February 1, 2022 | By Tammara Fogle
Social Security calculators can help you decide when to claim Dear Savvy Senior, Can you recommend some good resources that can help my wife and me determine the best claiming ages for maximizing our Social Security retirement benefits? Just Turned 62 Dear 62, Deciding when to start collecting your Social Security benefits is one of […]
January 5, 2022 | By Tammara Fogle
Three and a half years ago, Dan Hill’s wife, Lori, invited him to join her for pickleball at the Andover rec center. “I went out there to appease her,” Hill said. “I didn’t like it.” Hill, 70, a longtime tennis player, didn’t like the way the pickleball bounced. He allowed his wife […]
| By Tammara Fogle
After years of deferred maintenance and delayed capital improvements, low-income senior housing owned by the city of Wichita is undergoing major renovations. Plans also call for Mennonite Housing to take over management of the 226 units from the Wichita Housing Authority. The four facilities to be improved are the 86-unit Greenway Manor, 315 N. Riverview; […]
| By Joe Stumpe
If we are what we eat, I’m hoping my new book presents a self-portrait that Wichitans find deliciously recognizable. Iconic Eats of Wichita: Surprising History, People and Recipes features nearly 200 recipes that I’ve collected while writing for the Wichita Eagle, Splurge magazine and The Active Age over the last two decades. Of course, you […]
| By Amy Geiszler-Jones
AUGUSTA — A recent article in The Active Age about the all-female Krome Kitty Motorcycle Club sparked memories for a Butler County family whose motorcycle-riding grandma was part of a similar national club called the Motor Maids in the 1950s. Shawn Davis, owner of Free State Cycle Works in Augusta, has seen photos of the […]
| By Joe Stumpe
Jim McCann learned sales working in his grandfather’s insulation business, even if he did have to take a bit of kidding along the way. “We’d go out to people’s houses and I was his driver,” McCann said. “He’d tell me how to sell them, how to estimate things. When it was time for me to […]
| By Annie Calovich
Keeping a close connection to nature is vital to daily life, even during the winter. That’s why Wichitan Pam Pavlick pulls out a plant-growing appliance called the AeroGarden and puts it on her kitchen counter to grow lettuce this time of year. “You really have fun, growing the Black Seeded Simpson and curly varieties you […]
| By Tammara Fogle
Tim Marlar has been elected president of The Active Age’s board of directors. Marlar, of Newton, has served on the board since 2019. He takes over from Mary Corrigan, who remains on the board. Al Higdon and Tiya Tonn have joined the board. Higdon, a long-time Wichita resident, in 1971 co-founded Sullivan Higdon & Sink […]
| By Ted Ayers
“Courtesy Boy: A True Story of Addiction” by Mike Matson (Flint Hills Publishing, 2021, 348 pages) Mike Matson has decades of professional communication experience as a deejay, radio and TV newsman, press secretary to a governor and newspaper columnist. Thus, it is no surprise that he has written an entertaining and engaging book in “Courtesy Boy: […]
| By Richard York
Thank you so much for your story regarding Twin Lakes (November 2021). It brought back many memories for me. I am 72 years old. My parent’s home was at 2616 N. Amidon – a home that my dad built with used lumber and help from friends and family. Most of the home’s lumber came from railroad salvage wood […]
December 31, 2021 | By Joe Stumpe
A pair of Wichita women seem to have unleashed a mini-stampede with a simple question: Anybody want to go for a hike? Cindy Coughenour and Jeri Brungardt, who started Women Hiking KS and Beyond two years ago, drew 17 women to the first hike they organized. In October, 106 showed up for a hike at […]
December 1, 2021 | By Joe Stumpe
As someone afflicted with Alzheimer’s, David Welch was happy to see a drug called aducanumab conditionally approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this summer. Now, he and many others are wondering when it will be available locally and how much it will cost patients to obtain, even though some medical experts say there’s […]
| By Bonnie Bing
If your children or grandchildren want to play in the mud, let them. After all, that’s how sculptor and teacher Babs Mellor started. At the age of six, she was thrilled that her father dug ditches for irrigation pipes. “There was all that wonderful ooey-gooey mud, really like clay, and I spent hours making things,” […]
| By Nancy Carver Singleton
A casualty of COVID-19 last year, live holiday concerts are back in a big way. And the performers who make up community bands are ready to blow — er, go. “It has been a couple years,” said Romella Rausch, a flutist from Colwich who’s played in the Senseney Community Band for 20-plus years. “It is […]
| By Joe Stumpe
NEWTON — The most famous of Old West shootouts took place some 1,000 miles west of here, outside the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. But that fracas pales in comparison to the mayhem unleased in Harvey County a decade earlier. Known as the “Gunfight in Hide Park” or “Newton General Massacre,” the burst of […]
| By Tammara Fogle
Two projects at the Mid-America All-Indian Center are dovetailing nicely, according to executive director April Scott. The museum’s “Tell Me a Story” oral history project has been collecting stories from Native American elders on video. Some of those elders are family members of artist Blackbear Bosin, whose work the museum is celebrating through next June. […]
| By Joe Stumpe
If this is the year you finally make it to Hawaii for the holidays, kudos to you. If not, you can bring a bit of island fun to get-togethers right here with super-easy Hawaiian pulled pork. The main part of this recipe calls for just three ingredients — pork shoulder or butt, salt and liquid […]
| By Debbi Elmore
Brought to the United States from Mexico as a teenager, Catalina Garcia knows the challenges that a new country, language and culture present. They can even put a person’s health at risk. Decades after her arrival, Garcia is helping others navigate those challenges as part of a program call Promotoras de Salud that serves north […]
| By Ted Ayers
“When The Missouri Ran Red,” by Jim R. Woolard (Kensington Publishing Corp., 2021, 297 pages $26.00) Jim Woolard’s novel “When the Missouri Ran Red” focuses on the final few months of the Civil War in Kansas and Missouri. It’s also a coming-of-age story. Owen Wainwright is a 17-year-old orphan living with his aunt and uncle […]
| By Ted Blankenship
Americans buy millions of pickup trucks each year, many of them difficult to squeeze into American garages. And as they get bigger and bigger — the trucks and the Americans — the seats get farther from the pavement. What to do? Bring back running boards or install ladders? Manufacturers chose retractable running boards designed to […]
November 1, 2021 | By By Debbi Elmore
After more than a decade on Facebook, Flossie Alexander can speak with experience about the good and bad aspects of social media. “In the beginning, I was drawn to Facebook as a means to promote my business as a life fitness coach,” Alexander, who joined in 2009, said. “I soon discovered that I enjoyed getting […]
| By Tammara Fogle
SAN DIEGO — The Active Age won the 2021 General Excellence and Best of Show awards from the North American Association of Mature Publishers, the group announced at the annual NAMPA convention held here last month. The awards were for publications with more than 50,000 circulation, with entries judged by journalism faculty at the University […]
| By Ted Ayers
“100 Things To Do In Kansas Before You Die,” by Roxie Yonkey (Reedy Press, 2021, 176 pages, $19.95) For some 28 years, Kansas was the state I drove through to get to Colorado, the home of the rival Jayhawks (I am a proud Mizzou grad) and the place an 18-year-old Missourian could buy beer back […]
| By Joe Stumpe
As a shopping center, you could say Twin Lakes is older than the city of Wichita. Jesse Chisholm, the early trader for whom the Chisholm Trail is named, established a post at the present location of Twin Lakes Shopping Center in 1864, six years before Wichita was incorporated. Chisholm used the site between the Big […]