Oscar Wilde said, “No good deed goes unpunished.” This is an axiom of administrative work.   I would like to explore it a little, but I will need to go back more than forty years to do … more

Due to a rain-soaked Lincoln Park in 2019, the Little Balkans Days Folklife Festival’s vendors and music were moved to the asphalt circling the softball fields. Last year Covid canceled the whole … more

Dear citizens of southeast Kansas, As the doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, chief nursing officers, and CEOs of Fredonia Regional Hospital, Wilson Medical Center, Labette … more

Last week I got a call from my old friend Bubba back home.   It had been a while since he’d called me. So long, in fact, that some of you had been asking about him. I’d been worried myself, … more

No matter how grim life got for the immigrant coal miners and their families here in the Little Balkans, summer provided sweet solace in the form of a vegetable garden. Even into the 1950s, most … more

Sometimes I put on YouTube while I am going through my email early in the morning just so there will be a sound. I got into this habit in June of 2017 while I was teaching Elementary Statistics down … more

I’m a sucker for pithy statements, as essayist and radio personality Garrison Keillor obviously knows; he sent me a bunch of maxims last week. As I believe most of my readers are of the same ilk, … more

From the moment COVID-19 emerged in the United States, we have all been asked to make sacrifices to protect ourselves, our families and our neighbors from this terrible virus. At Ascension Via … more

We’ve got raccoons in the neighborhood. Jean and I walked past the old Methodist parsonage one day and saw a pair of yearlings in the garbage which had been dutifully set out on the curb. We saw … more

“You talk to your dog like he’s a person,” more than one of my consultation clients has observed when I told Arlo he needed to leave my office; that we’d be done in about an hour. (Sometimes, … more