As far as many cities are concerned, 151 years really isn’t very old at all — though it might make some feel better to know that Sedalia has been a city longer than Kansas has been a state.

Sedalia has always tried to indoctrinate its children with a love of ragtime. They let the kids out of class for an hour or two every year so that they can listen to someone play some ragtime music; they teach a miniature ragtime lesson in every class with the words “history” or “music” in the title. We were fed a steady diet of ragtime so that we would be ready each year to play it up like it was the most stunning and original development in music to date.

Another group of kids has finally conquered the Sedalia school system and I have one thing to say: Attending the first graduation ceremony where I wasn’t actually graduating was pretty surreal.

I jingled on the green, and I didn’t even get arrested.

The Taco Bell brand name must carry a lot of loyalty around here.

Last time I checked, a “transvestite” was the proper way to refer to a person who hailed from a certain planet in the galaxy of Transylvania.

In 2005, we saw the development of an Enhanced Enterprise Zone — an initiative that created sections of land that would award special tax rates to anyone who would maintain a place of business upon them.

Slowly, but surely, many of the jobs that were traditionally performed by humans have been mechanized and there have been some who have lost their livelihood to unfeeling systems, programs and robots who don’t want for food, sleep or pay.

“We're the Seabees of the Navy

“I am very upset over this,” wrote “tammy1874," a commentator on The Sedalia Democrat Web site.

I sat at my computer and thought about what I'd write – it needed to

Some of my readers might recall that I found a stash of old copies of The Sedalia Democrat when I sorted through all the junk in my garage earlier this year when the house that I live in played host to a garage sale.

“Take care out in those woods. Northwest Pettis County is an unforgiving place after dark. The monster owns the night. Turkey, Muddy, Heath creeks are its preferred paths — chicken is its favorite food. The monster has also been linked to couple of missing hippies from the ‘74 music festival who may be in the traveling party. Travis this not a joking matter — it is real and it is important. 

There must be some sort of cosmic force that wants Tyson chicken to be tainted. First, in early August a “foreign object” was discovered in a vat of raw chicken and now two Tyson employees have conspired to make our chicken taste more like white cotton gloves. I can’t explain it but there must be some kind of ancient curse that calls for tainted chicken because it’s practically inevitable at this point.

When I first heard that a band called Shinedown was coming to the Missouri State Fair, my initial reaction was one of confusion. I had really never heard of this band before that point, and I was even more confused when their concert turned out to be one of this year’s highest selling shows. (To be fair, I hadn’t heard of Gary Allan either, but I just figured he was some country singer because there have been a lot of country singers coming to the fair throughout the years who I couldn’t recognize by name.)

There’s been a lot of text and a lot of talk lately about what needs to be “done” about the state of downtown Sedalia. The real answer is this: We need to spend time there and spend money there. Instead of doing all this talking and planning, we could all go downtown and support our local businesses. 

You might not know it by all the rain we’ve been getting, but the harsh (Yes, I think it is fair to call it “harsh”) Midwest summer is closing in. The pools are open, school is out and the summer solstice is practically here. Soon many people of all ages will have an unquenchable thirst for cool beverages and an unending appetite for anything that can be loosely described as ice cream. 

There were even more people at the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival on Friday than there were on Thursday.