Not in recent memory has the sine die (that’s the formal name) adjournment of the Kansas Legislature left quite so much unfinished work for state government.

In the good old — or at least the old — days, that sine die adjournment was shaking hands, wishing fellow legislators a fun and productive summer, a little vacation planning talk. The high point for many lawmakers was the lifting of the during-the-session ban on taking campaign contributions from political action committees, businesses, unions, lobbyists and such. In the old days, there were actually envelopes handed to legislators as they walked to their cars—containing those campaign contribution checks.

But after this year’s sine die last Friday, there’s a real sense that this year’s work isn’t done.

And, it isn’t.

The immediate action will be watching this month and next for the governor, through his budget director, to cut about $50 million in spending which lawmakers will read about in the local newspaper. And, these cuts are unilateral, no legislative fingerprints on them, no legislation, no debate, no conference committee action, just the governor’s office looking for places to cut state spending with the minimum political effect on Kansans.

Which Kansans? That’s what insiders are looking for…will the prosperous who may occasionally need a Highway Patrol trooper to stand by while auto club workers change a flat tire on the Interstate or who need to renew their drivers’ licenses be inconvenienced?

Or, will Kansans who generally have more money spent on them—the poor, the sick, the children, the hungry—see cuts in spending that will show up almost immediately in their lives?

Or, of course, are there things that the state hires workers to do that just aren’t that important? This could be a thoughtful pruning of services the state has traditionally provided that not many even notice. Who really cares who takes possession of the antlers of a deer shot in someone else’s wheat field? Not enough hands go up to create much shade, do they?

Surprisingly, that $50 million in administration-ordered spending cuts might just create a few waves…but chances of that happening are slim.

The larger-spectrum effect of those cuts is to create about $80 million or so of ending balance in the budget for the coming fiscal year, enough to take care of emergencies and opportunities that might occur in the upcoming year. There are times that state government, like most individuals, just needs a little pocket change—though obviously the state’s pockets are considerably larger than even those loose-fitting jeans we tend to wear as we grow older.

Now, there is that other $50 million that a panel of judges just demanded the state spend on school districts… That’s a problem, which means if the state can’t wriggle out of it, there’s another $50 million to be spent from the relatively small fiscal year 2015 carryover from Tuesday (June 30) to Wednesday (July 1) that creates. But that $50 million is owed to schools, and wriggling out of it doesn’t sound right.

So, we have the upcoming cuts, the bill owed to schools, and if both are accomplished, then there’s about $37 million left in the treasury at the end of the next fiscal year. Probably enough, but it is dependent on all those tax increases passed this session that might, or might not, produce all the money that bookkeepers predicted they would.

Sine die adjournment? How about we classify that little exercise as just a breather, not exactly the summer off, but a break while non-legislative wheels of government are spinning and providing us some interesting money-moving and sliding of funding from here to there and hoping that it’s possible for us to at least scrape through until Jan. 11, 2016, when things start again…

Syndicated by Hawver News Co. of Topeka, Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver’s Capitol Report. To learn more about this nonpartisan statewide political news service, visit www.hawvernews.com.

It’s 10 a.m. and the sun blazes down on a patchwork of golden grain that dots the High Plains near Seguin in northwestern Kansas. A blistering southerly wind pushes the heat index to the century mark.

On this late-June morning, a roar of combines signals the latest edition of another wheat harvest. Cutting begins about this time each day and continues until midnight, or when the golden grain becomes too moist or tough to cut.

Fifteen-minute meal breaks are the only time off in a 14-hour workday. Although the days seem to last forever, technology has made life easy compared to the dusty, itchy harvests of yesteryear, when farmers sat on open-air seats and ate dust while sweat ran down their faces.

Modern combines come complete with contoured seats, soundproof cabs wrapped in tinted glass, air conditioning and stereos. Computers monitor the entire operation.

Across Kansas, farmers pilot these 12-ton machines as easily as the family car. Equipped with dual brakes, power steering and automatic transmission, these machines move through the fields at speeds of 5-miles-per-hour or more, depending on yield and field conditions. One machine can harvest more than 4,000 bushels of wheat on a good day.

Ask any farmer and he’ll tell you there’s nothing like cutting a field of wheat where the crop bunches up in the header and slows the combine to a crawl. Yields like that make farming and harvest fun.

And with crops like that, it doesn’t take long to fill up the bin. That’s when the grain cart waddles up next to the combine and 350 bushels of wheat is augured into the cart on the go.

It takes several hands to operate a harvest crew. Many producers operate one or two combines, a tractor operator pulls the grain cart and another couple helpers drive the semis, loaded with wheat, to and from the field.

There’s also usually one farmer who oversees or ramrods the wheat harvesting operation. He’s busy keeping an eye on moisture levels, making sure the machines are operating smoothly or lining up the next field to be harvested.

Farmers hate days when weather changes and the sun ducks in and out of the clouds. On such days they baby-sit the crop.

They test a field. Then move to another down the road, hoping to find wheat dry enough to harvest. No wonder farmers have been known to cuss the weather.

If and when harvest roars ahead full speed, it can be a frenzied time. Cutting the wheat and transporting this precious grain to the elevator or bin becomes the ultimate prize.

Man and machine race to beat the clock and weather. A storm with heavy rain, hail or damaging winds is every farmer’s worst nightmare and the possibility of such natural disasters is ever present during harvest.

Still, harvest is an event of beauty – the culmination of nearly nine months of growth, rejuvenation of the land and the ultimate prize – an abundant crop of golden grain. Seems like there are always moments of reflection when harvest is running smoothly, the crop is a good one and a farmer has time to stick his hands into a mound of wheat and pop a few kernels into his mouth. It’s at times like this, he’ll look out over the land he loves, where the machines are moving through clouds of dust and chaff.

“You gotta take what’s given you in this country,” they’ll think to themselves while chewing the wheat that’s by now turned to gum. “Some years, what you receive is better than others.”

A Kansas farmer takes risks that test the strength of his spirit. He faces harvest with the hope of bounty. He makes his peace with God and keeps that same peace with his neighbor. Faced with the annual trials of raising a wheat crop, this is the only way a Kansan would choose to live – with himself or anyone else.

John Schlageck, a Hoxie native, is a leading commentator on agriculture and rural Kansas.

“Ted 2” is a Seth MarFarlane-directed live-action comedy. Unfortunately, that sentence is losing a little of its luster. Don’t misunderstand, I love Seth MarFarlane’s sense of humor and the content that he produces; however, “Ted 2” suffers from many of the same problems that plagued “Ted,” in many cases, to a greater degree.

There are laughs, there is irreverence and there is referentiality, in spades. Those qualities together do not a great comedy make. Shock value is almost unattainable by MarFarlane at this point. He’s known as one of the most offensive comics out there and going for shock-value laughs is a dangerous game. Replacing quality with shock value is kind of like the comedic equivalent of substituting a cute dog for a good story (see “Max” review).

“Ted 2” certainly has its charms, but I doubt they will age well. A film like “A Million Ways to Die in the West” has grown on me since its release, “Ted” hasn’t and “Ted 2” certainly won’t. Seth MarFarlane is an fantastic producer and actor; however, his skill as a director hasn’t yet been fully realized. There are dramatic and comedic lulls in “Ted 2” that are distracting and break the momentum of the film.

Furthermore, there is something different about film comedy and television comedy. It’s somewhat easier for a television show to set up running gags and callback jokes when the distance between the original joke and the callback is great enough to make the callback seem like seeing an old friend again. In film, the time distance is much smaller and therefore the callback isn’t as novel and if the original joke was a less-than-stellar, the callback is wasted effort. My point being, MarFarlane is crossing the streams. His movies try to use television comedy approaches and sometimes it lands and other times it bounces off. “Ted 2” is about half and half.

4 of 6 stars

It’s old news by now that mountain lions (aka cougars) were finally confirmed in Kansas s few years back.

After years of reports and much speculation (some folks even believing that Kansas Wildlife and Parks had transplanted mountain lions here in Kansas to help control burgeoning whitetail deer populations,) cougar sightings in Kansas were confirmed.

The first confirmed mountain lion sighting in modern times occurred in 2007 when one was shot in Barber County in south-central Kansas, and 9 more sightings have been confirmed by Wildlife and Parks since. The last documented cougar sighting in KS prior to that was in Ellis County in 1904.

Settlers on the Kansas plains would have found gray wolves, (aka timber wolves) living here, but by the turn of the century they had been totally eradicated from the state. In December 2012 coyote hunters in northwest Kansas brought down what appeared to be an extremely large coyote weighing around 80 pounds.

Tissue samples taken by the US Fish and Wildlife Service confirmed that the animal was in fact a gray wolf from the Great Lakes population. Gray wolves have been known to wander into Missouri and Nebraska from northern states but this was the first confirmed gray wolf in Kansas since 1900.

American black bears were also once common in eastern Kansas, but they too were exterminated from the state by the late 1800’s. About a week ago, a black bear was spotted at a couple locations in Cherokee County in the far south- eastern corner of Kansas.

Black bear sightings in that part of the state have become more frequent because of a growing population in the Ozarks since Arkansas initiated a restoration program there 50 years ago, but Missouri and parts of Oklahoma also support black bear populations. An occasional black bear also wanders into extreme southwestern Kansas also, probably from populations in Colorado and New Mexico. Grizzly bears also roamed Kansas during the same time frame as black bears and they too were gone by the late 1800’s and have never been seen here since.

Although a grey wolf sighting in Kansas is unusual, my point to all this is that we should not be surprised to see occasional black bears and cougars in Kansas given the fact that there are viable populations of them in most surrounding states. After all it has become fairly common to see a dead armadillo along the road now and then because they have moved north over the past few years.

So far the cougars and black bears seen here have probably been young males wandering through, and no evidence has surfaced that there are breeding populations of either in Kansas yet.

There are no hunting seasons in Kansas for wolves, bears or mountain lions and although they can be shot if a landowner feels their property or family is in danger, all attempts should be made to scare them away first. Just like us humans who occasionally wander from place-to-place as our populations increase or because we desire different surroundings, so also does wildlife wander, especially young males of the species as they seek breeding territories of their own.

As I see it, even more reasons to Explore Kansas Outdoors! (Carefully)

Steve Gilliland, Inman, can be contacted by email at [email protected].

My Mother used to say time flew by more quickly as she got older. As a child, I didn’t understand what she meant. I admit I find myself thinking the same thing nowadays. But during the last three weeks, time seemed to lurch ahead and it has left me feeling much older.

It started with my 40th class reunion. I found myself surrounded by people who looked more like my classmates’ parents than members of the Southeast of Saline graduating class of 1975. Conversations included health issues, retirement plans and grandchildren.

Three days later, my husband celebrated his 65th birthday with a trip to the Social Security Office to complete his Medicare enrollment. He is now an “official” senior citizen.

My husband attended both of these events on crutches after a fall from a ladder at the beginning of the month that left him with a broken leg. Taking over his mowing, spraying, watering and trash duties has left me feeling much older and even more pressed for time. (He now agrees that since both of us are getting older, any future roof work will be a 2-person job with one on the ladder and the other steadying it on the ground.)

According to the K-State Research and Extension publication “AgeSense,” there are many ways to think about getting older. Aging can be considered chronologically, based on how many birthdays (or class reunions) an individual has celebrated. Getting older can be thought of in terms of functioning, with the focus on what a person can do rather than on how many birthdays he or she has experienced. Age can also be subjective, based on how old someone feels as opposed to how many birthdays they’ve had.

American society uses a generally-accepted definition of 65 years of age or older to determine when someone is considered “old.” Societal beliefs lean toward mostly negative attitudes and stereotypes about aging, fueled by the media and a youth-worshipping culture. But numerous beliefs Americans hold about aging are actually false. For example, older adults generally report a better sense of well-being than younger adults in research studies.

By examining personal attitudes and learning more about the facts of the aging process, people may decide that although aging is inevitable, a negative attitude about the process is not. Individuals with a positive attitude may reap many benefits. Research shows positive people actually do more for their own health as they age. They also are more functional, more likely to recover from disability and more likely to live longer.

The “AgeSense” publication suggests the SOC model as a way to adapt to the changes of aging. Selection refers to choosing activities and goals, Optimization is how people achieve their goals, and Compensation is used when new methods and behaviors for accomplishing goals are used. SOC is all about balancing opportunities and losses. It gives people a way to respond to everyday demands in an adaptive manner with the goals selected, the methods used to reach them and the strategies used to compensate when needed. In my husband’s case, by trimming tree limbs less often in the future (selection), he will make fewer trips up a ladder (optimization), and he will ask for assistance when he does (compensation.)

To learn more about positive aging, request the “AgeSense” publication MF3079 from the Ellis County Extension Office at 601 Main in Hays, 785-628-9430, or find it on the K-State Research and Extension website at www.ksre.ksu.edu/bookstore.

Linda K. Beech is Ellis County Extension Agent for Family and Consumer Sciences.