A dream, three graces, the power of art, and the golden apples of democracy

By Sherman Smith | editor-in-chief

By Max McCoy

When’s the last time you stood transfixed by art?

The experience commonly happens in art museums, of which we have a few here in the populous eastern third of Kansas. My favorite painting within a day’s drive is “The Homesteader” by N.C. Wyeth, at the Wichita Art Museum. Wyeth’s work was created in 1930 as an illustration for a magazine short story, but it transcends the forgettable tale it accompanied.

I can’t visit the Wichita museum without becoming lost in the Wyeth painting. Perhaps it’s the struggle of the young farm woman, the cottonwood stave beside her, the fresh grave at her feet. The wind whips her auburn hair, the hill is green with new grass, the stave has sprouted branches, and the blue prairie sky arches above her.

Each time, I am not only transfixed by the painting but somehow transformed. The experience is something like the epiphany portrayed in John Hughes’ “Ferris Buehler’s Day Off,” in which Cameron is overwhelmed by introspection while viewing, at the Chicago Art Museum, Georges Seurat’s pointillist painting of a Sunday in a park. I’m no art critic, so you’ll have to excuse my reliance on 1980s pop culture as a touchstone.

It’s been too long since I was captured by the Wyeth painting — or any painting.

The past year has been so filled with political and cultural chaos that it seems like nobody has the attention to spare for art in real life. The last month has been even worse, as a new American war in the Middle East and the skyrocketing price of gasoline and just about everything else have kept our eyes locked to our screens.

Nearly one-fifth of Americans relied on drinking water systems with elevated and potentially dangerous levels of nitrate in recent years, according to a new study released Thursday.

The nonprofit Environmental Working Group examined test data collected by water systems across the country between 2021 and 2023, the most recent data available.

Water systems serving more than 3 million people exceeded the federal safety limit of 10 milligrams per liter over the three years, the research and advocacy organization found.

President Donald Trump was evacuated from the White House Correspondents Dinner at a hotel in Washington, D.C., on Saturday night after what sounded like shots were fired, according to the press traveling with the president.

The Associated Press reported there did not appear to be any injuries. The pool report said that reporters heard the Secret Service say an “alleged shooter is in custody.”

WASHINGTON — Family and friends of Virginia Roberts Giuffre gathered in the nation’s capital Saturday to mark one year since her death, and to demand justice for victims of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

On a stage across from the Ellipse, with the White House in the background, family members, advocates and women connected to Giuffre through shared horrors of sexual abuse held a vigil for her.

They remembered the woman they say changed the world by sharing her story of abuse by the disgraced multi-millionaire who victimized roughly 1,000 women and girls, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

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