So, as I do most evenings, Saturday evening I opened the NewsCow to see what I’d missed about town since Friday evening. Turns out, the Recycling Center had reopened, effective Saturday morning! There is very little info, so I’m including it all underneath, but you can click through to nose about and maybe vote in a poll, or something, if you like. This is follow-up to So Reading the News Yesterday, from July 11th.
…..Sumner Newscow report — Effective Saturday, July 19, 2025, the Wellington Recycling Center will reopen and begin collecting materials again. At this time, the materials will remain the same as before: cardboard, paper products, magazines, tin cans, and aluminum cans. Hours of operation will also remain the same:
Monday, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Saturday, 9 a.m. to noon.
City staff is in discussions with multiple buyers and evaluating the environmental, operational and financial impacts of all of the options available at this time. Information will be provided in the future if any changes at the Center are required. (End; now you know what I know. Oh, except the City’s Recycling Center Page is not yet updated as of Sunday evening. Interesting!)
July 14, 1789 Bastille Day in France: Parisian revolutionaries and mutinous troops stormed and dismantled the Bastille, a former royal fortress converted to a state prison, that had come to symbolize the tyranny of the Bourbon monarchy. This dramatic action was proof that power no longer resided in the King as God’s representative, but in the people, and signaled the beginning of the French Revolution and the First Republic. Bastille Day for kids
July 14, 1798 A mere 22 years after the Declaration of Independence, Congress passed the Sedition Act, making it a federal crime to “. . . unlawfully combine or conspire together, with intent to oppose any measure or measures of the government of the United States . . . or to excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States . . . .” The Declaration: “…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government….” “An act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States”
July 14, 1887 Adrian C. “Cap” Anson, both manager and captain of the Chicago Whitestockings (National League), refused to let his baseball team take the field as long as the Newark Little Giants included their starting pitcher, George Stovey, an African-American, in the lineup. “Get that nigger off the field!” Anson was heard to say. Newark refused to allow Anson to dictate the use of their personnel, but the game was ruled a forfeit to Chicago. At the time there were only 20 black players in all of professional baseball. The same day, the directors of the International League (which included Newark) barred any of their teams from hiring black players in the future. By the following year there were only six black players left on all the teams in four leagues. All-black teams were formed, but the last of them, the Acme Colored Giants from Celeron, New York, of the Iron and Oil (I&0) League, stopped playing in 1898. No African-American would play in white organized baseball again until Jackie Robinson nearly 50 years later.
July 14, 1955 The Air Pollution Control Act of 1955 became law, the first in a series of laws that ultimately became the Clean Air Act in 1963. This first law simply provided funding to the Public Health Service to conduct research. History of the Clean Air Act
July 14, 1958 King Faisal II A group of Iraqi army officers staged a coup in Iraq and overthrew the monarchy of King Faisal II (who had ascended to the throne at age four). The new government, led by Abdul Karim el Qasim, was ousted in 1963 by a coup helped by the CIA and led by the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party—later dominated by Saddam Hussein. Read more
Noem is more interested in her face than in providing assistance to the Texas flood survivors Read on Substack
ICE Barbie, Kristi Noem, the Director of Homeland Security, is failing at her job miserably.
A portrait of Noem is going to be displayed in the South Dakota Capitol building, and there are three options. Who gives a shit, right? Kristi Noem, that’s who. Noem went on Instagram and posted to her creepy followers, “Which one do you like for the official Governor’s portrait to hang in the South Dakota State Capitol? Thank you David Uhl!” She added the three paintings of herself on horseback by artist David Uhl.”
She did this five days ago, during the floods in Texas that have killed at least 120 so far.
Here are the other two portraits.
I wonder how much South Dakota tax money was spent on this.
Before Noem’s survey about herself, Puppy-Killah Kristi did her stupid photo-op in El Salvador with the notorious prison behind her, with Trump deportees as props. She was in full makeup while making sure her shiny $10,000 Rolex was visible, which is probably less than her teeth cost.
She’s done other photos with guns, posing as an ICE agent. In one of them, she wasn’t holding the gun correctly and got roasted for it online. I bet she can’t ride a horse either.
We should be relieved that she didn’t shoot that ICE agent in the face. In her defense, she does know how to shoot a gun because that’s how she murdered her puppy. So there, critics.
Kristi is the kind of person that if you went out to dinner with her, she’d humbly say at some point, “Enough of me talking about myself. Now let’s hear you talk about me.” She can’t get over herself. She might be the female equivalent of Donald Trump. She already has the fake hair, and now she just needs the ridiculous tie, the orange make-up, and an adult diaper that hasn’t been changed since his first flip-flop on tariffs.
Remember, Kristi used to look like this…
…before she looked like this.
She definitely went for the Melania look, which is an improvement over the look for hunting wolves from a helicopter. She even got free dental work while she was governor, on the condition that she make a commercial for the Texas dentist who did her work.
It seems that’s the only time she’s interested in Texas, when she can get free dental work, but not when there’s a disaster.
According to The New York Times, two days after catastrophic floods roared through Central Texas, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) did not answer nearly two-thirds of calls to its disaster assistance line.
An anonymous source close to the issue said the lack of responsiveness happened because the agency had fired hundreds of contractors at call centers.
FEMA, which is a part of Homeland Security (I have to include that because trolls are commenting on this cartoon on Facebook asking, “What’s DHS got to do with FEMA?”), laid off the contractors on July 5 after their contracts expired and were not extended, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter. Noem, who has instituted a new requirement that she personally approve expenses over $100,000, did not renew the contracts until Thursday, five days after the contracts expired, and about a week after the floods started.
Where was ICE Barbie? She was probably spending her time looking at herself in a mirror, or maybe she confused Texas for one of the seven Native American tribes that banned her from their reservations.
Adam Zyglis: There’s a part of this cartoon that is my standing in solidarity with my colleague Adam Zyglis. So what happened with Adam? Adam, who works for the Buffalo News, drew a cartoon mocking Republican hypocrisy, asking for federal aid after protesting against federal disaster relief for other states. This has upset Republicans, which shows more hypocrisy for the gang that shouts “snowflake” at their political opponents. They even cried on Fox News about it.
Now, an event at the Buffalo History Museum by the Buffalo News Guild, which was to feature Adam among other journalists, has been postponed because of “credible” death threats toward Adam and his family.
And just today, a MAGAt posted on one of my client’s shares of a cartoon of mine about how Democrats are the violent ones. (snip-MORE, and it’s great)
The Canadian province of Manitoba is suffering through its worst wildfire season in its history, and to add insult to injury, several U.S. lawmakers are complaining that smoke wafting south is making it difficult for Americans to enjoy summer.
Six Republican Congress members shared their concerns in a letter addressed to Canadian Ambassador Kirsten Hillman on Monday, July 7, asking for more information about how the government plans to mitigate wildfires and the smoke that travels south. Since January, over 3,000 wildfires have consumed more than 5 million acres, killed two people, and displaced tens of thousands more in Canada. The lawmakers explain that resulting poor air quality in the U.S. has prevented Americans from partaking in outdoor summer activities. Compared to the devastation Canadians have faced this year, these issues are glaringly trivial.
“This is what turns people off politics. When you’ve got a group of congresspeople trying to trivialise and make hay out of a wildfire season where we’ve lost lives in our province,” Wab Kinew, premier of Manitoba, said during a press conference Thursday, July 10. Manitoba had just declared a state of emergency for the second time this year due to unprecedented wildfire activity. The province’s wildfire service reported 105 active fires burning on Thursday, including 14 that were listed as “out of control” across the eastern, western, and northern parts of the province. (snip-MORE on the page)
And, well-informed Canadians have opinions! We should be aware of this. The comments thread is fine. Go. Read. Comment, if you will.
I see that our recycling center has closed until further notice. International Paper, downsizing, has closed its recycling plant in Wichita, laying off all those employees, I saw on the newscast from the station I linked. Their story links a release from IP about all their closures and their plans for the year. The release is dated Feb. 13, of 2025. There’s another release from the Wichita Business Journal about the Wichita plant, but it says little to nothing. (No link from them; they’re mostly Kansans and Americans For Prosperity, anyway.)
Earlier, I got the idea to search if IP’s downsizing is due to recission of tax cuts and to tariffs. Gemini (who always volunteers though I never ask, preferring to find a link to a known source) says that while it cannot state that those things cause the downsizing in full, it also cannot state that those aren’t in the mix. (Because I do skim Gemini’s stuff.)
So, this hurts a bit: the closing of our recycling facility, as well as the Wichita one. During the first Trump admin, when POTUS began that trade war with China, China reciprocated by, possibly among other things, refusing anymore plastic recycling from the US. Our facility couldn’t find a place that did the recycling; no one else does it. China does it very economically though of course there is the question of what it’s really doing with the plastic, but another story for another time.
Anyway, in those days, I was an active BPW member. One of the things we worked hard on was getting a recycling collection facility here in town. We lobbied hard, both the public and the council, for use of an unused building (the former firehouse,) and possibly the use of a big truck for hauling the recycling collected to the recycler. We asked for no funding, we had willing volunteers; all the civic organizations set up volunteer schedules. We just needed the facility and a way to haul. Before the facility came about, I became a member of the city Planning Commission, so I couldn’t continue in that effort until after it was decided by the council. But, it was a happy circumstance that there was a plan for recycling in the existing Strategic Plan, even then! That’s always a big help, when something’s in the Strat Plan.
So, this was not a thing that came before the Planning Commission. I was not on Zoning Appeals at that time, so I have no idea if they got it, but as it came to reality, that wouldn’t have been necessary. It was decided that that firehouse building would become the collection facility, it would be staffed with volunteers but with a city worker or two there because it’s city property and insurance insists on that, and a city worker would do the hauling. Yay! It was open each Saturday from 9 until noon, and people needed to bring their recycling, preferably sorted, to the facility where volunteers then helped getting things where they went.
Eventually it grew, and there weren’t enough volunteers every Saturday to keep the lines moving reasonably. It went before the council to staff another one or two. There would still be volunteers there to keep things moving without too much staff. (People here in town like nice things, but don’t like paying for them.) The council approved, and the facility also opened on Mondays from 11 AM to 1 PM. That way, downtown business, who go through a lot of corrugated cardboard and bubble wrap, could get theirs done without as many of the public. Also, the staffers could actually get the stuff loaded in time for it to go to the recycler.
I just went there last week to drop recycling. We usually accrue enough corrugated cardboard and chipboard to unload at least once per month. We’ve cut paper back a lot, and again, plastic hasn’t been accepted since Trump p.o.’d China last term, so that’s not so much. Even so, where we usually have a single trash bag to go out for pickup, I think we’re going to have more that now has to go to the landfill.
I may be taking it too seriously, but I feel the way I did when the SCOTUS overturned their own decision in Roe v. Wade. We worked hard for it, we had it, it was good for all, and now it’s gone.
I hope this hasn’t bored anyone very much. It’s more sentimental than I usually am when posting such stuff. Still, our recycling collection facilities closing, or really, any big companies downsizing, is happening everywhere, and is affecting many, many people. I feel for all the Wichita workers who will have no jobs just in time for school shopping. So, I thought I’d post, because we all have to keep our eyes open for this happening around us everywhere. Thanks for your time! 🌞
Scottie's Playtime 