TOPEKA – The National Association of State Park Directors recently honored The Nature Conservancy of Kansas with its 2018 President’s Award. In 2016, TNC bought a 330-acre tract of land in Logan County that encompasses 250 acres of Niobrara chalk formations. The property adjoins the Smoky Valley Ranch which is owned by TNC. In 2018, the Kansas Legislature formally designated the chalk formations as Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park. The park is projected to be opened by summer 2019. The Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism and TNC are collaborating to design access to the park and build trails to protect the fragile formations and unique ecology of the area.
The Niobrara chalk formation is a layer of rock deposited about 85 million years ago. It is composed of a chalk-like sediment that settled at the bottom of an inland ocean called the Western Interior Seaway which covered most of central North America roughly 140 to 70 million years ago. The rock was exposed and eroded over time, creating the tall pillars and rugged canyons that characterize the Little Jerusalem badlands.
In addition to breathtaking views, Little Jerusalem is also home to wildlife – from bats and ferruginous hawks to snakes, toads and lizards – and plants found nowhere else in the world.
“Without the help of the Conservancy staff, Kansas would not have this beautiful landscape as a part of its state park system,” said Linda Lanterman, NASPD president and Kansas state parks director. “TNC and KDWPT are committed to making this property accessible to visitors, while ensuring that the fragile terrain is protected.”
Prominent members of The Nature Conservancy of Kansas who have worked especially diligently to protect and make the Little Jerusalem badlands accessible include Rob Manes, Kris Knight and Matt Bain.
Due to unforeseen equipment breakdowns, Wednesday’s refuse collection may not be collected on Wednesday, September 12, 2018.
In the event your refuse is not collected today, it will be collected on Thursday, September 13, 2018. Wednesday’s and Thursday’s refuse collection may be collected later than usual.
City of Hays customers who have any questions regarding this notice should contact the Solid Waste Division of the Public Works Department at 785-628-7350.
Please make sure your refuse and recycling are out by 7:00 AM and keep in mind the trucks have no set time schedule.
RELATED STORY: The city of Hays plans to replace its 11-year-old trash trucks.
When, on Friday, I am installed as the 10th president of Fort Hays State University, it will be a day of reflection, inspiration and celebration.
It will also be a day of great joy and gratitude, because in many ways, FHSU and I took similar paths – out of humble beginnings, but with much promise, came a journey that has always been nurtured by the love and support of a family and community.
We have excelled, and we have stumbled. We have grown. We strive daily to achieve excellence and to become something or someone more magnificent than our modest beginnings, with success measured only by the positive impact we have had on the lives of others. We know that our successes are achieved through the collective efforts of many.
An inauguration ceremony serves as formal means of uniting people who care deeply about the future of a university. The theme, “Unlocking Untapped Potential to Empower the World to Greater Success,” sets the perfect tone for expressing the work ahead of us. It captures the impact on our students and alumni and the breadth of our reach, stretching out over the nation, crossing oceans and languages, transforming lives in our own backyard and around the world. I am so excited to celebrate and lead this magnificent university as we step boldly into an even brighter future. That future will be created through the power of the connections forged between staff and alumni, faculty and students, university and community, and it will be guided by our spirit through the hard work of bringing dreams to life.
The ceremony has been meticulously planned by an outstanding committee: Karen Allen, Hayley Bieker, Gordon Carlson, Cindy Cline, Melissa Dixon, Terry Crull, Anthony Gabel, Tre’ Giles, Mary Hammond, Elodie Jones, Craig Karlin, Lisa Karlin, Lisa Lang, Rhonda Meyerhoff, Karl Pratt, Adam Schibi, Jacob Ternes and Nancy Vogel, chaired by Janette Meis.
I owe them and many others an enormous debt of gratitude. So many very thoughtful elements were built into the occasion: Student honor societies will be part of the processional; people from the university and the wider community will deliver video greetings; our TGOF partners will offer discounts in local businesses; Kim Stewart, chair of the Department of Applied Technology, built a a special stand to hold the presidential medallion; the Fort Hays Singers and the FHSU Wind Ensemble will bring their glorious music.
And the Celebration on the Quad will be the perfect opportunity for everyone to gather in the name of Fort Hays State University and share their love for Tiger Nation. This is a place of heart and home.
Finally, because I start each day reading a devotional, I am grateful for my church family, Celebration Community Church, and especially Pastor Brant Rice, for hosting a morning worship service specifically for the inauguration, ensuring I begin my day grounded in and supported by my faith.
I am truly touched by the generosity of thought and effort that have gone into this event, and I hope all community members will feel welcome to come. The ceremony is open to the public, and I hope everyone who can’t come to Gross Memorial Coliseum will join us through the live-stream.
Because for me, inauguration day is a magnificent opportunity to share my beloved Fort Hays State with members of my family as well as cherished friends and colleagues who will travel to participate in the celebration. It is a day when we invite people to our metaphorical home and our community, a caring community that consistently demonstrates a genuine appreciation and love for this university.
It is, of course, a deeply personal day as well. It is the day when I will formally accept the office of president and thank those whose leadership has presented me with a vibrant, student-focused university. It is the day when I will publicly declare my commitment to relentlessly pursue the promise of our future together.
First critical access hospital in nation to earn the honor
PLAINVILLE – Sepsis Alliance, the leading sepsis advocacy organization in the country, names Rooks County Health Center, a 20-bed critical access hospital in rural Kansas, a 2018 Sepsis Hero. RCH will be one of five heroes honored at the seventh annual Sepsis Heroes Gala on Sept. 13 at the Marquee in New York City.
Sepsis Heroes are chosen based on a demonstration of their dedication to raising awareness and improving treatment for sepsis, which is the body’s life-threatening response to infection. The condition affects 1.7 million Americans annually and is responsible for nearly 270,000 deaths per year. According to the University of Kansas Medical Center, mortality rates for sepsis and septic shock in Kansas are as high as 50%, far greater than mortality rates for heart attack (9.6%) or stroke (9.3%).
“Sepsis is not very well known or understood among the general public and, surprisingly, healthcare professionals,” said Thomas Heyman, Executive Director of Sepsis Alliance. “The amazing work our 2018 Sepsis Heroes are doing to raise awareness about sepsis and post-sepsis syndrome, improve sepsis treatment, and reduce readmissions is truly lifesaving.”
RCH’s award-winning sepsis initiative was guided by Stephanie Bjornstad, RN and RCH Quality Director and Risk Manager; Jen Brull, MD and RCH staff physician; and Pam Harmon, RN and RCH Chief Nursing Officer. Asked to describe the amount of effort involved in RCH’s sepsis initiative, Bjornstad explained, “When we first started, the sheer complexity of the challenges of developing our program just seemed overwhelming. Despite those challenges we were able to progress to the point where now our innovations are in place and the program just runs smoothly.” The great strides RCH made in improving sepsis treatment and outcomes for their patients in Western Kansas is reflected in the fact that RCH is the only critical access hospital in the nation to ever receive the Sepsis Hero award.
AJ Thomas, CEO of RCH, stated, “Our entire staff looked at the best practices, adapted them to rural Kansas, implemented them and this saved lives. Sharing an award like this with major, urban academic hospitals illustrates our staff’s initiative and progressive ethos in helping people.”
Harmon and Bjornstad will be the guests of Sepsis Alliance as they travel to the gala in New York to receive the award on behalf of RCH. America’s Got Talent finalist & sepsis survivor, Angelica Hale will perform at the gala where she will be presented with the Erin Kay Flatley Spirit Award Winner.
Other Sepsis Hero award winners include Jay Towers, a radio and TV personality; UM-Pulse, the University of Michigan Post ICU Longitudinal Survivor Experience clinic; Jill Kogan Blake, a sepsis survivor; and Sharon Hansen, a critical care nurse educator.
It’s time to replace the 11-year-old Hays refuse trucks according to Public Works Director Jesse Rohr.
By BECKY KISER Hays Post
The three automated refuse trucks used to collect trash by the Hays Public Works Department are the same trucks originally purchased when the blue polycart automated pickup program went into effect in late 2007.
The current trucks have approximately 60,000 to 70,000 miles on them and approximately 13,000 hours, according to Jesse Rohr, Public Works Director.
“Industry standard and the type of service it takes is about a six to eight year life span,” Rohr reported to city commissioners last week. “We had originally planned for 10 years. They’ve been in service for 11. It’s time to replace the vehicles.”
“We run two trucks daily. We run three trucks holidays and some Fridays. We always need that back-up truck,” Rohr insisted. “If a truck goes down, we cannot get through our routes on a daily basis with a single truck. We can make concessions for a few hours at a time if necessary but ongoing if we have one down for a week, we may have some serious issues.”
Rohr noted one of the current trucks was recently considered totaled following an accident. The city’s insurance will allow for a truck to be leased until the three new trucks are in service.
Staff is recommending the commission approve the low bid of $638,076 (after trade allowance of $105,000 or $35,000 per truck) from Doonan Peterbilt of Hays three Model 520 Peterbilt trucks with the New Way Sidewinder packer body.
City commissioners will consider awarding the low bid during their meeting Thursday.
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:
Although everything that can happen seems to happen to poor Junie B. Jones, she manages to maintain the utmost optimistic attitude.
“Junie B. Jones, The Musical” is the feature of this year’s Paula Huser Children’s Theatre.
The Paula Huser Children’s Theatre is an annual production that showcases child actors ages 7 to 14. Older students are mentored as directors and to manage lights and costumes. Huser was a founding member of what later became Hays Community Theatre and was known for her work with children, said Wendy Richmeier, “Junie B. Jones” director.
Performances will be 7 p.m. Friday and 1 p.m. Saturday at Celebration Community Church. Tickets are $5 and are general admission. Attendees are asked to bring a non-perishable food item. Tickets can be purchased at the door or online at www.hctks.com. Doors open 30 minutes before each performance. The musical lasts about an hour.
This year’s performance has more than 40 cast and crew members.
“Junie B. Jones, The Musical” is based on the book series by Barbara Park that bares the same name. Although the stories in the musical come from the book series, the musical does not follow any one book exactly.
The books are intended for a second-grade reading level, but many older children will likely remember the stories, Richmeier said.
The audience will join Junie B., played by Jordan Aschenbrenner, on her first day of first grade. Junie B. has a rough start to grade school when her best friend from kindergarten, Lucille, doesn’t want to be her bestie anymore. However, she makes friends with the new kid at school, Herb, on the school bus.
Junie B. is also disappointed to learn from her teacher, Mrs. Scary, that she has to get glasses after she struggles to read the chalkboard during class.
Junie B. keeps the details of all her travails in her “Top-Secret Personal Beeswax Journal.”
Correction: For time on Saturday for performance, which is at 1 p.m.
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.
