Walk Kansas, a statewide health initiative presented by K-State Research and Extension, will hold its fourth annual Walk Kansas 5K for the Fight and 1.5-mile fun walk Saturday, May 4 to benefit the Johnson Cancer Research Center at Kansas State University. It is open to everyone, not just Walk Kansas program participants.
The event, which will begin with a 50-yard kids’ fun run, will take place outside the Johnson Cancer Research center in Chalmers Hall on the university’s main campus. Check-in will be from 7:45 to 8:45 a.m. The 5K and 1.5 mile fun walk will start at 9 a.m.
The 5K route will circle around Bill Snyder Family Stadium and the 1.5-mile fun walk will wind through the main campus. Custom medals will be awarded to the top male and female finishers in each age category of the 5K.
All participants will receive a T-shirt, snacks,water and exclusive event day specials at various Manhattan businesses. The K-State Marching Band will perform.
Registration is $25 for he 5K and $20 for the fun walk through April 23, after which fees increase by $5. The kids’ fun run is free, but preregistration is requested for planning purposes. Information and links to register online or download a brochure and registration form are at cancer.k-state.edu.
Cooler. Mostly sunny in the morning, then mostly cloudy with a 30 percent chance of rain showers in the afternoon. highs in the lower 60s. North winds 10 to 20 mph.
Changes are coming in code enforcement and administration in Junction City. It is a study and a work in progress right now but changes will range from license requirements to continuing education requirements for general contractors.
At this point many of the details are being sorted out but City Manager Allen Dinkel feels there will be a benefit. “I moved the Codes Department underneath the Fire Department. One we felt there was some lax in enforcing our codes. We actually have found contractors that we were allowing that didn’t have proper insurance, and I think that’s what you’re trying to save the community. Because if you have a community work on your house and there’s problems they expect to know they have insurance. We can guard that for them.”
Junction City Fire Chief Terry Johnson has also just recently been appointed to serve as the new Codes Administrator. As he works through the process to review the city codes he is finding a variety of problems. Some contractors do not have required block test scores. The City will also implement required continuing education training, and there are issues with the Board of Contractors. “The Board of Contractors, the only documentation we have that they have ever met was in 2010.” Terms on the board run three years. “This board is supposed to appoint people, it’s not been done. Three of the contractors who were on the board are no longer with us. They passed away. My contractor’s board is basically defunct. So we have to figure out what we’re going to do’
An in-depth comprehensive review is being done by Johnson. He made it clear to city commissioners this week it will take some time.
Junction City firefighters responded to 1902 Thompson Drive on the north side of the city at 1:15 p.m. Wednesday. Fire Chief Terry Johnson said they arrived on scene and found a grass fire behind houses in the 1900 block of Thompson Drive. “The fire is under investigation but there was no property damage other than the tall grass between the houses and the field that was on fire.” There were no injuries.
On the distance of the fire from the houses, Johnson confirmed the fire came within four to five feet of the fence line. “But with the way the occupants are keeping their yards clean we were easily able to contain that.”
Firefighters were on scene for approximately 45 minutes.
The JROTC program at Junction City high school was the focus for the JC Breakfast Optimist Club at their meeting on Wednesday.
LTC Richard Hodgson, Senior Army Instructor for he JROTC program at Junction City High School; Cadet LTC Magdalena Solis, Cadet Commander of he JCHS Blue Jay Battalion and Cadet Major Savannah Green, Cadet XO of the JCHS Blue Jay Battalion.
Hodgson said there are 150 cadets in grades 9-12 enrolled in the JROTC program. The Battalion splits their class meetings every other day with some Cadets meeting on “Blue Days” and others on “White Days.” Cadets are required to wear their JROTC uniforms on those days, when in parades, at the military ball and other special events of the Battalion.
Optimist Club members learned from Hodgson and Solis that their role “is not to recruit students for the military, but to develop quality citizens at school and in their community.” Ways Cadets contributed to the community this school year were through projects for the Food Pantry in Junction City, toy drives for younger children and a clean-up project at the Black Jack Battlefield and Nature Park in Baldwin City, Kansas.
In addition to classes in which each student is enrolled, Cadets participate in competitions with other schools with similar programs. The competitions range from air rifle shooting and drill team to color guard and Raiders “which is the most physically demanding of all the competitions,” LTC Hodgson stated. The JCHS Raiders team also captured first place in a national competition with 19 other programs this school year.
Another accolade for the Battalion this year was completion of their GPA, which is a rigorous review of the JROTC program held every three years. It involves an inspection of the facilities, program individual cadets and their community involvement. The Battalion received a 98% rating.
Solis plans to apply for an ROTC scholarship and attend Texas A&M with a career goal of becoming an anesthesiologist. Green will apply for an ROTC scholarship at the University of Oklahoma or enlist in the Army with a goal of eventually becoming a teacher of Biology students in USD 475.
The City of Junction City had planned to undertake a new traffic roundabout project this year near the intersection of McFarland Road and North Eisenhower, but that will have to be delayed due to lack of enough funding.
The Junction City Public Works Director, Ray Ibarra, said the city budgeted $1.5 million for the 2019 street maintenance program but only one bid was received. It came in at $1.756 million. “Funding will not be available in the street funds to cover the $1.75 million for the project.” That bid was rejected and other alternate street projects have been identified.
City Manager Allen Dinkel stated, “Our engineer, we tied together the concrete bid for the roundabout as well as our street maintenance projects. Street maintenance projects came in where we thought they would, maybe even lower. The roundabout came in almost $300,000 higher.
Officials anticipate the roundabout can probably be built in 2020.
Geary County Public Works has announced that they will be planning on closing Liberty Hall Road between Taylor Road and Gfeller Road on Monday ( dependent on weather ) between the hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Temporary detour signs will be set out for the traveling public to follow. The detour for west bound traffic will be south on Taylor Road, then west on Old Highway 40, and north on Crider Road. The detour for east bound traffic will be north on Gfeller Road, then east on K-18, and south on Ritter Road.
The scheduled work will consist of replacing an old wooden drainage box and replacing it with corrugated metal drainage pipes.
The Northeast Kansas Regional Notification System has notified JC Post that Houston Road into the City of Milford is closed until further notice due to water across the road. This is due to the rise in the Milford Lake elevation.
The only way into the City of Milford is by way of 12th Street.
MANHATTAN — When Kansas State University’s Hale Library experienced a devastating fire on May 22, 2018, librarians from around the state reached out to share their concern. In one unexpected instance, concern grew into a donation of books from the Lawrence Public Library in Lawrence.
Crews working the fire on Tuesday at KSU
Angela Hyde, program coordinator for the Friends of Lawrence Public Library, was looking at donated cookbooks amassed for the Lawrence Public Library’s book sale last winter. Normally these books are sold for a few dollars each. A community member broached the idea of donating books to K-State Libraries after the fire, and Hyde’s board of volunteers enthusiastically supported passing along their cookbooks in order to build Kansas State University’s extensive cookbook collection.
The K-State Libraries cookery collection in the Richard L. D. & Marjorie J. Morse Department of Special Collections is one of the top research collections of its kind in the United States. It contains thousands of items that date from 1487 to the present. The collection also features a vast trove of publications generated by American communities and churches, as well as very rare manuscript cookbooks from the 17th through 20th centuries.
Hyde decided to contact K-State Libraries.
“We get so many of these books donated to us,” Hyde said. “Some of them sell in our book sales, and some of them linger on the shelves for years.”
Photo courtesy Friends of the Lawrence Public Library
It’s a generous gift for several reasons.
“I was floored when Angela contacted me with her offer,” said Roger Adams, rare books librarian at K-State Libraries. “No other public library has ever made this kind of gesture, and it’s of specific value for the Morse Department of Special Collection’s work in amassing cookbooks that document the food history of the state of Kansas.”
Adams said that so many communities have organizations that have put out cookbooks on a regular basis going back for years and that they are difficult to collect.
“We don’t hear about many of them because they have such a local audience,” Adams said. “They’re also part nostalgia — you might find grandma’s recipe that you loved as a kid — and many people don’t want to give them up. But they’re also a valuable snapshot of how a community eats. As you travel around not just Kansas but all over the U.S., you discover unique local fare.”
Adams said that most people are familiar with these community cookbooks — the kind a church or civic group compiles from its membership — but he doesn’t know that most people think about their value to food historians.
“They’re a document of a place in time, what foods were available, and oftentimes the ethnic backgrounds of its citizens,” he said.
In all, the Lawrence Public Library donation includes 55 cookbooks that date back to the 1970s. They arrived this winter, and Hyde says they will have more boxes to send to Manhattan soon.
“The first examples of community cookbooks date back to the 1860s, so they’re not hugely old, but we rely on donors for these kinds of materials,” Adams said. “Other libraries aren’t collecting them in the state as a Kansas cookery collection.”
But Adams said K-State Libraries is always looking to fill in the gaps.
“For example, it’s pretty rare for a community cookbook to show up from a county in the far western end of the state,” Adams said. “It’s also highly unlikely that a book dealer or another outlet would contact us about something like that, but it’s really valuable in documenting the state’s food history.”
While Hale Library is undergoing renovation, the collections are in storage. These cookbooks will join them for now, but they’ll be a valued donation when the books return to the Richard L. D. & Marjorie J. Morse Department of Special Collections.
Walk Kansas, a statewide health initiative presented by K-State Research and Extension, will hold its fourth annual Walk Kansas 5K for the Fight and 1.5-mile fun walk Saturday, May 4 to benefit the Johnson Cancer Research Center at Kansas State University. It is open to everyone, not just Walk Kansas program participants.
