Opinion

It was an amazing coincidence, really. Jeremiah Ariaz chose the Newton Kansan as the first stop of his artist-in-residence project documenting smaller, community newspapers in Kansas. He could have picked any number of places, but he chose us. The day he chose to come to Newton he first drove to the old Kansan building on sixth street.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A Kansas native who led an all-female Islamic State battalion when she lived in Syria has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, the maximum possible sentence, after her own children denounced her in court and detailed the horrific circumstances and abuse she heaped on them.

Dear Doctors: I heard on the news about a study that says you won’t get as hungry if you eat all of your meals earlier in the day. Does that have to do with the way the body clock works? It seems like circadian rhythms affect everything we do. Can you talk about that, and about this study?

“I’m afraid what Thanksgiving will be like, no matter how the election turns out,” a friend commented. She’s not wrong to be worried. Elections bring up all sorts of emotions and behaviors that create division. Understanding our “brains on elections” can help. Psychologists note that we all have many identities. Some of mine include writer, trainer, wife, and daughter. When my father had a health crisis, being a daughter became far more important to me than being a writer. Yet later, when I saw poor communication at a board meeting, my identity as a conflict trainer came to the fore.

I’ve been writing about Scottish cattle the last couple of columns, and I’ll continue with that theme this time, too, today writing about delivering cattle to market in the early stages of the cattle industry both there and in our country as well. In the big movement of cattle in both countries, cattle had to transport themselves, walking overland from Texas hundreds of miles to reach the cattle towns in Kansas first, then later Nebraska, before trains took them on to packing plants in Kansas City, Omaha, and Chicago. Before the trail drives ended the cattle walked themselves all the way to the range country of Wyoming, Montana, and even Canada. In Scotland the early cattle markets (trysts, as they were called there) were more south-centrally located, such as the one in Amulrie. Later the trysts moved south, first to Crieff, and finally to Falmouth. From there herds would be put together to drive to the pastures of north and central England to put on weight before going to London’s Smithfield market, just as Texas cattle for the same reason were often pastured on the short, mid, or tallgrass of Kansas and the central plains before being sold in Abilene or Wichita or even wintered over.

They are in my inbox. They are in my voicemail.

“It’s passed,” US president Joe Biden said of his student loan forgiveness plan at a recent forum. “I got it passed by a vote or two.” But he didn’t “get it passed,” nor were there any votes. He issued an executive order. “Where’s Jackie?” Biden asked at a conference in September, scanning the crowd for US Representative Jackie Walorski (R-IN). “I thought she was going to be here.” The month before, he’d pronounced himself “shocked and saddened” by Walorski’s death in an automobile accident. I am not a doctor. I do not play a doctor on TV, or on the Internet. You’re probably not a doctor, either. But our lack of credentials to issue medical diagnoses doesn’t prevent us from noticing, and making plausible inferences from, visible signs of (likely age-related) mental decline.

is not correct. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments concerning affirmative action on Monday, October 31 and will rule before the end of June, 2023. Most news outlets are portraying the arguments for and against affirmative action to be a liberal-conservative issue focused on providing equity in educational access across various racial groups. This According to a poll by The Washington Post and George Mason University’s Schar School of Public Policy and Government, over 60 percent of respondents support eliminating race as a factor in college admissions. However, a similar percent also support programs that would increase racial diversity among college students, and recognize that having a diverse population on campuses is a good way for college students to understand others. And yet, 60 percent also did not consider it important that the student body of a state university match the state’s racial and ethnic proportions.