Walt Whitman’s legacy lives on as one of America’s best-known poets. He was born 200 years ago on Long Island, New York. His poetry, his life and his St. Louis connections are being celebrated…
September is that busy month of local festivals. Summer is still with us and autumn not far away.
Cicadas, Katydids and Crickets
It’s hard for white folks to talk about racism. We think we are so beyond that R-word. We may have friends or associates of color. We may have voted for an African American. We haven’t a racis…
Most Americans of a certain age recall sitting for hours in front of a mostly-static TV screen on Sunday evening, July 20, 1969. A few hours earlier, two U.S. astronauts had made the first-eve…
Summer Solstice, the farthest northward arc of the sun in the Northern Hemisphere, occurs today, June 21. It is the day of the year with most hours and minutes between sunrise and sunset – 14 …
Fifty years ago this month I graduated from high school. There were 24 of us in the graduating class at Canton High School. Many of them are still in central Kansas. A couple have died. I have…
Obviously, I have never been a Mom. An active parent, yes. But never the carrier of life. Never the partner with flesh torn in process of giving birth.
I just finished reading the April issue of National Geographic. The focus was Cities – Ideas for a Brighter Future. According to the magazine, the world’s population just 30 years from now is …
April is Earth Day Month. We have room for improvement on many fronts, including recycling practices.
A majority of readers, I hope, got to this page by picking up a red wrapper on their lawns or driveways, then slipping out the paper and opening this newest issue of the Times. Often the red b…
March is the windiest month of the year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Close behind are the months of April, February and January.
Have you ever seen those flocks of thousands of blackbirds that look like spiraling dark cirrus clouds on the horizon? Last Sunday morning on a straight gravel section line road in Kansas, one…
When I am out of the country, I may say I live in the U.S. state of Missouri. (Sometimes that has to be explained with a reference to the Mississippi River.) When I am traveling stateside, I s…
One would think by now we would have gotten it right. One would think by now that color and cultural divisions would have dissolved, that we were all a happily blended neighborhood.
