Political trailblazer dies. The art of protest. Fire truck costs.

By Sherman Smith | editor-in-chief

TOPEKA — Nancy Landon Kassebaum Baker, who fractured a political glass ceiling as the first woman to represent Kansas in the U.S. Senate, died Friday.

Kassebaum, 94, grew up in Topeka and began her personal journey in politics as a member of the Maize school board. In 1978, she defeated eight Republicans to seize the nomination for U.S. Senate in a contest to determine who took the seat held by retiring Republican U.S. Sen. James Pearson. She prevailed in that general election with 53% of the vote but easily won reelection contests in 1984 and 1990 with more than 70% of the vote.

The Kassebaum family confirmed her death in a statement reported by KSNT that noted her remarkable life and appreciation for Kansas.

“For 94 years she relished the support of family and friends from all over the world. Her years were filled with remarkable successes, challenges and above all a deep love for Kansas,” the statement said.

By Max McCoy

As protest art goes, we’re experiencing an American revival.

Not since the turbulent protests of the Vietnam War era have so many taken paint and poster board in hand to express their displeasure. The current wave started six years ago with the summer of George Floyd, during which demonstrations erupted nationwide after the killing of a Black man by a white police officer in Minneapolis.

Protest signs are common to just about every cause that brings people together in a public space, as they have been since before any of us were born. Photographs of the hand-lettered banners carried by women in the suffrage movement of a century ago look surprisingly modern, if a bit neater.

Historically, resistance movements have harnessed the power of human expression — paintings, poetry, paper cranes — as paths toward progressive goals. One now recognizes Picasso’s “Guernica,” produced in the wake of the 1937 bombing of a Basque village by the fascists, as an important ant-fascist work that transcends its specific subject matter. The same goes for Randall Jarrell’s “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” written in 1945 and possibly the shortest poem about the violence of war, and perhaps the most effective. The novels typically come a decade or two later, such as Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front.”

Not a painter, poet or novelist?

Not to worry, because posters are the folk art of contemporary politics.

In the summer of 2023, a third of the fire engines owned by the fire department in Kansas City, Kansas, were unusable. Five of 15 pumper trucks were out of commission, and the department was waiting on parts from the manufacturer.

So Kansas City fire officials went on a nationwide hunt for trucks. But their frantic search turned up just four they could buy immediately, and the vehicles were designed for smaller, more rural departments.

Their experience was not unusual: Municipalities and fire departments in every state are struggling with soaring prices and years-long delivery times for trucks. It’s a crisis many cities and departments lay squarely at the feet of the country’s biggest fire apparatus manufacturers.

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