Flyover People Daily News

    In honor of the rain (finally!), here’s one of my poems that was published in The Christian Science Monitor.   RAIN All day rain has held to the clouds, the sky turning from gray to purple to purple-blue and back to gray again. A soft wind, the breath of spring, pushes the yellow […]

Poetry & Haiku, seasons, weather

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette: cat tracks into the neighbor’s yard   WINTER’S GOOD SIDE I should at least get partial credit for making it through half of winter without whining or complaining. But I lost my cool, my patience, when February opened with a sleet storm, followed by 7 […]

Flyover Weather, life on the ground, seasons, weather

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette: WHERE THE HIGHWAY ENDS In the summer of 1965, my parents took my brother and me to the Arkansas River, a mile south of Pawnee Rock, to see the flood. Heavy rains in Colorado had sent a crash of water downstream. This was a mighty […]

columns, E-town, Flyover Weather, life on the ground, nature, weather

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette: Deer head, Java Cat Coffee House, Emporia A RAINY MONDAY At the Java Cat, a woman in her 20s sits down with a book and I’m curious as to what she’s reading. Fiction? Non-fiction? The sky is dim this particular day, the overhead bulb has […]

columns, commerce, life on the ground, other people's stuff, WAW, weather

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:   TUMBLING TUMBLEWEEDS Just as many of us like to roam across Kansas, Russian thistles, too, are full of wanderlust. I don’t think about tumbleweeds often, but was reminded of them on a recent trip to Dodge City with my friend Tracy Simmons. While the […]

columns, Flyover Weather, landscape, nature, traveling, weather

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette: VISITING HURRICANES Here in the Midwest, hurricanes don’t enter into our forecasts very often, but occasionally the remnants of one will pass over Kansas and drop some rain. Not Isaac. At a time when our land is so thirsty for precipitation, Isaac slighted us. The […]

columns, Flyover Weather, life on the ground, sky, traveling, weather

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:   LUNCH AT AD ASTRA At Ad Astra, beneath the sounds of restaurant conversation and the clatter of silverware, came the voice of Bob Dylan. He sang “A hard rain’s a-gonna fall,” and although the song isn’t really about rain, that Saturday was indeed a […]

columns, Flyover Weather, small towns, vittles, weather

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette: Arkansas River, Wichita ENDLESS SUMMER When I woke up to the sound of rain last Tuesday, I felt as if I had awakened in another country. It was a great day – the air was chilly, and rain fell slowly and steadily all morning long. […]

columns, Flyover Weather, life on the ground, nature, weather

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette: Dried up dogwood leaves. ADJUSTING TO SUMMER In the evenings I often stand in the yard with a hose, watering the young trees, the shrubs, the hedge. Now I know I could just leave the hose on the ground for 10-20 minutes and let the […]

columns, life on the ground, seasons, weather

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette: The Langley Tornado, 4.14.12. Photo by Stephen Locke, used with permission. NIGHT OF A HUNDRED TORNADOES “I can easily recall the pungent scent of this tornado path,” Stephen Locke wrote. “Violent winds strip bark, blend grass, open the earth and liberate a cacophony of volatile […]

columns, Flyover Weather, Kansans, seasons, weather

An inch of snow is our official total here. So far anyway. It’s still spitting out there, but I think that’s more of a freezing drizzle or freezing mist right now. We had enough snow to whiten the ground one day in November – a wet snow with huge flakes, but it was a warmish […]

seasons, weather