About 20 years ago, one of the great hand-wringing fears was that homebuilding was going to grow so quickly that all the good farmland in Douglas County was going to be built over. And there was some reason to worry. From 1997 to 2002, the number of farms in Douglas County fell by about 4 percent, the number of acres in production dropped by about 13,000, and the value of all agricultural products grown or ...
If you are old enough, there was a time when a trip to the bank was at least a weekly event. As a tag-along kid, I got discs of gum wrapped to look like silver dollars from the tellers. (That’s the No. 1 reason I never became a coin collector. I chipped too many teeth hoping to find gum.) Well, a downtown bank branch that evoked memories of that era has closed. The old Capitol Federal branch at 11th and ...
One of the things I hope to do more of over the next year or so is have face-to-face conversations with more community leaders. While sitting across from my face is a lot to ask of someone, I’m hopeful to do such interviews with community leaders on a semi-regular basis. I’ll call it a "Conversation With ..." and it will become a new addition to the Town Talk lineup. So, first up, a Conversation With ...
Maybe I'll do a melon-grab when I'm on the half-pipe. All right, I confess, I don't know what any of that means — and probably shouldn't guess — because I can't speak skater lingo. Whenever I get on a skateboard it's not words, but numbers — like the type on my insurance card — that take precedence. But there are plenty who do speak the language, and they once again have their own store in ...
Associated Press Executive Editor Sally Buzbee remembers how her fellow journalists at the AP were being labeled as unpatriotic in the mid-2000s when they reported the war in Iraq was going poorly for the U.S. “I thought the U.S. was over that sort of thing,” said Buzbee, who was the AP’s Middle East regional editor at the time. “Hadn’t Vietnam taught us to listen to those on the ground?” Buzbee ...
I no longer drink beer when I play Monopoly. I’ve hurt myself too many times falling off the Boardwalk. But booze and board games, plus some food, is precisely the type of activity that will be encouraged at a restaurant and pub in the works for downtown Lawrence. A Lawrence duo has reached a deal to open Trader’s Cache at 724 Massachusetts St., in the spot that used to house the Latin American restaurant ...