Overland Park Kansas

Posts Tagged ‘johnsoncounty’

Johnson County Kansas Aims

A court in Johnson County, Kansas sentenced a mentally ill juvenile to life in prison with no chance of parole for 50 years. Andrew Ellman was convicted of murdering his mental health worker, Terri Zenner.

The defendant was 17 years old when he killed the victim. Because he was a juvenile at the time of the incident he was not eligible for the death penalty.

His victim, Teri Zenner, was 26 years old and recently married when he killed her. She worked for Johnson County Mental Health trying to help Andrew Ellmaker learn skills and find a job. She stopped by Ellmaker’s Overland Park home on August 17, 2004, for a routine home visit.

She never left alive. Andrew Ellmaker stabbed her to death and cut her with a chainsaw. He also stabbed his mother when she tried to intervene.

Sue Ellmaker, the defendant’s mother, survived the ordeal. She pleaded for mercy at the sentencing because of her son’s mental illness. She said that her son struggled early with mental illness. By the time he became an adolescent, his mental disorders overwhelmed him. He walked the hallways of his high school alone and wore a black sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his eyes. She placed her son in institutions until her insurance benefits ran out and then had to let him live at home.

The victim’s husband, Matt Zenner, cared nothing for this defense.

“I’m sick and tired of hearing about mental illness,” he said at the sentencing hearing. “Stand up and be a man. You sit there and stare at the floor…. It’s beyond my comprehension that you were able to do this.”

As the husband of the victim, Matt Zenner is entitled to his feelings of loss, anger and bereavement. The family of Terri Zenner deserves all our compassion.

However, as a society we must overcome our prejudice that mental illness is both incomprehensible and inexcusable. Otherwise, we could face even more tragedies like Teri Zenner’s.

More than seventy percent of youth in the juvenile justice system suffer from at least one mental health disorder, according to the National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice. For girls, the number is even higher. Eighty percent of girls in juvenile justice suffer mental illness. For all offenders, disruptive disorders are the most common, followed by substance use disorders, anxiety disorders and mood disorders.

Over sixty percent of youths in juvenile justice meet criteria for three or more disorders. Twenty five percent find their lives seriously impaired by mental illness.

For many of their families, juvenile justice provides their first and only access to mental health services. Sue Ellmaker testified that she kept her son in institutions “until her insurance benefits ran out.” Then he returned to the community, where he posed a deadly danger to the community.

Juvenile justice is not set up for mental health services. The aims and services of juvenile justice differ from the needs of the mentally ill youths who enter the system.

Families raising a child with mental illness feel frustrated, overwhelmed and exhausted. In my law practice, we help these families by coordinating special education, juvenile justice and mental health services.

Andrew Ellmaker deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison. The rest of us, though, must work even harder to help families raising children with special needs. It’s the only way to prevent future tragedies from happening.

About the Author:

Scott Wasserman is a graduate of Harvard Law School. He devotes his law practice to helping families raising children with special needs. He can be reached through his web site at www.yourchild1st.com.

Source – Mentally Ill Juvenile Sentenced To 50 Years In Prison

OP Aims To Annex Southern Land Tract

Johnson County Kansas Tax

Kansas City is a sprawling metropolitan area at the convolution of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers, and is comprised of the cities of Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas, as well as a number of smaller, interconnected, incorporated cities. Kansas City, Missouri is the major element in this metro area. The city occupies parts of four Missouri counties; Jackson, Clay, Cass and Platte, also Johnson County, Kansas. A village was established on this site in 1838 because of the river convergence and crossings. It grew quickly into a trading center for fur trappers who came down the rivers from the mountains and the trading companies who supplied them with the necessities to carry on their trapping excursions into the great mountains to the west. As the Great West of the US began to attract immigrants, Jackson County became the starting point for the famous trails leading to California, Oregon, New Mexico and the rest of the west. The California Trail, Oregon Trail and Santa Fe Trail all began in the area between Kansas City and St. Joseph, MO. At present, the Kansas City Metropolitan area has a population of more than two million. The area is served by a number of Interstate Highways, rail and a very large airport north of the metro area. Known as the “City of Fountains,” second only to Rome, Italy for the number of water displays, KCMO (as it is commonly known) is a city of more than 240 “neighborhoods,” representing many ethnic and national groups. The Irish are well represented with more than 250,000 Irish-American residents. KCMO also has more than 132 miles of wide boulevards. The climate is varied, with cold, freezing winters and hot, humid summers . . . and everything in between. It is also located in the center of what the weathermen call, “Tornado Alley,” because the atmospheric conditions during the summer season often generate huge rain storms that occasionally produce “twisters.” Major corporations have headquartered in the metro area, including: Sprint-Nextel (wireless telephone), H & R Block (tax accounting services) and Hallmark (greeting cards). The Kansas City Board of Trade handles more hard-red-winter wheat, the primary ingredient in bread, than any other commodity exchange in the world. KCMO was established a major shipping point for the beef cattle raised in the American West in the mid-1800s and still is to this day. Famous for “Kansas City Strip Steaks” and other fine cuts of beef, the area abounds in restaurants featuring everything from steaks to barbeque. The KC stockyards are still home to one of the best of the best, The Golden Ox Steakhouse. Kansas City Style Barbeque is renowned. The many great purveyors of barbeque include: Arthur Bryant’s, Gates & Sons and Firoella’s Jack Stack. In KC barbeque, the sauce is as important as the meat. Most were developed from tomato-base, then sweetened with molasses. The recipes are closely held secrets. One sauce that has achieved worldwide distribution is “KC Masterpiece.” The Sports activities in the area include major league baseball, football and soccer: The KC Royals baseball tem, KC Chiefs NFL football team and the KC Wizards soccer club, play their home games in the Sports Complex on the east side of the city. The Performing Arts are well represented by: The KC Symphony, Lyric Opera, Ballet and an annual Jazz Festival. For more information on Kansas City, Missouri visit
http://kansascitymicroblog.com
and
http://missourimicroblog.com
About the Author:

Source – City of Fountains

Tea party

Johnson County Kansas Genealogy

If there is a place you would like to be if you are dating, it is in Overland Park, A suburb within Kansas City. It is a place depicting the uniqueness of Kansas dating, as it was listed a clear sixth among the most a hundred desirable places to live by a Magazine survey. It is an affluent community in Johnson County, although some youthful singles have seen it as overtly staid and conservative.  If you are dating, you might see the place as eventless and despair over the matter, but learning the ins and outs of Kansas dating in Overland will change all this.

The single in Overland Park can be overtly frustrated by the turn of events in their world. Most of the activities are seemingly tailored for couples already in relationships. This should not make you forget that Overland Park has a very active singles scene more than you might think. For those in Kansas dating, the place offers them many lucrative options for meeting the right individuals to find the right and true love to begin a relationship with. You should also know that Kansas City with a lush culture and great places of special interest is about fifteen minutes away.

Free Online Personals for Dating in Overland Park
For that person or single who is already tired of waiting for Mrs. Or Mr. Right to tag along, and cutting out the chase is what is in their mind, it is possible to post your ad online and you will soon meet singles who are interested in what you have to offer. You also have the chance to browse the ads of other people. All categories are opened for your take, from gay, bisexual, strait and all other groups have the chance to try this Kansas dating chance. Whether you are in search of fast or hot sex, Overland will surely fulfill all your wildest dreams.

Johnson County Library in Overland Park Dating
Perhaps you are after a mind and body connection, and the Johnson country Library with its different branches around the county has something to offer you. Each branch has something to offer the different adult classes, on different subjects that range from genealogy, writing clubs and personal finance. Many of the classes are generally free and provide the chance to learn something novel, and you could just meet friends or some Kansas dating romantic prospects with whom you share the same love interests.

Volunteer Events
If at all you have some time or lots of it and you are after sharing your talent and professional ability, and you have found a place where you are appreciated for this, you might consider trying a volunteering chance. There is a center for Volunteers in Johnson County that is very ready to connect you with a superb volunteering position that does match your talents and interests. It is in such activities that you come across singles in Kansas who are most definitely in search of a Kansas dating chance with the right person, and who knows? You might be the perfect mate they have been yearning for.

About the Author:

Francis K. Githinji Is An Online Dating Expert. His Latest ProjectFree online dating and matchmaking service for singles Shows How The Power Of Online Dating Can Be Harnessed Internationally and With Great Success, Or You Could Post Your Valued Comments On His Blog At Kansas Dating

Source – Survive Kansas Dating in the Overland Park Way

Johnson County, Kansas Interior Master Bedroom Painting –

Johnson County Kansas History

The 1918 flu was the most lethal disease pandemic in history — killing 20 to 100 million people worldwide, most of them in the Fall of 1918.

It’s now being examined and debated with new urgency, thanks to the threat of a bird flu pandemic.

What can the 1918 flu tell us about the current H5N1 strain of bird flu?

According to evolutionary biologist Paul Ewald, author of Evolution of Infectious Disease and Plague Time: How Stealth Infections Cause Cancers, Heart Disease and Other Deadly Ailments (both great books well worth reading), the 1918 flu was so much more lethal than ordinary flu because it appeared and evolved at the Western Front of World War I Europe’s brutal trench war.

The more advantageous it is for infections to keep us alive and feeling well enough to walk around, the safer they are. The common cold is irritating but we can still go to work with it — the better to sneeze and spread cold germs to our co-workers.

The more advantageous it is for infections to destroy us, the more they will destroy us. Malaria makes us so sick because it spreads by mosquitoes — who find it easier to bite people who’re too sick to swap the mosquitoes. Who then go spread the infection to a healthy person.

During the 1918 flu, soldiers in Europe lay sick in crowded trenches where they easily spread the flu to other soldiers even though they were too sick to walk and many soon died. When transported to medical care, they were crowded into trucks and train cars with other sick and wounded soldiers. And arrived at military hospitals crowded with more sick and wounded soldiers.

Therefore, the 1918 flu virus had every evolutionary incentive to evolve into a strain highly lethal to people.

But is that the whole story? According to Ewald, we are not in danger of a bird flu pandemic — or at least, not one as deadly as 1918 — because there is no similar war going on today.

So should we all forget about bird flu and start worrying only about Iran?

Ewald uses sources from the 1940s that give France as the origin of the 1918 flu.

In The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague In History John M. Barry discusses the work of Dr. Edwin Johnson, editor of THE JOURNAL OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE, who studied the 1918 soon after it happened and published EPIDEMIC INFLUENZA in 1927.

Dr. Johnson also discards the theory (that some have given) that the 1918 flu originated in China and spread to Europe via imported laborers. Yet he also could not find evidence that it started in Europe.

In Haskell County, Kansas, the winter of 1917-1918 was hard. Many people came down with a flu that was unusually serious. We don’t know exactly how many of Haskell County flu victims that winter died, but it was enough to alarm the local doctor. He was so concerned about the number of local and deadly cases of flu that he wrote an alert to the government.

Of course, that didn’t stop the government from drafting young men from Haskell County — who were sent to Camp Funston for training before shipping them off to France.

So it’s quite possible that the 1918 flu first infected people in Haskell County, Kansas.

It appears that it did evolve once it was in Europe. The first wave of it hit the soldiers in the spring. It was known as the 3 day flu because large numbers of them caught it, were sick for 3 days and then recovered.

Then it went unnoticed until around September 1918 — when it spread throughout the world and in 3 months killed many more people than the war itself. From at peace Spain (which was unfairly blamed for it) to the South Pacific to remove Eskimo villages in Alaska.

Perhaps the deadly 1918 flu had its deadly origins for BOTH reasons:

1. It was a mutated avian flu that people did not have any acquired immunity for.

2. Wartime conditions encouraged it to retain and/or increase its lethality, by rewarding it for disabling and killing soldiers so fast and easily.

What does this mean for bird flu today?

We already know it’s a mutated avian flu we have no acquired immunity for. It kills over half of its human victims.

There is no major, intense war underway — but many people in large megacities of the developing world from Rio to Calcutta live in extreme density. One sick person lying in the corner of a corrugated iron hovel could infect many close family members and neighbors. If a pandemic struck, many would be transported to large and overcrowded medical centers.

In such conditions, a bird flu mutation would likely retain or evolve its extreme lethality.

And what if it was “only” as lethal as the virus that caused the 1968 “Hong Kong” virus?

According to the CDC, the 1968 virus would today kill 2 to 7 million people around the world. From 89,000 to 207,000 people just in the U.S. That would not be a worst case scenario but it would certainly cause a lot of fear and concern.

Therefore, bird flu does not have to evolve into a strain as deadly as 1918, to pose a threat to millions of people around the world. Even without a major world war, we are at risk from a bird flu pandemic.

About the Author:

c 2006 by Richard Stooker

Richard Stooker is the author of
How to Protect Yourself and Your Family From Bird Flu
and

Bird Flu Blog

Source – The Origins of the 1918 Flu and Where Bird Flu is Going Now