Volleyball, cross country: Area high schools state-bound.
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THE IOLA REGISTER Locally owned since 1867
www.iolaregister.com
Monday, October 24, 2016
Grant sets up county for success By RICHARD LUKEN The Iola Register
GILBERT’S GOOBERS By RICK DANLEY The Iola Register
This is the second installment in a two-part series looking at an “average” small-operations farm in Allen County. Earlier this month an article highlighted the Covey family’s system of farm-to-table poultry. Today, peanuts. TENNESSEE RED VALENCIA (Arachis hypogaea): aka,
Gilbert’s Goobers Gilbert Covey holds a peanut shell up to his ear and shakes it. Rattle. “Hear it?” He shakes it again. Rattle. He shakes it one more time. “Hear it? That’s how you know it’s ready. That means they’re dry.” It’s been a long time, about 10 years, since Covey last cultivated a small crop of peanut plants. It’s an unusual crop for the area. Most of the billions of pounds of peanuts that make it to U.S. markets each
year are grown in the American South, with about half of those coming from Georgia. “Peanuts originally come from Brazil,” explains Covey. “The United States got them back in the 1700s, so they’ve been here a while. But they’re just not grown much around here, not that I know of.” Covey is holding a peanut plant he’s recently exhumed from his garden. The branches are heavy with their particular fruits. Covey plucks a single wrinkled shell from a vine. “These are Tennessee Red Valencia,” he explains. He opens the shell, revealing three healthy-looking peanuts, each coated in a papery, richlytinted red skin. “You can see here how they got their name,” says Covey. Because they look like they’re from Tennessee? “Because of their color. Here, taste one.” Covey explains that peanuts, like the soybeans that
crowd the fields around his rural Elsmore farm, are actually legumes, not nuts. “That mainly means they produce their own nitrogen for the plant. And these here are what you call heirloom peanuts. Now, an heirloom is open-pollinated, so you can go ahead and keep
your seed and plant it next year. “You know,” says the overmodest Covey, “they’re actually pretty easy to grow.” HERE, then, is that process in a nutshell (sorry): Covey orSee GILBERT | Page A4
Progress continues across the county on a series of projects set through a Community Engagement Grant project that kicked off in the summer of 2015. Re presentatives from Iola, Humboldt, Moran, LaHarpe and Elsmore gathered Thursday for their month- Damaris Kunkler ly “Allen County Together” meeting, which follows along to ensure the projects remain on the front burner. Thursday’s meeting was at Thrive Allen County’s offices. The projects were formed at a series of countywide community conversations, in which each community’s representatives spelled out some of their more strident needs. For example, Elsmore sought a new storm siren patched into the county’s dispatch service, while LaHarpe targeted dilapidated properties. Six “priorities” took shape: 1. Employee and business development, primarily for Iola and Humboldt. 2. Public safety. 3. Safe green spaces and communities that are bike- and pedestrian-friendly. 4. Developing a “complete streets” policy in Iola and Humboldt. 5. Expanding opportunities for physical activities, earmarked for Iola and Moran. 6. Increasing educational opportunities by supporting the new technical education center at the old Diebolt Lumber facility near See GRANT | Page A4
Treating the mentally ill in KS Theater look-around By JIM McLEAN Kansas Health Institute
Editor’s note: Reporters from the Topeka CapitalJournal and KHI News Service collaborated for a sixmonth exploration of how the state’s legal system deals with people with mental illness. This is the first in a four-part series. America has a long history of criminalizing mental illness. Well into the 20th century, courts, not clinicians, committed people with mental disorders to state hospitals, where too often they were warehoused and received little if any meaningful treatment. A report written in 1948 for the Kansas Board of Health titled “A Study of Neglect” concluded that “a seriously mentally ill person (in Kansas) is almost a criminal before the law.” The report — written by Harry Levinson, a psychologist of national stature who began his career at the Men-
Complaints of underfunded and overcrowded facilities date back to the establishment of the first state asylums in Kansas. Kansas policymakers “grudgingly” appropriated $500 in 1866 to build the state’s first asylum in Osawatomie. ninger Clinic, and two colleagues — also noted that more than one-third of the approximately 46,000 Kansans who had entered state mental health hospitals between 1866 and 1946 had died in them. The Levinson report and another issued about the same time by a special commission formed by former Kansas Gov. Frank Carlson that included Dr. Karl Men-
Quote of the day Vol. 118, No. 249
A gaggle of people walked through the old Iola Theater Saturday night, catching up on refurbishing of the building. They were treated to popcorn from the old theater’s machine and other snacks. In the auditorium, where seating is long gone, they marveled at the Art Deco features of the building, which opened in 1931. The visit came after the annual meeting of the Allen County Historical Society, during which Todd Eyster, Jim Smith and Bob Shaughn e s s y were reelected directors.
ninger prompted the first of several sweeping reforms of the state hospitals and the mental health system in Kansas. Today, the system is inarguably better as a result. But as this series of stories, “Mental Health on Lockdown,” to be published over the next several days illustrates, many Kansans with See ILLNESS | Page A2
“I’m as pure as the driven slush.” — Tallulah Bankhead, actress 75 Cents
Hi: 73 Lo: 56 Iola, KS