Mike Matson

This column was published December 13, 2025 in the Manhattan Mercury . When my wife and I made the decision to get married in December 1998, I was living and working in Topeka, she was doing the same in Manhattan. The logical question arose. Where will we live?   We thought about it for three entire seconds, looked at each other and said in unison, “Manhattan.”   When I first left Manhattan, I was two years old and 40 when I returned. Born here while my father earned an agron

This column was published November 29, 2025 in the Manhattan Mercury . I remember a journalistic colleague once asking Topeka gay-bashing Baptist minister Fred Phelps on camera how it felt to live, work and operate in the lunatic fringe.   This was in the early ‘90s, pre-Internet, before social media.   Phelps grew red in the face and thundered forth with pure venom. In his mind, he was right, the rest of us were wrong.   Lunatic fringe? How dare you?    In his unwavering cer

I’ve driven through Marion County dozens of times. It has always struck me as the prototypical, quintessential rural Kansas county.   An aging and dwindling population, Romanesque limestone courthouse taking up an entire city block in the county seat, production agriculture-based economy, mom and pop shops on Main Street, the Marion High School Warriors under the Friday night lights.   The human beings behind all those enterprises hit me similarly. Salt of the earth, give you