Hays High School JAG-K students participate in Trick-or-Treat So Others Can Eat. (Courtesy photo)
The annual Trick or Treat So Others Can Eat canned food drive is set for Tuesday, October 8, 2019 in Hays.
Volunteers will be going door to door collecting non-perishable food items from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Food items such as canned meats, canned vegetables, canned fruit, and boxed meals are much needed at this time.
To assure residents that the items collected are for the Community Assistance Center, all volunteers will be wearing an identification badge with “Trick or Treat So Others Can Eat” clearly printed. Please leave items on the porch if you will not be home or do not want someone ringing the doorbell. Youth and adult volunteers from Hays give of their time to make this food drive a success.
Any house missed or those living in a rural area may take food items to the Community Assistance Center in Hays located at 12th and Oak until noon Oct. 31.
Members of the Hays Volga German Society, organizers of the Hays Oktoberfest, have released the full schedule for the newly extended event. The 47th Annual Volga German Oktoberfest will take place Friday, October 11 and Saturday, Oct. 12, in Municipal Park.
The mission of the Hays Oktoberfest is to celebrate the rich German heritage of Ellis County while generating scholarship money for students of Volga German descent and fundraising for area churches in need.
The NCK Tech Drive Thru will again feature German food made by NCK Tech Culinary Arts students. Menu items available for pick up include bierocks, green bean dumpling soup, and spitzbuben cookies. Patrons can order in advance by calling the main office at NCK Tech at 785-625-2437. Food can be picked up on Friday only at the drive-up window at the NCK Tech building directly across from Municipal Park.
Anyone interested in being a vendor at Saturday’s German Market should call the Downtown Hays Development Corporation at 785-621-4171. Vendor forms can be downloaded at www.DowntownHays.com on the Downtown Hays Market page under the Events section.
Gates will open at Municipal Park on Saturday at 10 a.m. with activities starting after the 11 a.m. Fort Hays State University Homecoming Parade ends. New this year, for-profit businesses and organizations will be allowed to set up on this second day, alongside non-profits.
Late registration for Oktoberfest vendors is available through Friday, October 4. Vendors can reserve a spot by calling vendor committee chair Lee Dobratz at 620-803-2258. Registration forms can be downloaded at www.haysoktoberfest.com.
For details and updates on the event, check the group’s website at www.haysoktoberfest.com or the Hays Oktoberfest Facebook page.
At the recent Kansas Fur Harvester’s convention, I strolled past a booth where several dozen beautiful flint-blade knives were displayed for sale. The owner and creator of those knives was Chris Yackle from Paola, Kansas who told me “As a young boy I was absolutely fascinated by the large collection of Native American artifacts, tomahawks, knife and lance points and arrowheads collected by my great grandfather George from Hillsdale.”
The artifacts were displayed on the wall in front of his great grandfather’s favorite chair, and as punishment when they got into trouble at great granddads house, Chris and his siblings would be forced to stay in the house and sit in that chair. Chris says he actually looked forward to that punishment so he could look at all the artifacts. When Chris was still very young his dad got a job with a pipeline crew and because of his job they moved every three years from the time he was in sixth grade until he graduated from high school. That sounds brutal for a kid, but Yackle told me he didn’t mind because that made for a huge area on which to hunt for Native American artifacts, and the cool part was that when he was along with his dad on the pipeline, he had permission wherever they went.
When Chris was fifteen, they moved to a home near Ft Scott, Kansas. On a trip to Ft Scott’s annual festival called Good Old Days, Yackle met Dennis Croffland from Haysville, Kansas who had a vendor booth there at the festival. Croffland was a flint knapper, making knives with stone blades, and Yackle decided on the spot he had to learn flint knapping. Chris had been experimenting with making stone knives for years so with Croffland as a mentor; flint knapping was easy for him to learn.
A picture of Chris Yackle’s favorite knife.
Flint knapping came about in England as a way to make flints for flintlock rifles. Yackle says that although some stone here in America is called flint, the only true flint comes from England where the process originated. Chris says that in school, he had no use for physics or geometry and couldn’t see how he would ever use either in life. Now however, he finds flint knapping to be all about physics and geometry.
He says “Flint knapping at its core is simply shaping and sharpening a rock. You first decide what you want to get out of a particular rock, and then look the rock over to see how that can be achieved. Look for flaws and cracks you’ll need to work around, figure out where the blade edge can be gotten, then once you’ve pictured and planned the blade or whatever you choose to make from the rock, simply remove all the stone that shouldn’t be there.” He buys most of his stones already precut into slabs from a man known as Bear Carpenter in Wellsville, Kansas, who also became a second mentor to him.
Yackle says the ultimate tool for removing material from the rock is antler, but he usually uses a “billet,” a round wooden piece with a hard copper cap on one end. A piece of heavy leather or other material is laid over his thigh, then the rock is held there with one hand while he slowly and meticulously removes small chips by striking just the right place with the billet until what is left is the finished knife blade.
Nearly all the rock he works with is some variety of agate or jasper; some is from Kansas but most is not. He prefers to use antler for knife handles, but a few are wooden. Once the blade is complete, a slot is cut into the selected handle and the blade is inserted into the slot and held in place with a two-part epoxy.
Yackle’s favorite knife has an antler handle and a blade made from Arkansas Novaculite, the same hard stone used to make Arkansas whetstones which are well known for their ability to sharpen knives. The handle is head of a bald eagle, and the blade has the perfect color and markings to look like an eagle feather. Chris said he had the handle for over a year before finding just the right stone for the blade.
I’m sure Chris Yackle’s great grandfather would be very proud to know that he passed his love for rocks and Native American artifacts down to Chris; sort of a chip-off-the-old-block you could say…or maybe a chip-off-the-old-rock….Continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors!
Steve Gilliland, Inman, can be contacted by email at [email protected].
Kansas Common crude at CHS in McPherson gained a quarter per barrel on Friday and starts the week at $43 per barrel. The Kansas benchmark had ups and downs last month. CHS reports the average for the month of September for Kansas Common was $46.91 per barrel, although it ended the month at $44.25, down a dollar from the first of the month.
Baker Hughes reported a drop of three oil rig and two gas rigs in its weekly Rotary Rig Count for a total of 855 active rigs across the U.S. New Mexico added four rigs while Texas dropped four. Oklahoma was down three rigs. Canada reported 144 active rigs, up 17 on the week.
Operators are about to spud a new well on a lease in Barton County, and drilling is underway at one site each in Barton, Ellis and Russell counties. Independent Oil & Gas Service reports eleven rigs in eastern Kansas that are moving in, rigging up, drilling or relocating, up one for the week. There are 26 active rigs west of Wichita, which is down three.
The government reported U.S. crude production for July at 365 million barrels, an increase of about 3.5 million barrels over the month before. Total production nationwide through July of this year topped 2.5 billion barrels. EIA said July production in Kansas totaled at 2.81 million barrels in July, or about 90,000 barrels per day.
Oil-by-rail traffic increased by one percent, marking one of only two freight categories to show a weekly increase. During the week that ended September 28, operators moved 12,245 rail tanker cars carrying petroleum or petroleum products, according to the latest report from the Association of American Railroads. Amid declines in total rail traffic, oil-by-rail last week posted its first year-on-year decline in recent memory.
The government reported U.S. crude-oil production last week of 12.38 million barrels per day, down about 92,000 barrels per day from the week before but well ahead of the 11 million barrels produced during the same period last year.
Crude oil inventories increased last week by 3.1 million barrels, but remain at the five-year seasonal average at 422.6 million barrels. The Energy Information Administration reports imports are down 87,000 barrels per day from the previous week. The four-week average for imports is more than 15% below the same period last year, at 6.6 million barrels.
A small lizard found among the dunes straddling New Mexico and West Texas in one of the nation’s richest oil basins is at the center of a legal complaint filed in federal court in Washington Tuesday. Environmentalists want the U.S. government to add the dunes sagebrush lizard to the endangered species list. It’s part of a fight that stretches back to the Bush and Obama administrations and could affect part of the multi-billion dollar energy industry in the Permian Basin.
The merger-and-acquisition frenzy in the oil patch continues. The Daily Oklahoman reports on three mega-deals last week, including the sale of Roan Resources to Citizen Energy Operating. That deal is worth a reported one billion dollars, and includes the assumption of about $780 million of Roan’s debt. Analysis from Austin, Texas-based Enverus notes that the industry’s merger and acquisition activity topped $17 billion in the third quarter and reached more than $85 billion through the first three quarters of this year.
The oil and natural gas industry in New Mexico last year provided more to the state’s annual budget than any other industry, nearly $2.2 billion, or 32% of the $6.88 billion in state funding for schools, infrastructure, health care and public safety. The CEO of the American Petroleum Institute says contributions from oil and gas to New Mexico through leases and royalties grew by $465 million from the year before.
Research into the treatment and possible recycling of oil-and-gas wastewater in New Mexico got a $100 million boost from the U.S. Department of Energy. According to reporting from the Carlsbad Current Argus, the Governor enacted a memorandum of understanding with New Mexico State University last month to begin studying how to treat and recycle produced water in the desert state. The school then announced its College of Engineering was awarded a five-year federal grant to create what’s being called the Energy-Water Desalination Hub.
From left, Margaret Becker, Emily Duncan and Vernon Becker
NCK Tech’s Hays campus students receiving scholarships from the NCK Tech Foundation and other benefactors were honored with a reception Oct. 2.Recipients, in many cases, had the opportunity to meet their scholarship contributors.
One such recipient met her benefactor — but not for the first time.Vernon and Margaret Becker established a nursing scholarship for a student enrolled in the program at the Hays Campus. The recipient for this inaugural scholarship was Emily Duncan. Duncan first met Vernon Becker when he was in the hospital and she was a student nurse. A student nurse, crafting her skills, helped take care of Becker. He was so impressed with the student nurse (Duncan) that, after his hospital stay, both he and his wife, Margaret, decided it was time to give back.The Beckers have established the scholarship.
“I couldn’t be happier that Emily was the first recipient,” Vernon Becker said.
Dr. Robert Severance
With new scholarships established, a long-standing tradition of scholarship benefactors continues. Once such contributor is Dr. Robert Severance. Dr. Severance became the second director of the North Central Area Vocational-Technical School in July 1967 and served in that capacity until 1992. He has continues to be a tremendous advocate of technical education and along with his wife established several scholarship opportunities. The Robert and Dorcas Severance Family Scholarship awards several students on both the Hays and Beloit campuses. His continued financial contributions along with his enthusiasm for NCK Tech only continues to increase. Recipients this year for the Hays Campus included Connor Born/welding and Kreighton Meyers/carpentry.
A complete list of Hays campus recipients and their benefactors from all scholarships include:
8-Man Football Connor Born – Welding
Mason Doll – PHAC
Drake Steinbrock – Electrical
Robert and Dorcas Severance Family Connor Born – Welding
Kreighton Meyers – Carpentry
Bob and Patricia Schmidt General Connor Born – Welding
Charles N. Tuley Zachary Poppe – Automotive
Clara and Archie Walters Memorial Kilie Unrein – Nursing
Dane Hansen Career Enhancement Diane Holbrook – Nursing
Said Lahrairi – Nursing
Nessa Larsen – Nursing
Payton Littrell – Nursing
Austin Seltmann – Electrical
Shannon Toll – Nursing
Bob and Patricia Schmidt Nursing Emily Bellerive
Amelia Borell
Alexa Brull
Helen Kelsi Coss
Emily Duncan
Makooshla Frier
Ruth Hair
Gwendolyn Housley
Katie Kreutzer
Alia Larson
Dallas Mead
Amanda Migchelbrink
Kayla Reed
Haley Schothaler
Mandy Wallgren
Leneal Weiser
Tyra Younie
Hays Medical Center Volunteers (Nursing) Melissa Pummell
Juana Lira Ramirez
Tori Tebo
Kilie Unrein
Judy Murphy Memorial Mandy Wallgren – Nursing
Mike and Jeanie Michaelis Kreighton Meyers – Carpentry
Kilie Unrein – Nursing
Vernon and Margaret Becker Emily Duncan – Nursing
William Yeager Zachary Poppe – Automotive
NCK Tech’s Endowment Association and Foundation enables the college to provide scholarships, materials, buildings and equipment to train individuals to be successful and productive. Students received over $153,000 in scholarships. To learn more about NCK Tech, visit our website at www.ncktc.edu.
Anthony Fox, owner; his fiancé Becky Meagher, and Melissa Meagher, owner, took over the SouthWind CrossFit, 229 W. 10th St, Hays, in August.
By CRISTINA JANNEY Hays Post
New owners have taken the helm of SouthWind CrossFit and are bringing new offerings to the fitness club.
Melissa Meagher, 33, and Anthony Fox, 28, took over the business, 229 W. 10th, in August.
Both Fox and Melissa have a backgrounds in fitness and athletics, and Melissa and Fox were both coaches at the SouthWind before they purchased the business.
Fox has a bachelor’s degree in health and human performance and a master’s degree in movement and sports studies. He also has a certification to train college athletes. He was also formerly a trainer at the Center for Health Improvement.
Fox said he spends a lot of time watching people’s movement and trying to help them improve their technique.
“I think that keeps people safe,” he said. “I want to push people to get stronger, but I also know where to ride that line of what is going to push you to get better without you getting hurt.”
Melissa is a level 2 CrossFit coach. She was a Division I volleyball player at Central Connecticut State University and also an assistant high school volleyball coach at TMP.
Melissa said after her college sports career was over, she was dealing with a lot injuries. She joined SouthWind as what she characterized as “broken.” The gym worked with her at the level she was at and helped her rebuild her strength.
She said she is now in the best shape of her life, even better than when she was playing college sports.
“[The gym members] get to ask me questions about how did you do that. I can talk to them about how recovery is really important — how to take care of your body while you are trying to get your body back to shape,” Melissa said.
She added it helps people to be able to see others have been in their shoes and have been able to get back in shape.
In addition, her high school coaching experience, Melissa said, helps her connect with her athletes and work with large groups.
“That is really important in this gym too,” she said. “You get to know every single person in class. I can look at every single person, and I know all of their names. I know all of their injuries. I know what goals they are going for. Nobody gets neglected in this gym.”
The new owners have varied the classes offered at the gym. In addition to the 60-minute CrossFit classes, they now offer 45-minute Get Fit classes, 30-minute Quick Fit classes, an endurance course on Saturdays, open gyms, CrossFit Kids and an Athletic Development Program for high school athletes who want to work on strength and conditioning in the offseason.
Get Fit classes are for people just learning CrossFit or people who want the CrossFit class but are not involved in competitive sports.
“They want to get the good workouts in and learn more in technique and learn more in movement,” Melissa said.
Quick Fit classes are for those who don’t have very much time. They don’t use barbells, but they use all of the other equipment.
The gym is continuing its Legends course, which is geared to people who are 50 years and older. It is 60 minutes three days a week.
CrossFit Kids is aimed at getting kids involved while their parents are working out, Fox said.
“We are very about family,” he said. “As they see their parents doing something that is healthy and good for them, we are hoping they will follow in their footsteps as well.”
CrossFit is defined as using constantly varied functional movements at high intensity, Fox said. This includes a lot of squatting and lunging, and pushing and pulling.
These movements apply to daily activities. Getting out of chair is similar to a squat. Lifting groceries is similar to a dead lift, Fox said.
Especially in the Legends class, the coaches are working on improving strength for daily life activities. Some of the gym members said they were unable to kneel at church, and their goal was to be able to do that again.
Melissa and her sister Becky’s mom joined the gym. She has had two total knee replacements. If she was sitting in a chair and holding a grand-baby, she had to have someone there with her, because she couldn’t get out of the chair with one her grand-babies in her arms. Through the CrossFit class, she was able to build enough strength so she could do that.
“You don’t have to have the goal be awesome or to be a competitor,” she said. “You can just have a goal as simple as I want to be able to get our of a chair on my own. We will work with you.”
CrossFit is more focused on functionality and not how your body looks, and everyone’s workouts are individualized, the duo said.
Gym membership costs vary depending on what type of classes you want to take. Endurance courses are $19 per month, Kids CrossFit is $29 per month, the Legends class is $49 per month, Quick Fits are $69, Get Fits are $89, CrossFit is $99 and full access is $119.
October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
Options Domestic and Sexual Violence Services is selling purple lightbulbs at several Hays businesses in conjunction with the national Purple Light Nights campaign, which began in Covington, Wash.
“The idea behind it is to help bring awareness to the number of people who experience domestic violence,” said Jennifer Hecker, Options executive director.
“It’s to send a message out in the month of October that we will not tolerate, we don’t want domestic violence in our community and we’re here to support those who are suffering in silence right now,” she said. “We’re celebrating those who’ve come out the other side of domestic violence and to let people who are now experiencing it know there is a place to go and a community of people here to support you.”
Homeowners are encouraged to replace their regular porch lightbulbs with a purple lightbulb this month. Businesses can show their support by placing purple string lights in their store windows.
Purple lightbulbs supporting Options are available for $2 at Breathe Coffee House, Simply Charmed, Be Made and H2o Float Cryo Massage.
A new awareness event this month is a poetry reading co-hosted by Options and Sigma Tau Delta, Fort Hays State University’s international English Honor Society chapter.
The free event is part of a regional conference in Hays. It will held 7 to 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 18 at Breathe Coffee House, 703B Main.
People can come and read a piece of literature or poetry that they’ve written or just listen.
“The pieces don’t have to be about domestic violence but what we find a lot of times with poetry specifically is that the medium truly lends itself to people who have been oppressed and have been traumatized,” said Shaelin Sweet, community advocate and an English major. “It’s a very good outlet for that creativity and that hurt, but also for that strength and that power to flow.”
The nonprofit agency serves 18 counties in northwest Kansas and provides free confidential services.
“We don’t force people to report to law enforcement. All of our services are survivor-driven. Their participation is voluntary,” Hecker explained.
Help is also available to family and friends of abuse victims who often don’t know what to say or not to say to their loved one.
“We’re here to help people navigate through this very difficult time and to make sure victims have full wrap-around support to help them move into the healing phase.”
At approximately 6:20 p.m. Saturday, Barton County Sheriff’s Office deputies were dispatched to a reported injury accident on the Barton/Russell county line on the Susank blacktop.
A 2012 Harley-Davidson operated by Gregory Allison, 60, rural Great Bend, was westbound on the county line, according to a news release.
Investigation at the scene indicated Allison failed to negotiate the curve going south onto Susank Road. The motorcycle went into a skid, sliding over 100 feet. Allison was thrown from the bike, landing in the west ditch.
A helicopter was called to the scene, and Allison was transported by air ambulance to Wesley Medical Center in Wichita.
Deputies believe excess speed was a contributing factor. Allison’s condition is not known, the sheriff’s office said in the news release.
MANHATTAN — A public hearing will be conducted at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, October 10, 2019, to consider the adoption of proposed regulations regarding water use. The hearing will be held in room 124 on the first floor of the Kansas Department of Agriculture, 1320 Research Park Dr. in Manhattan.
The hearing will consider a proposal to repeal K.A.R. 5-21-7, which adopted change in use rules applicable only in Western Kansas Groundwater Management District No. 1; repeal of this rule would result in the statewide rule (K.A.R. 5-5-9) being applied within GMD 1.
The other proposed regulations — K.A.R. 5-25-2, 5-25-4, and 5-25-22 — will assist water users in Big Bend Groundwater Management District No. 5 in developing an augmentation project.
The R9 Ranch in Edwards County, owned jointly by the cities of Hays and Russell as a long-term water supply, is located in Groundwater Management District No. 5.
The proposed regulations can be found on the KDA website: agriculture.ks.gov/PublicComment. Written comments can be submitted online at this site as well.
All interested persons may attend the hearing and may present comments either orally or in writing, or both. In order to give all parties an opportunity to present their views, it may be necessary to request that each participant limit oral presentations to five minutes. Individuals wishing to participate by teleconference may go to either the KDA Garden City Field Office or the KDA Stafford Field Office on the date and time of the public hearing.
Any individual with a disability may request accommodation to participate in the public hearing and may request a copy of the quarantine in an accessible format. Persons who require special accommodations must make their needs known at least five days prior to the hearing. For more information, including special accommodations or a copy of the regulations or their economic impact statement, please contact Ronda Hutton at [email protected] or 785-564-6715.
