This commentary originally aired on January 3, 2014. Of all the measures of time that humans have invented, the one I have the biggest problem with is dog years.

Baby, it’s cold outside, but the warmth of this special time of year never fails to bring sweethearts together!

Every Who down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot… But Grump, who lived up in his tower, did not! Grump hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season! ‘Cause it wasn’t about him – I think that’s the reason. Yes, I think what caused him to be such a Scrooge May have been that his ego was two sizes too “yuge.” Then he got an idea! An awful idea! He said, “I’ll give Christmas a kick in the reah! I’ll cut tax for the wealthy, I’ll cut funds for the poor! I’ll spread fear through the land then I’ll

With apologies to Woody Guthrie who I think, under the circumstances, would understand…

Hey, there, weary voter – take heart, we’re almost done Between the mud-slinging, lies and the FBI’s This election hasn’t been much fun But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel If you can’t take another scandalous day We’ll have a new president, we’ll have to try then To resist moving up Canada way My mailbox is getting all slimy from the mailers filled with fear and hate They claim Isis will be in my neighborhood If I vote for the wrong candidate They claim the country’s going to wreck and

On a warm Kansas autumn day I made my way to our neighborhood elementary school. Every October they have a Fall Fest. The proceedings always start with an amazing event: A huge parking lot square dance. Somehow the music teacher organizes a hundred or so elementary students and their adult relatives into twirling couples that doh-si-doh and promenade their way over the pavement. It’s a wondrous sight.

October is a month of hauntings! There have been multiple sightings of the living dead walking amongst us. This fetid, creature, lumbering trance-like down our streets, has returned from the grave.

Tomorrow is the first day of autumn, the season of breaths. Here in Kansas we pant through our sweaty summer months. Just when we don’t think we can take it for one more sticky minute, nature grants us this delightful meditative season called fall for catching our breaths.

With all due respect to Andy Williams, there’s an even more wonderful time of year… It’s the most wonderful time of the year! There’ll be tents and RVs There’ll be buses and teepees – So be of good cheer! It’s the Walnut Valley Festival time of year! It’s the pick-pickingest season of all! Guitars, mandolins, banjos They even allow those who play accordion It’s the pick-pickingest season of all! There’ll be stages for listening To the great bands a visiting And arts and crafts booths down the

The Governor and his legislative cohorts did it again. They deprived Kansas of $800,000 in arts funding from the NEA and Mid-America Arts Alliance, all because they didn’t allocate enough state matching funds. For 40,000 years, humankind has appreciated the arts. That’s how old the earliest cave paintings are. I wondered if those early humans had to deal with folks who undermine the arts like we do. I stopped in at Make ICT, a nearby maker space, and asked some of the younger, sharper minds