Kansas in the news

Kansas has sure been in the news a lot lately. Yes, I know...the small, flat, home of dorothy and toto and not much else...has been grabbing a lot of national news headlines. I'm not a Kansas native. I'm from the neighboring, (and after I moved here I discovered) much-hated state of Missouri. I feel like even though I've only been here two years, I'm more of a Kansan than a Missourian now. I appreciate Missouri. There's a lot I like about the state...but for the lack of finding more eloquent words, I feel like Kansas has its shit together a lot more than Missouri. Better roads. Better schools. More pride. More consideration. There's not all that stubbornness that comes along with being the "Show-Me State." I don't know...I'm not a native of here, but I've been thoroughly impressed by what I've seen in Kansas so far... But then again, I've only lived in the northeast part of the state...

Anyway, back to my original idea for this post. I went to CNN.com today and two of the main stories (BTK and the Steve Fossett flight) involved Kansas. One day last week the top two most e-mailed stories from NYTimes.com featured Kansas in the headline. Larry King had an entire show about the BTK guy. Yes, we're getting a lot of attention for the mass murderer guy in Wichita...so that's probably not a good thing. But I guess as a Missourian, I'm not used to seeing my state featured on the national news (that, of course, is when our governor doesn't die in a plane crash and then beats John Ashcroft posthumously...I'm glad Jean was named Senator, but I can't help but think the country would have been a better place if Ashcroft would have stayed in the Senate instead of becoming AG....) Yes, I know, if you're from New York, L.A. or D.C., most all of the stories on national news organization Web sites come from your place of residence. But I had a small little thrill this week by seeing all the Kansas stories in such prominent positions of the national media agenda---for better or worse.