Flyover People Daily News

To celebrate Kansas Day, I was on Kansas Public Radio today with this piece: Finding Hope in The Bleak Mid-Winter of Kansas.

history, Kansans, on the radio

  I’m thrilled to be giving a book talk/reading at the future home of the Lyon County History Center, 709 Commercial in Emporia, on Thursday, Sept. 4, at 6:00 p.m., The Lyon County Historical Society is in fund-raising mode, working at bringing in money to renovate the building in downtown Emporia. Right now the museum […]

E-town, events, history, Waiting on the Sky book

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette: NAMING NAMES Once upon a time in Kansas, there were towns called Milo, Mimosa and Moonlight. Those towns have faded into history now, but they are three of the 4,281 post offices established in Kansas between 1828 and 1961. In a book called “Kansas Post […]

cities, columns, history, small towns

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette: FAMILY STORIES Clouds hung low over Highway 50 as I drove westbound toward Chase County one October morning. Leaves were beginning their brilliant farewell. A few days earlier, Ila Mae Whitlock who lives near Elmdale, had called, saying that she had stumbled across a few […]

columns, history, Kansans, life on the ground

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:       A TIME CAPSULE Where were we 10 years ago? Step back in time with me, a decade, if you will. While cleaning my junk room over Labor Day weekend, I found newspapers and clippings, all from 2003. I started writing this Flyover […]

columns, E-town, history

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette: ROYALS REBOUND The Kansas City Royals are having a good season. I don’t watch baseball, but the team has been playing well enough that even I have paid attention. During the past two decades, I’ve observed a pattern. Each April as a new season begins, […]

columns, history, nostalgia, on the radio, small towns

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette: ‘DRAGGING WYATT EARP’ “Returning home is like that. The future gets left behind, a piano dumped on a stark prairie. Suddenly you’re left with nothing but your life and the past. You have returned. Full circle. Everything else is just a blur.” Those are the […]

columns, history, Kansans, other people's stuff, writing

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette: ‘SHADOW ON THE HILL’ On a sunny Saturday in May, 1925, Decoration Day, Florence Knoblock was found brutally murdered on the kitchen floor of her farmhouse near Burlington. Florence was married to John Knoblock and was the mother of a 4 year-old boy named Roger. […]

columns, history, Kansans, other people's stuff, writing

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:   IN THE PRESENCE OF TREES An abundance of shade, a concert stage, the state’s largest southern magnolia, and an independent young cat named Twiggy. Those are just a few of the things that you’ll find at the Bartlett Arboretum in Belle Plaine. This Sumner […]

columns, history, Kansans, landscape, nature, other people's stuff

  Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette: UNDERGROUND IN HUTCHINSON “Don’t pick or lick the walls” is one of the rules at the Kansas Underground Salt Museum in Hutchinson. And I’m happy to report that I behaved. There were plenty of walls down there, but I did not lick any of […]

columns, history, nature, traveling

KSN in Wichita featured a nice story on Mary White this evening. The Emporia Gazette’s editor, Chris White Walker, was interviewed as was Beverley Buller of Newton who wrote “A Prairie Peter Pan,” a book about Mary White. Watch it here. ***

E-town, history, Kansans, on TV, other people's stuff