Opinion

GUEST COLUMN, Kim Baldwin, Kansas Farm Bureau

Fall field trips are in full swing for children and their teachers. While a teacher might notify parents of an upcoming field trip a week or two before the big day, the preparation work needed for a field trip to become reality sometimes happens many months prior.

While our family’s farm has hosted many groups in the past to talk about farming sorghum, wheat, corn or soybeans in central Kansas, the requests for visits have definitely increased since we began growing and marketing popcorn.

THE POSTSCRIPT, Carrie Classon

My mother told me she was worried that her cat, Katy, needed to lose weight. Privately, I agreed.

My sister and I spent the weekend with my parents up at their cabin in the woods. Their cat, Katy, is now middle-aged and not as active as she used to be. She is no longer allowed outside because she is an excellent bird killer. So Katy spends a lot of her time napping — something cats are very good at (and something I think is a good idea for people as well). But over the years, Katy developed a saggy belly. My mother, who feeds her, felt responsible and worried that she might not be healthy.

GUEST COLUMN, J. Basil Dannebohm

On Sept. 9, 2001, I should have been celebrating my 20th birthday. Instead, I found myself bedridden with a debilitating tension headache. Though I was acquainted with the symptoms, it was a type of headache I rarely ever experienced. I visited my physician and told him, “Something feels terribly wrong. I feel as though something horrible is about to happen.”

The doctor assumed I was referring to my health when I spoke those ominous words.

I wasn’t.

I knew the severe discomfort was a warning about something bigger than me. I just didn’t know what it was.

L&T Publisher Earl Watt

It’s not very often that you can say that three Republicans voted for one of the largest tax increases in history, but that was the case last night at the Seward County Commission meeting.

Scott Carr, Tammy Sutherland-Abbott and Presephoni Fuller voted for a 13-plus mill increase while Republican commissioners Steve Helm and Todd Stanton voted against it.

It’s true that the commission is facing a refund to an overcharged taxpayer, but that is only a small fraction of the proposed increase.