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Yahoo
5 days ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
Cocooning during this Kansas storm season, I try to avoid the cataclysm outside my window
The spring storm season has brought frequent rain and thoughts of self-preservation, writes opinion editor Clay Wirestone. (Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector) Each day now in Lawrence, where my family and I live, I watch the clouds roll in and the rains come. The spring storm season thunders and flashes and pours, and the lawns flourish and gutters overflow. I sit here in my home office through the evenings and watch as the lightning casts strange shadows. I hear the rain pelting the roof. Later on, when I take our dog out for a walk, the rains have usually slowed and the neighborhood smells earthy and damp, while the doused roads shine under streetlamps. During these days, my son hangs around the house. School has ended, and summer activities remain a few weeks distant. He plays video games and dotes on the pets. My husband's work has shifted into its busiest season, so some days I only see him toward the end of the day. I seem to live now, for a week or two at least, in a small protected bubble. The rains come and the world rumbles and my son and I stay indoors and wait for the storm to pass. Aren't many of us doing that right now, staying in those kind of bubbles, waiting for the skies to clear? We can create those bubbles in different ways. Some of us watch seasons of old situation comedies, following the adventures of Sam and Diane and Cliff and Norm on Cheers (rest in peace, George Wendt). Some of us watch horror movies (I enjoyed Nicholas Roeg's 'Don't Look Now' the other night). Some of us find escape through exercise or alcohol or other activities that change our brain and body chemistry. It is the season of survival. We endure the weather. It's different for all of us. Here in Kansas, the weather might be a private prison company pressing to reopen facilities to serve Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. It might be a law that denies critical yet misunderstood health care to teenagers. It might be your immigration status if you study at a university. It might be an uncertain economic climate that threatens small business in towns and cities. In uncertain times, we search for comparisons. We judge today's storm against the storms of the past. We survived those, we tell ourselves, so surely we must survive these ones. Those storms may have even been worse, we tell ourselves. We should expect spring rains, Discover Magazine explains, as humid summer air collides with dry winter air. The mixture forms clouds, yields precipitation. We still wait indoors, swaddled in decades-old quilts and drinking hot tea. The metaphor strains. My correspondents will write me email messages insisting that determined Kansans can weatherproof their homes. We can work together to find community and purpose during these dreary, overcast days. We need not — must not — hide from the work ahead of us. I understand these things, agree with them, have written them before. We can both endure and act. The stormy season will pass. These times will end. The clouds will clear and the sun will nudge itself above the horizon, and we will pick up the pieces. I will mow the lawn and pick up the random branches that fell from the giant tree in our front yard. Cleanup awaits, and it will take the whole subdivision pitching in. Yet while spring storm season continues, at least let me have these gloomy evenings. Let me embrace poetry and fiction and imagination leaps. Grant me the time to recharge, to dote on my family, to enjoy distractions for a handful of days. We all deserve time to center ourselves, to feel protected from the inevitable deluge. These moments of grace will steel us for a long, hot summer. Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Yahoo
27-04-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Expand the night-vision hunting season for Kansas' top varmint? I'm rooting for the coyotes.
A coyote surveys the terrain around the author's campsite. (Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector) Find yourself a patch of land away from city lights just about anywhere in Kansas, and you will hear them. Sit down on a good rock and wrap yourself in the cold and dark, especially during a new moon in winter, and they will eventually begin to yip, yowl and yap. Their cries will grow in intensity until you might think yourself surrounded, subject to imminent attack, although you are likely as safe on the prairie as in your own bed. What just sent a thrill down your spine is the cacophonous song of the coyote. These 'song dogs' are among nature's best survivors, an adaptable omnivore that has been with us since at least the last ice age. They are present in every state except Hawaii, are blamed for killing farm livestock and snacking on suburban house pets, and have been the target of unsuccessful eradication attempts for the past 200 years. The latest campaign in the war on coyotes came April 24, when the Kansas Wildlife and Parks Commission voted 5-2 to extend the night-vision hunting season from the current three months to seven. During the meeting, held at Fall River in southeast Kansas, the commissioners acknowledged various conflicts over extending the season but declined a request from Wildlife and Parks secretary Chris Kennedy for more time to study the coyote problem. The new season would be Sept. 1 to March 31, excluding some firearm deer seasons. Currently, the season is limited to January, February and March. The extended season would not take effect until after the new regulation passes statutory and legal review and is officially adopted. Night vision hunters typically spend thousands of dollars in rifles, scopes, and thermal optics. Their gear resembles tactical military gear, and that may be part of the appeal. We'll get to this Zero Dark Coyote pretend combat presently, just as we will recount the story of a coyote named Rattlesnake. In places like Kansas, where the myth of the frontier seethes just below the cultural surface, the coyote is not just a predator but a living symbol of the dichotomous desire to both hold the wild and to tame it. For First Peoples, Coyote often represents the Trickster, the entity who alternately brings creation and chaos. For ranchers, the coyote is a profit-eating pest to be eliminated by any means available. For romantics, the animal represents wildness, rebellion and cunning survival. We see ourselves in the clever and grinning countenance of these nocturnal ramblers. Coyotes have been watchers on many of my outdoor adventures, but my best memory comes from a night some years ago sleeping on a sandbar on the Arkansas River far below Wichita. I had been kayaking the river for a book project and, retiring to my tent after miles of paddling, the coyote yips seemed like the voices of old friends. Their night song spanned the centuries, at least in my imagination, to a time before the plow broke the plains. From the moment white settlers came to Kansas, coyotes were targeted for extinction because of real and suspected depredations. Rabbits and mice are the primary foods for coyotes, but just about anything can become a meal of opportunity — garbage, crops, livestock, the occasional toy poodle. Coyotes generally don't attack human beings, although when cornered or trapped they can be dangerous, just as any wild animal can. In 1916, the Kansas Supreme Court took up the case of a coyote in a Wichita zoo that bit a child. Four-year-old Bessie Hibbard had been taken by her parents to the zoo at Riverside Park, where she put her hands in a cage containing a coyote on display. The animal bit and scratched her hand and arm. Bessie's father sued the city for negligence. The state Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling and found in favor of the city, saying officers and agents of the city were not liable for damages while performing official duties. A dissenting justice, Judson West, said the coyote cage was a 'most malignant and excuseless' nuisance which afforded zoological specimens the opportunity to 'dine upon the children' of visitors. I'm with West. For decades, beginning around 1900, the state attempted to eradicate coyotes by poison, firearms and paying bounties on their hides. When I was a kid, I remember some of my friends getting $2 per pair of coyote ears, paid by the county. I was a hunter in my youth, and always in need of money, but I never shot a coyote. I have since given up hunting, believing it immoral to kill wild things for money or sport. Your results may vary. Perhaps the biggest change in the state's approach to coyote management was the result of one man, F. Robert Henderson, a specialist who worked 27 years for the Kansas State Cooperative Extension Service. Henderson, hired in 1968, educated livestock producers across the state about the myths and realities of coyote predation. 'Not all coyotes kill livestock,' Henderson said in his memoir, published in 2016. 'It is a learned thing on the part of the coyote. … I found out that generally ranchers hate coyotes.' He also learned that most people who set out to kill coyotes end up thinking that killing indiscriminately is not the answer. Instead, you have to eliminate those animals that have learned to kill livestock, and the best way to do that is by trapping. In the 1970s, Henderson set out to make an educational movie about coyote control. Lacking funds, he used a Super 8 movie camera and wrote his own script. The star of the film was Rattlesnake, a coyote the Henderson family had raised as a pet — something, the author cautioned, that 'is not a good idea for you or the coyote.' Rattlesnake became the film's star because he would attack livestock when given the opportunity, a drama Henderson created with the help of a local rancher. It all seems a little bloody now, but I think the point of the staged scene was to show Rattlesnake running away when a pickup truck approached. When the film was shown, Henderson recalled, 'Kids would first feel sorry for the calf, then cheer when the coyote got away.' Like the kids, Henderson's sympathy was with the coyote. 'Wild animals do get into situations where they create losses and cause people to have loss and worry,' Henderson wrote. 'This is true, always has been and probably always will be.' The actual number of cases is likely far fewer than generally believed. Henderson's memoir, appropriately called 'Coyotes Go to Heaven,' is a sprawling and folksy account of his life, and that of his wife, Karen, from 1933 to 2016. Henderson recounts, among other things, hunting with Kansas Gov. Mike Hayden and the influence of environmental ethicist Aldo Leopold on wildlife conservation. Henderson died in 2024. He was 91. I was thinking about Henderson as I reviewed the video stream of the Wildlife and Parks Commission voting to extend the night vision hunting season for coyotes. I hadn't known much about Henderson until a few weeks ago, when a friend suggested I check out his work. I'm glad I did, because Henderson seemed like somebody I could have been friends with. I don't presume to know what Henderson would have thought about the expanded coyote season, but I can tell you I find it disturbing. The kit — night scopes, thermal optics, and typically an AR-15 style rifle — seem more suited to urban warfare than recreational hunting. I suspect that playing war is the point for some. I don't mean this mockingly, but hunting requires skills that are also useful in combat, something that novelist, soldier, and big-game hunter Ernest Hemingway knew well. But for all his faults, Hemingway did his hunting in the light. Coyotes are officially treated as a non-game species, according to the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, but they are 'regulated and managed' as furbearers. As a non-game species, they can be hunted during the day year-round, and there is no bag limit. In 2021, a three-month night vision hunting period was introduced, ending March 31. With a hunting license and a special $2.50 permit, hunters can use artificial light and thermal imaging equipment. This year, 7,310 night vision permits were issued, according to Laura Rose Clawson, chief of public affairs for the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks. 'Coyotes are an important recreational species in Kansas,' Clawson said in an email. 'About 30,000 hunters spend about 200,000 days total hunting coyotes in the state. Most of this is the result of traditional (non-night-vision) hunters and methods.' Clawson said there were alternatives to hunting for controlling losses to predation, including penning livestock at night, removing carrion, having guard animals, and fencing. 'However, coyotes do sometimes prey on livestock,' she said, 'and in those cases, lethal removal of the offending animal is often the most effective solution.' About 4% of cattle losses and 11% of lamb losses were due to coyotes, she said, citing figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Trapping is an option, but that is also lethal. The animals are destroyed after being trapped because relocation isn't viable. In public hearings on the night-vision season held last month in El Dorado, Junction City and Hays, a total of 58 individuals attended. Thirty-eight were in favor of an expanded coyote night-vision season, Clawson said, while 10 were opposed. Another 10 were neutral or did not complete the survey. 'I'm concerned I don't have as much biological data on the coyote population as I'd like to have,' Kennedy, the Wildlife and Parks secretary, said during Thursday's meeting. He also wanted 'to make sure we're not hunting any wildlife population in the state to extinction.' Kennedy suggested postponing the vote on extending the night vision season, but the commission proceeded. There was, however, some concern. One member expressed worry about how hunting is perceived by the public. Another acknowledged that previously a wildlife biologist had told the commission that even a yearlong season would likely have no effect on the coyote population. The discussion preceding the vote was largely about conflicts with other hunting seasons, the added burden on game wardens and other law enforcement, the best month to hunt coyotes (January) and the importance of night-vision coyote hunting to the state economy. Guided night-vision hunts are a big business in Kansas, with operators charging up to $1,800 per night. The coyotes are lured in by electronic rabbit distress calls. The operators, of course, claim they are doing landowners a favor by killing the animals. Perhaps. But I doubt the accelerated killing of coyotes will do much to deter livestock predation because it doesn't target the offending animals. The animals killed by the night-vision hunters are being promised rabbit for dinner, not lamb. You don't kill all dogs because some have learned how to get into the chicken coop. Nature is indeed 'red in tooth and claw,' as Alfred, Lord Tennyson poetically observed in 1849. But we shouldn't be. Night-vision coyote hunting seems offensive in the same way as buffalo slaughters in the 1870s or rabbit clubbing during the Great Depression. There must be a better way to control coyotes than shooting them. Coyotes have expanded their range and tripled their numbers since the 1980s, but it's not the fault of the animals. Humans created the opportunity by destroying habitat and by reducing the coyote's chief rival, the wolf. The harder coyotes are hunted, either in calling contests like the ones held in Kismet or by night-vision seasons, the larger their litters. They have learned to exploit our trash, our livestock, and the habitats we create. They have become America's most successful predator because we have helped them become so. As author Dan Flores noted in 2016's 'Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History,' their strength is their uncanny adaptability. 'In one of the myriad ways humans and coyotes eerily mimic one another,' Flores wrote, 'like us coyotes are a cosmopolitan species, able to live in a remarkable range of habitats.' The current night-vision campaign to control the coyote population, like past hunting efforts, is doomed to fail. It may provide recreation for those who like military-grade kit, but it is ultimately a pseudo war against ourselves. I'm rooting for the coyotes. Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Black Hills Energy asks to raise natural gas rates for Kansas customers by 17.6%
Black Hills Energy is proposing a rate increase that will raise residential bills by about 17.6%. (Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector) TOPEKA — A public hearing Tuesday in Wichita will give Black Hills Energy customers an opportunity to comment on a proposal that would raise residential bills by about 17.6%. For a customer with average usage, that equates to an additional $11 per month to take effect in the second half of 2025, according to a Kansas Corporation Commission press release. Black Hills provides natural gas service to approximately 120,000 Kansas customers, primarily in the southern half of the state. The company filed a request with KCC to increase rates in early February. Its last rate review was in 2021 and its most recent new revenue request was in 2014. In testimony, company officials said Black Hills has experienced declining residential usage per customer. In addition, increased insurance costs and investments in infrastructure are affecting revenue. 'Presently effective rates do not produce sufficient revenues to cover the reasonable cost of Applicant's continued ability to render reasonably sufficient and efficient service,' the company said in testimony. The public hearing begins at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Lowe Auditorium, Hughes Metropolitan Complex, 5015 E. 29th St. North, in Wichita. Participants who want to comment or ask questions must register in advance by noon Monday on KCC's website. The hearing also will be broadcast on KCC's YouTube channel. Written comments may be submitted to KCC through 5 p.m. June 20, via KCC's website, by mail to the commission's office at 1500 S.W. Arrowhead Road, Topeka, KS 66604-4027, or by calling (785) 271-3140 or (800) 662-0027. The commission will issue an order on the application on or before Aug. 29.
Yahoo
20-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A theocrat's prayer to end democracy
Looking up into the dome of the state capitol building in Topeka. (Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector) It was a time of great and fervent excitement. By act of Congress, citizens were asked to turn to their Creator in supplication and meditation. This national day of prayer was to be celebrated in statehouses across the land, with every individual invited to offer hosannas or amens or other holy words of praise. The places of lawmaking were transformed into houses of worship, where the symbols dear to the faithful festooned the galleries and holy banners fluttered from balconies. When the appointed day arrived, lawmakers made thunderous speeches and pounded their desks in protestations of righteousness. There was no louder din than in the capitol building of an interior province, a region known as much for its piety as for the bountiful harvests of wheat and corn. Under a great copper-sheathed dome, choirs of young people sang the praises of the One who made the sky while lawmakers clustered elbow to bended elbow and murmured their approval. Few remembered the ancient day when the day of supplication became the law of the land, or the war that had prompted its passage, or the innkeeper and the lawmaker who had championed it. An ambassador of this interior province, was not yet born when the day was proclaimed, but from a dais in the capitol rotunda he addressed the assembled flock. His face was stern as he clutched his holy book and urged the assembled to celebrate the land's deliverance from the rule of the godless. At long last the battle for theocracy had nearly been won. The faithful were in power under the great copper dome. It would be a small matter to extinguish the infidels entirely. No true patriot could doubt the land was specially ordained by the Almighty for greatness. Victory was at hand. The ambassador bowed his head and asked the One to bestow wisdom on the leaders of the land. He unashamedly asked this for all in the name of peace and love. No one could remember a more passionate or powerful sermon. Then an aged stranger approached. She moved silently down the aisle and mounted the platform, her chalky robe swirling like smoke. Her white hair fell in rivulets to her shoulders. Her face was as pale as those of the statues of long-dead statesmen in the alcoves of the rotunda. The stranger touched the ambassador on the arm and bid him step aside, which the startled man did. She grasped the lectern with skeletal hands and surveyed the congregation with eyes burning with uncanny light. 'I am sent from the Throne,' she said, her voice solemn and deep. 'The One has heard your prayers, and they will be granted — if you wish. But know that for every prayer answered, another must be dashed. Each request for favor brings with it the unspoken plea that another be disfavored. All supplications for earthly power are wishes both selfish and damned.' Her eyes smoldered. 'You have asked the One for victory,' she said, 'so that you might rule this land in the way which pleases you. Very well. I will repeat your prayer, as it falls upon the ears of the One above the clouds.' There were calls for the capitol guards to remove the stranger, but they stood as transfixed as the crowd. 'Almighty One, grant us the power over our political enemies, so that we may not only exalt You but punish them,' she said, her voice growing stronger. 'Let us make laws that take the food from their mouths, the homes of their families, and their ability to pay for medicine and doctors to see them through sickness. Grant us the power to choose in their stead the governing of their bodies and their minds. Allow us to restrict the means of controlling conception and then force women to bear unwanted children, even when violated.' The stranger paused and clutched the robe to her breast. 'Let us purge from their libraries those books we deem to be improper or impious. Allow us to deny our enemies the ability to seek redress by controlling the manner in which their leaders are selected. Grant us the right to banish from our shores those who utter seditious dissent.' The crowd grew still. 'Let our enemies live from this day forward with fear in their hearts,' the stranger said. 'Let them fear the loss of their positions if they speak of equity or inclusion, make them cower if they dare say azure instead of crimson, allow them pain if they insist on choosing how they shall be called by others. Make their nights sleepless in expectation of a knock at midnight's door. Grant them freedom of worship only if they worship as we do, deny them public office if they refuse any manner of worship, and enforce the social and marital codes of a society these thousands of years dead.' The ambassador attempted to mutter 'blasphemy,' but the word caught in his throat. The stranger regarded him for a moment with pity, then turned back to the crowd. 'Allow no truth to free a human soul,' the stranger continued. 'Shutter the great houses of learning lest a whisper be made against the ambassador or his earthly king. Make a virtue of intolerance and paint it as just. Make retribution the supreme law of the land, power the only virtue, and chaos the only mode. Force them to abandon the sacred civic code that once governed this land, just as we have, and accept in their stead whimsy, nonsense and malice. Allow the land to wither beneath tariffs on foreign things, the fear of strangers, and the rapacious hunger of misers and kings.' The stranger shook her head and her hair floated cloud-like about her face. 'Finally, Greatest One, ignore the prayers of the meek, the young, the sick and the old,' she said, her voice growing soft. 'Comfort not those who pray with pure hearts. Reward not those who thirst for righteousness. Punish those who seek the truth. Banish those who challenge power with fact. All are enemies of the state, Greatest One, and are therefore your enemies. Damn their hopes, dash their dreams, and make their eyes wet with tears. Deny them comfort, afflict their spirits, and fill their hearts with lead. Smite them and their generations to come. Forever make them inequal to us. Grant us the end of history and relieve us of the will to change. This we implore of You, in the name of love.' The stranger paused. 'This is the prayer of your secret hearts,' she said, her voice a quaver. 'If you still desire it, speak! The messenger of the One awaits.' It was reported afterward that the old woman was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what she said. On the way to the asylum, a copy of Mark Twain's 'The War Prayer' was found in the folds of her voluminous robe. Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Listening for the echoes of history, here in Kansas and across the United States
The Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve stretches out near Strong City, Kansas. (Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector) Virtually all of the articles that I have written for Kansas Reflector and for other publications have been about agriculture. That is a byproduct of this Kansas farm boy's upbringing. The land, and the people who tend to it, are topics close to my heart. That said, these are troubling times, and my heart and mind tell me that this nation, and others, have lost their way. Society is fraying, and at a pace that should be deeply troubling to anyone with a sense of history. That is apparent at the Republican-dominated state legislature in Kansas as well as at the highest levels of the federal government. Over the past six decades, my career and personal interests have taken me to various corners of the world, and I have dealt with some of the richest of the rich, and the poorest of the poor — from the standpoint of material wealth — during my travels. I have seen some of the worst, and some of the best, of humankind. I will carry those experiences with me until my dying day. Experiences give us perspective, and coupled with education, they help us to connect the dots and draw parallels from the past to current events. Civilization is diminished when we ignore the lessons of history and fail to act with respect to people and events that we know are simply not right. Sometimes an event, or a book, will enable a person to pull together those experiences in a way that is a sort of early warning sign that we have lost our way, in the United States or other parts of the world. For me, a cathartic moment came from a book that I read recently. It is called Time's Echo: the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance. As the author Jeremy Eichler stated, it is about 'the role of music … as a witness to history and as a carrier of memory for a post-Holocaust world.' He notes that World War II caused 'a tear in the fabric of humanity, resulting in deep trauma, grief, and scarring.' And he reminds us that 'music remembers us.' All of this is pertinent to today's world, and especially in the United States. Most of us know what is right and what is wrong. But the book notes: 'The future will not judge us for forgetting, but for remembering all too well and still not acting in accordance with those memories.' As former President Biden mused in his speech at the Democratic convention — what will our legacy be? What will the children say? One need not be a historian to know that the path undertaken by the current regime lacks a moral compass. Power corrupts, and those who cannot see the parallels between this regime and those in power in the times leading up to World War II are taking us down a path that will not end well. It is an inflection point in history. Those of us who recognize the situation have to decide what we do and where we go from here. May we choose wisely and well, and may our example be remembered by generations to come. Ben Palen is a Kansas native and a fifth-generation farmer and agriculture consultant in Colorado and Kansas. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
