Have you ever tried sautéeing with water or preparing a boiled salad? It is easy to get in a rut and prepare the same foods in the same way.
Join Donna Krug, Cottonwood Extension FCS Agent from Great Bend, on Tuesday, April 3rd, at noon at the Extension Office Meeting Room, 601 Main in Hays, for this free educational program. Donna wrote the K-State Research and Extension fact sheet that highlights five healthy cooking styles and cutting techniques.
Give the Hays office of the Cottonwood Extension District a call at 785-628-9430 to register. Several recipes are included in the fact sheet and samples will be shared.
Developmental Services of Northwest Kansas, was recently announced as the recipient of a $399 grant from Midwest Energy, Inc. for it’s Kid-Link program.
The grant award will be used to purchase a Boardmaker Plus Program.
The Boardmaker is a program to create visual schedules, communication books, interactive activities and speech boards.This system can be used for infant’s, toddler’s or older children regardless of their abilities.It will aid communication between parents and children as an environmental prompt to help children remember what is expected of them in a certain activity or routine.The program may help prevent or reduce challenging behaviors, support social competence, and enhance memory.By using this program, children will be better prepared for their transition into school.
The DSNWK Kid-Link program provides a full range of early intervention services to infant and toddlers from birth through two years of age in their natural living environment.
The parishes in and around Hays, will celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday with a solemn hour of prayer and benediction at 3 p.m. Sunday at Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church, 500 E. 19th St., Hays.
The service will include adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, the Divine Mercy Chaplet in song, as well as prayers, music and meditation.
Devotion for Divine Mercy began in the 1930s when Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, an uneducated Polish nun, received special communications with Jesus in which he asked her to have this image painted to spread the message of his mercy.
Under the instructions of a spiritual director, Saint Faustina, as she is known, wrote down her revelations with Jesus, which is now contained in her 600-page diary. In these writings, Saint Faustina said we are to call upon Jesus with trust, receive his mercy and let it flow through us to others.
This mercy fulfills the message in Matthew’s gospel that states, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”
Saint Faustina said in her diary that we “radiate” God’s mercy to others by our actions, our words and our prayers.
The Divine Mercy image is a painting of Jesus with two rays emerging from his heart representing the blood and water which flowed from the side of Jesus as his heart was lanced after he died upon the cross.
One is pale representing the water which makes souls righteous. The other is red for the blood, which is the life of souls.
“These two rays issued forth from the very depths of my tender mercy when my agonized heart was opened by a lance on the cross. These rays shield souls from the wrath of my father. Happy is the one who dwell in their shelter, for the just hand of God shall not lay hold of him.” (Diary number 299)
Saint Faustina died in 1938 at the age of 33. She was canonized a saint April 30, 2000, in Rome by Pope John Paul II. At this time, the pontiff said that the Sunday after Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday, would now be an official feast day of the Church.
Divine Mercy is not just for Catholics – it is for all souls. All Christians share in Jesus’ mercy, and all are invited to participate in this special hour of prayer.”
TOPEKA — The Kansas Cold Weather Rule ends on Saturday, March 31. That means Kansans who are behind on electric and natural gas utility bills will be subject to disconnection of service unless they contact their utility company to make payment arrangements.
The Cold Weather Rule is in effect from November 1 through March 31 each year. It provides protection from disconnection to residential customers serviced by utilities under the Kansas Corporation Commission’s (KCC) jurisdiction. That protection ends on Saturday. Failure to make arrangements or failure to adhere to an already established payment plan could result in service disconnection. Reconnection may require payment in full.
The Cold Weather Rule requires regulated utilities to set up 12-month payment plans for customers who cannot afford to pay their full bill. As part of this arrangement, the customer must make an initial payment of 1/12 of the overdue amount, 1/12 of the bill for current service, the full amount of any disconnection or reconnection fees, plus any applicable deposit owed to the utility. The balance is billed in equal payments over the next 11 months in addition to the regular monthly bill.
The KCC adopted the Cold Weather Rule to protect customers during cold winter weather by providing a reasonable and organized method of paying past due and current bills. For a complete list of utilities regulated by the KCC visit: https://www.kcc.ks.gov/aboutus/jurisdiction
More information about the Cold Weather Rule is available at: https://www.kcc.ks.gov/consumer-information/cold-weather-rule. Kansans may also contact their local utility company or the KCC’s Office of Public Affairs and Consumer Protection at (800) 662-0027.
Tera Pflaum, special education at La Crosse Middle/High School, stands in front of a bulletin board of dozens of her former students.
By CRISTINA JANNEY Hays Post
LA CROSSE — Tera Pflaum wants her students above all else to know there is someone on their side.
She not only tries to get to know and encourage students in her classroom as a resource teacher at La Crosse Middle/High School, she is in the hallways greeting other students. She notices things like new haircuts and congratulates kids on the school play.
“I always say buying in to me is 90 percent of their learning. They have to know that I truly care and I am here for the right reasons,” she said.
She loves her job, but she has more than a passion for teaching. She really cares about her students and their success in academics and life.
Pflaum, 41, has been named the Hays Post Teacher of the Month. She has been a teacher at La Crosse Middle/High School for 18 years. She first taught 11 years of middle school science and then she returned to Fort Hays State University to earn her master’s degree and began teaching special education.
Pflaum’s son, who is 10, recently asked her if she knew what she wanted to be when she was his age. She happily chimed in that yes, she did. She knew she wanted to be a teacher when she was in the second grade. She said her teachers were her rock when she was growing up.
“I had really good teachers growing up,” she said. “They inspired me. I wanted to be for somebody else what they were for me in my education.”
Her greatest inspiration was her Spanish teacher at Cimarron High School, Patricia Howard. She was very involved in the school, and she cared about kids.
“She cared about the subject matter too, but the whole child came first,” Pflaum said, “our needs, our social emotional needs. She cared about us, so I will remember her forever.”
Especially in a small school, Pflaum said teaching is more than just academics.
“There is more to your classroom than just textbooks and notebooks and paper,” she said. “It is knowing the students and knowing their families, knowing their favorite sports team and knowing what kind of birthday cake they like on their birthday. You get to know so much about the population you teach. I think that also helps in the success because these students want to work hard for you. They want you to be proud of them. They have that personal connection.
“I want them to know no matter what obstacle they face or what path they go down, there is always a way to the right path. There is always someone who will lead you in the right direction or push you to be the best you can be.”
She tells her students they don’t have to be a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher. They just need to be the best they can be.
“Nothing less than your best,” she said. “I tell my kids all of the time as long as they are giving me nothing less than their best, that is all I can ask for.”
Pflaum pulls from the struggles in her own life.
“I get these kids,” she said. “I get when they have a rough night or their parents are divorced or their parents are fighting. I understand. Sometimes when they walk in these doors, science, math, English is the last thing on their mind. I think if we meet those social emotional needs… If we meet those basic needs for them, the rest just falls into place for them.”
After years of teaching general education, Pflaum said she felt drawn to students who needed extra attention or needed to learn in a different way. She recalls coloring in the parts of a cell so a student could identify its parts.
“It was always a goal of mine to see a light bulb go on for them,” she said.
Now as a special education teacher, she thrives on seeing her students improve. Sometimes that is increasing their reading ability and others it is being able to go back into a general education classroom.
Pflaum described the most rewarding aspects of her job.
“Definitely seeing students make progress. Having a student who coming in as a seventh grader and is reading at a third- or fourth-grade level and by Christmas we are almost up to a sixth-grade level and closing that gap between them and their regular ed peers is very rewarding,” she said.
Pflaum lives in Hays and her three children attend school in Hays, but she drives back and forth to La Crosse because she loves the school and staff.
“There is something about the family atmosphere down here with the staff,” she said. “I have excellent paras, and it would be very hard to leave that. I would be almost like leaving your family.”
Chelsey Smith, fellow teacher, nominated Pflaum for the Teacher of the Month award.
Smith said in her nomination, “She shows each student the respect and positivity they deserve! In addition to being an amazing full-time teacher making a difference in the lives of all students, she serves as a mentor to new teachers and the Stuco sponsor. Tera is all around an amazing teacher who couldn’t deserve this award more!”
Pflaum has been highly involved in extracurricular activities at the school. She also coordinates the concession stand for all school activities. She is a former middle school basketball, volleyball and cheerleading coach as well as high school cheerleading coach.
Pflaum said being involved shows students that you are committed to them and the school. She might go to a ball game or attend a school play or sponsor a school dance. Between her own children (she also has twin girls at Hays High) and activities at La Crosse, she rarely has an evening at home.
Pflaum’s advice to new teachers?
“Get to know the whole child. It will make you a better teacher, and be a communicator. If you get to know the whole child and let them know you are in it 100 percent and be a good communicator with your peers and parents, you will be a successful teacher. The rest of the stuff just falls into place. …
“Having empathy and getting to know the whole child is not something you are going to learn in a textbook. It is something that has to come from within.”
Some students are hard to reach because they have struggled at school or they have struggled at home and they don’t trust. She is not afraid to talk to her students, sit down on the floor with them or go for a walk with them, and she encourages other new teachers to do the same.
“When they realize that you are in and they are realize you are in it for the long run, they will open up,” she said. “They will trust in you. They will care about you. They will look up to you.”
A key witness in the trial involving three Kansas men accused of planning an attack on Somali immigrants testified Thursday that the group was actively recruiting people to help carry out the alleged plot.
Dan Day recorded months of phone calls and meetings with members of the Kansas Security Force militia as a paid informant for the FBI.
He told jurors that Patrick Stein held at least three recruiting meetings to find out “who was with him, who was against him.”
“I’m tired of waiting on somebody else to do something,” Stein can be heard saying on one recording.
Wright, Allen and Stein-photos Sedgwick Co.
Stein, Curtis Allen and Gavin Wright are charged with conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. They were arrested in October 2016 after a months-long investigation into their alleged plan to bomb an apartment complex and mosque in Garden City.
Day, dressed in jeans and a green-striped, button-down shirt, said he went along with the plot as part of his “persona” as a Kansas Security Force vetting and intelligence officer. He was recruited as an FBI informant, the state says, after he approached officials with his increasing concerns about the defendants’ discussions, which took place in person and during hours-long nightly calls.
Day began recording meetings shortly after the shooting at an Orlando, Florida, nightclub in June 2016. That’s when, he says, he became convinced the defendants “might be serious about actually trying to kill” Somali immigrants.
The men were “outraged,” Day says, about a “Muslim killing all these people, Americans. I was outraged, too.”
The Florida gunman, Omar Mateen, pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State.
Over the course of several weeks, Day says Stein and Allen approached other members of their militia group. During one recorded meeting, Stein tells Cody and Trish Burch — also expected to testify as witnesses in the case — he needs “to know where you guys stand” on a potential attack.
Trish Burch got defensive, Day says. She can be heard on the recording telling Stein, “We’re not just gonna go up and start shooting for no reason.
“We’re not that type of people,” she says. “We believe in protecting ourselves.”
She tells Stein the purpose of a militia is for defense.
“We have to keep our image good,” she says. “We have to be smart about this.”
At another meeting, the defendants tried — and failed — to recruit another couple to be a part of an attack.
Day says he took the defendants seriously.
“They had set their minds on getting rid of all the cockroaches, all the Muslims, killing them,” he says, repeating a term the men used to refer to Somali immigrants.
He says the defendants met frequently to plan the actual attack, studying targets using Google Earth and going on surveillance missions. Day was in charge of suggesting some targets, and he told jurors he thought Garden City would be “attractive” because of its high concentration of Somali Muslim immigrants.
Potential future targets there included a different apartment complex near Garden City Community College, as well as the landlords who rented to Muslims and immigrants.
Day told prosecutors it was difficult to maintain his persona with the militia over the course of the investigation.
“It went against most of everything I believe in myself,” he says.
He also had to avoid planting any ideas with the defendants, per the FBI’s rules.
“It had to be their idea,” he says.
By September 2016, the men were drafting a manifesto to release at the same time as the attack and were close to acquiring the material to make explosives. It was then that the FBI decided to send in an undercover officer to “take control of the situation,” Day said.
“[The defendants] were progressing very fast,” he said.
Within a month, Stein, Allen and Wright were arrested.
Defense attorneys argued last week that Day was not the hero the state is portraying him to be, but a bounty hunter who exploited the defendants and pushed them along. Attorneys said the FBI manipulated the situation against the defendants.
Defense attorneys will have the chance to cross-examine Day when the trial resumes Monday.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri Senate has approved a measure to make it easier for state agencies to share information about potential child abuse.
The measure, passed Thursday in a 31-0 vote, was partially in response to the death of Adrian Jones, a Kansas boy killed by his father and stepmother in 2015 and whose body was fed to pigs. Jones’ family moved between Kansas and Missouri, and lawmakers said increased communication between states, as well as agencies within the states, could help spot similar abuse.
Heather Jones-photo KDOC
The proposal makes several other changes to the foster care system, including extending the amount of time the Department of Social Services is required to retain abuse records.
Today Sunny, with a high near 64. Breezy, with a north wind 5 to 10 mph becoming south southwest 16 to 21 mph in the morning. Winds could gust as high as 31 mph.
Tonight Partly cloudy, with a low around 43. South wind 11 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 28 mph.
Saturday Mostly sunny, with a high near 53. Breezy, with a north northeast wind 14 to 20 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph.
Saturday NightMostly cloudy, with a low around 27. Northeast wind 10 to 15 mph.
SundayMostly cloudy, with a high near 45. East northeast wind 9 to 11 mph.
BALTIMORE (AP) — Sports apparel merchant Under Armour has become the latest victim of a massive digital theft of sensitive information about tens of millions of customers.
The Baltimore company disclosed Thursday that an intruder grabbed the email addresses and login information during a February break-in affecting about 150 million users of its food and nutrition website, MyFitnessPal.
Under Armour says the hacker didn’t obtain any payment information, Social Security numbers or driver’s license numbers. That means this break-in is unlikely to require credit and debit cards to be replaced or raise the specter of identity theft, as happened with big breaches affecting retailer Target and credit reporting agency Equifax that resulted in the departures of their CEOs.
Still, Under Armour says it is requiring all MyFitnessPal users to change their passwords.
MCPHERSON, Kan.-Savannah Schneider pulled off her first hat trick of the season and propelled the Hays High Lady Indians to a 3-1 win over Augusta in the 7th Place game of the 12th Annual McPherson Invitational. Schneider got the scoring started early with a shot that found the back of the net in the 3rd minute. The score would remain 1-0 before the final goal of the first half gave Hays High a 2-0 lead in the 14th minute.
Augusta scored the first goal of the second half off of a corner kick in the 53rd minute. The score stayed at 2-1 until Schneider capped off the hat trick with a goal in the 71st minute. With the win the Lady Indians improve to 2-2 on the season and will have their first home match on Tuesday when they host Dodge City.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Topeka man convicted in the killing of his estranged wife last summer has been sentenced to life in prison.
Enriquez -photo Shawnee Co.
Pedro Enriquez pleaded guilty last month to first-degree murder, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated battery in the death of 33-year-old Viviana Vazquez.
Enriquez was sentenced Thursday.
Prosecutors say Enriquez abducted Vazquez on June 7 from a Topeka home, where their 10-year-old son said he saw Enriquez drag her
Viviana Vazquez-photo Topeka Police
outside by the hair. Viviana Vazquez’s body was found the next day in a wooded area. An autopsy showed she had been strangled.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – Matt Davidson became the fourth player in major league history to homer three times on opening day, the White Sox went deep six times total and Chicago routed the Kansas City Royals 14-7 on Thursday to spoil their 50th anniversary celebration.
Tim Anderson also homered twice and Jose Abreu went deep for the White Sox, who picked up James Shields (1-0) in a big way after the former Royals ace surrendered four runs in the first inning.
Shields wound up lasting six innings, holding Kansas City without a hit after that shaky first.
Of the four players with three-homer opening days, three have done it against the Royals, while the six homers by Chicago on opening day matched the big league record set by the Mets in 1988.
Yolmer Sanchez added a three-run single and Yoan Moncada drove in a pair of runs for the White Sox, who forced Royals manager Ned Yost to burn through nine pitchers.
Danny Duffy (0-1) breezed through three innings for Kansas City, but a trio of homers in a five-run fourth turned his day around. The left-hander survived the inning before hitting the clubhouse.
Despite a cold rain and steel-gray skies, the Royals looked early on as if they would reward the hardy fans who turned out to celebrate the start of their golden anniversary season.
Longtime third baseman Mike Moustakas, who signed a one-year deal during spring training, provided an RBI single in the first before new first baseman Lucas Duda hit a three-run homer to right.
Everything unraveled when the fourth inning began.
Abreu led off a homer binge with a two-run shot, Davidson followed with his first home run, and Anderson added his first two batters later. By the time Moncada added an RBI double off Duffy later in the fourth inning, Chicago had turned a four-run hole into a 5-4 advantage.
Davidson and Anderson went deep again in the fifth off Royals reliever Blaine Boyer, and Sanchez tacked on a bases-clearing single off Burch Smith with two outs in the seventh.
Davidson capped his big game with a three-run homer off Brian Flynn in the eighth, becoming the first White Sox player with a three-homer game since Dan Johnson in October 2012.
TRAINER’S ROOM
Royals: C Salvador Perez (left knee sprain), RHP Nate Karns (right elbow inflammation), INF Adalberto Mondesi (right shoulder impingement) and OF Bubba Starling (left oblique strain) were placed on the DL before the game. Perez is expected to miss 4-6 weeks, though Karns could be back soon.
White Sox: Hard-throwing LHP Carlos Rodon (left shoulder rehab) and C Kevan Smith (sprained left ankle) were placed on the DL retroactive to Monday.
MORE MOVES
The Royals also designated for assignment pitchers Wily Peralta and Ryan Zimmer, selected the contracts of INF Ryan Goins and RHP Blaine Boyer and recalled C Cam Gallagher from Triple-A Omaha. The White Sox selected the contract of LHP Hector Santiago.
UP NEXT
The teams are off Friday before resuming their series this weekend. The White Sox will send RHP Lucas Giolito the mound Saturday night while the Royals counter with RHP Ian Kennedy.
RENO COUNTY — A man involved in a fatal accident in Reno County in April 2017 has been arrested on alternate counts of involuntary manslaughter and a count of second-degree murder.
Buzzini -photo Reno Co.
A Kansas woman died in the single-vehicle accident along Kansas 96, about five miles south of Hutchinson. Benjamin Buzzini was driving.
Just before 2a.m. April 25, emergency responders were dispatched to the 2100 block of South K-96 Highway for a single-vehicle fatality accident.
Buzzini was driving northbound and left the road for an unknown reason. His 2010 Jeep rolled several times before coming to rest in a furniture store parking lot. Buzzini was ejected from the vehicle and taken to Wesley Medical Center with serious injuries.
The passenger, Stephanie Futral from Wichita was pronounced dead at the scene.
Neither occupant was wearing a seat belt and, at the time, speed was considered a factor in the crash, according to the sheriff’s department.
Buzzini is jailed on a $125,000 bond. Reno County Sheriff’s officials arrested him in Houston.
