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Grace Notes

Tue, 10/04/2022 - 18:25
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__ It has been fun here in Stockton City watching an artist put paint to the bare wall on the southeast corner of U.S. 183 and 24. As of Friday, Sept. 30, Matt Miller, from Hays, had started adding some details to the S, T and O of STOCKTON, with the two highway signs in the S, tiger stripes in the T, and the background behind what will be an oil pumper. This postcard greeting from Stockton will be amazing, I have no doubt, as I’ve seen the amazing work Matt has done on several murals in Hays. Matt has a goal of being finished with the mural around the 20th of this month. Before he finishes, RoCo Arts Council needs to bring in about $3,000 more in donations. I know there are many of you who are enjoying the progress on this project, and I invite you to help the arts council raise the funds to finish the work. This mural is a statement of “who we are” in Stockton with bits and pieces of our lives incorporated into the design. Financial support from the community is a great way to identify with the art and the story it will tell about Stockton. Please help support this awesome project by dropping off a donation at the Sentinel office towards the remaining balance needed.

__ Now that we are into October, let’s hope the dial on the HEAT gauge gets turned down to cool us off. It seems like it’s been a long, grueling summer with dayafter- day of excessive heat. But who am I to complain? My jobs are all indoors, in air conditioning. And yes, before too long I will be complaining about being too cold!

__ Our “little” grandson, now eight years old and in second grade, is playing tackle football; he’s the center for the team. He’s built for the position—ain’t nobody gonna push him around. He is solid as concrete, weighing around 115 pounds. (His step-brother, now in college at Fort Hays, wrestled for Hays High School his freshman year at 109!) Jackson, “JB,” as he’s known down in Texas where our son and his family live, has hands big enough to safely “hike” the football to the QB behind him that weighs about half of Jackson. But JB’s favorite play is a decoy fake snap to the quarterback who then runs off in one direction while JB, still holding the ball between his legs, hands it off to another player who then runs off in the opposite direction. He says, very seriously, “Yeah, we have a bunch of trick plays.”

__ Here in landlocked- Kansas, I don’t believe any of us can even imagine what it’s like to endure a hurricane of the magnitude of Ian last week that tore through much of Florida and on up the East Coast. Sure, Kansas has tornadoes that cause havoc... destruction and even deaths. But for Ian to decimate everything in its path for hundreds of square miles in a heavily-populated area, is just impossible to imagine, except for what we see on TV. I just have to wonder... where does all the magnitude of debris go? There’s certainly no place in Florida to pile it or bury it, so it’s got to go somewhere outside of the “Sunshine State.” I mean, we’re talking entire homes, vehicles, boats of all sizes, churches, schools, motels, and on and on. How do they even begin clean-up? How do they even begin to put their lives back together? Where? Does? All? That? Debris? Go??