Party in the Sky

The Hillcrest. Douglas and Rutan, Wichita.

There was a toast.

There was yummy food, too. (But no pictures.)

A Piccadilly chocolate strata cake.

The man with the birthday: Jay Price.

This guy is one of my good, good friends. I’ve written about him here and here.

Dr. Price is one of the most interesting people I know. And a kind and thoughtful person, too. He teaches history and directs the Public History Program at Wichita State University.

You can also read about him in an article written by The Eagle’s Becky Tanner: WSU Professor Works to Keep History Alive.

The man with the stories: Dudley Toevs.

He told stories about the history of this fabulous 1927 building. A Kansas Preservationist, Dudley helped get the ball rolling to save Emporia’s Granada Theatre.

Next to Jay is the woman with the Kansas Traveler Newspaper: Susan Howell.

If you don’t already subscribe to the Kansas Traveler, you should. This quarterly newspaper, $14/year, is full of articles telling about things to see and do in Kansas. There’s a fabulous statewide event listing in each paper. Susan and John Howell work hard to bring Kansas to Kansans.

Kansas on the Net is a valuable resource that I use a lot. That’s John and Susan’s site.

John Howell built the Blue Skyways network for the Kansas State Library and John and Susan traveled around the state, gathering information and taking photos for the town web pages. If you follow links about small towns on my Daily News page, you know that I am always and forever linking to the Blue Skyways pages they built.

They are good people who serve this state well.

The neighborhood below the Hillcrest.

The view from the Sky Room, 10th floor of the Hillcrest, about 5:15 p.m.

This is what the sky looked like about 6:30 p.m. when the pasture fire smoke began to strangle the city. When I left the building, my GPS had a hard time finding the satellites – too much smoke.

On Facebook, Heather Wade posted a link about the polluted Wichita sky: Wichita exceeds air pollution standards.