Shawnee County Health Department is looking to create the area’s first local farm and food council in an effort to address food insecurity among county residents. Craig Barnes, manager of the department’s Health Outreach and Planning Division, announced such plans in a presentation Monday morning to the Shawnee County Commission. According to Barnes, impending creation of the council is one of four initiatives the health department expects will promote healthier living in Shawnee County. Two of those — development of the Shawnee County Farm and Food Advisory Council and investment in a “health planner” position — are already underway, Barnes noted. [...]

Downtown Topeka has gotten much livelier since Julian Jenkins and Marcelino Gomez III moved there last June, they say. A year ago, Gomez said, he’d be greeted by silence and a general lack of activity whenever he went out front after 5 p.m at their second-story apartment in the 700 block of S. Kansas Avenue. “But now we go outside and there’s people hanging out, kids hanging out,” he said. “There’s people walking up and down ‘the av.’ We call it ‘the av.’” (Read more: Local - The Topeka Capital-Journal)

Topeka native Gary Woodland’s extended family has traveled across the country to watch him play. So it was no surprise Tuesday evening when those close to him — Gary and Wanda Bond, Yolanda McKeever and Payne Mendenhall, among others — joined Woodland in downtown Topeka for a block party celebrating the professional golfer’s June 16 win at the U.S. Open. Gary Bond said he and his wife watched the tournament “every step of the way.” “We were all screaming and cheering when he won,” Wanda Bond said. “We’re his fans,” McKeever added. (Read more: Local - The Topeka Capital-Journal)