PAWNEE COUNTY — One person died in an accident just before 7p.m. Saturday in Pawnee County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 1992 Chevy Astro van driven by Joseph Carson Saenz, 18, Larned, was southbound on U.S. 183 thirteen miles south of Rush Center. The van traveled off the road into the east ditch. It came back on to the road and traveled into the west ditch and rolled.
EMS transported Saenz and a passenger Joshua Lujan Saenz, 16, Larned, to the hospital in Hays were Joseph Saenz died. Joshua Saenz was not wearing a seat belt, according to the KHP.
The United States is exceptionally religious. Americans pray and attend religious services more than adults in other developed countries and they assign a higher value to religion in their own lives. Nearly three-quarters of Americans affiliate with some religious group.
Does this religious fervor correspond with a religiously literate public? On July 23, the Pew Research Center announced the results of a major survey of religious knowledge and found that Americans, on average, correctly answer fewer than half of questions — many of which were intended to represent some of the “basics” about various religious traditions.
Americans fare only slightly better when asked about their own religious traditions. Christians, for example, answer about 59 percent of questions about the Bible and Christianity correctly.
So are Americans both religious and religiously ignorant about religion, as some claim? The answer to that question depends entirely on what we think it means to know about religion — especially our own.
When we compare the results of Pew’s survey with a study led by political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell about the importance of religion in people’s lives, we notice a surprising pattern: America’s least religious groups earn the highest scores on Pew’s religious knowledge survey and some of America’s most religious groups answer the fewest questions correctly. When Pew published the first iteration of the study with similar results in 2010, major news outlets focused on a perceived inverse correlation between religiosity and religious knowledge. “Survey: Atheists, Agnostics Know More About Religion Than Religious,” blared one headline.
We should pause when we hear the claim that Americans who are religious — people who gather in religious communities frequently, who ground their sense of self in religion, who find religion important in their daily life — know less about religion than people who are not religious. Echoing the philosophy of religion scholar Thomas A. Lewis’ astute question: If religious people lack religious knowledge, does “religious” mean the same thing in both halves of the sentence? What type of knowledge are we measuring?
Take a look at what religious knowledge means on the Pew survey. Of the 32 questions asked in 2019, roughly 22 — depending on how you classify them — measure knowledge about scriptural narrative (e.g. “Which biblical figure is most closely associated with saving Jews from murder by appealing to the king?”) and doctrine (e.g. “Which is one of Buddhism’s four ‘noble truths?’”).
Here’s my interpretation of the results: Being religious often has little to do with content knowledge about scriptural narrative and doctrine — of our own or others’ religious traditions. If that is correct, then how we talk about religious knowledge should change.
We should first acknowledge that religious individuals are capable of expressing their religious identity fluently in their own religious communities. Being able to express oneself religiously — and to understand the religious self-expression of a co-religionist — is its own type of religious knowledge. I have studied religion formally for years, but I know that, as the son of a Roman Catholic and humanist Jew, if I were to step into an evangelical church I would lack the vocabulary for communicating my religious identity clearly to folks in the pews. In other words, religious knowledge includes a skill — communicating religious identity — and not just content knowledge.
As religious studies scholar Vincent Lloyd argued after the release of Pew’s 2010 survey, there is a difference between “knowledge-that” and “knowledge-how.” The Pew survey measures the former, whereas religious individuals have plenty of the latter. Religious folks know how to be religious just as someone riding a bike knows how to balance on two wheels, even if they can’t explain the physics. We learn from the results of Pew that knowing how to be religious does not necessarily require knowledge about scriptural narrative and doctrine. So what does it entail?
We might better understand what it means to know how to be religious if we recognize three buildings blocks of religiosity: belief, behavior and belonging. Drawing on decades of sociology, anthropology and psychology research — including the work of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt — I have elsewhere explained how the beliefs people hold, the behaviors they manifest and the communities to which they belong mutually constitute people’s religious identities. Knowledge about beliefs need not be the primary focus of our religious lives. Growing up I could not name the five books of the Torah, but I knew how to tell Yiddish-inflected jokes over matzo brei while visiting my Ashkenazi grandparents in New York for Passover. In the eyes of my grandparents, my biblical illiteracy did not make me any less Jewish.
Religious individuals and communities need not know the dictionary definitions of their beliefs, behaviors or communities of belonging in order to know how to be religious and express that religious identity in their private and public lives.
And that brings us to a second type of skill, one that is academic and not devotional: the ability to analyze and contextualize religious expression. If religious individuals’ knowledge-how is akin to fluency in a religious language, then the conceptual knowledge of religious studies scholars is akin to linguistics. The religious studies scholar asks how religious expressions communicate meaning and establish relationships in specific times and places. The American Academy of Religion, the world’s largest professional association for scholars who study religion, defines religious literacy — a type of conceptual knowledge about religion — as the “ability to discern and analyze the intersections of religion with social, political and cultural life.” This conceptual knowledge helps a scholar analyze lived religion and religious identities, not memorize content.
So what does Pew’s survey tell us about Americans’ religious knowledge?
The results show us that Americans lack content knowledge about religion, especially scriptural narrative and doctrine. This should concern us, because content knowledge about multiple religious traditions is important. Stephen Prothero, an adviser to Pew and the author of the 2007 bestselling book “Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — and Doesn’t,” makes a compelling case for why we have a civic responsibility to teach children facts and figures about the stories and beliefs found within religious traditions.
Pew’s survey does not tell us whether Americans are religiously literate as defined by the American Academy of Religion, though I suspect they are not. We do not know what conceptual knowledge Americans have to analyze the role of religion in public life, but recent evidence — statements that Islam is not a religion, a political cartoon showing Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a dog, or claims that Buddhism is inherently peaceful — suggests we need to improve religious literacy education. Fortunately, the National Council for the Social Studies has taken an important step by releasing guidelines for teaching about religion academically and constitutionally in American public schools.
The Pew results emphatically do not tell us that religious people are ignorant about their own religion. Religious individuals and communities know how to be religious — and that type of insider knowledge is profound.
Benjamin P. Marcus is religious literacy specialist at the Religious Freedom Center of the Freedom Forum Institute. His email address is: [email protected].
Beginning Monday, Elm Street between Sixth and Eighth streets will be restricted to southbound traffic only with no parking or alley access. The curb and brick repair project is scheduled to be completed within one week, pending weather conditions.
Signs will be in place to direct the traveling public. The traveling public should use caution and if possible, avoid this area.
For more information, call the Office of Project Management at 628-7350 or the contractor, J-Corp, at 628-8101.
In the U.S., there are almost five million people with mild to moderate dementia, and studies show that about 70 percent are at home, either alone or with a caregiver, often a spouse. If people with mild to moderate dementia can stay home safely, this would save Medicare and Medicaid a great deal of taxpayer money. More importantly, this would provide those people affected with dementia their preferred environment. Indeed, it is important to allow all people the chance to stay at home whenever possible.
A 2013 Johns Hopkins report studied more than 250 people with dementia living at home and found that 99 percent of the demented and 97 percent of their caregivers had at least one unmet need. The foremost unmet need was defined by safety issues such as poor lighting in walkways which increased the risk of falling. Other needs that were not being met in this study included not performing regular exercise, poor follow-up with health care providers, not having prepared legal and estate planning and not receiving help with medications and some activities of daily living. Researchers found that those with lower income, with depression and with borderline rather than severe dysfunction had significantly more unmet needs.
When there were at-home caregivers for these folks with early dementia, the caregivers were often not aware of these deficiencies. In addition, the needs of the caregivers were often ignored or unrecognized. Remarkably, at-home caregiver stress and depression were some of the strongest predictors for an earlier move of the person with dementia to the nursing home.
Methods to enhance a person’s chance of staying at home are not difficult. Preparation for legal issues and estate planning should be done early and BEFORE the loss of memory. Other methods include providing raised toilet seats, grab bars in the bath and bedroom, properly tacked down carpets, good nighttime lighting in walkways and proper day and nighttime footwear. Researchers also advise providing enhanced support for caregivers with education about community support available such as social services, occupational therapy and caregiver support groups. In addition, screening and treatment of any caregivers’ depression, should be provided. This would go a long way in helping people stay at home as they age.
Bottom line: Most of us, and our families, are not prepared for the possibility of dementia as we age. If we prepare, we greatly improve our chances for staying at home.
For free and easy access to the entire Prairie Doc® library, visit www.prairiedoc.org and follow Prairie Doc® on Facebook, featuring On Call with the Prairie Doc® a medical Q&A show streamed most Thursdays at 7 p.m. central.
Two mass shootings at crowded public places in Texas and Ohio in less than 24 hours claimed at least 29 lives and left scores injured, a shocking carnage even in a country accustomed to gun violence.
First responders on the scene of the shooting in El Paso-photo courtesy KTSM TV
In the Texas border city of El Paso, a gunman opened fireSaturday morning in a shopping area packed with thousands of people during the busy back-to-school season, killing 20 and injuring more than two dozen, many of them critically. The shooting was being investigated as a possible hate crime as authorities worked to confirm whether a racist, anti-immigrant screed posted online shortly beforehand was written by the man arrested in the attack on the 680,000-resident border city.
Just hours later in Dayton, Ohio, a gunman wearing body armorand carrying extra magazines opened fire in a popular nightlife area, killing nine and injuring at least 26 people.
The Saturday shooting in El Paso and the Sunday shooting in Dayton were the 21st and 22nd mass killings of 2019 in the U.S., according to the AP/USA Today/Northeastern University mass murder database that tracks homicides where four or more people killed — not including the offender.
Including the two latest attacks, 125 people had been killed in the 2019 shootings.
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EL PASO, Texas (AP) — Twenty people were killed and more than two dozen injured in a shooting Saturday in a busy shopping area in the Texas border town of El Paso, the state’s governor said.
Among the possibilities being investigated is whether it was a hate crime, the police chief said. Two law enforcement officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity identified the suspect taken into custody as 21-year-old Patrick Crusius. El Paso police haven’t released his name, but confirmed the gunman is from Allen near Dallas.
Police said another 26 people were injured and most were being treated at hospitals. Most of the victims were believed to have been shot at a Walmart near the Cielo Vista Mall, they said, adding that the store was packed with as many as 3,000 people during the busy back-to-school shopping season.
“The scene was a horrific one,” said El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen, who described many of those hurt as having life-threatening injuries. He also said police found a post online that may have been written by the suspect — one reason authorities are looking at whether it was a hate crime.
El Paso, which has about 680,000 residents, is in West Texas and sits across the border from Juarez, Mexico.
Residents were quick to volunteer to give blood to the injured after the shooting, and police and military members were helping people look for missing loved ones.
“It’s chaos right now,” said Austin Johnson, an Army medic at nearby Fort Bliss, who volunteered to help at the shopping center and later at a school serving as a reunification center.
Adriana Quezada, 39, said she was in the women’s clothing section of Walmart with her two children when she “heard shots.”
“But I thought they were hits, like roof construction,” she said.
Her 19-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son threw themselves to the ground, then ran out of the store through an emergency exit. They were not hurt, Quezada said.
She said she saw four men, dressed in black, moving together firing guns indiscriminately. Police later said they believed the suspect was the “sole shooter” but were continuing to investigate reports that others were involved.
El Paso police Sgt. Robert Gomez said the suspect, who used a rifle, was arrested without incident.
The shooting came less than a week after a gunman opened fire on a California food festival. Santino William Legan, 19, killed three people and injured 13 others last Sunday at the popular Gilroy Garlic Festival, and died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Ryan Mielke, a spokesman for University Medical Center of El Paso, said 13 people were brought to the hospital with injuries after the Texas shooting, including one who died. Two of the injured were children who were being transferred to El Paso Children’s Hospital, he said. He wouldn’t provide additional details on the victims.
Eleven other victims were being treated at Del Sol Medical Center, hospital spokesman Victor Guerrero said. Those victims’ ages ranged from 35 to 82, he said.
Gov. Greg Abbott, who confirmed the number of victims at a news conference, called the shooting “a heinous and senseless act of violence” and said the state had deployed a number of law enforcement officers to the city. President Donald Trump tweeted: “Reports are very bad, many killed.”
Presidential candidate and former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke appeared a bit shaken as he appeared at a candidate forum Saturday in Las Vegas shortly after news of the shooting in his hometown was reported. The Democrat said the shooting shatters “any illusion that we have that progress is inevitable” on tackling gun violence.
He said he heard early reports that the shooter might have had a military-style weapon, saying we need to “keep that (expletive) on the battlefield. Do not bring it into our communities.”
“We have to find some reason for optimism and hope or else we consign ourselves to a future where nearly 40,000 people a year will lose their lives to gun violence and I cannot accept that,” O’Rourke said.
El Paso has become a focal point of the immigration debate, drawing Trump in February to argue that walling off the southern border would make the U.S. safer, while city residents and O’Rourke led thousands on a protest march past the barrier of barbed wire-topped fencing and towering metal slats.
O’Rourke stressed that border walls haven’t made his hometown safer. The city’s murder rate was less than half the national average in 2005, the year before the start of its border fence. Before the wall project started, El Paso had been rated one of the three safest major U.S. cities going back to 1997.
Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, also said the El Paso shooting suspect wasn’t on her group’s radar screen prior to the shooting.
“We had nothing in our files on him,” Beirich wrote in an email.
The shooting is the 21st mass killing in the United States in 2019, and the fifth public mass shooting. Before Saturday, 96 people had died in mass killings in 2019 — 26 of them in public mass shootings.
The AP/USATODAY/Northeastern University mass murder database tracks all U.S. homicides since 2006 involving four or more people killed, not including the offender, over a short period of time regardless of weapon, location, victim-offender relationship or motive. The database shows that the median age of a public mass shooter is 28, significantly lower than the median age of a person who commits a mass shooting of their family.
Since 2006, 11 mass shootings — not including Saturday’s — have been committed by men who are 21 or younger.
———-
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — Multiple fatalities are reported and many others were seriously injured and at least one suspect was in custody after a shooting Saturday at a shopping mall in the Texas border town of El Paso, hospital officials and police said.
Police responded in the early afternoon to an active shooter scene at the Cielo Vista Mall, near Interstate 10 on the east side of the city, and were advising people to stay away from the area and to look for missing family members at a school being used as a reunification area. Police and witnesses said at least some of the shootings happened in a Walmart in the shopping complex.
Ryan Mielke, a spokesman for University Medical Center of El Paso, said 12 people were brought to the hospital with injuries, including one that died. Two of the injured were children who were being transferred to El Paso Children’s Hospital, he said. He declined to provide additional details on the victims.
Eleven other victims were being treated at Del Sol Medical Center, according to hospital spokesman Victor Guerrero. He said those victims ages ranged from 35 to 82.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called the shooting “a heinous and senseless act of violence” and said the state had deployed a number of law enforcement officers to the city.
A family of three was among a dozen people waiting outside a bus station. They were trying to return to their car that was in a blocked-off Walmart parking lot.
“I heard the shots but I thought they were hits, like roof construction,” said Adriana Quezada, 39, who was in the women’s clothing section of Walmart with her two children.
Sgt. Enrique Carrillo said by midafternoon that a suspect was in custody and the public was no longer in danger.
Quezada’s 19-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son threw themselves to the ground, then ran out of the Walmart through an emergency exit. She said they were not hurt.
White House staff said President Donald Trump was briefed on the shooting and spoke about it with Attorney General William Barr and Gov. Abbott. “Reports are very bad, many killed,” the president tweeted.
Presidential candidate and former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke appeared a bit shaken as he appeared at a candidate forum Saturday in Las Vegas shortly after news of the shooting in his hometown was reported.
O’Rourke, who said he had called his wife before taking the stage, said the shooting shatters “any illusion that we have that progress is inevitable” on tackling gun violence.
The Democrat said he heard early reports that the shooter might have had a military-style weapon, saying we need to “keep that (expletive) on the battlefield and do not bring it into our communities.”
“We have to find some reason for optimism and hope or else we consign ourselves to a future where nearly 40,000 people a year will lose their lives to gun violence and I cannot accept that,” O’Rourke said.
El Paso, which has about 680,000 residents, is in West Texas and sits across the border from Juarez, Mexico.
___
___
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — Twenty people were killed and more than two dozen injured in a shooting Saturday in a busy shopping area in the Texas border town of El Paso, the state’s governor said.
Among the possibilities being investigated is whether it was a hate crime, the police chief said. Two law enforcement officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity identified the suspect taken into custody as 21-year-old Patrick Crusius. El Paso police haven’t released his name, but confirmed the gunman is from Allen near Dallas.
First responders on the scene of the shooting in El Paso-photo courtesy KTSM TV
Police said another 26 people were injured and most were being treated at hospitals. Most of the victims were believed to have been shot at a Walmart near the Cielo Vista Mall, they said, adding that the store was packed with as many as 3,000 people during the busy back-to-school shopping season.
“The scene was a horrific one,” said El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen, who described many of those hurt as having life-threatening injuries. He also said police found a post online that may have been written by the suspect — one reason authorities are looking at whether it was a hate crime.
El Paso, which has about 680,000 residents, is in West Texas and sits across the border from Juarez, Mexico.
Residents were quick to volunteer to give blood to the injured after the shooting, and police and military members were helping people look for missing loved ones.
“It’s chaos right now,” said Austin Johnson, an Army medic at nearby Fort Bliss, who volunteered to help at the shopping center and later at a school serving as a reunification center.
Adriana Quezada, 39, said she was in the women’s clothing section of Walmart with her two children when she “heard shots.”
“But I thought they were hits, like roof construction,” she said.
Her 19-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son threw themselves to the ground, then ran out of the store through an emergency exit. They were not hurt, Quezada said.
She said she saw four men, dressed in black, moving together firing guns indiscriminately. Police later said they believed the suspect was the “sole shooter” but were continuing to investigate reports that others were involved.
El Paso police Sgt. Robert Gomez said the suspect, who used a rifle, was arrested without incident.
The shooting came less than a week after a gunman opened fire on a California food festival. Santino William Legan, 19, killed three people and injured 13 others last Sunday at the popular Gilroy Garlic Festival, and died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Ryan Mielke, a spokesman for University Medical Center of El Paso, said 13 people were brought to the hospital with injuries after the Texas shooting, including one who died. Two of the injured were children who were being transferred to El Paso Children’s Hospital, he said. He wouldn’t provide additional details on the victims.
Eleven other victims were being treated at Del Sol Medical Center, hospital spokesman Victor Guerrero said. Those victims’ ages ranged from 35 to 82, he said.
Gov. Greg Abbott, who confirmed the number of victims at a news conference, called the shooting “a heinous and senseless act of violence” and said the state had deployed a number of law enforcement officers to the city. President Donald Trump tweeted: “Reports are very bad, many killed.”
Presidential candidate and former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke appeared a bit shaken as he appeared at a candidate forum Saturday in Las Vegas shortly after news of the shooting in his hometown was reported. The Democrat said the shooting shatters “any illusion that we have that progress is inevitable” on tackling gun violence.
He said he heard early reports that the shooter might have had a military-style weapon, saying we need to “keep that (expletive) on the battlefield. Do not bring it into our communities.”
“We have to find some reason for optimism and hope or else we consign ourselves to a future where nearly 40,000 people a year will lose their lives to gun violence and I cannot accept that,” O’Rourke said.
El Paso has become a focal point of the immigration debate, drawing Trump in February to argue that walling off the southern border would make the U.S. safer, while city residents and O’Rourke led thousands on a protest march past the barrier of barbed wire-topped fencing and towering metal slats.
O’Rourke stressed that border walls haven’t made his hometown safer. The city’s murder rate was less than half the national average in 2005, the year before the start of its border fence. Before the wall project started, El Paso had been rated one of the three safest major U.S. cities going back to 1997.
Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, also said the El Paso shooting suspect wasn’t on her group’s radar screen prior to the shooting.
“We had nothing in our files on him,” Beirich wrote in an email.
The shooting is the 21st mass killing in the United States in 2019, and the fifth public mass shooting. Before Saturday, 96 people had died in mass killings in 2019 — 26 of them in public mass shootings.
The AP/USATODAY/Northeastern University mass murder database tracks all U.S. homicides since 2006 involving four or more people killed, not including the offender, over a short period of time regardless of weapon, location, victim-offender relationship or motive. The database shows that the median age of a public mass shooter is 28, significantly lower than the median age of a person who commits a mass shooting of their family.
Since 2006, 11 mass shootings — not including Saturday’s — have been committed by men who are 21 or younger.
———-
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — Multiple fatalities are reported and many others were seriously injured and at least one suspect was in custody after a shooting Saturday at a shopping mall in the Texas border town of El Paso, hospital officials and police said.
Police responded in the early afternoon to an active shooter scene at the Cielo Vista Mall, near Interstate 10 on the east side of the city, and were advising people to stay away from the area and to look for missing family members at a school being used as a reunification area. Police and witnesses said at least some of the shootings happened in a Walmart in the shopping complex.
Ryan Mielke, a spokesman for University Medical Center of El Paso, said 12 people were brought to the hospital with injuries, including one that died. Two of the injured were children who were being transferred to El Paso Children’s Hospital, he said. He declined to provide additional details on the victims.
Eleven other victims were being treated at Del Sol Medical Center, according to hospital spokesman Victor Guerrero. He said those victims ages ranged from 35 to 82.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called the shooting “a heinous and senseless act of violence” and said the state had deployed a number of law enforcement officers to the city.
A family of three was among a dozen people waiting outside a bus station. They were trying to return to their car that was in a blocked-off Walmart parking lot.
“I heard the shots but I thought they were hits, like roof construction,” said Adriana Quezada, 39, who was in the women’s clothing section of Walmart with her two children.
Sgt. Enrique Carrillo said by midafternoon that a suspect was in custody and the public was no longer in danger.
Quezada’s 19-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son threw themselves to the ground, then ran out of the Walmart through an emergency exit. She said they were not hurt.
White House staff said President Donald Trump was briefed on the shooting and spoke about it with Attorney General William Barr and Gov. Abbott. “Reports are very bad, many killed,” the president tweeted.
Presidential candidate and former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke appeared a bit shaken as he appeared at a candidate forum Saturday in Las Vegas shortly after news of the shooting in his hometown was reported.
O’Rourke, who said he had called his wife before taking the stage, said the shooting shatters “any illusion that we have that progress is inevitable” on tackling gun violence.
The Democrat said he heard early reports that the shooter might have had a military-style weapon, saying we need to “keep that (expletive) on the battlefield and do not bring it into our communities.”
“We have to find some reason for optimism and hope or else we consign ourselves to a future where nearly 40,000 people a year will lose their lives to gun violence and I cannot accept that,” O’Rourke said.
El Paso, which has about 680,000 residents, is in West Texas and sits across the border from Juarez, Mexico.
TOPEKA – The Governor’s Council on Fitness is now accepting nominations for its annual Kansas Health Champion Awards. Awards are given to individuals and organizations that make an exceptional effort to model, encourage and promote health and fitness in Kansas. The deadline for nominations is September 30. Award recipients will be recognized at the Community Health Promotion Summit on January 30 in Wichita.
“The Kansas Department of Health and Environment is excited to partner in this important initiative to recognize those who make healthy living in our state a priority,” said KDHE Secretary Lee Norman, MD. It’s important that we recognize their efforts and the difference they are making in their communities.”
Nominees shall have demonstrated:
• Work that goes above and beyond what is expected to model, encourage and promote fitness
• Work that helps overcome health inequities
• Sustainable influence or activity
• Far-reaching health impact
“In addition to promoting effective models for increasing physical activity, nutrition and tobacco-free living for replication by organizations and communities around the state, the awards also allow us the opportunity to honor the outstanding work of one individual and one organization this year,” said Marlou Wegener, Chair of the Governor’s Council on Fitness and Manager of Community Relations, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas. Eligible nominees might include an outstanding volunteer, a school, a local community, a newspaper or individual reporter, a local or State policy maker, or an employer, among others.
For more information and to submit a nomination, go to getactivekansas.org and click on the nomination form link. If you have questions about the nomination process, contact Connie Satzler at 785-587-0151.
The Governor’s Council on Fitness advises the Governor and others on ways to enhance the health of all Kansans through promotion of physical activity, good dietary choices and prevention of tobacco use.
HAYS – The final day of the AA/AAA State American Legion baseball tournament produced three dramatic finishes, including a pair of walk-off wins, and when all way said and done Saturday it was Emporia Post 5 claiming the state championship with a 7-5 win over the Hays Eagles at Larks Park in Hays.
Dustin Schumacher postgame interview
In the first semifinal of the day the Sabetha scored three early runs and lead the Hays Eagles 4-2 heading into the bottom seventh but Hays got back-to-back walks to open the frame and then Trey Riggs singled in a pair of run to tie the game at two. Then, following a sacrifice bunt Brady Kreutzer delivered a walk-off RBI single giving Hays the 5-4 win.
In the second semifinal game Emporia and Iola battled for 11 innings before Jace Stewart singled in the game-winning run in a 3-2 Emporia win.
That set up the state championship game between the host Eagles and Emporia. The Eagles beat Emporia in the second game of pool play on Thursday and Emporia beat the Eagles in a tournament in Emporia earlier this season.
The Eagles, as the visiting team, struck for two runs in the first inning. With the bases loaded Brady Kreutzer doubled to left field to give Hays a 2-0 lead. Emporia answered with two runs in the bottom of the inning tying the game at two.
After a pair of scoreless innings Tate Garcia and Cody Petersen drove in a pair of runs on back-to-back RBI singles in the fourth to give Hays a 4-2 lead.
Kreutzer drove in his third run of the game with he second run scoring double in the fifth putting Hays up 5-2.
Emporia’s Beau Baumgardner hit a two-run homerun in the bottom of the fifth to cut the Hays lead to 5-4.
In the sixth inning, with Hays still clinging to a one run lead it appeared that Eagles starter Tate Garcia had recorded a strikeout of Cade Kohlmeier to end the inning. But the third base umpire overturned the home plate umpire’s call of a strikeout swinging. He ruled that Kohlmeier foul-tipped the pitch. With the extra chance Kohlmeier singled two pitches later starting a rally that was capped off by a three-run double by Hayden Baumwart that gave Emporia a 7-5 lead.
In the top of the seventh inning Hays got the tying run aboard with no outs but were unable to push across a run in the inning as the Eagles fell to Emporia 7-5.
Tate Garcia suffered the loss for Hays, he allowed seven runs on seven hits with six strikeouts in 5.2 innings.
SEDGWICK COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a Kansas man on alleged child sex crimes.
Ayton photo Sedgwick Co.
On Thursday, police responded to a Wichita hospital regarding a possible sexual assault of a juvenile victim, according to officer Charley Davidson. Investigators developed probable cause that lead to the arrest of 45-year-old Ayton Griffin. He and the victim knew each other.
Griffin is being held on a bond of $150,000 on requested charges of of aggravated indecent liberties with a child and indecent solicitation of a child, according to the online jail records.
The case will be presented to the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office, according to Davidson.
SHAWNEE COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a shooting and and have a person of interest in custody.
On July 19, police issued an alert in an attempt to locate 44-year-old Andre Jerome Wallace in connection with a shooting that occurred in the in the 3300 block of SE Irvingham in Topeka on July 18, according to Lt. Andrew Beightel.
On Friday, United State’s Marshals arrested Wallace in Wichita, according to Police Lt. Aaron Jones.
Police have not reported any requested charges against Wallace who remains in custody in Harvey County, according to online jail records.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Swarms of mayflies have emerged from under water along the Missouri River and are caking windshields on stretches of road between Omaha and Kansas City, forcing drivers to pull over and clean up the mess.
Mayflies not dirt cover the car photo courtesy KTVI TV
Mayflies spend 99% of their lives in water, but they rise when they become winged adults to take part in a mating swarm. They quickly die after that.
But the few days they spend mating are a nuisance.
“They are atrocious. They are horrid,” said Pam Frana, a membership specialist for the Nebraska City Tourism and Commerce Department. “Flooding brought those and stirred them up.”
The mayflies are piling on windshields so much that Dominator Fuel in Rock Port, Missouri, sold out of windshield wiper fluid. Other gas stations report they’ve gone through twice the usual amount.
“The windshields are completely covered,” said Chandra McCarty, a cashier at Dominator.
Mayflies may be an irritant to humans, but they’re a good source of food for fish and reptiles. The insects are drawn to light and have attracted frogs looking for a late-night feast.
At the Rockport gas station, they’ve been seeing 30 to 40 a night. They sit in front of the doors, lured by the bugs.
“They try to come up and come in,” McCarty said.
But there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
“It used to be so bad people couldn’t see when they were driving,” said Andrew Wagner, who works in Hamburg, Iowa. “It’s getting a lot better since the flooding is going down.”
Urban entomologist Jody Green, an educator with the Lancaster County Extension Service, said mayfly hatches are actually a yearly event.
“As an entomologist, I would relish seeing them, but I am sure it might even gross me out, too, if I couldn’t help but step and squish them,” Green said.
TREGO COUNTY — One person was injured in an accident just after 11a.m. Saturday in Trego County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2000 GMC pickup driven by Phyllis Jean Parke, 46, WaKeeney, was eastbound on county road T just east of Trego Center.
The driver lost control on the soft shoulder, entered ditch and rolled.
Eagle Med airlifted Parke to the hospital in Hays. She was not wearing a seat belt, according to the KHP.
BARTON COUNTY-For the third time this week the Barton County Sheriff’s Office has taken a suspected methamphetamine dealer into custody.
Just after 7a.m. Saturday, deputies and detectives conducted a traffic stop on a 1999 Oldmobile Alero near the intersection of 10th Street and Kiowa Road at the east city limits of Great Bend, according to Sheriff Bellendir.
During the course that traffic stop, officers discovered a quantity of methamphetamine. It is believed the drugs were in route to Great Bend for distribution.
Arrested at the scene was Kevin “Adam” Pekarek, 37, of Hutchinson.
Saturday morning traffic stop and investigation in Great Bend photo courtesy Barton Co. Sheriff
Pekarek was transported to the Barton County jail where he was booked on two counts of possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute. One of those counts, stems from an earlier investigation. He is being held in the Barton County jail in lieu of a $100,000 bond on each count.
“Distribution of methamphetamine and its use remains the single most serious issue facing the Sheriff’s Office. We remain committed to curb its use in our county,” said Bellendir.
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