What will happen if newspapers cease to exist?

It will be devastating for a variety of social groups:

"Do you love me or hate me?"

I got my husband opening day tickets for his birthday. He said I don't know if that means you love or hate me.

- Words written by the wife of a Cleveland Indians fan earlier this year

As a fellow Tribe fan, I completely understand his reaction. That the Indians will be bad this year is a given. When you trade Cy Young Award winners in back-to-back seasons, when the "ace" of your pitching staff hasn't thrown a major league pitch in 18 months and half of the projected rotation features a collection of "junk" in its pitch arsenal that would make Fred Sanford ache with envy, "bad" is a foregone conclusion.

The only real question I and several of my fellow Tribe fans have is whether they'll lose more than 100 games. For those who don't follow baseball, 100 losses in a 162-game season is the benchmark for "epically bad."

Edsel bad. "Ishtar" bad. "Cannonball Run 3" bad. Detroit Lions bad.

Anyway, you get the point.

A couple of friends want to go see the Indians play this season - be it in Kansas City or even Cleveland. I find myself wondering if it's wise to spend real money to watch such bad baseball (the Royals could be even worse than Cleveland this year - just as they have been for the past several years).

Talk to me in a few months, and I may well change my mind.

But that husband's reaction to opening-day tickets? I get it. I really do.

A fresh reminder that anyone can be elected to the U.S. Senate

Senator Barbara Boxer of California, who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, offered this evidence as proof that global warming was reaching dangerous levels: it had been over 100 degrees for three straight days....in February...in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil!

Um, Barbara? Brazil is in the southern hemisphere, and February is their version of our August. Rio routinely tops 100 in February.

Now, that gaffe isn't likely to earn Boxer a spot in Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World" list on his MSNBC show --- but I wouldn't be shocked if Bill O'Reilly crowned her a "pinhead" for that doozy.


Sigh......

Perspective, folks, perspective

I took a chunk out of my Sunday afternoon to watch a History Channel documentary called "Black Blizzard," recounting the origins and impact of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.

It didn't take long for my brow to furrow as deeply as the parched soil yielded to a plow's blade. They had "experts" pontificating that the Dust Bowl was the earth's protest against "abuse" perpetrated by farmers, who should not have plowed up the tallgrass that kept the soil in place when the prairie winds blew.

Apparently, they didn't realize that the Homestead Act required farmers to plow up the soil to meet the terms of the agreement that gave them the 160 acres of land. Technological improvements (better tractors and plows and harvesters) and soaring grain prices brought about by the outbreak of World War I combined to create a period of prosperity farmers had rarely seen.

It gave them the opportunity to significantly improve their quality of life, to indulge in such luxuries as...real homes built of wood or stone....and an automobile to transport the family. In other words, property residents on the coasts took for granted.

Think about that: it took several years of virtually unmatched prosperity for most farmers to reach something near middle class. Yet they were portrayed as greedy. Who wouldn't want to make most of that opportunity, especially after you'd been desperately poor your entire life?

Mind you, not everyone profited to the same extreme: Dad was born in an earthen dugout in the middle of Kansas in 1924, six years after World War I ended. His father had a strong business acumen, which showed itself for decades afterward, but the Roaring '20s weren't a blast for everyone.

Millions of farmers didn't have electricity reach their homes until the Rural Electrification Administration was created during the Great Depression.

There's no question that farming practices contributed significantly to the Dust Bowl, and measures such as shelter belts and no- and low-till crop management had to be adopted to salvage top soil and prevent the choking dust storms that defined the period.

But I was amazed at how much I heard on the show that reflected a striking lack of knowledge and perspective. It reminded me of the kind of chatter that comes from urban think tanks calling for large portions of the western Great Plains to be transformed into prairie preserves allowing buffalo and other wildlife to roam freely under the adoring view of throngs of tourists. Small farms and the rural way of life are dying, so the thinking goes, so let's do something useful with all that land.

Never mind that studies have shown such a measure would result in less revenue than what is currently generated by the farmers, ranchers and townspeople that currently inhabit the targeted land.

Ironic that I never hear anyone calling for small retailers to be shut down and moved out in cities all over the country because Wal-Mart and other large competitors are, we all know, going to drive them out of business anyway. Or do we really know what we think we know?

Too often in that show, folks showed what they didn't know.

The value of boredom

I came across a compelling blogpost this week about how important boredom is to intellectual stimulation.

You read that right: boredom is important to intellectual stimulation. I completely agree with that stance.

How is that possible? Well, boredom is so often the gateway to pondering issues and questions, whether they be about one's self, people in that person's life, or what's going on in the world around them. Curiosity can bloom, creativity can blossom, new understandings can take root.

The blogger voiced concern that a modern society hooked on perpetual stimulation in the form of social media or iPods or the latest technofad will not develop the ability to delve deeply - whether it's within or in the surrounding environment.

It's too easy to run from internal issues or societal problems by distracting yourself with the waves of stimulation pounding us as incessantly as the ocean's surf....so people don't grow, issues aren't resolved, problems aren't corrected.

And a society lurches from fad to fad, which is not the same as progress. As healing. As enriching humanity.

I wonder how much of the "noise" distracting us today is intellectual junk food for a populace that needs a far more "nutritious" menu.

Some vegetable stew on a snowy day

Idle thoughts as a blanket of snow covers the heartland......

Kansas meets Kansas State at Manhattan tonight in perhaps the biggest game in the heated rivalry since the Jayhawks defeated the Wildcats in the NCAA tournament on their way to the national championship in 1988.

Bramlage Coliseum has even been dubbed "The Octagon of Doom,'' for the size and noisiness of its crowds. It's one of the best home-court advantages in the country, writers (and some coaches) are saying.

Sorry, I don't buy it. Frankly, until this year (and a couple seasons ago, when K-State rode Michael Beasley and Bill Walker to its first NCAA tournament in many years), Bramlage was the Octagon of Gloom. About the only guaranteed sell-out was the KU game, thanks to Jayhawk fans who would venture the 40 miles from Lawrence.

Even this season there have been open seats at many games....and it's not like Bramlage seats 25,000. It's just a bit bigger than Wichita State's Koch Arena, if I remember correctly.

Don't get me wrong: I'm certain the atmosphere tonight will be electric, and the fans will do everything they can to help a strong K-State team knock off a KU team that will climb back to #1 in the polls if they leave Manhattan with a victory.

But I'm not going to buy into the "Octagon of Doom" moniker for another season or two. Such titles aren't earned in a game or three. Like good wine, they need to stand the test of time to wear that label.

* * *

I couldn't help but smile when I was watching an episode of "NCIS: Los Angeles" last night.

Was it just a coincidence that two longtime cast members of the now defunct series "The Unit" were in the same episode? I doubt it.

Audrey Marie Anderson, who played "Kim Brown," and Michael Irby, who played Charles Grey, a member of "The Unit," were both in the episode of "NCIS: LA" that saw Chris O'Donnell's character, Callen, reprise a deep-under-cover personna from years before. Irby's role was a distinct departure from his stint as a counter-terrorism soldier on "The Unit."

I was always a fan of Anderson, and I hope to see her back on television regularly.

* * *

About 6 inches of snow fell in Wichita Thursday night and Friday, and it almost seemed strange. Not that it snowed. But that it snowed so......calmly.

It's not much of an exaggeration to say that snow falls sideways in Kansas. Look no further back than Christmas Eve for the heaviest snow of the season to date that brought with it blizzard-force winds.

This latest snow was a powdery affair, with the flurries casually drifting down and coating the landscape almost aimlessly. It was remarkable to watch, when I had a few moments over the course of a very long and very busy day at work.

Here's to more snowfalls like that.

* * *

No surprise why national media's getting such a bum rap from so many folks I talk to these days.

National Public Radio sent a reporter to town to cover at least a portion of the trial for Scott Roeder, who shot and killed abortion provider George Tiller last May. Yet when they reported on Roeder's conviction on Friday, they repeatedly said the trial was in Kansas City.

Really, NPR?

Why'd she have to mention hail???

Last July, an old friend returned to Wichita for a visit with family. She goes by Sr. Sophia Grace now, but we knew her then as Kim Huschka.

She worked for WeatherData as a meteorologist before entering a convent in Ohio, where she is working her way through the novitiate process. She loves it there, and I'm convinced she has a legitimate calling to the religious life.

But while we were at a cookout one evening, she mentioned she missed Kansas thunderstorms - particularly hail. They just don't have storms like that in Ohio, she said.

Within a half-hour, thunderstorms fired up and massive hail struck downtown Wichita and neighborhoods just west of downtown.

Including mine. My car was totalled.

I joked with Sr. Sophia that God must love her very much to put on a show like that for her.

I spotted this photo of her with the young children of friends we used to hang out with not that long ago....and thus this little story.