You may have noticed it was very windy last Saturday. Eudora Fire Chief Ken Keiter did. Not wanting to burn down much of his community, he called off the scheduled training burn of a home at 610 W. 20th. The fire department made use of the structure this week for more rescue drills but still plans to burn the house down on a Saturday when weather cooperates.

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A group of young Baldwin City singers are going to get the chance to perform on a big stage. Kelley Bethell-Smith, director of voice studies at the Baldwin Academy of Dance and Voice, said she learned last week that the application she made for the academy’s children’s choir to perform at the third annual Kauffman Center Future Stages Festival was successful. The choir will perform on one of three stages June 26 at the Kauffman Center. She expects more details next week of when and where the choir will perform.

The application process was much like a grant application and required documentation of the choir’s community involvement, tuition and scholarship format and its ability to put on a 20-minute show, Bethell-Smith said.

“To be accepted was a huge surprise and a great honor,” she said. “I didn’t expect we would get accepted the first time we applied. For our kids to be able to perform there is over the moon.”

Her early estimate is that about 30 children will make the trip despite the festival’s date during the academy’s slow summer period, Bethell-Smith said.

Bethell-Smith said the choir would repurpose part of its coming spring show performance for the Kauffman event and add a few more numbers. It would be a mix of classical choral pieces and current popular songs, she said. One thing listeners can count on hearing is the hometown of the singers.

“Baldwin City will be emphasized repeatedly,” she said. “We’re going to mention it to the point that it’s not tacky.”

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Eudora’s thrift shop His Hands Clothing Closet won a big fan Saturday by helping a local woman resolve a prom crisis. Angela Rocha said her daughter Natalya ripped the dress she was going to wear later that evening to the Night to Remember prom that the Legacy Christian Church of Overland Park sponsors for special needs teens and young adults at John Knox Village in Lee’s Summit, Mo.

“I tried to fix it myself, but I just made it worse,” she said.

In desperation, Rocha went to the thrift shop in downtown Eudora. She wasn’t expecting much, because who has quality prom or evening wear available off the rack on such short notice? Her daughter doesn’t like strange dressing rooms so the 501(c) shop’s proprietor, Christine Zimmer, allowed Rocha to hold up dresses against Natalya in the middle of the shop floor to get an idea of how they would fit. To her surprise, she found two dresses that fit for $8.50, Rocha said.

“It was a beautiful dress and very in style,” Rocha said. “Usually when you buy from a thrift shop, you would have to clean it before you put it on. But I know she already does clean them.”

The Night to Remember gives those attending the prom treatment with a red carpet walk, paparazzi, dinner and dance.

“Had Natalya gone in regular dress, she would have stood out,” Rocha said. “She looked wonderful. Everybody told her she looked beautiful. It was a special night for her.”

Zimmer saved the day for her and her daughter with the kind of generosity she has shared with many in the community, Rocha said.

“It’s not like this an isolated thing that she did just for me,” she said. “I hear she does things like this quite a bit.”

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A former Baldwin City resident will return Friday, intent on collecting a family time capsule. Pete Ruhlen said he planned to dig up a jar filled with objects placed in the concrete abutment of a walking bridge built in the mid-1960s. The father, the Rev. Ralph Ruhlen, built the bridge so the Ruhlen children could use a pasture to walk to what was then the school district’s new high school (now Baldwin Junior High School). The district now owns the old family homestead, which is just north of the new Baldwin High School.

Ruhlen said he’s tried twice to free the jar from the concrete but couldn’t get the buried concrete to crack. He’s confident if the district digs out the old abutment from the ground, he can split the concrete and free the jar. Baldwin Superintendent Paul Dorathy has told him the district would use equipment now on the property to unearth the concrete.

Ruhlen has no idea what he might find. He remembers recruiting a brother and sister to join him in filling the jar but can’t remember what they put in it. Ruhlen is confident they would have chosen objects that would last. His siblings who contributed objects for the time capsule were smart, he said. Brother Tom Ruhlen is now a doctor in Phoenix, and sister Alice Blecha is a teacher in Topeka.

Joining him at the site will be his brother David Ruhlen, a retired Kansas University social welfare professor who lives in Lawrence.

“He was older and out of the house when I did it,” Ruhlen said. “He’s the one that got me started on this. He told me I needed to dig it up.”

A previous version of this post included a misspelled name. The man hoping to dig up a family time capsule is Pete Ruhlen.