The Kansas Department of Transportation expects to begin work this week on a mill and overlay project on a portion of U.S. 36 in Phillips County.
The project area covers a 17-mile stretch from the Norton County line to the west U.S. 183 junction in Phillipsburg. In addition to the resurfacing work, crews will also be applying a chip seal on the road shoulders from West 500 Road to the Phillipsburg city limits. Traffic will be directed through the work zone via flaggers and a pilot car during daylight hours. Minor delays not exceeding 15 minutes should be anticipated.
Work is expected to be completed by the end of October, weather permitting.
Venture Corporation is the primary contractor for the project with a total contract cost of approximately $2 million.
The Career and Internship Fair, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 12, in the Black and Gold Room of Fort Hays State University’s Memorial Union will cap off Making Your Mark, the university’s Career Readiness Week 2018.
More than 80 employers will be on campus for the fair, said Karen McCullough, director of Career Services. It will be one of the largest turnouts ever for employers at the fair, she said.
“This is a first-time collaborative effort among several offices to provide programs that will aid students in becoming career-ready and in searching for internships and jobs,” said McCullough.
Cassie Augustine Jones, named one of the top 25 Most Influential Young Professional in Colorado, will be the keynote speaker at Tuesday’s Personal Branding Conference, 9 a.m. to noon in the Memorial Union’s Fort Hays Ballroom.
Several of the Personal Branding Conference sessions will be available to FHSU virtual students (and anyone else interested) via Facebook Live.
Mock interviews, from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., will overlap the branding conference in the ballroom.
Tuesday ends with a networking reception in the Robbins Center’s Eagle Communications Hall.
“Making Your Mark is bringing together events and activities that have traditionally existed at other times during the semester,” she said. “We’re combining them into one week now, before the career fair, so that students can spend a few days digging into professional development, practicing the skills and then using them at the career fair in front of employers.”
Wednesday, designated as Career and Internship Day, includes the the Career readiness Conference from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Pioneer Room as well as th Career and Internship Fair and the Study Abroad Fair, which will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the union’s Sunset Lounge.
“We know that employers value students who have experience learning in and working with people from other countries and cultures,” said McCullough.
Handshake, the online platform FHSU recently launched to connect students and employers, has been useful in preparing for the career readiness week. All currently enrolled students have a Handshake account and simply need to activate it to access postings about internships, jobs, career-preparedness events (like Making Your Mark week) and other useful information.
The week began Sunday with the Tailored for Tigers open house. Tailored for Tigers is a professional clothing closet at the university, where students can check out professional clothing to use for internships, networking, interviews or other professional job opportunities. An etiquette dinner, was Monday night.
“The Science of Eating” is the focus of the upcoming Science Café at 7 p.m., Monday, Sept. 17, at Thirsty’s, 2704 Vine St. in Hays.
This is the first Science Café to be conducted at Thirsty’s.
Glen McNeil, interim dean of the College of Health and Behavioral Sciences, will address the questions of how and why we select the foods we eat, which of our senses are the most important, and what chemicals in foods influence how our senses perceive what is in front of us.
The event, sponsored by FHSU’s Science and Mathematics Education Institute, is free and open to the public.
John Schlageck writes for the Kansas Farm Bureau.My dad read two newspapers daily when I grew up in the ‘50s. His newspapers of choice were the Kansas City Star and Denver Post.
Both arrived on the same day and both contained the latest news from that date in history. The doodlebug or jitney brought the two papers from KC 358 miles to the east and Denver, 255 miles to our west. We farmed outside the small Sheridan County community of Seguin.
For you younger readers, people called self-propelled railroad cars doodlebugs or jitneys. Doodlebugs sometimes pulled an unpowered trailer car but were often used singly.
They were popular with some railroads during the first to middle part of the 20th century. Jitneys provided passenger and mail service on lightly used branch lines, often in rural areas with sparse populations.
By operating these two-car trains in northwestern Kansas, the Union Pacific (UP) didn’t need to use conventional trains consisting of a locomotive and coaches. Several railroads, mostly small regional and local networks, provided their main passenger services through doodlebugs in a cost-cutting effort. This also freed up the UP to use its locomotives for the transportation of wheat, milo, barley and livestock.
Our home was located a little more than a block north of the tracks and from the time I saw my first train, I was fascinated by the sound, smoke and the sight of these hulking metal monsters. I couldn’t wait to see them, hear them, count the cars and eventually ride on one of them.
Doodlebugs were considerably quieter than the steam locomotives that carried millions and millions of bushels of grain from the breadbasket of the world where I grew up to hungry mouths around the globe. These two-car trains typically consisted of a gasoline-powered engine that turned a generator and provided electricity to traction motors, which turned the axles and wheels on the trucks.
The doodlebug that stopped in our little village, population 50 with dogs and cats, usually came mid-morning, about 10:15. Back in those days you could almost set your watch by its arrival.
And that’s how my dad received his two daily papers on the same day. A half century later after the rail lines were torn up and steam engines were a distant memory my dad subscribed to the Salina Journal. One of his neighbors, Elmer Reitcheck, subscribed to the Hays Daily News. After they’d read their copies, they’d swap.
The funny thing about this is that Dad and Elmer were now reading yesterday’s papers. To be more exact, it often took two days to receive their daily papers. That’s right. With all our technology, and lightning quick U.S postal service, it still required two days to deliver a paper 94 and 188 miles.
Talk about old news. You know the old saying, “That’s a heck’uva way to run a railroad.” Well, I can’t remember how many times I heard my dad say, “bring back the railroads.”
I guess, you could blame part of the demise of today’s papers on transportation and the government, but they both take a beating daily anyway, so back to the story of doodlebugs and those days of yesteryear.
I took one of my first train rides on a doodlebug. I also accompanied my dad to see our relatives in Denver by way of the Rock Island Rocket. That was more than 60 years ago and the 250-mile trip on this streamliner took less than three hours. We literally flew across the plains traveling at speeds of 90 miles-per-hour in this red and silver rocket. It takes four hours to cover this same distance traveling on Interstate 70 today.
For my sixth birthday, I asked my parents for a train trip from Seguin to Oakley. It was a little less than 50 miles by train and Mom and Dad drove part of the way beside my sister, Cathy, and me as we dawdled in the doodlebug on our way to Oakley. This slowpoke traveled half the speed of the Rocket – maybe less.
During part of the trip the engineer allowed me to put my hand on the huge silver, metal throttle and as I told my friends later, “I drove the doodlebug part of the way to Oakley.”
Bet I couldn’t get anywhere near a train throttle or computer-operated engine room today. SOPs (standard operating procedure), rules and regulations being what they are.
I’ll remember that birthday always. And who knows, maybe one day trains will once again play a vital role in transportation. One thing is certain, they won’t carry newspapers anymore.
John Schlageck is a leading commentator on agriculture and rural Kansas.
Kansas SBDC at Fort Hays State University is hosting the Encountering Innovation: The Hunt for Opportunity Tour.
Encountering Innovation is an annual event in Kansas where the U.S. Department of Defense Tech Scouts identify innovations that may be useful to the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense is one of the largest buyers in the world and looks at a broad range of innovations that include clothing, unmanned aerial systems, cybersecurity solutions, and more.
Ralph Lagergren will be presenting the Encountering Innovation. He is a serial inventor and businessman and is looking to find rural Kansas inventors, patent holders, and business owners who have an idea with potential for commercialization. Topics that will be presented by him include: how to finance a product, how to market a product, how to decide between licensing, selling, or manufacturing a product, the patent process, and other tips.
We have two places in our region that will be hosting this presentation, including:
SEDGWICK COUNTY – A man convicted of embezzling more than $500,000 from the Wichita pawnshop where he worked was sentenced to 32 months in prison Tuesday.
Jelinek -photo Sedgwick Co.
According to a media release from the Sedgwick County Attorney, Phillip H. Jelinek, 35 of Wichita, entered a guilty plea to felony theft on June 25 in Sedgwick County District Court.
The charge against Jelinek alleged that he embezzled $587,450.83 from A-OK Enterprises LLC, where he worked as an accountant.
The thefts occurred over a two-year period and involved money from internet sales.
The prison sentence was imposed by Judge David Kaufman, who said in court that the impact of the theft was “catastrophic” to the business.
Jelinek and his attorney asked Kaufman to consider probation because Jelinek was seeking treatment for a gambling addiction and had sold his house to help pay restitution. Judge Kaufman denied the request.
Bruce Harris, the owner of A-OK Enterprises LLC, said in court that the thefts from his business forced the company into bankruptcy and caused employee layoffs and closure of some locations.
The case was investigated by the Investigations Division of the Office of the District Attorney.
Today Sunny, with a high near 84. Breezy, with a south wind 11 to 16 mph increasing to 18 to 23 mph in the afternoon.
Tonight Increasing clouds, with a low around 67. Breezy, with a south southeast wind 15 to 21 mph.
Thursday Mostly cloudy through mid morning, then gradual clearing, with a high near 88. Breezy, with a south wind 16 to 23 mph.
Thursday Night Clear, with a low around 68. Breezy, with a south wind 11 to 20 mph.
Friday Sunny, with a high near 92. South wind 11 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 28 mph.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — GOP state lawmakers are divided over whether they support fellow Republican Kris Kobach’s candidacy to become Kansas’ next governor, according to a newspaper’s survey.
Johnson County Bar Association Gubernatorial Debate -photo courtesy Kobach for Governor campaign
Twenty-eight percent of GOP lawmakers it surveyed would not say if they support Kobach’s candidacy and close to 10 percent did not respond to repeated inquiries. Four moderate Republicans from Johnson County have already said they will not vote for Kobach.
“I’m not going to take a position on that race. I just don’t feel like it’s any benefit to me to do that,” said House Majority Whip Kent Thompson, a Republican from Iola, without elaborating.
Among Democrats, 94 percent of those in the Legislature said they will support candidate Laura Kelly.
“She will be a great Governor and the alternative is too horrible to even contemplate,” Rep. Jerry Stogsdill, a Prairie Village Democrat, said in an email.
Kobach defeated Gov. Jeff Colyer by 343 votes in the August primary, confirming a deep divide between moderates and conservatives in the state GOP. Since Kobach’s victory, some conservatives have criticized moderates for not supporting the party’s nominee in his race against Kelly and independent Greg Orman.
In August, House Majority Leader Don Hineman, a moderate Republican from Dighton, said in an email to more than two dozen centrists that voting for Orman or Kelly “could well be a career-ending move for anyone who chose to do so.” He did not respond to The Star’s questions about whether he will support Kobach.
Others in the party are strong Kobach supporters.
“Secretary Kobach is the best candidate for governor this State has had in my lifetime,” Rep. Francis Awerkamp, a St. Marys Republican, said in an email.
Kobach has long espoused conservative views on immigration, taxes and social issues and he has indicated during the campaign that he will not work to attract moderate voters in the general election.
He said after the first gubernatorial debate in Overland Park that the lack of apparent support is part of the candidates’ strategic plans when they consider their district’s wishes.
“This is typical in any major election where you have people at different levels up and down the ballot,” Kobach said.
Sen. Barbara Bollier, of Mission Hills, a GOP moderate, said earlier this summer that she would vote for Kelly.
“I don’t understand why not, why they won’t,” Bollier said about moderates not coming out against Kobach. “It’s hard for me to understand. It’s about being electable, they believe, and for me it’s about doing the right thing for the state.”
SEDGWICK COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a series of burglaries and have made two arrests.
Bogguess-photo Sedgwick County
Just after 9a.m. Monday, police responded to a reported business burglary in the 5600 Block of West Kellogg, according to officer Charley Davidson. The business had been burglarized overnight. Two vehicles and tools worth an estimated $68,000 were missing.
Investigators were led to a residence in the 3700 Block of North Armstrong. Police arrested 50-year-old Jaime Lambert on 8 counts of possession of stolen property and 38-year-old Charles Bogguess on 7 counts of possession of stolen property.
Lambert -photo Sedgwick Co.
Officers were able to recover all of the missing items from Gerber Collision and Glass including the two vehicles. Officers also recovered a third stolen vehicle along a skid loader and trailer reported stolen earlier this year, according to Davidson.
BROWN COUNTY — One person died from injuries in an accident just before 8:30a.m. Tuesday in Brown County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2007 Harley Davidson motorcycle driven by Shawn Simpson, 40, Hiawatha, was westbound on 290th Street five miles north of Hiawatha.
The driver failed to make the curve at Kill Deer Road. The motorcycle entered the west ditch, rolled and the driver was ejected.
Simpson was transported to KU Medical Center and died Tuesday afternoon.
He was not wearing a helmet, according to the KHP.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas panel has ruled that a suburban Kansas City man who is charged with election fraud can remain on the November ballot.
Adam Thomas -photo Johnson County
The state objections board issued its ruling Monday in the case against Adam Thomas, of Olathe. The finding that the Republican candidate for the 26th District House seat can remain on the ballot has nothing to do with his pending court case.
Thomas was arrested last Thursday and charged with election perjury. Democratic state Rep. Vic Miller, of Topeka, had called for an investigation into Thomas in June after presenting evidence that he didn’t live in the district where he was running.
Thomas’ attorney, Michael Kuckelman, maintains that Thomas will be acquitted in the court case.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Wichita city officials have approved spending up to $81 million to build a new ballpark for a Triple-A baseball franchise.
A rendering of what the new 7,000-seat multi-sport complex and “baseball village” could look like. CITY OF WICHITA
The council on Tuesday approved a plan that will also pay $2.2 million to the Wichita Wingnuts to break the independent baseball team’s lease at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium, which will be torn down.
Mayor Jeff Longwell announced last week that the Triple A team will move from New Orleans to Wichita. The team is an affiliate of the Miami Marlins.
The new stadium will cost $75 million and must be completed by March 15, 2020. The city’s agreement includes building a $6 million pedestrian bridge across the Arkansas River.
The move is not final and City Manager Robert Layton said changes could still be made in the agreement.
Jerry Lee Houghton, 59, of Atwood, died September 10, 2018, at Rawlins County Health Center, Atwood, KS. He was born Nov. 1, 1958, in Hoxie, KS, to Robert and Lucille (Bryant) Houghton. In Jerry’s spare time he enjoyed hunting and fishing. He was a member of the Rawlins County Sportsman Association.
He was preceded in death by his parents and grandparents.
Jerry is survived by three sisters, Teresa (Alan) David, of Goodland, KS, Melva (Brian) Moore, of Oklahoma City, OK, and Dedra (Keith) Sawyer, of Paola, KS; several nieces and nephews; one great niece; and many more cousins, friends and family members.
Visitation will be from 4-7:00 p.m. Thursday, September 13, 2018, at Baalmann Mortuary, Atwood. Funeral services will be at 10:00 a.m. Friday, September 14, 2018, at Baalmann Mortuary, Atwood, with burial to follow in Fairview Cemetery, Atwood.
Memorials are suggested to the Rawlins County Sportsman Association, in care of Baalmann Mortuary, PO Box 391, Colby, KS 67701.
