by RICK DANLEY // September 2, 2016 TORONTO — It’s a wonder that in southeast Kansas Courtney’s isn’t a household name. The Wichita Eagle gave her the front page a couple of years ago, calling her restaurant “a big-time Italian restaurant in tiny Toronto.” A PBS affiliate in Topeka broadcast a special on her in … Continue reading Courtney’s
by RICK DANLEY // November 18, 2016 Aleksander Sternfeld-Dunn, a professor of music at Wichita State University and an amiable evangelist for the importance of the arts in public education, appeared before a small crowd in the recital hall at the Bowlus Fine Arts Center on Wednesday to make, as the title of his lecture … Continue reading Arts Ed
by RICK DANLEY // October 21, 2016 Death proved no hurdle to the man, Mark Twain, who made a special appearance at the Iola Public Library Tuesday night. Shuffling up to the stage, wearing an all-white Stacy Adams suit and a satin cravat bundled under his chin, clutching a pipe, and casting a quizzical look … Continue reading Twain Brain
by RICK DANLEY // March 21, 2016 In the fall of 1911, President Taft was presented with a case of bottled water from the Iola Booster Club. Attached to each bottle was a label: “This bottle contains Neosho river water, nothing else. … We use this water on our streets, lawns, tables. We drink it, … Continue reading The Neosho
by RICK DANLEY // July 15, 2016 In 2003, Shauna Berntsen entered Allen Community College on a softball scholarship. Not long after Valentine’s Day of that year, her enrollment was annulled and the 19-year-old was deployed to Iraq. She had completed basic training the previous year, but had hoped to postpone active duty service until … Continue reading Shauna
by RICK DANLEY // October 6, 2016 The Addams Family is so firmly wedged in the popular imagination that, during the 2004 presidential election, the then-editor of the New York Times referred to John Kerry as having an “Addams Family face.” It was an unkind statement, and yet everybody knew what he meant. (In case … Continue reading ‘The Addams Family’
by RICK DANLEY // August 16, 2016 Just as we recently lost the last of the living World War I vets, time will remove, perhaps in the turn of another generation, the last of the women who taught in one-room schools. But for an hour last Thursday, three of the most charming such specimens from … Continue reading One-Room Schools
by RICK DANLEY // December 3, 2015 Allen Community College’s excellently cast staging of Martin McDonagh’s pitch-black comedy “The Cripple of Inishmaan” is able to wring from the fast-paced script the same quotient of wit and deep feeling that made the play a hit when it first arrived on the London stage in 1996. The … Continue reading ‘The Cripple of Inishmaan’
by RICK DANLEY // February 17, 2015 NEOSHO FALLS — Sitting at a long table beneath the fluorescent lights of the Senior Center in Neosho Falls, Thelma Bedenbender, 84, searches for something amid a pile of papers. While she does that, the Rev. Russell Anderson, the soft-spoken, genial pastor of the town’s United Methodist Church, … Continue reading God in Neosho Falls
by RICK DANLEY // June 1, 2015 One evening, years ago, when Thelma Cook was still working as a club manager and bartender at the Holiday Park Motel in Chanute, a man from Georgia walked into the club, eyed the oil paintings on the wall and decided to purchase the lot. But he had to … Continue reading The Marvelous Art of Thelma Cook
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