Springtime in Kansas means a lot of things. The trees start to bud, the pollen makes us sneeze, the days get longer and kids start looking out school windows dreaming of summer plans. For most of us who grew up in Wichita, those plans included Joyland Amusement Park.
I miss Joyland. I was lucky enough to spend countless hours in the park in its heyday, the 1970s and ’80s. If you’re too young to remember Joyland, or maybe you’re a Wichita transplant and didn’t have a chance …

Our parents hit their 30s during the peak of Reaganomics- they lived fast & spent big. Mine even had matching BMWs. It was the golden age of shopping malls, walking like an Egyptian and swiping your MasterCard.
But the world has changed- all these financial crises are, in part, due to a definition of success as outdated as The Bangles themselves. The ideal of working 30-plus years for a single company, building your 401k to retire at 65 with a nest-egg, has failed us as Americans. Big companies have taken our pensions (Enron) and our years …

If you look at a map of passenger rail routes across the United States, you might notice something… odd. Sprawling across the prairies, mountains, deserts and coasts are thin red lines of beautiful, scenic railway. They connect DC to New York, Seattle to Chicago, San Diego to San Antonio, Wichita to… wait. Where’s Wichita?
That, at least, was my initial reaction. The next thought to follow was “Oh, Wichita just isn’t a big enough city yet.” I looked closely at the map to see if other cities of similar size and …

People wearing festive colors with big smiles on their faces, making a list and checking it twice. You think I’m talking about Christmas? Au contraire, mon frère, I am talking about something better than Christmas – March Madness! Sorry, Andy Williams, but you are going to have to make room for Andy Katz because THIS is truly the most wonderful time of the year. If you see me this month, there is a pretty good chance I am singing “One Shining Moment” in my head. And …

After hearing a distressing interview on NPR last week, one of my good friends came to me with a few serious questions about the state of the world. “How will we ever manage to feed everybody?” “ If it came down to Genetically Modified Crops or Organic Food, what should we choose?” “How many people will die from malnutrition before Americans start becoming seriously concerned?” “What do we have to do to put things right?”
The last question, surprisingly, is the easiest to answer. “All we have to do,” I said …