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Labor Day weekend is about half a week away, and for more than a century, in addition to being the unofficial end of summer, the holiday has been the time for the biggest annual event in the small town of Kismet.
This year marks the 105th Little World’s Fair, and organizers Brett Reiss and Neal Coffey said this year’s event has plenty of fun for all who come to the Seward County community.
A portion of the commission comments and suggestion cards items on Monday’s Seward County Commission agenda had one commissioner and Administrator April Warden voicing concerns over some community issues.
In commission comments, Vice Chair Tammy Sutherland-Abbott talked about some remarks made by local leaders following the results of the recent August primary election.
Sutherland-Abbott began her remarks by praising the work of county employees and Warden.
World War I involved all parts of the world, and Kansas was not exempt from those efforts.
Recently, author Blake Watson announced a new project to highlight some Kansans’ stories from that time.
Eye care is important in all parts of the world and recently, local optometrist Dr. Liz Fieser from Prairie Vista & Optical took part in a mission trip to help with just that to Roatán, Honduras.
“We had more than 200 used pairs of glasses donated from our patients, and these glasses were given a second life with citizens of Roatán. The organization that headed everything up was SVOSH, which stands for Student Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity, and the optometry school in charge of that group is Northeastern State University Oklahoma College of Optometry (NSUOCO) in Tahlequah, Okla., which is actually where I went to school along with Dr. [Ryan] Farrar,” Fieser said. “The group has actually been doing these mission trips for about 14 years, and the only break they took was in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic. How I got involved was, there were three doctors who were scheduled to be part of the group but ultimately had to back out of the trip, so the organizer at the college put a post on Facebook about looking for volunteer doctors, and I jumped on it. I also got to take my boys, James and Josiah, which was amazing. I've always wanted to do a mission trip like this, but the opportunity/timing just never came up until now. I remember when I interviewed with Dr. Farrar, I told him a goal of mine was to do a mission trip like this. And the optometry school also brought several pairs too, almost 700, and they were all really great brands.”
The school year has officially begun, and a main point of focus for many districts will be the mental health of their young charges.
Recently, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shared some updates regarding those efforts throughout the U.S., saying data released earlier this month highlight improvements in mental health among some U.S. teens, including decreases in the percentage of students feeling persistently sad or hopeless. However, the report also highlights concerning increases in the percentage of teens reporting experiences of school-based violence and absenteeism due to safety concerns, according to a release from the CDC.
