Officials in McPherson County are rearranging their trouble shooters through a new alliance called the Local Emergency Planning Committee. The group is to fortify a joint response to natural or man-made disaster.
In Lindsborg this includes police, fire and ambulance services, public works, Bethany College, the hospital, schools, day care center and Bethany Village. City Administrator Kristi Northcutt said public meetings will be scheduled to help the community understand this coordinated response during an emergency.
Put another way, better informed is better prepared. Spring is here and summer is coming, both lugging the usual baggage of volatile, random weather.
Spring in Kansas can be full of surprises, early and late, because Winter is prone to stubborn streaks, holding on with ice breath and sharp elbows, and its kinship with Alberta and her clippers. Winter is like the party guest who doesn’t know when it’s time to leave.
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Robert Frost’s poem, “Two Tramps in Mud Time”, tells of an April moment, the air and sky fresh and lighthearted. Suddenly a cloud crosses the sun’s path and a bitter little wind finds us out, and we’re back in the middle of March, chilled and frustrated. Kansans can relate to that kind of moment – the promise of warmth, the raised hope, the ruthless rebuff.
While the hint of spring-burst is only a hint, winter slithers along in the shadows, knocking us with a late freeze or an early hail. But as the sun climbs higher, spring’s small caresses begin to acquire a total embrace of warmth and life, the need for man and nature to sit down somewhere in the sun.
The lawns get green, crocus and hyacinth sprout, the daffodils and tulips are not far behind. Summer will be here soon enough with its share of tragedies, of wars and plague and loved ones dead, of broken promises. There is also the exotic fancy of fireflies, the frolic at the swimming pool, the gentle mystery of lives and adventures shared and the hope that more summers will come as this one ends.
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Meanwhile people at city hall and the courthouse keep an eye on the potential for ugly scenarios, how to soften their impact, and yet here we are. Spring drifts our way, at long last bending her face to be kissed, deliberate and unabashed. In spite of our tremor and warnings, she returns on the earth’s steady cadence, free of fear or worry, and again with the promise of certain days when no wind blows either over the plain or in the mind and no chill or fever finds the bone. It is a time that comes with a special prairie climate, its freshly laundered air, the lightest of breezes that come along not like an invader but like a friend who has stopped by for a visit.
