Opinions

In 1890 an article originally published in the South San Francisco Examiner was making the rounds of Kansas newspapers.

He thanked the Ellsworth County Independent-Reporter for catching an important omission in a recent Ellsworth County Resolution issuing a countywide burn ban.The two words left out of the resolution were perhaps the most important — burn ban. The language in the document did declare “an emergency.

Good Friday is difficult. Saturday is unbearable. Sunday is triumphant. Where were you on this triumphant Easter Sunday? Were you part of the millions of people who dressed up and headed to church? Many make that trek each week.

A week ago, Ellsworth County Commissioners approved a burn ban and — at the same time — inadvertently offered their constituents yet another reason for the importance of a newspaper to a community.

Hi, I’m Karen Bonar and I’m the new editor/ publisher of the Ellsworth County Independent-Reporter.If we were meeting in person, I would pause here and let you make a “Karen joke” ... or I might go ahead and make it myself.

In the Spring of 1872, Warren Y. Jenkins traveled from Panama, Ill., to Kansas in a two-mule wagon with Mr. Cuno Clawson. The story was related in The Jenkins, Boone and Lincoln Family Records, written by Jenkins in 1925.

It’s hard to believe it has been more than 20 years since Sharon Montague and I walked up and down Douglas Avenue, talking to business owners about the possibility of starting a second newspaper in Ellsworth.Most appeared skeptical, especially Jeff Holm, who at the time owned a car dealership here.

The final week in the general session of the legislature consisted of work in conference committees and on the House and Senate floor.Conference committees are made up of the chair, vice chair and ranking minority member of both the House and Senate committees to which the bill is assigned.

In the early morning hour of 2 a.m. Saturday, March 28, 1863, the steam boat “New Sam Gaty” was laboring against the current of the Missouri River near the bluffs below Sibley’s Landing, about 30 miles east of Independence, Mo.

We relearned a hard lesson earlier this month — one that after so many years of covering county commissions, city councils and school boards should be stenciled on the wall in front of our desk at the newspaper. Our mistake?