October 2025

Not long ago, I was haunting the alleys downtown and noting all the infrastructure you don’t see from the storefronts. The utility poles and power lines and electric meters reminded me of the work of R. Crumb, the underground cartoonist most famous for the anthropomorphic, sexually charged “Fritz the Cat” comics. It wasn’t an oversexed feline I was thinking about but Crumb’s urban drawings, especially “The History of America,” that render in painful detail the things we have trained ourselves not to see, such as the web of power lines strung from utility poles overhead.

It’s hard to imagine waking up and going to work on payday only to find you have less money than you started with at the beginning of the pay period. That’s the reality many farmers are facing as fall harvest enters full swing in Kansas. Almost every acre of corn and soybeans across the state is expected to cost more to plant, grow and harvest than farmers will receive when they sell their crops.