Firework sales begin next Tuesday, June 27th in Grain Valley. Locally, two fireworks tents are hosted by community organizations. The Grain Valley Band Parents Association will host its tent in the parking lot of the Grain Valley Price Chopper. The Boy Scouts and Grain Valley Chamber of Commerce will offer fireworks at their tent located on the corner of Buckner Tarsney Road and SW Eagles Parkway. 

City code allows for the discharge of fireworks on Saturday, July 1st as well as July 3rd and 4th between the hours of 9:00am - 11:00pm. 

The Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) Air Quality Program has issued an orange Ozone Alert for Monday, June 19, 2023. This alert indicates that an unhealthy level of ground-level ozone is expected tomorrow in the Kansas City region.

Ozone pollution is formed when emissions from vehicles, lawn and garden equipment, and other sources react in heat and sunlight. Environmental factors — such as warm, sunny weather; low wind speeds; and lack of rain — increase the likelihood of poor air quality. 

The two most important things residents should do on Ozone Alert days are:
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1.    PROTECT YOUR HEALTH
Ozone pollution can cause a variety of problems — even in healthy adults — including chest pains, coughing, nausea, throat irritation and difficulty breathing. People who are sensitive to air pollution, including children, older adults and people with breathing or heart problems, should limit outdoor activity between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. Everyone should consider scheduling outdoor activities before 10 a.m. or after 7 p.m.


2. REDUCE POLLUTION
More than half of all emissions that lead to ozone pollution are caused by everyday activities such as driving and yard work. To help reduce air pollution, you can postpone mowing and wait until evening to refuel vehicles. If you live close to where you work, consider riding a bike or walking instead of driving. Both options produce zero emissions and the exercise is great for your health. Try to schedule walking and biking trips before 10 a.m. or after 7 p.m., and avoid prolonged exposure to outdoor air. 

The Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) Air Quality Program has issued an orange Ozone Alert for Thursday, June 15, 2023. This alert indicates that an unhealthy level of ground-level ozone is expected tomorrow in the Kansas City region. 

Ozone pollution is formed when emissions from vehicles, lawn and garden equipment, and other sources react in heat and sunlight. Environmental factors — such as warm, sunny weather; low wind speeds; and lack of rain — increase the likelihood of poor air quality. 

The two most important things residents should do on Ozone Alert days are:


1.    PROTECT YOUR HEALTH
Ozone pollution can cause a variety of problems — even in healthy adults — including chest pains, coughing, nausea, throat irritation and difficulty breathing. People who are sensitive to air pollution, including children, older adults and people with breathing or heart problems, should limit outdoor activity between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. Everyone should consider scheduling outdoor activities before 10 a.m. or after 7 p.m.

2. REDUCE POLLUTION
More than half of all emissions that lead to ozone pollution are caused by everyday activities such as driving and yard work. To help reduce air pollution, you can postpone mowing and wait until evening to refuel vehicles. If you live close to where you work, consider riding a bike or walking instead of driving. Both options produce zero emissions and the exercise is great for your health. Try to schedule walking and biking trips before 10 a.m. or after 7 p.m., and avoid prolonged exposure to outdoor air. 

Learn more about simple actions to reduce pollution and follow the SkyCast, the region’s daily air quality forecast, at AirQKC.org. MARC issues the SkyCast each afternoon from March 1 through Oct. 31. SkyCast information is also available via the air quality information line, 816-701-8287, on social media at www.twitter.com/airQKC and from area media outlets.

Submitted by Lisa Addington

The ladies of Xi Iota Phi have had a wonderful spring full of activities and growing friendship.
February found us having our meeting at the home of Lisa Addington, we celebrated our Valentine Queen Karen LaJaunie with a card shower and dessert. We then held our annual Valentine dinner at Sinclair’s Restaurant in Blue Springs.

For March some of our members visited the renovated Harry S. Truman library and enjoyed lunch together afterwards at the Courthouse Exchange on the square. Bobbie Brubeck was our host for our March meeting. She continued our program series about the friends in our lives and how they make us who we are.

We elected our new officers for the upcoming year as well. Our incoming officers are Karen LaJaunie, President, Linda Ebert, Vice-President, Karen Blau, Recording Secretary, Bobbie Brubeck, Corresponding Secretary, and Chris Smith, Treasurer.

April was a busy month for us, we had our Founder’s Day dinner at the home of Chris Smith, we had a wonderful salad bar, with pie for dessert and played Banana grams for fun afterwards. April’s meeting was held at the home of Diana Boyce. We also had our yearly Mother/Daughter tea at the end of the month. Our theme for the tea was Momma Mia, keeping with it being Mother/Daughter. We had lasagna, salad, bread and cake. Our activity was a matching up game of famous mothers and daughters.

During our monthly meeting we reviewed our By-laws and Standing Rules, we also signed up for a committee for the upcoming year. Diana Boyce was our hostess.

May’s meeting was held at Debbie Wood’s home and we held our Installation of Officers, voted on our changes to the By-laws/Standing Rules, and discussed our budget for the year as well.

To celebrate our Woman of the Year, Cathy Talley, we went to the Bella Italian Restaurant in Lee’s Summit. We held a card shower for her and we also revealed our secret sisters with a card and a gift. We drew names for our new secret sister too. It was a great evening and a wonderful finish to another year with each other.

The Board of Aldermen met Monday, May 8th, approving the second reading of several ordinances related to amendments to municipal code, and approving the first reading of ordinances related to the construction of a trail along Eagles Parkway.

Under ordinances, the board approved the second reading of three ordinances related to amendments to municipal code including abuse of a child and endangering the welfare of a child.

As previously reported, Police Chief Ed Turner explained the recent passage of recreational marijuana in Missouri necessitates changes, as they have encountered cases of children exposed to the point that they had to seek medical care due to exposure.

The Board also approved the first reading of an ordinance to approve a grant from the Missouri Department of Transportation to construct a shared trail along Eagles Parkway from the Blue Branch Creek Trail east to Main Street/Buckner Tarsney Road.

The Board approved the first reading of an ordinance to add two stop signs in the Rosewood Hills subdivision: the first at Rosewood Drive and Lindenwood Drive, and the second at Hedgewood Drive and Rosewood Drive.

In other business, alderman Darren Mills was appointed Mayor Pro Tem.
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The next regularly scheduled meeting of the Board of Aldermen will be held at 7:00pm on Monday, May 22nd at City Hall.

The artwork has been hung, the food trucks are scheduled, and downtown businesses are ready to welcome guests for the first First Fridays event of the year on Friday, May 5th from 5:00pm - 8:00pm.

The Grain Valley Fair Association is continuing the popular Food Truck Friday events, focusing on just the first Fridays in 2023 rather than a weekly event. This year's events will be held May 5th, June 2nd, July 7th, August 4th, and then during the Grain Valley Fair on September 8th and 9th. 

All events, with the exception of the Grain Valley Fair, will be held in downtown Grain Valley, with a different theme planned for each month. On May 5th, an Art Walk is planned, featuring artwork from student artists displayed in participating downtown businesses. 

In addition to the food trucks and Art Walk, collaborative art activities and vendors will be on site, and several local businesses and restaurants will be open for dining and entertainment options. 

The Grain Valley Chamber of Commerce will welcome two new businesses, The Patel Group and Iron Courtyard, with ribbon cuttings beginning at The Patel Group's new offices at 4:00pm. 

Mayor Mike Todd said the Grain Valley Fair Association board partnered with the newly formed Downtown Grain Valley, Inc. to add to the successful Food Truck Fridays events and support downtown revitalization efforts.
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"We are looking forward to a really great time.  With the help of Downtown Grain Valley working with the Grain Valley Fair, we are going to have a great event.  Theming each First Friday this year is a great addition.  I have seen all the art for the Art Walk this Friday and to say we have some talented artists in our school system is an understatement.  I think everyone will be pleasantly surprised at the talent that is on display from early childhood up to the high school,"
Todd said.

​Ads are now being accepted for the 2023 Garage Sale Directory - the deadline for ads is Tuesday, May 16th. The directory will be published Thursday, May 18th in advance of the City Wide Garage Sales on Saturday, May 20th. 

The annual City-Wide Garage Sale is traditionally held on the 3rd Saturday in May. It is not a city-sponsored event, but a grand tradition in Grain Valley. Few other events create as much discussion and debate in our fair city. 

To reserve your ad, click on the link below. 

     Missouri's Poet Laureate Maryfrances Wagner of Independence is concluding her two-year term with the Missouri Haiku Project, whose goal is spreading poetry by Missourians themselves throughout the state. Wagner will be presenting a workshop, one of many she has hosted over the past few months during this effort, at Columbia's Unbound Book Festival on Saturday, April 22nd.
     "I have been very pleased with the support around the state, particularly Columbia. I've received haiku from people in Fulton, Nixa, Columbia, St. Louis, Springfield, Theodosia, Moberly, Kirksville, Maryville, and all around the greater Kansas City area. I've received haiku from students as young as five to seniors in their 80's. Many have written their first haiku with this project.  People have sent them to me via email, snail mail, and handed me their business cards with a haiku on the back," Wagner said.
     Wagner chose the super-short form of haiku, which originated in Japan, as a type of poetry that everyone could create. English-language haiku is often written as three lines with a 5-7-5 pattern of syllables. Wagner emphasizes that “more important is the image. A haiku is the fewest words, one to three lines, that appeal to the senses and focus on nature.”
     The process of participating is simple: follow the guidelines (Missouri-Poet-Laureate-Haiku-Project_guidelines-tips-and-examples.pdf (missouriartscouncil.org)), write a haiku, and send your poem to Wagner at wagnermaryfrances@gmail.com. 
     Governor Michael L. Parson appointed Independence poet, teacher, and community arts leader Maryfrances Wagner as Missouri’s sixth Poet Laureate. She is serving from July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2023.
     The Missouri Poet Laureate enriches Missourians’ lives throughout the state by fostering the reading and writing of poetry, through public appearances, readings, workshops, and digital and social media. 
     Wagner has published 10 collections of her poetry, most recently Solving for X in April 2022. Other books include The Immigrants’ New Camera, Salvatore’s Daughter, Light Subtracts Itself, Dioramas, Pouf, The Silence of Red Glass, and Red Silk, which won the 2000 Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award. Her poems have also appeared in dozens of magazines and anthologies.
     Wagner has co-edited several poetry anthologies and the New Letters Review of Books. She has co-edited I-70 Review magazine since 2010.
     Her poetry “is accessible in the best sense of the world—straightforward, lucid, concrete,” says William Trowbridge, Missouri Poet Laureate 2012-16. Her poems, says Arizona poet and author Gary Gildner, bring readers “stunning moments with children, with family and feelings, the stuff of this world unfolding as natural and necessary as a flower—the loves and losses, the albums in the attic, the meals of ravioli—stories simple and splendid.”
     In 2020, Ms. Wagner was named the Individual Artist honoree for our Missouri Arts Awards, the state’s highest honor in the arts.
     The Missouri Haiku Project encourages Missourians to try their hand at creating their own haiku poems. Wagner said this project has been one of the most successful and fulfilling during her term as poet laureate.
     "I have been moved over and over by the support and by meeting new people. People have put their haiku on photographs and paintings. Columbia embraced the project and have melded it into the Unbound Book Festival. The library there had a haiku high tea and then put the poems and teapots in a display case. Teachers have gone into ten classes from first grade through middle school to have children write haiku.  In the Writers Place's In Our Own Words program, we included having the students write haiku. Blue Springs High School turned all of their haiku into a mobile they hung."
     "I have taught five haiku workshops, two in Columbia, one for the Writers Place, and two at Woodneath Mid-Continent Library. We had a haiku event at Prospero's bookstore where people were able to read their haiku to an audience. We've posted haiku on Facebook every day since Jan 1, and I've created haiku on marbled paper as well as printed haiku cards.  Ten thousand haiku cards are being passed around the state. A professor at UCM had her students write haiku and chalk them on the sidewalks around campus. A teacher in Theodosia had his students write them on the sidewalk and the side of the school building.  People hung them on bulletin boards, posted them in unexpected places, and I've been leaving haiku cards everywhere I go," Wagner said.
     There are also several displays and haiku cards and tiny books people can take at the Woodneath branch of the Mid-Continent Public Library.  
     "The project has been the most rewarding of the four I've done as there is so much more interaction with people.  I've met so many people through this project, and I've loved seeing what children come up with because often their sense of observation is so vivid," Wagner said.
     The Missouri Haiku Project is the last of four projects completed by Wagner during her term. 
    "My first project was ten Podcasts that are posted on Apple, Spotify, and Anchor. People can google them on their computer as well. They are listed as The Literary State.  Ten Missouri poets each answered two questions about the craft of writing, offered a writing prompt, and then read two of their own poems. Each is about 10 to 20 minutes long, and people could listen to them in their car on the way home or sitting at a table with pen and paper. I hope, as well, that teachers will use them in their classrooms to teach students more about poetry."
     The Tiny Books project was Wagner's second project, which featured twenty more Missouri poets.  Each tiny book has one poem in it, designed by Richard Hansen of California. 
     "The third project was two anthologies of yet twenty more poets published by Spartan Press.  The Missouri Haiku Project is the fourth, and it began on January 1st through May. The more I reached out to people the more poets I realized lived in this state," Wagner said.  
     As Wagner reflects on her term as Missouri's Poet Laureate, she hopes her work throughout the state has changed mindsets many have around poetry. 
     "My two goals during my time as poet laureate have been to promote Missouri poets and put poetry in the hands of people who don't usually read it or even think they like it. I hope I've changed some minds on that."

     For more information on the Missouri Haiku Project, visit Home_page (fieldinfoserv.com).