A rocking horse sits on my front porch. His matted mane has worn off on one side. White plastic shows through the once black saddle. Recently he has begun to resemble the Skin Horse from the children’s classic The Velveteen Rabbit. This Mother’s Day the horse reminded me of three things. 1) My children have [...]
I have a bunch of plants on my back porch that grow like crazy. They are hard to manage, vine-like entities that, if left untended, take over everything. When they first started growing, I stressed about them endlessly. I trimmed, cut, pruned, dug up, and whatever else I could think of to keep them at [...]
William Quantrill betrayed four associates of Eli Snyder, an Osawatomie blacksmith and cohort of John Brown, in December of 1860 to convince proslavery forces that his desire to serve the proslavery cause was genuine. Quantrill had to do this because he was known in the area as a Free State advocate and proslavery forces had [...]
Target doesn’t open until 8 a.m. There are exactly two Target stores between my home and my work. The only conveniently located Walmart between my work and my home is about a mile from my house. I know all of these seemly random facts because I needed them to not be true last week. I [...]
Preachers, teachers, writers, musicians, artists and anyone one else who deals in ideas have one thing in common: they steal liberally. Some try to make it look like they don’t. Some do it better than others. But whether done well or not, and regardless of any admission; everyone knows that stealing is part of the [...]
Like most Americans, I will never forget where I was that Tuesday morning in September. I was just finishing the 8 a.m. news on KOFO radio in Ottawa and we switched to an ABC broadcast that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center building in New York City. The events of that day [...]
By Jeremy Gulley At this time of the semester, I remind myself and my students to persevere. The point to getting through is to keep working and remember that, soon, we will wake up and it will be over. But perseverance isn’t always easy. In fact, I argue that perseverance needs practice, or at least [...]
By Beth Gulley Saturday morning I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around, and it was Danny. “Hi Beth,” he said. “Are you running today?” I told him I planned to, and I showed him my race bib. He explained that he was only going to walk a mile because of his bad [...]
By Kevin Gray How would you answer the following questions sent by the Kansas Association of School Boards to all the public school districts in Kansas? What do Kansas public schools currently offer that promotes intellectual, educational, vocational and scientific improvement? My answer: How about a wide ranging set of classes and programs taught by [...]
By Jeremy Gulley Two events on Friday reminded me that being unnoticed is often the best choice. I know that we like to be noticed, stand out, be important and have people listen to us, but in a lot of cases, I think it would be better if we just shut up and stayed to [...]