dow Jones publishing empire reportedly hung up on the Forbes reporter who called them. Ken Davis, heir to a Texas oil fortune, actually sued — albeit unsuccessfully — alleging an invasion of privacy.
Attitudes have changed. While many super-wealthy Americans still suppress the urge to flaunt their wealth, very few of them feel the need to keep it a secret. Many take great pride in their immense fortunes.
And many of us admire them for it.
I’ve seen this change firsthand. In innumerable conversations, my friends and acquaintances who mix with the very wealthy have approvingly relayed stories of huge parties, yachts, private jets, car collections, and glittering mansions. The tone, typically, is one of respect and admiration.
The transformation doesn’t end with the mega-rich. With displays of extreme wealth all around them, those with more modest wealth — even some in the top 1 percent — now consider themselves middle-class.
It’s a matter of perception. In the 1970s, when the ultra-wealthy concealed their wealth and lived more modestly, a person who drove a BMW, dined out often, and took European vacations could consider himself rich.
No longer. With the wealth of the Forbes 400 tracked daily online and countless stories about Donald Trump and other wealth-flaunting celebs in the news, even a physician who takes home $500,000 a year might not feel rich.
The more the modestly rich see themselves as simply middle-class, the more they succumb to their base instinct to chase wealth far beyond their rational needs. That breeds resentment at paying taxes to fund programs for the less fortunate.
And those anti-immigrant remarks? Yes, they appeal to a dark strain of nativism. But doesn’t nativism stem from a base desire not to share with those less fortunate?
Trump may eventually say something so outrageous that he’s forced off the national stage. But unless we as a people re-learn that extreme wealth is better off shared than showed, there will be more Donald Trumps.
OtherWords.org columnist Bob Lord is a veteran tax lawyer who practices and blogs in Phoenix. He’s an associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.
By DAVE RANNEY
One out of five adult Kansans and nearly one out of four adult Missourians has at least one disability, says a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In Kansas, difficulty walking was the most common disability (13 percent), followed by cognitive impairment (9 percent); inability to live alone due to physical, mental or emotional conditions (5 percent); difficulty bathing or dressing (3 percent), and seriously impaired vision (3 percent).
Minnesota had the fewest adults with at least one disability, at 16 percent, while Alabama had the most, at 32 percent. Kansas was near the middle at 20 percent. Missouri registered at 24 percent.
The report was based on data gathered in 2013 during a CDC-sponsored telephone survey that involved roughly 465,000 respondents nationwide, including nearly 22,800 from Kansas.
The calls were limited to adults who were not living in institutional settings such as nursing homes. Respondents were not asked if they were deaf or hearing impaired.
Among the report’s findings:
Southern states tend to have the highest percentages of people with disabilities.
Women tend to have more disabilities than men.
The two most frequently cited causes of immobility were arthritis and “back and spine problems.”
Almost 50 percent of adults living in households with annual incomes of less than $15,000 have a disability.
Nearly 40 percent of adults who did not complete high school have a disability.
Though previous surveys have gathered data on disabilities, this was the first year that the survey, officially known as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), included questions to categorize disability.
“This is important information,” said Martha Hodgesmith, associate director of the Research and Training Center on Independent Living at the University of Kansas. “For years, advocates for people with disabilities have been wanting to get finer-grain information from BRFSS, which is what we’re seeing now.”
Dave Ranney is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.
HUTCHINSON – One of five teens accused of threatening to shoot students at Hutchinson High School is back in juvenile detention.
Police report 16-year-old Takoda Bowman was taken into custody on suspicion of criminal threat. Police say Bowman went into the Bogey’s restaurant and made the threats around 12:45 Thursday afternoon.
Bowman and the other four teens involved were recently released from custody after they were arrested in May on charges of solicitation to commit first-degree murder. The five are accused of planning the mass killing at the school through text and social media. The five have maintained their innocence saying it was a joke, and that they would never carry out such a plan.
Bowman, along with Andrea Harris, Jake Eells, Tyler Cabral and Dominic Collins all await trial in the case. No date for the trial has been set.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Topeka Police Department says it’s planning changes to policies on how police deal with dogs after an officer recently shot and killed a retired judge’s pet.
A Topeka police officer fatally shot the 26-pound dog in July after it began charging in the backyard of James Macnish, a retired Shawnee County district judge who owned the dog.
The Topeka Capital-Journal reports the police department also released a video from the officer’s body camera that shows him fatally shooting the dog.
Police Chief James Brown said at a news conference Thursday that the officer’s actions were appropriate, but upcoming changes will recognize that officers have other tools, including pepper spray, to possibly control aggressive animals.
The new rules will also require officers to undergo training in handling dog encounters.
Teachers in southwest Kansas school districts usually have to travel a lot of miles for professional development opportunities.
However, thanks to a grant proposal written by Fort Hays State University and administered by the Kansas State Department of Education, numerous K-12 instructors in that area of the state have been spending time in the classroom the past couple of weeks, learning how to teach the new multi-state education standards released two years ago.
Kim Mauk, Rolla superintendent
A group of 26 states — Kansas being one of them — developed Next Generation Science Standards for teaching in the United States in an effort to develop greater interest in science. Kansas was one of 13 states to adopt the standards.
Faculty from Fort Hays State University’s College of Education and Technology and the College of Arts and Sciences successfully wrote three grant proposals that supported workshops on the new standards this summer. In addition to a workshop held at the Southwest Plains Service Center in Sublette, similar programs also were held in Wichita and Topeka.
The total of the grants was $421,243, with the option of the two U.S. Department of Education Mathematics and Science Partnerships grants that supported the workshops in Wichita and Topeka being renewable for up to two additional years.
The final workshop ended Friday at the Southwest Plains Service Center.
Kim Mauk, superintendent of Rolla USD 217, a small school district in Morton County, the farthest southwest county in the state, said she “jumped on this opportunity when I saw it.”
“The teachers have heard about the new science standards,” she said, “but this allows them to see firsthand what this all means.”
The workshops are designed to address K-12 Next Generation of Science Standards. These standards involve modeling instruction, where students learn science through discovery and lab activities rather than lectures or PowerPoint presentations.
“We had really good participation,” said Mauk, who signed up nine of her teachers for the workshop. “Even my kindergarten teacher thought, ‘How can I make this connection with what I’m doing in the classroom?’ ”
The intensive two-week workshops are designed to better prepare teachers at the elementary level to teach the Next Generation Science Standards, thus raising student capabilities in science and math.
Dr. Paul Adams
“We teach the teachers, and the secondary effect is the students,” said Dr. Paul Adams, dean of the College of Education and Technology and director of the FHSU Science and Mathematics Institute.
“These are great partnerships to help school districts across the state,” said Adams, also a professor of physics and the Anschutz Professor of Education. “I think all the teachers left with more confidence to teach physical science.”
Adams and former FHSU faculty member Dr. Adam Holden were in charge of the workshop “Engineering Our Future” in the Topeka school district.
“Hopefully this will better prepare teachers at the elementary level to teach the new science standards,” said Dr. Keith Dreiling, associate professor of mathematics and computer science, one of the FHSU faculty who worked the Topeka workshop.
“It also creates a partnership between us and the teachers,” Dreiling said. “I have quite a bit of science in my background, but I learned a lot about the new things, too.”
Adams was also the principal investigator on the project “Training Opportunity to Integrating Math Practices Related to Elementary Science Standards,” whose lead agency was Wichita USD 259.
Dr. Eric Deyo, assistant professor of physics, taught at two of the three workshops, in Wichita and at the southwest Kansas one, which was led by Dr. Beth Walizer, an associate professor of teacher education at FHSU.
“We want them to learn how to do this and take it back to the schools,” Walizer said. “We decided we would take the professional development to them. It was definitely easier access for them.”
Adams, in his 22nd year at Fort Hays State, is a guru at writing grant proposals. He said he generally works on four to six proposals a year, but this is the first time he has been involved with three grants being awarded at the same time.
“Sometimes you’re a winner, sometimes you’re a loser,” he said.
This time, a whole lot of teachers around Kansas — and students as well — came out winners.
All three of this summer’s projects involve follow-ups throughout the coming school year to track teachers’ progress.
“I think these are great partnerships,” Adams said, “to help school districts across the state.”
Hays, Kansas – Monica Lea Brothers, age 58, died Wednesday, August 5, 2015, at Via Christi-St. Francis Medical Center Wichita, Kansas.
She was born August 7, 1956, in Great Bend, Kansas, to Vernon and Melba Jean (Foos) Smith. She married Jimmie Brothers on February 9, 1976. He died November 30, 2014.
She was a homemaker and moved to Hays from Los Alamos, New Mexico. She grew up in Great Bend, Kansas and was a graduate of Great Bend High School.
Survivors include two daughters, Melissah Brothers, Hays, KS; Amanda Brothers, Eagle River, WI; her mother, Melba Jean Smith, Hays, KS; one sister, Joanie Young and husband, Pat, Oklahoma City, OK; two aunts, Freda Broetzmann, Hays, KS; and Guilia Foos, Perry, KS.
She was preceded in death by her father; husband; one brother, Tracey Christopher Smith; grandparents, H. Lee and Ruth Smith; Philip P. and Esther Foos.
Services are at 2:00 P.M. Saturday, August 8, 2015, at Cline’s Mortuary of Hays, 1919 East 22nd Street, Hays, Kansas 67601. A private Inurnment in the Larned Cemetery will be held at a later date.
Visitation is from 11:00 to 2:00 P.M. Saturday, at Cline’s Mortuary of Hays.
Memorials are to Ana’s Gift, Dolly Parton’s Imaginary Library or the Monica Brothers family. Condolences can be send via email to [email protected].
Helen Barber Norman, age 98, passed away on Wednesday, August 5, 2015 at the Scott County Hospital in Scott City, Kansas. She was born on April 29, 1917 in Sumner County, Kansas, the daughter of Ruthburn and Alpha Lile Barber. A lifetime resident of Western Kansas, she was a teacher with a Masters Degree in Special Education.
Her memberships include the United Methodist Church, United Methodist Women, Kansas Teachers Association, and was a Past Camp Lakeside board member.
On June 25,, 1944 she married Rev. Merlin F. Norman in Scott City, Kansas. He passed away on February 14, 1993 in Scott City, Kansas.
Survivors Include her Two Sons – Merlin Norman, Jr. Of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Charles Norman of Dighton, Kansas, Two Daughters – Helen (Terry) Dobbs of Goodland, Kansas, Zoa Norman of Chicago, Illinois, One Brother – Lyle Barber of Hutchinson, Kansas, Thirteen Grandchildren, Twenty Nine Great Grandchildren, Fourteen Great Great Grandchildren and Fifteen Nieces & Nephews.
She was preceded in death by her Parents, Husband, Two Brothers – Edwin Barber and Beryl Barber and One Sister – Dorothy Wagner.
Funeral Services will be held at the United Methodist Church in Scott City, Kansas at 2:00 p.m. Saturday, August 8, 2015 with the Rev. John Lewis presiding.
Memorials amy be given to Camp Lakeside % Price & Sons Funeral Home.
Interment will be in the Scott County Cemetery in Scott City, Kansas.
Visitation will be from 10:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. Friday at Price & Sons Funeral Home in Scott City, Kansas.
Restaurateur “Pasta Jay” Elowsky – whose restaurant Pasta Jay’s will anchor a 12-storefront retail development at 43rd and Vine – is getting ready for his new location in Hays, set to occur mid-to-late spring.
Jay Elowsky, daughter Josie and son Jay Wyatt.
The restaurant will offer a wide variety of Italian fare and will be the fourth location for the small chain, with others located in Moab, Utah; Boulder, Colo.; and Lone Tree, Colo.
While the model will be the same as the other locations, it will also be tailored to Hays, Elowsky said.
“Steaks” came to mind, as he currently offers a 16-ounce New York strip and a 12-ounce baseball-cut sirloin in his Boulder location.
“I imagine those will be transferred down there,” he said.
But for Jay, his restaurants are more than a place for people to eat.
“We like to be involved in the community,” he said. “Customers and employees are like family.”
“Our best marketing tool is the food we service,” Jay said, noting his strong desire to make his restaurants “a place you can call home.”
The business is likely to create around 50 jobs and will be completely staffed locally after training by three or four people from outside locations, Elowsky said.
Developer Stephen Tebo of Tebo Properties is spearheading the development and originally reached out to Jay suggesting the Hays market would be a good fit for a new location.
For more on Pasta Jay’s, including company history and menus, click HERE.
