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A podcast focusing on the perspectives, lives, and stories of Kansans to provide greater insight into the state we all call home.
Ep29
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[00:00:00]
TikTok Surprise
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Sydney Collins: I open TikTok and this is the, literally the very first TikTok that came up. So I'm gonna put it next to the speaker, uh, or the microphone. We'll see what happens. Oh, shoot. No, I don't wanna look for hats like his, I
Gus Applequist: Because this is where I like get out my clapping energy. You know, it's like. The interstate is the most boring path you could possibly take through Kansas.
It is the
Sydney Collins: straightest path. And the most direct path, not the path.
Gus Applequist: Yeah. And there's, there are so many things waiting to be discovered. You just gotta get off the dang interstate.
[00:01:00]
Introducing the Podcast and Guest
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Sydney Collins: Welcome back to Ask Everybody. I'm Sydnee.
Gus Applequist: And I'm Gus.
Sydney Collins: Uh, we are a podcast where we're uncovering, amplifying and connecting Kansas.
Gus Applequist: And today we have a, an interesting guest. His name is Rex Buchanan. He's the director emeritus at the Kansas Geological Survey. And yeah, our, our interview, uh, covered a lot of subjects, but, but really focused on earthquakes and water.
Sydney Collins: Yes. And I felt really overdressed because he came in super comfy and I was really jealous of his shirt, to be
Gus Applequist: quite honest. He's, he's like, he's chilling. He in retirement. It's great.
Sydney Collins: He was, he was full retirement today and I absolutely loved it.
Gus Applequist: Yeah. That's great. So here's our interview [00:02:00] with Rex Buchanan.
Rex Buchanan's Background
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Gus Applequist: Welcome to Ask Kansan. Sure. And, uh, yeah, could, could we just start by having you introduce yourself for our audience?
Rex Buchanan: Uh, Rex Buchanan. Uh, I'm from Lawrence, former director of the Kansas Geological Survey.
Gus Applequist: so I understand you grew up near Little River, is that correct?
Rex Buchanan: Yeah. You knew where Little River is?
Sydney Collins: Yeah, I, I, I'm from, I live in McPherson, so we go to Little River all the time.
Rex Buchanan: Okay. So you're not too far away. And where, where are you from? I'm from,
Gus Applequist: we're both from Salina.
Rex Buchanan: Yeah. From Salina, yeah. Okay. So, yeah, uh, on a farm. I grew up on a farm outside of, uh, little River. And then I actually went to Wesland to college.
So I've got some, uh, Salina connections from that. And I worked, while I was at Wesleyan, I also worked at the Salina Journal, which Oh wow. It's just like, well, it's not far. Yeah, it's not far here. It's just kind of off this direction here. Yeah. So, yeah. Uh, and, and, uh, so I had some connections to the community from that.
Gus Applequist: Did you, so I know that Little [00:03:00] River is not far or close to the, the Smokey Hills. Did you as a kid have any geologic interest in any of that stuff? Or did that come later? Yeah, I
Rex Buchanan: think so. I, People tend to think of the Smokey Hills in, say, Ellsworth County. Russell County, Lincoln County. But there's an arm that comes down through Rice County, uh, right on the edge of where I grew up.
Uh, yeah, probably I, I, I did have an interest, you know, I like a lot of kids. I had a rock collection and, and, uh, I was interested in that sort of thing. I, I would say the bigger thing was, uh, I grew up on a farm and I was telling somebody the other day that for the most part, when you grow up on a farm, the only time you're in the house is when it's too dark to work or you're sick.
One of the two. And I didn't get sick very often, so we kinda grew up outdoors and I would say I'd give that some credit to sort of the direction I felt like I wanted to go when I, when I left there, uh, which was I [00:04:00] wanted to do something. That had a connection to the outdoors. So I, I wound up with an undergraduate degree from Wesleyan in biology, but I would say a lot of what I, a lot of growing up influenced kind of the career path that, that I went on and in geology or outside all the time.
And, uh, and I always tell people that the, uh, the, the worst day in the field is still better than the best day in the office. Okay. And that's a nice thing about, uh, geology was when the weather's really crappy. There's always stuff to do indoors, but, but it provides the opportunity to go out in the field.
And particularly I was at the Kansas Geological Survey, very Kansas focus, and that kind of fit in with how I identified, uh, myself too.
Career in Geology and Science Communication
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Gus Applequist: Is it fair to say, like the, the main focus of your career has, has had, you know, has been, um, science, communication,
Rex Buchanan: I, I, I tell [00:05:00] people I have a little bit of trouble.
I think folks have trouble defining me and I have a little trouble defining myself. If you were to ask me what I think of myself, I'd probably tell you I think of myself as a writer because, you know, I, like I said, I did that work at the Salina paper. Then I did some of that in graduate school when I started the geological survey.
It's part of the University of Kansas, and so when I came there, I had a joint appointment both doing science writing at the geological survey and teaching science writing at the KU journalism school. So I thought of myself that way. I still think of myself that way, and yet I would probably, my guess is most folks that don't know me real well, probably some of them.
Think of me as more on the scientific side, whereas folks in the scientific community probably don't think of me that way. Uh, I don't give, spend a lot of time giving that thought. But yeah, I, I, I probably think of myself as a writer, first and [00:06:00] foremost, more than anything else.
So what do you do in McPherson?
Sydney Collins: So, I live in McPherson, but I live, but I work here. But
Rex Buchanan: you work here? Yeah. Okay. So
Sydney Collins: I, um, moved to, uh, live, grew up in Salina. Okay. Moved to McPherson in 2020, and then COVID hit used to work for the city of McPherson. Okay. And then. Found my way here to feed
Rex Buchanan: over here. Okay.
Sydney Collins: Yeah.
Rex Buchanan: And you grew up in Solana? I
Gus Applequist: did, yeah. I went to Westley, actually. Tanner there also went to Westley. Yeah, I was. And he looked at the Journal as well, so, well, yeah.
Rex Buchanan: And he and I met out at the Nee Indian, um, village Museum. Yeah. Uh, 'cause I was doing a story about that. Mm-hmm. And, uh, yeah. So when did you graduate from Wesleyan?
I was 20 14, 20, so it was like yesterday. It's, it's a little different than when I was there. I was there a long time ago. So.
Gus Applequist: So what led to you becoming the inter interim director of the KGS?
Rex Buchanan: yeah. I started at the survey in 78 and like I said, I had a joint appointment originally after six or [00:07:00] seven years, I kinda came to the realization I had to make a choice.
I would do one thing or the other. I, I was not real good at splitting jobs and so I decided to focus on what I was doing at the survey over time. I wound up with more and more administrative responsibility, mostly for the sort of the public component, not so much the research component of the place, and then over time.
With additional administrative experience they asked me to take on that role. So that's what I did the last oh six or seven years I was there, I still worked there a little bit, uh, but uh, for the most part retired in 2016. So I guess in about 2010 they asked me to, to take that role on, and I did it. Uh, it wasn't anything I'd really ever aspired to.
Uh, it was interesting and I learned a lot.
Dealing with Induced Seismicity
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Rex Buchanan: The big issue that that came up at the time that I do did that was induced seismicity or manmade earthquakes. And really, uh, that was what I spent most of that five or six years dealing with. And it was not [00:08:00] anything I expected to do, really didn't have any background, but it was an issue that kind of came onto the scene and it was something that I did.
And I'm still involved with earthquake and seismic issues as a result.
Gus Applequist: As I was reading about that element of your background, I thought about, uh, a movie from the nineties, uh, called Dante's Peak, starring Pierce Brosnan. He's A-A-U-S-G-S Falcon artist. And you know, there's obviously a volcanic eruption and it's very sexy in Hollywood.
Rex Buchanan: Yeah.
Gus Applequist: And it, it occurred to me reading through kind of the, the public relations that you had to do that it was very not sexy and like, thank you, I appreciate
Rex Buchanan: that. What, what I mean by that is it was hard work if my wife was here. She, she would agree with you, by the way, I'm the perfect person for, for a role like that.
Gus Applequist: And,
Rex Buchanan: well, I'm sorry, what was the question? I'm still sort of recovering what
Gus Applequist: I, what I mean by that is that, is that you, you put in your time in the, in the trenches there, uh, kind of interfacing between the scientists Right. And the world and, [00:09:00] and business and the politics. You're kind of in some ways the punching bag between all of those different people.
Rex Buchanan: Yeah. Actually the. I mean, that's a good point. Uh, because I had a lot of experience sort of interacting with the public. then that became a critical component of dealing with the earthquake stuff. And so I was fairly well equipped to do that sort of thing in the process. Yeah. We became, in effect, the governor had asked us to, to lead the effort to try and figure out how to deal with earthquakes and in, in the state.
Uh, in that process, I think we, we were at certain times sort of unpopular with everybody. Uh, the general public was certainly unhappy with the rate of seismicity. They wanted something done about it. at the same time, there was a, there was clearly a strong connection between those earthquakes and there were gas activities going on in the state at the time.
Uh, we got push pushback from those [00:10:00] folks as well. So yeah, I think it's safe to say that. Not that there were, there were days when it was not the most pleasant job in the world. It, it wasn't something that I really expected to deal with. When we'd have a big earthquake and we, we had some big earthquakes, my phone would just, you know, buzz across the counter.
Uh, and there were days when I sort of felt like, uh, it was hard to make anybody happy. Uh, but over time, I think we got to a good place and I think we got to good resolution. I think we, it worked the way that it should have worked, but it, it wasn't always, uh, it it, there there are a couple years where it was fairly stressful, I would say.
On your movie reference though, to go back to that. Mm-hmm. Uh, I did come down here one time to Salina because they did a showing not of your Pierce Brosnan movie, but I think actually as a movie might have even been called Earthquake. It was kind of one of those, it. Seventies movies in the vein of, uh oh, what's the movie?
Well, you [00:11:00] guys are too young. Uh, the movie where the ship turns upside down. It's kinda the disaster type movies that were popular for a while. Well, this was sort of in that same vein, so they showed that at Thelina Art Center Theater over here. That little theater on Santa Fe. Yeah. And they asked me to give up and give a talk and, and uh, sort of make a connection between the Poseidon Adventure.
That was the name. Oh, you know this movie, so I'm sure. No, I know you don't. I'm sorry. Uh, but anyway, I was gonna fake
Sydney Collins: my way through it, but
Rex Buchanan: no, my memory wasn't that great a movie. The earthquake movie was really not that great a movie, but it was in a lot of respects, sort of what the public. New and, and certainly sort of fit with their conceptions of what earthquakes were about.
So actually I thought it was a good idea. I enjoyed coming down here and that's a neat little theater over there. Oh it is? Mm-hmm. And, uh, so it, it was a good evening. Yeah.
Earthquake Public Relations
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Gus Applequist: So you, you mentioned the task force that was formed to address the earthquakes. can you remind me, like, just briefly, who the other kind of parties were?
Rex Buchanan: the [00:12:00] geological survey doesn't regulate anything. Our, our, our purpose in life is to study and to report on geologic issues and resources and going into this stuff with induced ethnicity. I would've told you our primary focus was on oil and gas issues and water issues, because those are the two big geologic resources in, in Kansas.
We don't have any regulatory authority, but the, the, uh, organizations that do regulate activities that were involved with oil and gas production and water disposal, which turned out to be ultimately the culprit here, uh, were the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and the Kansas Corporation Commission.
The Corporation Commission is responsible for what people call Class two disposal wells. I know we're getting into the weeds a little bit here, but you ask, uh, when you produce oil in this state, you also produce water. It comes up naturally. It's down there with the oil and it comes up [00:13:00] naturally. It's highly saline, very salty water.
You don't want that water to get loose at the surface 'cause of the damage it'll do to the ground. So you've gotta dispose of it. And I tell people, when I was a kid growing up outside of Little River in the fifties, people built what they called evaporation pits, and they would dump that water into these big earthen pits.
They said it evaporated, but it didn't. It just soaked into the ground and that saline water has contaminated aquifers in parts of Kansas in where they're still dealing with that issue today. Today, almost all of that sa natural saline water is pumped back into very deep geologic horizons, not necessarily where it came from, sometimes even deeper.
That's how we dispose of that. And about till 2008, 2009, the production level of, of wells down in particularly Oklahoma, but some up in south central Kansas, there was a play, an oil and gas [00:14:00] activity in which people were producing oil in such a fashion that it was producing a lot more water than typically it had.
In some cases, it wouldn't be an unusual. Originally to produce, say, 10 barrels of water for every barrel of oil Wow. That you produce this play down in that part of the world was producing sometimes as much as a hundred barrels of, of water for every barrel of oil. We had to get rid of an awful lot more water than people were used to getting rid of.
What we found was if you pump it into a certain geologic horizon, it would in effect, uh, trigger faults to move that had previously been stressed but inactive, and that would create earthquakes. Reg regulating that salt water disposal is primarily responsibility of Kansas Corporation Commission. So those were the partners that we had.
Now we also worked with folks in the oil and gas community because that they were doing the disposal. We particularly worked with a lot of folks in Oklahoma because they had this issue prior to us having it. They had it much worse than we had it. [00:15:00] Uh, we watched their experiences and how they dealt with it to know how we should deal with it.
And so it was a pretty wide ranging and we dealt with environmental communities, even dealt with the insurance community because that came into play in this process. So it required a lot of conversations, a lot of dealing with a lot of different communities. We eventually came up with a plan combination of some disposal cutbacks.
Also oil. The gas prices went down. There was less production, less water to get rid of. Between those two things, they pretty well resolved the issue. Now, having said all that, there are still small earthquakes that come up in this part of the world today. Uh, there was a a time when really the, the, that induced size ethnicities really focused, say down southwest of Wichita, like down in the Wellington area or Harper County down in there.
Well, eventually sort of worked its way north. So then you had a lot of activity in the Witchita, and then you had some big earthquakes in Hutch, and now you've got 'em almost, I, I don't know if you guys have felt any up [00:16:00] here, but you've certainly had 'em. Oh yeah. And that McPherson County, saline County area, not so much here recently, but there was a big spate of those within just the last few years.
Nothing really huge. Nothing as big as. Certainly the earthquakes we saw down in Oklahoma, but certainly enough to be disconcerting into the part of the world where you're not used to feeling earthquakes. Mm-hmm. that very much had an effect on people in this part of the world. I, I even remember a conversation I had with president out at Westland one day mm-hmm.
When those were kind of at their peak, because we talked a little bit about, uh, pioneer Hall, which is an old masonry old building Yeah. Brick and, and brick and mason type building that it's the type section of what you worry about. And, and we had conversations about about how much you should look at that because it's got some of these kind of turrets up on the top of it mm-hmm.
That are brick. And we had conversations about what do you do? What can we expect? Uh, [00:17:00] yeah. So it's an issue that, uh Yeah. Involves this part of the world a little bit.
Gus Applequist: Well, you know, when, when we do have earthquakes, it of course comes up again in the public discourse. Mm-hmm. But it seems like. The, the level that it was at back in 2013 to 15 has pretty well come down, or,
Rex Buchanan: yeah.
You haven't seen anything up here nearly of the size of what we had then. The, the, the biggest of those was actually about at, well there was right toward the end, one of the biggest was on Labor Day of 2016 and it was a Saturday morning about seven o'clock, and it occurred in nee Oklahoma, which is about 20, 30 miles south of Kansas, Oklahoma border.
That was a, initially measured at a five six, I think now they may even put it at a five seven. That's a bigger earthquake. And what I remember that one in particular because. Saturday morning I had a cold and I wasn't feeling good and I was sleeping kind of late, and it woke me up and it, and I knew what it was.
I mean, you, it, it went [00:18:00] and it went on and on. Mm-hmm. And my first thought was, please God, let it be in Oklahoma. And uh, it was, but just barely. Uh, and yeah, my phone just blew up with phone calls, uh, a about the thing. And that, that was a big earthquake. It was felt, and there were a lot of fairly big earthquakes in that process.
We haven't had anything of, of that magnitude really for quite a while. But when you live in a part of the world that is not used to seismic activity, and then all of a sudden you have. Earthquakes become almost as a daily kind of, certainly weekly kind of thing. People get upset. And I remember fairly early on when we, and by the way, I haven't talked about this stuff for quite a while.
People don't ask me about it much anymore because it has died down. But really early on when we were dealing with this issue, I, we reported regularly to the county commissioners down in Harper County because they were the ones that were really kind of ground zero for this thing. And I remember one morning, one of 'em [00:19:00] called me up after an earthquake and said, you know, the problem is.
If we have tornadoes, we get tornado warnings and we know what to do with earthquakes. We don't get any warning and we don't know what to do. So here was a group of people in a part of the state that hadn't seen any activity that suddenly are facing an issue that scares 'em pretty bad. Having said that, at the same time, I'll never forget this, the first time we went down there, the first thing they said to me was, we want the earthquakes to stop, but we don't want the oil and gas guys to go away.
And I remember thinking, well, you can have one of those, but I'm not sure you can have both of those. Now, at the end of the day, I think the way we approach the problem, I think you can do both of those things. You've just got to take certain steps when you dispose of that water. But I'll also say a lot of what we, the resolution of that came as a result of a lot of conversations.
And that's sort of, I think how Kansans come about going about solving their problems, which is sometimes it takes a lot of [00:20:00] conversation and a lot of back and forth. It may not be the fastest way to get to a resolution, but it is a way that involves everybody that's involved, and that's what we were trying to do.
And that's eventually where we came down in that process. Uh, so yeah, today I don't think it's an issue that really people Yeah, it doesn't get their attention like it would, it did 10 years ago. Yeah. It
Gus Applequist: strikes me as a, as a success story that that, and a lot of the success stories I see around the state these days are because it's organizations working with other organizations in a low ego way to just focus on whatever the problems are and get 'em done.
Rex Buchanan: Yeah. I, I, I think it is a success story. And I think most people that watched us around the country, because obviously Oklahoma was dealing with it, we were dealing with Texas eventually was dealing with it. All sorts of states were dealing with it, and they were all watching each other trying to figure out, well, what works and what doesn't.
And I, I would argue, yeah, that it was a, a success story as, as we look back on it, for [00:21:00] what it's worth, I think in a lot of respects that model is applicable throughout natural resources in the state. And I'd probably argue that it's just as applicable, say in terms of water issues that the state faces that where we've had success in dealing with water issues, it's been the result of long-term engagements across lines that maybe don't ordinarily talk to each other.
A lot of conversations, uh, that I think is sort of a Kansas way of doing things and yeah, and I always tell people, Kansans I think will do almost anything you ask 'em to and almost nothing that you tell 'em to. Okay. So had we That's a great line as an earthquake, uh, group, if we had just gone out and said, okay.
Corporation commission said You are, by God gonna shut down these disposal wells. I don't think that would not certainly have been well received within the oil and gas community and probably wouldn't have been well received even within the local community. 'cause they didn't want the oil and [00:22:00] gas community shut down.
They wanted 'em to operate, but they wanted them to operate in a fashion that didn't set off earthquakes and which is eventually where we got. So I think it was, uh, an example of where long-term slow conversations are sometimes your only option for dealing with issues like that.
Gus Applequist: you've mentioned water.
That's a great segue, I think, to the aquifer.
Understanding the High Plains Aquifer
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Gus Applequist: Um, I, I actually noticed just today, Kansas Geological Survey posted a, a map that shows the kind of the change to the aquifer, uh, from pre-development to the average of the last couple years. And, and yeah, it paints a, a fairly startling image. You know, uh, some areas in Kansas, the aquifer is [00:23:00] 40% of its original thickness.
Mm-hmm. I guess is the right way to say that. Mm-hmm. I guess first I just wanted to ask a, a little technical question. They refer to it as the Kansas High Plains Aquifer, and I'd never heard that term. I have always heard Ogalala. Could you speak to that briefly?
Rex Buchanan: Yeah. And before I do that map, I'm pretty sure it came out of a book that I did with Don Steeples called Kansas Geomap.
So, uh, which is available for sale from the survey. So we'll do a plug for that. Yeah, yeah. Perfect. Uh, and it has a whole bunch of different maps in it. the High Plains Aquifer is kind of an all-inclusive term for an aquifer that underlies all or parts of eight states. Now, you, you may not have heard of the High Plains Aquifer, but you've probably heard of the Ogallala Aquifer.
And when you say the aquifer, that's probably what you meant, the Ogallala. Now there are a lot of different aquifers in Kansas. In my world, people typically wouldn't say the aquifer because that doesn't narrow it down any. In the outside world, in your world, if somebody says the aquifer, I pretty much assume, yeah, that they're [00:24:00] talking about the Ogalala.
The Ogalala is a subset of the High Plains Aquifer in Kansas. There are three aquifers that are part of the High Plains, so. Sometimes you'll hear people use those terms interchangeably. High Plains and Ogallala, they're not interchangeable. The Ogallala is part of the High Plains aquifer. I'm trying to think of a good analogy, and I'm not thinking of one right at the moment, but, uh, you know, let's say the English department is part of the University of Kansas, okay?
Mm-hmm. The broader term is the University of Kansas. A subset of the University of Kansas is the College of Liberal Arts. All sure. The Ogallala is a subset of the High Plains.
Gus Applequist: Okay. So how should we Yeah, go ahead please. Can we
Sydney Collins: back up a little bit?
Rex Buchanan: No, we can't. We, we got, we gotta plunge forward here.
Sydney Collins: People like me who are not walking dictionaries. Yep. What's an aquifer?
Rex Buchanan: Okay. An aquifer is for asking. That's good. Yeah. An aquifer is an underground rock formation in which water is within the pore spaces in between the particles of rock that can be pumped [00:25:00] out in amounts sufficient to, uh. To, to create a, well, that's kinda the technical definition.
Okay. Let's think, but let's think of it this way. Uh, a sponge holds water. Mm-hmm. Okay. It's in the pore space of the sponge, not the sponge itself. Right. Think of an aquifer as just an underground water saturated sponge, or instead of sponge, it's it's rock materials. Mm-hmm. In the case of the Ogallala, it's the, the, the water containing part of the aquifer is sand and gravel.
So if you think about a sand pile out there and you think about dumping water on a sand pile, it can in effect absorb a lot of water in that pore space in between the greens of sand. Mm-hmm. That's what the Ogallala primarily is, sands and gravels. Other kinds of aquifers in other parts of the state. It might be a, a sandstone aquifer.
You know, you mentioned the s smokey hills. The, uh, the part of the, the, the rock unit within the Smokey Hills that I think of most is the Dakota [00:26:00] formation sandstone water, and the Dakota formation is in the, within little particles of sandstone. So when we talk about. Aquifers. A lot of times people, they, they want to talk about underground lakes.
Gus Applequist: Mm-hmm.
Rex Buchanan: Well, or underground rivers. Those may occur in a very few places in Kansas. They certainly don't occur around here. And that's not what we're talking about with the Ogallala. Mm-hmm. Okay. What we're talking about is water saturated rock, not an underground lake, a river. And so one, one of one of the guys I work with always says, don't think of the Ogallala as if you could drill a big round hole and send a scuba diver down.
It's not gonna work like that. So that's what an aquifer is. If you can produce water from those rocks and sufficient amounts to have a, well, that's what an aquifer is. And the alala is a big deal because it's very extensive and it's got a lot of water. It's really high quality water. And that map shows that in some parts of, and it underlies about the western [00:27:00] third of Kansas.
And in places now, it's highly variable from place to place. There are parts of Western Kansas where. It does not exist at all. There are other parts of Western Kansas where it's like 400 feet thick, so there's a lot of water in some places. Uh, the use of that water then has changed the landscape out there.
Now this doesn't mean anything to you guys, but when I was a kid growing up in the fifties and sixties, nobody grew corn in Western Kansas 'cause it was too dry. Today you can grow corn. The upshot of that is you can grow corn because irrigation from the oval, the upshot of that is you can feed it to cattle.
So now there are big feedlots out there that didn't used to be there. With the upshot of that is you now get big packing plants of places like liberal and garden and dodge, where you didn't used to. When I was a kid, we always, I had a feed lot on our farm. We had a feed lot on our farm and we took fat cattle to typically Wichita, sometimes Kansas City, maybe Omaha, but [00:28:00] typically Wichita today, there aren't packing plants in any of those towns.
They're all out west 'cause that's where the cattle is, cattle are, and the cattle are there because it's where the corn is and the corn is there 'cause that's where the water is. The other impact of that is that's also affected then, uh, the groups of folks that come in to work at those packing plants. So that landscape out there, both culturally and physically has changed dramatically since about the sixties.
And it's all as a result of water from the Ogallala.
Future of Water in Kansas
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Gus Applequist: how, how urgent is this crisis? Is it a crisis? Is that even the right word for it?
Rex Buchanan: Well, you know, I, when I first started the survey, my boss would always argue that it wasn't a crisis. It was something we had plenty of time to deal with. You know, I've never actually gone to look up the definition of crisis in terms of, of time.
If you think of crisis as something that's immediate and absolutely you have to do something right now, if you, I mean, when you stop breathing, it's [00:29:00] probably a crisis. Mm-hmm. Okay. If you, uh, have a health problem that you can sort of live with that might kill you over the course of 40 or 50 years, is that a crisis?
I don't know. I mean, I'm, I've never really looked the word up. Uh, so is this the latter rather than the former? Let's, here's what I, I would say sort of a slow motion crisis, and that's one of the problems is it's real easy to put off dealing with a slow motion crisis. And by and large, I think that's what we've done.
You're probably not gonna run outta water tomorrow. Probably not gonna run outta water a year from now in a lot of places. But if you continue to pump it at the rates that we have been pumping it, you will run out. Is that a crisis? Well, maybe not for me. I mean, I'm 71 years old. I don't know how much time I got left, but yeah, it's pretty high that the aquifer's gonna outlive me for the most part.
Is it gonna outlive you guys? Uh, I don't think so. Well, you might [00:30:00] be saying, well, kinda, so what, what difference does it make? Mm-hmm. Well. That's a good question because certainly there are people out there that will say that water's not doing anybody any good down under, under the ground. We might as well use it.
We might as well make money using it. We might as well produce food, which you eat by using it all right? Mm-hmm. We might as well use it to make, to grow corn, to make ethanol. We might as well use it now. That's one argument. The problem with that is that if you use it at an unsustainable rate, that day will come when you can't use it anymore.
I was talking to a friend of mine at the survey the other day that said there was a, the proposal, uh, that he had heard from some folks out by Ulysses out in southwestern Kansas to maybe bring in one of these big data centers to, as kind of a local industry intensive, but that, yeah, that requires water.
Well, I would probably make the argument that you might want to use, you might wanna look at industries that are maybe a little less water in intensive in turn. As compared to, say, growing corn that might be [00:31:00] sustainable that you might have around a hundred years from now as opposed to using all that water N now?
Hmm. I think the question is how do you want this state to look 50 or a hundred years from now? Yeah. I don't know if that's a crisis or not, but I would argue that that water issue with the High Plains Aquifer and the Ogallala in particular is the biggest, most intractable natural resource issue facing this state.
And actually, I would probably argue, if you were to ask me, it's the biggest issue facing the state period. Now, obviously, I come at this from a natural resource perspective, and I'm sure you can come up with a lot of other problems that Kansas FA faces, but if you ask me, this may not be an immediate crisis, but long term it is central to what this state's gonna look like 50 years from now,
Gus Applequist: how you tied agriculture and then basically the entire economy of the western, half of the state to that.
Paints it much more dramatically than I, yeah. I wouldn't say the
Rex Buchanan: [00:32:00] entire economy. Okay. Certainly there are places where dry land farming takes place now, dry land, and that's non irrigated farming, and that will take place in the future. Whether the Ogallala is there or not, that economy marches forward.
There's a lot of economy out there, but here's, here's one. One component of this that I don't hear people talk about very often, everybody's sort of well aware that those counties have emptied out in terms of people. Mm-hmm. I mean, for the most part, you look at the population of those counties. There are some counties that have incredibly small numbers of people out there.
There are high schools that have graduating classes of five. Okay. That's before we've seen the impact of this in a big way. Okay. If you think that issue of. Demographic demographics is facing the Western 30th Kansas of Kansas. Now you wait for [00:33:00] 20 or 30 years it'll really affect it. Now again, people may say, well, that's the way it goes.
And if that's your response, that's your response. Okay? I it may very well be. A lot of times when people look at population out there, they compare the population today to the population in 1890, and almost every one of those counties had a lot more people in it in 1890 compared to 2025. Well, maybe the correct response is, well, there were just too many people out there in 1890.
It couldn't carry that many people. That's one response. You can look at this in all sorts of different ways. All I'm saying is the options for people to live out there are gonna be severely reduced if the water goes away.
Gus Applequist: For me personally, as I look at the, the issues that we face as a, i, I mean, I'll say even more widely as a society, we often choose a negative framing on those.
And, and I guess as I view this and, and what, what you're saying is we need a new vision for Kansas, for [00:34:00] the western half of the state, state that is less reliant on water as a economic driver. Is that, is that a fair assertion?
Rex Buchanan: Well, I don't think I would've said that. Okay. Okay. For, for starters right off the shoot, I would not say, I think we need a new vision for Western Kansas for 50 years down the road.
Partly because I grew up in Central Kansas and partly because I live in eastern Kansas now, people in western Kansas are part of that in western Kansas. Do not really appreciate folks from other folks in the state, from other yeah. Waltzing in and saying, here, I'm an expert, let me tell you what to do.
Okay. So I would be loath to, to put it in. And those words. I will also say though, if you look at the legal frame framework of water, water in effect is, uh, belongs to the people of the state of Kansas, and that's everybody in the state of Kansas, not just the folks that pump water for irrigation. So everybody has a stake in this thing and everybody needs to be part of the conversation.
[00:35:00] Uh, yeah, I do think it ought to be a conversation for how people want this state to look 50 years down the road. Having said that, a lot of those conversations have taken place already, and it's, it's, I, I think I used the word intractable and it's been intractable. Now, having said that, there are places where progress has certainly been made and folks have come together and sort of voluntarily agreed that they're gonna cut back like 20% over the course of five years.
And see how that works. And there, uh, was a group of folks in Sheridan County, Northwestern Kansas came together and did that. Everybody watched it. And it turns out that if you maybe grow a few different crops, if you schedule pumping differently, if you, if you're a little more efficient, you can use 20% less water and you'll still make as much money.
And that may not quite hit sustainability, but it certainly will extend the life of the aquifer significantly. If you [00:36:00] take that approach throughout western Kansas, then you may extend the life of what folks do out there significantly as well. But to go back to the earthquakes, it takes a lot of conversations and it doesn't happen overnight.
And even with those conversations, sometimes you don't get where you need to go. But the Sheridan County folks. They got there. Uh, there are other parts of the state where folks got there.
Political Challenges in Natural Resource Management
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Rex Buchanan: It is doable, but it can be slow and painful, and particularly in a politically divided time like we're in now, uh, it's even tougher.
I mean, I, we've picked kind of a bad time to be politically at odds with each other and in terms of the natural resource, uh, part of the world, I would say. So it is doable, but it's gonna require a lot of conversation and, and, and folks just may not agree.
Gus Applequist: Yeah.
Misconceptions About Fracking and Earthquakes
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Gus Applequist: going [00:37:00] back a little bit back into the earthquake side of things, I read that, uh, there was a couple articles that came out, uh, I think Outta Lawrence, that that incorrectly tied, uh, you know what, I'm done.
I do know what to talk about. Tied hydraulic
Rex Buchanan: fracking and hydraulic fracturing and Yeah.
Gus Applequist: And, and you, you got a lot of pushback because of that article. Yeah. From the governor, from oil and gas. Yeah.
Balancing Science and Politics
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Gus Applequist: And, uh, it, it struck me that, that you, you were running, you know, a a, a science-based organization that needs to be fairly insulated from politics, however you have to communicate Right.
In a political environment.
Rex Buchanan: Yeah.
Gus Applequist: How do you balance those
Rex Buchanan: things? Yeah, that's a good question. And obviously you've been doing your internet homework and going back, reading some articles that I probably, uh, don't have the, uh, wherewithal, uh, revisiting some of those times is not, not pleasant. Yeah.
The Importance of Accurate Terminology
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Rex Buchanan: A lot of folks attributed those earthquakes to hydraulic.
fracturing or fracking because everybody in the environmental community hated fracking at that time. Well, those [00:38:00] earthquakes weren't caused directly by a fracking. I mean, fracking does cause, cause small earthquakes almost by definition. But it was salt water disposal, as we've already discussed. Now you can say fracking led to the production of additional water, therefore fracking had a role in it.
Well, maybe if you want to define it that way, you can make that argument. That's not how I defined it. Because to solve the problem, we couldn't turn around and say, Hey, you can't frack wells anymore. Because something like, at least half of the wells in Kansas have been fracked since the 1940s. Okay? So that was not in the cards.
You have to define your terms correctly. And so I routinely would say these earthquakes are not caused by hydraulic fracturing. They're caused by salt water disposal. And I remember. One of the, I think it was the Lawrence paper, one of the folks from Sierra Club said that I was being disingenuous. And I remember thinking, I don't even know when I'm being disingenuous or not.
I'm impressed [00:39:00] that they could tell. Uh, but yeah, I, it sort of felt like people thought I was dodging a que I was dodging something when I would say, well, these are not caused by fracking. All I was trying to use was terminology, and I'll do it. I'll say same thing today. Mm-hmm. I'll, if you say to me, these earthquakes are caused by fracking, I'll say, well, we're, there's not a lot of oil and gas drilling right around here in Salina, and yet you're getting earthquakes.
They're caused by a salt water disposal not caused by fracking. So tell me how that, what you said is true. Okay. but yeah, a lot of people didn't take that real well. But it was a, it was a. Because I would go to the legislature and testify in front of committees, and they would always, yeah. Are these caused by fracking?
And I would, well, like the water issue, if you think if somebody can sit here and give you a black and white 32nd answer to the water issue in Kansas, well, I would like to meet that person. [00:40:00] Okay. Because it's a complex issue and it can't be answered with a soundbite, okay? Mm-hmm. And the same thing was true with earthquakes.
And so if somebody said, yeah, we're just, we just need to shut down fracking. Well, I'm sorry, but that dog don't hunt with me. Having said that, I'm perfectly willing to get up and talk about the role that their own gas industry is playing in this problem. And the same way that you have to talk about the role that irrigation is playing when it comes to water.
Okay? You have to talk about all those things. I think pointing fingers wasn't the way to do it. But the other part of it was the survey has always been. Uh, viewed as a source of information, not as a source of advocacy. Mm-hmm. Okay. Our role is to go to the legislature and say, here's the issue. Now what do you want to do?
Okay. Uh, our, our role was not to go say, Hey, go shut down there in the gas community, or go shut down the irrigation community. That's not what the statutes are about. We are [00:41:00] providing information so people can make informed decisions. That was our role Some days it was hard to stay within that role.
People would ask me, what do you think we should do? And I'd say, well, that's not really my job. Well, you can imagine how popular that answer is. But we did come up with a plan for the regulatory agencies to take steps. And the same thing is true on the water side. It's not the survey's job to go out there and say, you need to cut back 20% all across Western Kansas.
It is our job to provide maps that say, if you cut back 20%, here's what will happen to the a, the life of the afer. And that's, mm-hmm. That's what we do.
Fieldwork and Measuring Water Levels
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Rex Buchanan: And by the way, you didn't ask this question, but I still help go out and measure water levels as part of that program every year because, uh, either A, I don't have a life or BI enjoy it.
And it's, so every January I go out with these guys and we spend a week, uh, measuring water levels in a set of, uh, wells we go back to every year.
Sydney Collins: Why January isn't that cold? [00:42:00] That's
Rex Buchanan: a good question. It is cold. I can't slip anything past you. Can we? No. Uh, you are aware. January is, January
Sydney Collins: is cold. It
Rex Buchanan: is cold.
One of the g one of the guys that I, that I work with, uh, his answer would probably be because it's harder and it's more unpleasant. No. Uh, we're for the most part measuring water levels and irrigation wells. And you can't measure a water level in an irrigation. Well, when it's pumping, there are big pumps down there.
Oh. That will, that will chew. You measure these with a steel tape. If you lower tape into a pumping, well, you will come back without a tape. Okay? Mm-hmm. So you have to go out and time a year when they're not pumping, they're not. Occasionally you'll hit a pumping. Well, in January, not very often. So we try to go out actually the same January 2nd.
We go out, go to the same wells every year. And, uh, that, so that's why it's in January. Okay. And when the weather's nice. It's fun. Uh, when it's snowy or rainy or really, really cold, it's not a whole lot of fun. Yeah. [00:43:00] But anyway,
Gus Applequist: yeah. When the weather's nice and it's fun. What makes it fun for you?
Appreciating Kansas' Natural Beauty
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Rex Buchanan: Uh, you know, I said I grew up on a farm.
I grew up on a dry land farm. I don't know anything about irrigation. So I, a lot of what it is is just the learning process. Mm-hmm. It's fun to learn, uh, to see a lot of things I wouldn't see otherwise. I also like it takes you into part of the state that I think are really scenic that I wouldn't see otherwise.
I see a lot of animals that I wouldn't see as a result of having done that. It's also, you typically are by yourself all day long, so you leave. Six 30 or seven in the morning, depending on sun up, and you're out there till six 30 or seven that night, and you might talk to one or two other people in that process.
To me, I'm not a real social person, and it's kind of my idea of a good time, and so I, I genuinely enjoyed it. occasionally they ask me to take somebody along with me, and to me that defeats the purpose. Uh, and the world's probably [00:44:00] happier if I'm by myself. Anyway, the other part of it is, it's important.
Okay. You feel like you're doing something that really matters. When we come back with those numbers every year, I'll guarantee you when I get back to Lawrence, people that I run into walking around will say, what's it look like? Okay. Mm-hmm. What did you see this year? Uh, there is some pride in knowing that numbers that you're collecting in the 1990s and the two thousands are gonna be the numbers that people rely on to make decisions long after you're gone.
Those are all good reasons. Now, having said that, almost everybody else that I work with thinks I'm nuts. Okay? That is, there are eight or 10 of us that do that, and most of those eight or 10 folks, they like doing it. Most of the people I work with, uh, wouldn't do it at the point of a gun. I mean, they. For, because it, it can be unpleasant.
There are also a lot of people I know that, that would look at you like, well, why would you want to go spend a week in western Kansas? Well, I can give you a lot of reasons. Yeah. So I gave you some already. Mm-hmm. Okay. And my guess is most of the people that say, why would [00:45:00] you want to go spend a week in western Kansas?
Probably haven't spent a week in Western Kansas. All right. And I get tired of hearing that because I see things every year that I think are spectacular. So sue me. Uh, anyway,
Gus Applequist: I've been fortunate to film Harvest in Western Kansas last couple summers. Okay. And, uh, it's, it's different. I'm not by myself. I'm with crews and stuff.
Right. But just being out there in that big, expansive sky and it's, there's something special about it For sure. It really
Rex Buchanan: is. And, uh, if you open up your. Your mind to it all. You see that I've done some, I do a lot of field trips still and one of 'em I've done last four or five years, there's a group called Audubon of Kansas and I, they bring people in that operate out of Hayes to take 'em out to look at lesser prairie chickens and the bird watching world.
That's a big deal. There aren't very many lesser prairie chickens out there. People come from all over the, the country to haze to get up at four [00:46:00] o'clock in the morning to go to a blind, to look at lesser prairie chicken. Well, because there's a lot of demand and there isn't enough blind space. They also put together field trips of non birding stuff.
So I do geology field trips for these folks, is something else for 'em to go do. I can tell you those folks are from all over the country and they're not waltzing in here with some kind of preconception about Western Kansas. They're not like, you know, most Kansans have a bad view, Eastern kan do of Western Kansas.
These people are from all over the country. They're a blank slate. They love it. I mean, those folks can't get enough. And it is so much fun to hang around with people who are generally enthusiastic about what they're seeing on the high plains. sometimes I think Kansans could use a dose of that to be a little bit more open-minded, not waltz in with a, a mindset that's already negative about how flat, boring, dusty, and awful it is.
You know, once you get west of US [00:47:00] Highway 81, or in my case where I live in Lawrence, people think you get west of Lawrence and it's Western Kansas and they don't care. Uh, but I think if you. Open your mind up a little bit. You might see it differently.
Gus Applequist: I read your article on KPR about, uh, the, the last symphony on the Flint Hills Oh, Uhhuh.
And about how that helped maybe raise the, the level of pride in the Flint Hills.
Promoting Kansas' Hidden Gems
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Gus Applequist: How can we take that energy and, and put it other places or even across the state? Yeah.
Rex Buchanan: You know, that's a good question. And by the [00:48:00] way, yeah, that was from a talk I gave out at the Symphony, basically saying that I thought the symphony had maybe worked a little bit.
On that inferiority complex we have. Having said that, I have absolutely no proof for anything that I said out there in that article or that day that was all anecdotal. It's just what I feel. I, I do think the pride in the Flint Hills is palpable today. Mm-hmm. I think if you, even in Lawrence, I was on a radio show one time and I learned that the easiest applause line in the history of mankind, even in Lawrence was Flint Hills.
You say Flint Hills and people start applauding. Yeah. My question was, well, why don't they feel the same way about the Smokey Hills? Yeah, I certainly do. Uh, there's a guy here in Salina, west Jackson. You probably know who he is from Land Institute. Uh, Wes and I are friends, and Wes one time accused me of, uh, being a Smoky Hill chauvinist because I felt that way about the Smokey Hills.
Well, I'd probably say same thing back at Wes. I think Wes is too. Mm-hmm. [00:49:00] I think the Flint Hill, the, the Smokey Hills are just as deserving of that affection as the Flint Hills are. Now, how you achieve that is a good question, and I'm not smart enough to, to know the answer to that, but I do think people are maybe a little bit more willing to open up their minds and, and mm-hmm.
And, and maybe look at the, particularly the natural world in those ways. One of the problems is, and this goes back to the demographics that I was talking about before. I say this all the time, half the population in this state now lives almost half lives in five counties. We have 105 counties. Half the people live in five of them.
Cedric Johnson w dot, Shawnee and Douglas. Mm-hmm. All, almost a fourth of the people in Kansas live in Johnson County. Alright. What that means is we, people always think about Kansas as being a rural state, but it's not. It's an urban state. When half your population lives in five counties, [00:50:00] you are an urban state.
That means you are apart from the natural world, much more than you were when I was a kid, when there were a lot more farmers out there. I think the. Opportunity to experience the natural world is really, really important. And it's more and more important all the time as it becomes a more and more urban population.
And that's why seeing things like that Ponty Indian Village Museum that Tanner and I went to, okay, that may not be a natural feature. It's certainly a human feature on the landscape, but it fits within the landscape. Those are the kind of places that I think every Kansan should visit. And yet, I don't know about Tanner's experience, but I can guarantee you when I go out and give talks, I say, how many of you people have ever been to the Ponty Indian Village Museum?
If I get two or three hands in a crowd of 50, I'm, it's a good day, okay? Mm-hmm. People have, have you guys been there? No.
Sydney Collins: We've heard about it, but you've heard about it. Okay.
Rex Buchanan: He Tanner's been there. Okay. There's a reason we hired him. Yes. [00:51:00] Okay. Yes. That's very reason we hired him. But my point being, I think that's, I think that is a great place.
Gus Applequist: Hmm.
Rex Buchanan: And yet, all the time I talk to people who've never been there, the largest. Do you know what the largest parcel of publicly accessible property of Kansas is? Okay. And while you're thinking the largest parcel of ground that you could publicly go out to legally and visit in the state, where do you think it is?
What would your guess? I guess Cheyenne bottoms. Cheyenne Bottoms would be a good guess. Yeah. It wouldn't be right, but it would be a good guess. Thanks. Cimarron, national Grassland in Morton County, it's about 110,000 acres. Have either of you been there? No. No, exactly. Uh. I give talks throughout the state. I ask that question. Virtually nobody has been there. That's the largest parcel of publicly accessible property in Kansas, and yet vast majority of Kansans never been there.
Well, part of the reason, it's where it is. Okay. It's closer and I just looked this up. It's closer to the state capitals of Oklahoma, [00:52:00] Colorado, and New Mexico than it is to Topeka. It is a long ways out there. Wow. That's why people have not been there. But I'll tell you, it's one of the most special places in this state.
I've had experiences out there. If we've got time, and I'll, and, and I don't know how we're doing on time here, but I led a field trip out there once for a bunch of legislators, and it was May and there had been a lot of rain that particular spring and everywhere there was a blooming flower called Indian blanket, and it's kind of an orange blooming flower goes about this tall.
As far as the, I could see that 110,000 acres was covered by. Blooming wildflowers. Wow. Okay. Now, I grew up, like I said, in the fifties, and I read accounts and I, and this may be from Little House on the Prairie, you know, Laura Ingles Wilder, where they would talk about how the prairie was a carpet of wildflowers.
And I remember even as a kid reading that and thinking, well, that's great, but I'll never see that. Hmm. We owned a pasture, I own a pasture [00:53:00] today. It is not a carpet of wildflowers. Mm-hmm. Okay. But that day on the Cimarron National Grasslands, I saw wildflowers as far as I could see. Now I've traveled a lot all over the world, but I will tell you on that particular day in May, that was as pretty as any place I have ever been.
But no, most people have never been there. I think maybe to go back to your answer or your question about what do we do to change that, I think people have to get out and they've gotta see from themselves and they've gotta have an open mind to what they see. Uh. They've gotta see it for themselves.
Gus Applequist: I think that's such a great place to leave the interview.
I, I mm-hmm. Um, that painted such wonderful mental images of, of what's out there. And I, it's a good challenge to us and to our audience to, to get out and, and see those things. So I hope we can do that. And there,
Rex Buchanan: there are a hundred examples. I mean, you don't have to go clear out to Morton County there.
They're all over the place. [00:54:00] I think it's less a question of where you are than it is of how you see the world. And if your definition of scenery is gonna be mountains and oceans, then you're probably gonna struggle a little bit around here. There's a friend of mine, I talked about him, about related to Symphony named Jim Hoy, who used to say that the Flint Hills are a place that takes your breath away.
They're a place you can breathe, okay? Mm-hmm. You have to, you have to think in a different way, and then it kind of doesn't matter where you are.
Gus Applequist: There's a lovely quote that comes to mind from, of all things Ted lasso the, the series and it's, um, be curious, not judgemental. Yeah. And, and when you're in the judgemental state, you look at a place that does, is devoid of trees and you think, you know, it doesn't have value.
But if you're curious exactly. If you, if you look at, at these empty squares or empty squares on the map and you say, I wonder what's in that square? Uh, lot different outcome.
Rex Buchanan: I, I saw uh, a piece the other [00:55:00] night on sports where Andy Ried the coach of the chiefs keeps a, or I dunno if he still does, but keep a yellow sticky tag on his, behind his desk that said, don't judge.
Well, I thought, well that's interesting 'cause he's gotta spend a lot of his time judging players and a lot of judging a lot of things. But I think the point was very much the same. You don't know what other people have been through. I think that was probably the Ted lasso. Mm-hmm. Don't judge again. I, I have a friend who would say there's more history in a square mile of Kansas soil than there is in all the books put together in, in all the libraries in the world.
Yeah. If you, if you don't judge, yeah. If you don't go, if you go into it with a more open mind and a curious mind, I think you've got a lot better shot at seeing things than if you go in with your eyes closed.
Gus Applequist: Well, thank you so much. This, this was a pleasure. Yeah,
Rex Buchanan: you bet. Thank you. Good visit with
Gus Applequist: you guys.
[00:56:00]
Closing Thoughts and Acknowledgements
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Gus Applequist: Well, we hope you enjoy that interview with Rex Buchanan. I thought, Rex's answers, uh, were really helpful to me. I, so sometimes our guests point out things that I haven't really thought about. Like I, I was, I was kind of prescribing like what Western Kansas needs to do and he is like, you know, that's really maybe not the right approach mm-hmm.
Is for US Central and Eastern Kansas people to tell Western Kansas what to do, which is like, yeah, actually that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that's probably,
Sydney Collins: it's like us telling Florida, Hey, you should probably figure out what you're doing with those alligators. Like,
Gus Applequist: exactly. Mm-hmm.
Sydney Collins: That's not safe.
Gus Applequist: I wanted to give a few, uh, shout [00:57:00] outs.
One is to an article that was done by the Plainspoken Scientist, which is a blog that focuses on science communication. They did a wonderful interview of Rex back in 2015, and that really helped me prep for this interview. So, so thanks to them. And we also wanna thank the Smokey Hill Museum here in Salina.
They have been doing for many years now, actually a series of presentations called First Thursdays. Yep. Um, and they've brought so many great speakers to Salina and so we've been kind of partnering with them over the last few months. We've had, Yeah, go. And
Sydney Collins: Dr. Andrew Orr, um, Dr. Carlton Shield Chief Grover.
Um, Adrian, Adrian, zinc, Adrian. Mm-hmm. Um, he was one of the very first episodes that we did. Um, so if you want Kansas history, go back to like, episode, I don't know, three or four. Mm-hmm. Um, with Adrian Zinc. That was a really good one.
Gus Applequist: And if you find yourself in Salina, uh, it's worth a stop.
Yeah. Smokey Hill Museum. And I think
Sydney Collins: you can watch 'em online.
Gus Applequist: Oh yeah. I think that's, they're streamed, that's, yeah. We, we know they're streamed. Somebody at Feely helps do that. Yeah. Um, yeah, so check them out. One of [00:58:00] my favorite things they have there is, uh, replica, like a sod house. Oh yeah. Which is really cool to see.
Mm-hmm. So, yeah. Uh, did you have anything for I
Sydney Collins: do. I just have fun little stories today. Love it. Nothing too crazy. So I was trying to find, I love newspapers.com. Shout out to Adrian again, uh, for mentioning this in one of our earlier episodes. And so I asked Chad, I go, what are some things? 'cause I wanted to find like odd, funny stories.
I go, I need some terminology to search. And so it gave me oddities, like,
Gus Applequist: and
Sydney Collins: so that's what I put in, um, my search for newspapers. And um, and I did it from like 1800 to like 1930. That's the date that I gave. And I found, um. This kind of section, and you can go to the next slide. Local oddities. That was the, um, term that I searched and it's unusual, unusual things in Hutchinson.
People Things and things, period.
Gus Applequist: [00:59:00] Unusual things about Hutchinson. People in things. Yeah, things in, in two times. That sentence, a little on in
Sydney Collins: general is just that sentence.
Gus Applequist: Yeah. Yep. Agreed. Okay. I'm excited. Okay. So
Sydney Collins: the, so the first story, and none of these make any sense. Hutchinson has a woman who declares, she has not, or sorry, she does not intend to get a new hat this fall.
The reason is she already bought two.
Gus Applequist: Is this supposed to be like a, like a, almost a, a riddle or something? I don't know. Hu
Sydney Collins: This is literally the whole section. It's so nonsensical. Hutchinson has a woman who declares, she does not intend to buy a new hat this fall. The reason is. She already has too. Yeah.
It's almost like a bad, like joke. Like,
Gus Applequist: yeah.
Sydney Collins: Have you heard of With no punchline? Yeah, with no punchline. Like, have you heard of the woman who refuses to buy a hat this fall?
Gus Applequist: No. Why?
Sydney Collins: Because she already has two. Like it's a horrible joke. Yeah.
Gus Applequist: Yeah. We passed for entertainment in 1907.
Sydney Collins: Yeah. [01:00:00] This is October 17th, 1907, so who knows?
Um, all right. Hutchinson has a boy who admitted to the school teacher this week that he needed a whipping, his admission of the need. So flu, so frustrated. I think that is frustrated. That's word for me, but it's looks like an,
Gus Applequist: I think it's frustrated.
Sydney Collins: Frustrated the teacher that she has not had nerve yet to tackle the boy, and so he is on parole.
May escape the strap altogether.
Gus Applequist: I'm getting real awkward energy from that whole, that
Sydney Collins: whole thing is just a hot mess in general. Yeah. Yeah. Then the e this, if you notice the E is upside down.
Gus Applequist: People in prison,
Sydney Collins: uh, where'd it go? Oh, there is an upside down E Oh, yeah. In the,
Gus Applequist: yeah. It's, it's weird. They put the, it's super weird.
Mm-hmm.
Sydney Collins: Anyway, we can move on. All right. This is the last one. [01:01:00] Um, again, this is all one section. Then there is a refreshing incident in Hutchinson. A girl who recently eloped with a former lover has now been reported to be beautiful. So I'm not quite sure. Was she not beautiful before she eloped and it's a former lover.
So what happened to the current lover? There's a lot going on here in this story that I would like the details to.
Gus Applequist: Like I, I've also, uh, perused, uh, newspapers.com a little bit. Um, I I was surprised to find that there's like three or four different papers in Salina history. Yeah. I didn't realize that. Um, and yeah, there's a lot of stories in there that would not be stories today for whatever reason.
Sydney Collins: Yeah. And if you think about like, how information was shared back then, like it was literally like if you got sick and the doctor had to be called to your house, that was news.
Gus Applequist: Yeah. Or if you went to Kansas City to visit your nephew.
Sydney Collins: Yes.
Gus Applequist: News.
Sydney Collins: News.
Gus Applequist: Mm-hmm. It, [01:02:00] it, it tells you how little outside influence these communities had in those times.
Mm-hmm. And like, they were just desperate to be entertained, to be interested in whatever was happening.
Sydney Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah,
Gus Applequist: it's a different world we live in,
Sydney Collins: and everyone's like, ah, privacy. I'm like, privacy hasn't been a thing since 1907, so I don't know.
Gus Applequist: Fair. Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, I bet the, the girl is really happy to be called Beautiful.
That's, that's, yeah. I'm
Sydney Collins: really confused on that part. Mm-hmm. But,
Gus Applequist: well, in that happy note, thank you for watching, uh, or listening to another episode of Ask A Kansan, and we're very glad that you joined us today.
Sydney Collins: Uh, please share, um, this episode or any of our episodes with just one other person that helps spread the message.
Um, make sure to like, and share on, um, social media, follow us. Um, you can find more information. You on our website, ask a kansan.com. You can follow Tanner Stories as he, um, start traveling a bit more. Mm-hmm.
Gus Applequist: There's some great kind of [01:03:00] photo essays on our Facebook page and elsewhere that, uh, yeah. Worth, worth checking out.
Takes, takes Tanner's significant amount of time to develop that stuff. Yes. And so it's worth checking up.
Sydney Collins: So we will see you next time.
Gus Applequist: Thank you.