Annie Calovich's Column

Annie Calovich is a popular writer for The Wichita Eagle and, in today's column, she mentions a spectacular photo I shared on Facebook last week. The photo, taken by Brandon Sullivan, is here. The sun is about to duck behind a line of thunderstorms that brought a spectacular show of lightning and thunder later that night.

On Twitter last week, I had an exchange with an author who lives part time in Toronto and part time in New York City who contended the earth is "too crowded." When I pushed back by saying the entire population of earth could be comfortably housed in the combined land mass of New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma, he didn't disagree but said that people wanted to live in big cities because that is where the economic opportunity is.

That got me to thinking:

• Charles Koch, Wichita
• Warren Buffet, Omaha
• Bill Gates, Seattle
• Sam Walton, Bentonville

Seems to me that economic opportunity is where you make it. The wide open spaces and spectacular vistas of Kansas and the Great Plains may actually be more conducive to big thinking than a crowded, dirty city. After all: