In a brief Board of Aldermen meeting on April 26th, the Board certified election results for the April 6, 2021 election, thanked outgoing Ward 2 Alderman Nancy Totton for her years of service, and installed incumbents Shea Bass, Tom Cleaver and new Ward 2 Alderman Darren Mills.             
     The next scheduled board meeting of the Board of Aldermen will be held Monday, May 10th at 7:00pm at City Hall.
 

​     Farm fresh produce, plants, trees, and a variety of home décor and gift items await shoppers at the opening weekend of the Valley Wagon.    
     The popular farm stand has expanded this year to include a barn stocked with food and gift items, planters, and home décor.
     The Valley Wagon will also feature a variety of trees, plants, and flowers for sale, and has expanded its services to include free range black angus beef raised in Boonville. Processing appointments for half and whole beef are now being accepted for May, June, and July.                 
     The Valley Wagon is located on the north side of Grain Valley at 1451 S Buckner Tarsney Road, next to Milestones Academy. Hours this weekend are Saturday, May 1st 8:00am-4:00pm, and Sunday, May 2nd 8:00am-4:00pm. These hours will continue through May, and produce offerings will expand as the season continues.
     The Valley Wagon accepts cash and debit/credit. No checks accepted, and all sales are final.
     For more information on the Valley Wagon, visit their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/MoehleMater.   
 

​     The Jackson County Health Department will host a COVID-19 vaccine clinic on Friday, April 30th at
Grain Valley Community Center, 713 N Main St, Grain Valley from 11:00am—4:00pm.
     To register, visit https://jacohd.jotform.com/211114410678851.
    Any Missourian over the age of 16 can sign up for an appointment. Individuals who are 16 or 17 must have a parent or guardian sign their consent form.
 

​       In the 1800s, Independence found itself at the very eastern end of an important trade route, the Santa Fe Trail. Soon, the Oregon Trail and California Trail branched off from the Santa Fe, and tens of thousands of pioneers came to Independence to outfit themselves for a journey west. 
     The National Frontier Trails Museum is a history museum, interpretive center, and research library dedicated to telling the rich history of America’s principal trails for hundreds of thousands of pioneers who risked their livelihoods for a new life in the American West. 
     While the museum has been closed due to COVID-19, I can highly recommend it as an interesting place to visit when it reopens. It is located just south of the Square at 318 W Pacific Avenue in Independence, Missouri.
 

​     This week I have chosen a photograph, but I cannot tell you when or from whom we received it. I chose it because of the beautiful stained-glass window at the Christian Church on the corner of Main and Walnut Streets. Built in 1910 and dedicated in June, 1911, it was destroyed by fire on January 17. 1972. 
     Because the seats were at an angle, it is difficult to read the names at the bottom of the window. The name in the middle is “Cannon” and a former church member remembers that the window was a gift from Bill and Adie (Cannon) Minter. The smaller window to the left bears the name “Mr. & Mrs. John Gregg.”
     I believe the photo was taken in 1946 or early 1947, as the child in the second row, Danny Elliott was born in 1945. At the time this group was assembled they were probably known as the Ladies’ Aid.
     Later they were known as the Women’s Council and finally as the Christian Women’s Fellowship. Over the years, these ladies provided funds to the church and were known for their benevolent work both within the church and within the community of Grain Valley.
     If you are a long-time resident of Grain Valley, you may remember some of these ladies. If you are new to our town or a regular reader of this column, you may recognize a name or two.  Jewell and Edgar Graham owned an apple orchard north of town. Bill and Adie Minter ran a grocery store. Mae Raines lived on Yennie and gave piano lessons. Jean Rowe, well into her nineties, lives at St. Mary’s Manor in Blue Springs. Danny Elliott (grandson of Lucy Rowe) graduated from GVHS in 1963 and is the retired Dean of Students at Central Methodist University in Fayette, Missouri. Ruth Fine was the postmaster in Grain Valley through much of the 1950s and 60s.
     Lula Preston was on the school board in the 1950s, but I remember her best as the “fairy Godmother” to first graders at Grain Valley for many years! She would often come and read to us or bring us cookies. Madge Warren lived in the big house near the west end of Walnut Street and her husband was president of the Bank of Grain Valley.
     I knew nearly all of these ladies and I’m even related to a couple of them. Come visit at the Historical Society any Wednesday.  I’ll tell you “the rest of the story!”
     Visit the Grain Valley Historical Society at 506 S. Main on Wednesdays from 10am—3pm and Saturdays from 11am—3pm, or online at www.grainvalleyhistory.com.
 

     It's been a year since the COVID-19 pandemic forced all of us to rely on our computers and associated devices for work and school. Most modern tech devices don't need a 'tune up', but as we head into spring, it's a good time for cleaning.
     So when you start to do a deep cleaning on your living space, take a few minutes to follow these steps to spring clean all items associated with your digital lifestyle.
     Avoid computer and app cleaning products.
     It's tempting to purchase do it all products that promise to clean your computers and smartphones. Avoid these products like the plague. Most of these products do more harm than good. Your devices are designed to take care of themselves, so avoid all of the extra junk.
     Remove your 3rd Party Anti-Virus (AV) software.
     Fifteen years ago, computer manufacturers didn't include AV software; now they do. Macintosh users have xProtect and Windows Users have Windows Defender. Smartphone and tablet users just need to avoid downloading unknown apps from the Google Play Store and the App Store. Most 3rd party AV software causes more problems than good.  
     Change Your Passwords For All of Your Online Accounts.
     It’s always a good idea to change your passwords every so often, so why not do it this spring?  There are too many data breaches occurring where your personal information is leaked into the hands of cyber-criminals. You wouldn't believe the number of calls we get at the office from people who have had their personal information stolen because they hadn't changed their passwords for years. 
     If you make it a habit to change your passwords on a regular basis, you can avoid your personal information falling into the wrong hands. Using a passphrase instead of a password helps you create passwords you can easily remember. 
     Need help with creating a passphrase? Visit www.useapassphrase.com. Passphrases are more secure than your standard password and are so much easier to remember.
     Creating passphrases along with using password management software such as LastPass (www.lastpass.com) or the password management system built into web browsers, such as Google Chrome, Opera, and Firefox will keep your personal information safe.
     Back-Up Your Files.
     I hate paper and keep everything stored digitally. Instruction manuals, pictures, documents, the list goes on and on. In this digital age, I know many of you are storing items digitally as well. 
     Cloud backup is your best option with services like Carbonite (www.carbonite.com), Google Backup and Sync (www.google.com), and iCloud drive (www.icloud.com) vying to save your important information.
     Remember there is a difference between cloud storage and cloud backup. Cloud storage is meant just to store one copy of your files, where cloud backup keeps multiple copies of your files. Make sure your backup your files in multiple places, not just on the cloud, but also on an external hard drive as well.
     Donate, Trade, or Sell Your Old Tech Devices.
     We have several laptops, desktops, tablets, and phones sitting around the house.  I know you do too.  Why are we keeping these devices?  There's no good reason to keep them. Make it a point to stop hoarding your tech devices and get rid of them. 
     If you have information on them that you want to ease, just reset your items to factory defaults and the information will disappear. There are many recycling places near you, just do a Google search to find one and get rid of that digital clutter. If you have a device that still works, donate it to a needy non-profit. 
Have something newer that you want to sell? Sell it on Facebook Marketplace, or Craigslist, or trade it in on Amazon.
     Declutter Those Devices.
     Don't believe the myth that too much stuff on your devices will slow them down. It is a good idea to remove old files, smart device apps, and computer programs for the sake of having a more streamlined device. Take a moment to organize those files, pictures, and videos. 
     Don't forget about those emails. 
     Most of us tend to use our email as a filing cabinet which is why our email gets so cluttered. Unless you're using Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple Mail, or Windows Mail, too much mail won't slow your device down. If you are, you need to clean out that email quarterly. Don't forget to empty your recycle bin and your trash can as well.
     Take care of all of those cords.  You probably use wireless devices when you can, but with technology, there are going to be some cords that need to be connected to our devices. If you can, hide those wires to your computers, printers, and even TVs with cord covers or check out some other solutions that will allow you to hide cords in your walls. 
     For your smartphone and tablet, switch to wireless chargers to eliminate cords. You can also consider purchasing power centers in a central location of your home where the family has a convenient place to charge all of their devices.
     Clean Out those Crumbs. 
     During all of the hours you spend in front of a screen, there's a good chance you're going to snack on something. After a while, your device is going to get pretty gross. For desktop and laptop keyboards, turn them upside down to shake out the dirt and crumbs. I recommend getting a can of compressed air to effectively get all of the debris out.  
      Clean Your Screen. 
     The average smartphone and Tablet have more germs than a public restroom. Take the time to disinfect your handheld devices. To properly clean and disinfect them, use a solution of 50% Water and 50% of isopropyl alcohol. Only use a microfiber cloth to wipe down your devices.
     Your home and office are not the only things that should be getting cleaned this spring. Don’t neglect your technology or it will not last as long as it should.
     Want to ask me a tech question? Send it to [email protected]. I love technology. I've read all of the manuals and I'm serious about making technology fun and easy to use for everyone. 
Reach out to us at www.callintegralnow.com or phone at 888.256.0829. 
 

​     It likely began in the air over Los Angeles, when the first smartly dressed TWA flight attendant asked the traveler, “Coffee? Tea? Water?  What would you prefer?”
     The beloved pre-school teacher’s mantra, “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit” got thrown right out the proverbial window, in this case at about 42,000 feet, with that very first mention of a preference.
     The restaurant industry followed shortly, really aiming to please their customers by allowing almost every preference to be met. Booth or table? Lemon in your ice water? Loaded or plain baked potato?  Salad dressing on the side? You say you would like sweetener for your tea?  Which of these three kinds would you prefer?
     Then it was a short leap from restaurants to our own homes. I follow the blog of a really creative mom with three young kids. Luckily none of them are allergic to peanut butter, a lunch staple, but get this: all three kids each prefer a different kind of peanut butter.      
     Never satisfying my curiosity and the very obvious question about how they even knew there were multiple kinds, blogger mom honors their preference. “They are just expressing their individuality,“ she writes. The adults in my life must have gotten individuality confused with being picky brats, which is what they would have called us if we had complained about the peanut butter.
     Luckily my mom was a good cook, but let me assure you, she wasn’t much interested in our preferences. Maybe the spaghetti had meatballs, maybe it had meat sauce. Sometimes the lima beans had corn mixed in with them, and sometimes they didn’t (which frankly didn’t matter because we didn’t want to eat them anyway).
      Our sandwiches were cut in rectangular halves, no trimmed crusts and no fancy triangles or star shaped cut outs.  If it was baloney day, she chose the cheese, and the only choice we had was mustard or mayo. 
    She didn’t poll us for our preferences on how our egg was going to be cooked at breakfast each morning. If one of us had scrambled eggs (which for some reason still taste better out of Mom’s skillet), all of us had scrambled eggs. I am guessing I would have liked an occasional Ritz cracker rather than a saltine, but we weren’t busy making sure our preferences were known. And we survived quite nicely.
   Some preferences are naturally easier to honor. When you bake a pan of brownies, somebody usually prefers the crispier edge pieces and somebody prefers the gooier center pieces. It is still all coming from one pan of brownies, and no, I was not tempted to buy the recently advertised all crispy tunnel looking brownie pan. 
    It’s okay for people to have a preference when you are passing a platter of turkey because dark meat and white meat are right there available for the taking. I also support steak houses asking our preference on how done we want our steaks because it is an expensive cut of meat that we are treating ourselves to. 
     My preference for a medium steak probably came from my dad slaving over a charcoal grill and finally giving up, plating it, telling us that is how it was supposed to look, and not asking us to cut into it in case we wanted it cooked a little more.
    The rumors of people out there who like their steak moo’ing and some who like it charred are surely true.  While I personally prefer a medium warm center, I have seen these mavericks in restaurants, sending back their steaks, like Goldilocks rejecting one chair or bed or porridge after another until one is just right.
     As I age, some of the choices we are offered in the name of honoring preferences kind of wear me out. Case in point, every once in a while the hubs and I pretend we are young and hit up the local site of a nationwide breakfast chain.
    We always do this on a day we know we can go home and nap off our food coma afterward; and by the way, I prefer the couch with a quilt for a quick nap, and an actual bed with a cotton blanket for anything much over an hour.
     We get our coffee from the gum snapping waitress, and we each order the house special, which will be likely be delivered on a variety of not so clean looking plates, despite our preference for spotless plates and utensils.
    Last time we went, I felt a little like I did when Mr. Hile would randomly call on me in Geometry class.  “Quadrilateral? “ I would guess, and he would just shake his head, while I silently made plans to go home with Carla to copy her homework again.
   Back to the greasy spoon. Did I want my hash browns crispy or soft? Bacon, sausage patty, sausage links, or ham?  Grits or toast?  Eggs over-easy, hard, or scrambled?  Waffle or toast?  Toast you say?  Sourdough, wheat, or white? Real butter or margarine? I was so scared to make a mistake, to one of the questions I just meekly answered, “Yes.” 
    The Flo wannabe stared at me, uncomprehending, then finally looked over at my husband and said, “Do YOU know what she wants?”  Luckily, he does, and if it wasn’t what I wanted when it arrives, he will just give me his breakfast and suck it up.  Now there’s a guy that was raised not to have a preference, someone to truly love. I guess I should be grateful he preferred me over his other dates.
    When we married, I knew he was darn near perfect, because he truly didn’t have any discernable preferences at all. He let me choose the side of the bed, which cabinets the plates and glasses went into, even our china pattern. I got to park my car on the right because it was easier to back out of the garage on that side. 
     Then came the day when he unpacked groceries to put them away. How could I have missed this crucial preference of his?  Apparently he preferred jamming the cans onto the shelves all willy nilly and unreadable without a lot of effort or any organizational strategy at all.
     Who doesn’t put soups together? Why were the beans all divided by short condensed milk cans? He has since changed his preference for can arrangement, likely due to my excellent tutelage and example.
    At least I don’t have something as pedestrian as a dishwasher loading preference. I am so happy when anybody else mentions they will help with dishes, they can load them any darned way they want to.
    But my friend’s preference about how her dishes go into her dishwasher has caused her a bunch of razzing. One night at a party she was hosting, two of us offered to clean up for her. She finally accepted and just told us to put as much as we could into the dishwasher.
     She walked into the kitchen when we were about halfway finished with our mission. She froze in her tracks, and we could tell from her look we had somehow gone astray.  “Oh…they actually go this way,” she said, and adjusted the plates on the dishwasher’s bottom rack.
     I started to reorganize the remainder of them, but my co-loader intervened, wanting to know why the other way wouldn’t work. What ensued was a bunch of half-hearted explanations that finally ended with the hostess friend mumbling about the original manufacturer‘s instructions having diagrams of proper loading. In truth, it was just her preference.
    Through somewhat incoherent cursing, my pal began to rearrange, but as soon as the hostess left the room, she quickly flipped them back.  I cannot remember her exact words, but I think she said, “The sun will come up tomorrow whichever way they are loaded, “ or maybe it was, “That’s a load of something…”
    Sure, there are some preferences that really are important, like high heels or flats, who we spend time with, No. 1 or No. 2 pencils, the type of car we drive, crushed or cubed ice, where we live and work, shaken or stirred, toothpaste flavors.
    I bet some people think Coke or Pepsi is an important preference. Those of us who have experienced a perfect soda suicide mix know that it doesn’t really matter at all.
     Preferences should also not be confused with highly distinguished favorites like the month of August, dark rinse jeans, and praline-flavored anything, which have risen to the top after years of testing out other options. They are not simply preferences. They are a way of life.
    Heading into my landing, let’s circle down the runway back to the airlines, where this whole preference thing started, and where I recently booked some travel for my boss.
     I selected the carrier, got to note his preference for the flight’s departure and arrival times, where and how much space he would have to stash his carry on, the amount of leg room, and an aisle, center, or window seat. Is this where the joke about you can pick your friends and pick your seat but you shouldn’t pick your friend’s seat goes? 
   When my boss came back from travel, I asked about his flight.
     “I had great seats both ways, plenty of room to stretch out, and my bag was actually right above me for a change,” he said. 
    I smiled, but inside I was irritated; not with him, but with myself. My boss may not like his trip so much the next time; when I finished my purchase and went to pay, I forgot to save his darned preferences.
 
     Cathy is a retired public school English teacher and Public Information Officer.
 
 
 

     Community Services League (CSL) and United Way of Greater Kansas City have formed a collaborative partnership to implement and administer Jackson County’s $11,550,205 federal rental assistance. Funds will be used to assist eligible households that are unable to pay past due rent and utility bills due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 
     The Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) provides financial assistance and housing stability services in Eastern Jackson County to eligible rental households who demonstrate a risk of experiencing housing instability, have seen their income reduced by the COVID-19 pandemic, and earn a household income at or below 80% of the area median income. Rental and utility assistance payments are made directly to the landlord or utility provider on behalf of the tenant.
     More information about the program, including eligibility requirements, an application checklist, and more, can be found at www.jacksoncountyerap.org. Detailed program information is also available for Spanish-speaking families at www.jacksoncountyerap.org/espanol.
     Grandview Assistance Program (GAP), Raytown Emergency Assistance Program (REAP), and Hope House, in addition to CSL’s locations, are serving as application hubs with dedicated ERAP Case Managers.
     The $11.5 million grant is part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, which established a $25 billion Federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program for state, county, and municipal governments.
     Kansas City, Missouri received its own grant funding of $14.8 million directly from the federal government and is administering its own rental assistance program for households within city limits.
 

​The following information is derived from the Grain Valley Police Department daily calls for service log for the week of April 14-20, 2021.