Water snakes killed needlessly

From

Steve otto

Wichita Peace and Freedom Party Examiner;

Every year, around Wichita, people kill water snakes of various types and claim they just killed a Water Moccasin in Kansas. Or they may have found a whole bunch of them on a certain creak bead. The fact is that Water Moccasins are rare in Kansas and found only in the far south east. Yet people will swear they have seen or killed them.
Nearly all snakes are becoming extremely rare in Wichita and Sedgwick County. Snakes are losing their habitat, yet at the same time, lakes are being built around new homes and that provides many with one more place to live.
But reality is that there are a number of harmless water-snakes that look just like a Water Moccasin and are often mistaken for them, according to The Kansas School Naturalist Emporia State University.There are a number of poison snakes to be found here in Kansas. In the eastern part of the state there are copperheads. I’ve seen one myself. There are a number of Rattlesnakes found in Kansas. The massasauga rattle snake is also found in the eastern woodlands and I have found those. Most of the other rattlers live far out on the prairie miles from Wichita.

The big differences between the non-poisonous snakes and the poisonous are that the more dangerous have cat pupils. The harmless have round eyes. Most poison snakes are pit vipers, so they have two small pits between their eyes and nostrils. The poison snakes have a double row of scales on the bottom of their tails while the safe ones have only one.
Most water snakes eat small fish and frogs and don’t bother people swimming. Unless the swimmer picks them up they will ignore people. Their bites can break the skin but are harmless.
Common people are not the only ones who mistake water snakes for water moccasins. ABC news showed a water snake that they believed was a water moccasin. They should know better.

This water snake make look dangerous but he isn't.

Amy Winehouse RIP

From The Kasama Project

This was in guardian.co.uk.
Thousands like Winehouse die every year, and they are not venerated, or even pitied. We will not educate ourselves about the disease, or reform drug laws that plunge addicts into a shadow-world of criminality and dependence on criminals. Winehouse got away with too much said one copper, after a tape of her using was released. Did she? Did she really? Winehouse walked barefoot through the streets because that is where the drugs were, and even as her bewildered face splatters across the front pages, drug support charities are closing, expendable in this era of thrift.

Amy Winehouse: Why is there so little understanding of addiction?

Tanya Gold
Amy Winehouse is dead and any useful understanding of the mental illness that killed her seems far away. Already the portrait is painted and flat-packed, smelted and ready to become myth.
There is tiny Amy with the swaying beehive hair and the frightened eyes, tormented by her talent and the chaos it brought, famous at 21, dead at 27, now a member of the repulsively named “27 Club” of musicians who were also addicts and died at 27 – Joplin, Hendrix, Morrison, Cobain. All dead, all revered, as if it was their illness that made them interesting. The initial, rushed obituaries made much of Winehouse “making it” into the 27 Club. Would she make it to 28 and be shut out? No, she got in, with 54 days to spare.

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Boys Boys

Wichita Burlesque

Wichita finally is finally developing some of its own culture. One thing that has developed is Wichita Burlesque. Sure there are strip acts, but they are done with tradition and taste and not just sleazy.

The shows have been put on at the Wichita Cowtown Empire House Theatre. The show includes comedy skits, musical acts and of course the burlesque acts.

Fireworks on the Forth are a tradition

HUGE!!! Three 2 Liters Dry Ice Bomb

Steve otto

For years Wichita has banned fireworks. The “over-safety crowd” decided they

were too dangerous. People set them off for years and when the couldn’t by them legal, they went out of state or out of county.
Bottle Rockets have been illegal for decades in Kansas. But many people bring them in from Missouri. Some people make their own fireworks. They may use black or smokeless powder bought from a shop that sells gun loading equipment. Others use match stick heads. These aren’t the best explosives, but they do make a bang.
According to The Wichita Eagle the city could enact a firework ban sometime this week if the drought conditions continue. The fear is justified. It doesn’t take much to start a prairie fire. But people are already buying the fireworks now. Do they really believe no one will light them because of a last minute ban?
Fireworks have been a tradition of Independence Day for the last two centuries. Who is seriously going to try and stop than now?

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According to Wikipedea,fireworks were used to celebrate the fourth as early as1777. On that day thirteen gunshotswere fired, once at morning and again as evening fell, on July 4 in Bristol, Rhode Island. Philadelphia celebrated the first anniversary in a manner a modern American would find quite familiar: an official dinner for the Continental Congress, toasts, 13-gun salutes, speeches, prayers, music, parades, troop reviews, and fireworks. Ships were decked with red, white, and blue bunting.

Kari Ann Rinker MSNCB