May 31, 2024 | By Ted Ayres
“Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics” by H.W. Brands (Doubleday, 2023, 451 pages, $32.50) “Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning” by Liz Cheney (Little, Brown and Company, 2023, 372 pages, $32.50) Have you noticed that 2024 is an election year? Even if I wanted to forget, my […]
| By Nancy Wheeler
The answers to the following clues all mention a family member. The answers appear below. 1. What program debuted on CBS in October 1954 and starred Robert Young as the dad who had all the answers? 2. What 2008 movie starred Meryl Streep and featured songs by ABBA? 3. What anti-slavery novel by Harriet Beecher […]
| By Monica Cissell
Sometimes it’s difficult to find the energy and motivation to exercise, especially when factors like bad weather and lack of access to an exercise facility are added in. But exercise is important at any age, and strength training is an important part. Research into strength training by the National Institute on Aging has found it […]
May 9, 2024 | By The Active Age
An outdoor fitness court will officially open at 1 p.m. Friday in Pat Garcia Veterans Memorial Park in north Wichita. Located at 2640 N. Wellington Place, between Arkansas and Broadway, the court was developed by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas, Wichita Park and Recreation and the National Fitness Campaign. According to a news […]
April 1, 2024 | By The Active Age
There’s apparently no place like Wichita to experience that sniffling, sneezing, itchy, runny nose and watery eyes feeling. For the second year in a row, the city has been named the most challenging place in the United States to live with seasonal allergies by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. But there are a […]
| By Ted Ayres
I recently became acquainted with some interesting people and have become rather attached to them. These new friends include a former nurse, a former spy, a former union official and an occasionally still-practicing psychiatrist. They are all septuagenarian pensioners living at Coopers Chase, an upscale retirement village near Fairhaven, England. Oh, and they meet once […]
January 10, 2024 | By Stefania Lugli and Celia Hack
On the longest night of the year, Wichitans huddled into the gym at Guadalupe Clinic to honor the lives of those who died while experiencing homelessness in 2023. Forty-three tea lights burned in a corner of the room — a quiet tribute to the 42 identified people who died while homeless this year. One more […]
January 6, 2024 | By The Active Age
Maize and Andover were among Kansas cities that appeared to grow in population the fastest last year, according to U-Haul. The company tracks one-way rentals of trucks, trailers and U-box moving containers across the United State each year to come up with its “growth index.” Overall, Kansas saw more slightly more departures (50.1 percent) than […]
January 5, 2024 | By The Active Age
Tickets are now on sale for the 2024 U.S. Figure Skating Midwestern Synchronized Sectional Championship, which will be held in Wichita Jan. 24-27. Championship performances will be conducted at Intrust Bank Arena while practices will take place at the Wichita Ice Center. This is Visit Wichita’s fourth time to host a U.S. Figure Skating event. […]
December 29, 2023 | By The Active Age
The Active Age is holding a drawing to give away three pairs of tickets to “Johnny Cash: The Official Concert Experience” at the Orpheum Theatre on Friday, Feb. 9. The show features video from the Johnny Cash TV show projected above the stage, accompanied by a live band. The band’s singers also perform versions of […]
| By Joe Stumpe
NEWTON — Harvey County residents were buzzing about the opening of a steakhouse in the Old Mill last month, and not just because they were hankering for a hunk of red meat. The Old Mill itself plays a key role in this area’s history. Local businessman D. Hamill built the stone and brick structure as […]
| By The Active Age
Volunteers to count homeless United Way of the Plains is looking for 100 volunteers to help conduct the Wichita-Sedgwick County point-in-time homeless count on Jan. 25. It’s part of a national effort to estimate the number of Americans who don’t have safe and stable housing, data that is used in a variety of ways. Those […]
December 11, 2023 | By The Active Age
The Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services and Sedgwick County will host a public town hall meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2023, to answer questions regarding the South Central Regional Psychiatric Hospital project and gather input on potential sites from the community. Sedgwick County issued a request for proposals for properties or existing buildings […]
December 10, 2023 | By The Active Age
The Wichita City Hall public parking lot was changed this month to unmanned, automated ticket booths. According to a news release, under the new system, when visitors approach the automated entry gate, they will push a button and receive a ticket with a barcode on it. When they are ready to leave, visitors will scan the […]
| By The Active Age
The Wichita City Hall public parking lot was changed this month to unmanned, automated ticket booths. According to a news release, under the new system, when visitors approach the automated entry gate, they will push a button and receive a ticket with a barcode on it. When they are ready to leave, visitors will scan the […]
November 29, 2023 | By PJ Griekspoor and Bonita Gooch The Community Voice
By PJ Griekspoor and Bonita Gooch The Community Voice Pastor David Chiles of Paradise Missionary Baptist Church has a front-row seat to the explosive building spree on Wichita State University’s Innovation Campus and adjacent private property. Corporate offices are being built on Innovation Campus and hundreds of new market-rate apartments have been built in the […]
November 2, 2023 | By The Active Age
Wichita Park & Recreation is partnering with Southeast High School to plant 700 trees in Alice Wall Park, 4506 S. Doris, today. According to a news release, 100 students from Southeast High School will plant trees in the park from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., with the Wichita Park & Recreation forestry team overseeing their […]
July 31, 2023 | By The Active Age
Exploration Place, the Sedgwick County Science and Discovery Center, has broken its all-time attendance record with 363,047 visitors in the 2022-23 fiscal year. According to a news release, the previous high of 348,532 was in 2000-01, the science center’s first year of operation. Exploration Place has also set a new membership record of 9,203 households, […]
July 28, 2023 | By Ted Blankenship
I had no idea what we were missing when Dorothy and I took a cruise down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. We were content with chef-prepared meals, visits to historical places, jazz in the streets of New Orleans and lounging on the deck of our paddle-wheel boat. We didn’t know that if we had […]
June 27, 2023 | By Ted Ayers
The Kansas African American Museum has achieved much in its current location, the historic former Calvary Baptist Church on North Water Street. The building sits in what once was the heart of Wichita’s black community — four blocks between Main and Waco where many early African American residents owned businesses, attended church and made their […]
May 30, 2023 | By Lynn Stephan
Since the day Wichita’s North High School opened in 1929, accolades for its distinctive design, particularly the Indian and pioneer sculptures, have gone to architect Glen Thomas and internationally-recognized fine artist Bruce Moore. A third name, that of Lawrence Byers, if mentioned, is typically incidental. Yet, as the draftsman and iconographer in Thomas’ office, Byers […]
April 12, 2023 | By Joe Stumpe
“The money is gone.” That’s in the statement issued by District Attorney Marc Bennett in announcing that two older Wichita residents have lost a total of nearly $175,000 to scammers. In the first case, a Wichita man in his late 70’s received a pop-up warning on his computer that his bank account had been hacked. […]
March 31, 2023 | By Diana Breit Wolfe
I have a story from my early childhood that keeps creeping back to me, and I re-live it in my mind from time to time. It’s about my grandma dying while she was babysitting me. But more about that later. Out of curiosity, I started asking others about their earliest childhood memories. Most of what […]
February 28, 2023 | By Ted Blankenship
I am one of the few Americans not concerned about the cost of gasoline because the eye doctor told me I should give up driving. What? Just because I can’t see the road? What can an old guy like me do when he needs a bolt or some nails? Send his wife to the store? […]
January 6, 2023 | By Dr. Kamalakar Surineni
According to a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report, one-third of people over the age of 65 are taking at least five prescriptions. As we age, we may develop chronic diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Often these chronic diseases are interconnected, meaning one could lead to another. For example, […]