Multimedia Reporting (Bradford-Utsler)

A KU senior graduate student from Albuquerque, NM, differs from fellow peers because he exceeds whatever is expected of him.

Bethany Brown says what makes Richard Friesner different is “his caring for other people. He is very service oriented, everything he thinks about, in the back of his mind, is how he can help other people.”

Richard Friesner contributes his greatest accomplishment to his graduation this May with a Masters of Science in Environmental Science. Some could disagree though when comparing all Friesner has achieved throughout his college career.

A marathon runner, Friesner uses his athletic ability to service others. A year ago on New Years, he ran a 24-hour marathon to raise $600 for the Jubilee Café and this Wednesday Friesner will again run for a cause, but this time everything is bigger.

Starting on Wednesday at noon, Friesner will run back and forth from Stauffer-Flint to the Chi Omega Fountain, for three days or until he raises $3,000. Only stopping for food, water and naps, most likely during the hottest hours of the day, Friesner will use his marathon training to help those in need.

Carolyn Tharp, Lawrence senior and CCO Coordinator for the Jubilee Café says to have someone help out like this and hopefully reach his goal will be very exciting. “This has been his baby. We’ve just been supporting him.”

Friesner credits his community service help to his parents, saying they always volunteered. He was taught that helping others and doing philanthropic events is “part of a normal life.”

Still an active boy scout, Friesner has always done community service. He can be found every Friday morning at the Jubilee Café giving his time. “He is always one of the first people there, ready to help out with a smile on his face, and a joke,” Tharp said.

A high school track star, Friesner has been running since he started. This Forrest Gump contributes running to his success in his everyday life. He stopping running his first semester at KU and didn’t make the grades he wanted. “I found I could focus better when I have that energy (from running). When I have a lot going on I can focus on each thing better and work on my time management.”

Since Friesner’s first marathon, he has increased his distance and time. Friesner started in the Kansas City marathon with a running time of three hours and 19 minutes. In his latest race, the Boston Marathon on April 17, he set a personal record of two hours and 56 minutes.

To further his accomplishments, Friesner has ran many ultramarathons, one being the Brew to Brew in 2004. The Brew to Brew goes from Kansas City to Lawrence, which is roughly 44 miles.

An ultramarathon, by definition, according to the Wikipedia Encyclopedia online, is any distance longer than a regular marathon, which is 26.2 miles.

Generally, there are two types of ultra marathons: one based on distance and the other on time.

To run a marathon, especially an ultramarathon, a person must be in great physical shape, with many months of training. Friesner keeps in shape by running everyday, with his long runs on the weekends. He has a base of running 70 to 80 miles weekly, including one hill workout, in which he runs around the Camponile area for 30 minutes.

When a marathon arises, Friesner will add more speed workouts, that incorporate more hills and mile repeats-- when a person runs a mile quickly, breaks, then continues with another mile.

When asked why this speedy runnner isn’t on the KU Track or Cross Country team, he replied that he isn’t fast enough.

“He is very fast,” Brown said. She sometimes accompanies him on runs, but either bikes alongside him or he has to run slower to stay with her pace.

Next week Brown will be helping Friesner with his run. She will “man the table” on Wescoe Beach collecting donations, along with providing water and food when he needs it.

“I definantly liked him right away,” Brown said, when talking about the first time she met Friesner. “He has such a friendly personality.”

Friesner’s contributions will help many people in need. With $1500 in donations, he is already half-way to his goal.

Tharp said Friesner has taken the intiative and done everything, for the race, on his own. “I think it’s a neat idea, a creative way to raise money for the homeless.”

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A breeze rings wind chimes, swings a hammock and blows in through the door that remains open. Birds sing merrily in the trees, a cat takes a nap on a bench and a neighbor plays Frisbee with her dog. These are how things go at Anne Burgess’s dream house six miles north of Lawrence.

Anne Burgess’ house is located six miles north of Lawrence. She arranged it uniquely. Photo by Michiko Takei

Anne Burgess, lecturer for the Applied English Center at the University of Kansas, and seven or eight of her relatives and friends started to build their dream house in 1974. They put all their money together and bought a piece of land. Twelve people lived there first, including Anne and a number of her friends and family.

“We thought, well, we can do it, why not?” Burgess said. “People used to do this and we just did it.”

In the 1970s, building houses, living together and sharing the houses was a popular movement called “back to the land.” Many people, especially hippies, who did not like the city and the old way, started all over by themselves. Anne Burgess just believed like many other people in those days. She also thought it would be fun to live in a commune because she had grown up in a big family and really liked each other.

“We just wanted to try to do it. We grew our own food, built our own houses, just trying to start over,” Burgess said.

Anne Burgess, right, sitting on a chair, and her sisters and friends started to live communally 32 years ago. This picture was taken by a photographer who worked at University Daily Kansas in those days. Photo contributed by Anne Burgess

According to Burgess, Lawrence used to have many places where people lived together. People called them “communes,” and a teacher at KU published a book about them, which was quite popular in those days, she said. However, it didn’t last for a long time.

“It had been a popular movement for a while, but it is not too popular any more,” she said.

It is not nearly as popular as it used be because it is hard to live together, make decisions with others and always get along. Burgess said she knew a lot of people who said so.

In her case, she used to have eight adults living with her, but most of the people moved away. Today, only three families live there, including Burgess and her husband, Mel Smith, and two families who are their friends.

Judy Bonifield, who lives with her family in the house, said she had once lived there but she moved to the city, and decided to live there again.

Burgess said, when the commune began, they discussed things until they could find a compromise. Although they did not have any formal rules, they met about every week during dinner to discuss things such as car problems and farm chores (milking goats, feeding chickens, cooking, taking care of the garden, shopping for food, keeping track of money, cleaning up and so on).

“We kept track of our decisions by writing stuff on a big calendar that everybody wrote dates, notes and so forth on,” she said.

Constructing houses without professionals requires a lot of money and work. It costs $1,000 for one acre in the 1970s, and they spent $15,000 for 15 acres total. Today, it costs about $3,000 for an acre, according to Burgess.

Burgess tried to get used materials such as wood, metal and doors as cheap as possible. Back to the 1970s, there was a place sold used materials, which is not in Lawrence any more, she said.

After gathering materials that they needed to build a house, they learned how to build from reading books, and getting some advice from a friend who was a carpenter. The carpenter helped them whenever they had a question. It was easy to find a book because it was such a popular movement. Many people were writing books about how to do it, Burgess said.

Anne Burgess works on building a house on a ladder. Photo contributed by Anne Burgess

At the beginning, they started to build only a bedroom, just enough space for everybody to sleep. Little by little, the house got bigger and bigger. Burgess said after five or six years, they got enough rooms for everyone, but with only three families left in the house. They decided to divide all available space into three segments.

According to Burgess, some lived in town, and some lived in a small tent during construction. They had to work fast because they could not live in a tent in winter. They started building the house in July, and finished the basic construction in four or five months. However, they did not install any water, electricity and gas because they did not know how to do it.

Burgess’ communal house was very simple in the early days. Photo contributed by Anne Burgess

“The first house was really simple, nothing fancy,” Burgess said.

Burgess said they had some challenges. First, they didn’t make much money. About 25 years ago, she was working at a vegetarian restaurant in which she earned only 30 cents an hour. She had two kids, and most of the people who were working on the house had kids.

“I needed a better job, so I decided to go back to KU to get master’s degree,” she said.

Burgess began to teach English as a second language at KU.

She said another challenge that they faced was a lack of professional knowledge, because none of them were a professional carpenters.

“Sometimes, we did not know what to do. We just guessed,” she said.

Burgess and others got water by buying it from a person who sold water before they got running water. They took a huge metal tank on the back of their truck and filled it with water at his house. Then, they brought it home and put it in a cistern, she said.

“We washed dishes once a week,” Mel Smith, her husband, said.

Smith said his neighbors bought a water pump, and he extended it to the house so that he could switch non-running water to running water.

They also got electricity by running a very long extension cord from the cabin down to their house. They heated their house with wood because they did not have gas in the early days.

“We made a lot of mistakes,” Burgess said. “It wasn’t perfect.”

After they made a lot of mistakes, they began to learn how to do it, she said.

By 1991, Burgess and Smith finished adding and arranging rooms, but their neighbors continued to add more.

“I’m very satisfied, happy,” she said.

Today, most people do not do as they did. People quit living communally because it is hard to live together, make decisions with others and get along with each other.

Photo by Michiko Takei

“I had a lot of people who said they don’t get along,” she said.

A few people, however, still do it in Lawrence. They enjoy the community and they do not want to live in a big city. Ad Aspera on Kentucky Street, and Sunflower House on Tennessee Street are two major collectives in Lawrence, Burgess said.

She also said it has become more challenging to build houses by yourself now because materials are so expensive.

She suggested that people who are going to do it remember that it is very important to think of what one will need, instead of what one need right now. She also said one should talk to a lot of people who have done it, go around and look at the houses, and get ideas from other people.

Burgess and her husband are still not sure what they are going to do with their house in the future. If their daughters want it, they can have it, Smith said. They are sure that they will live there until they die.

“Oh, no, I really do not want to sell it,” she said.

Related Links:
Home Design, Homebuilding, House Plan
House Building Guide
Boomers (Hippies Links)

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It’s a typical Monday evening at Community Living Opportunities, a group home for adults with severe disabilities in Overland Park. There’s Delbert, who just awoke from a refreshing afternoon nap and came out of his room shrieking with excitement. There’s Paul, the “old man” of the house, sipping coffee and shaking his head at his housemate. There’s Sandy, constantly smiling and choosing to maneuver her wheelchair by scooting her feet along the ground. There’s Jim, quietly watching a basketball game on the television, bobbing his head back and forth and occasionally laughing, perhaps because his favorite team, the Chicago Bulls, just scored a basket.

And then there’s Cedanor Henrius, their caretaker, their teacher, their friend. A man with a warm face, an even warmer heart, dreadlocks pulled back with a rubber band, and a gold cross necklace he wears every day.

“Are you ready to go to bed?” Henrius asked Jim when the game reached halftime. “If you’re ready to go to bed, give me five.”

Jim gingerly lifted his small right hand and puts it in Henrius'.

“There we go,” Henrius said. “It’s bedtime.”

Jim has severe handicaps and is not capable of communicating verbally with Henrius. But that doesn’t mean he can’t communicate at all, Henrius said.

“You have to be creative in learning to communicate with them,” Henrius said. “You can do sign language, body language. They may understand you.”

Henrius started working with people with disabilities nearly two decades ago, and more than 1,200 miles away, in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere – Haiti. Henrius is an immigrant. He is one of the 10.9 million people that the Center for Immigration Studies, in a study released last month, is blaming for taking jobs from Americans with a high school education or less. Henrius’ job, though, which he does with such surprising passion, is not one that most people would be waiting in the wings to snatch. He works 12-hour days and makes no more than $10 an hour. He changes diapers, adjusts bags for stomach feeding tubes, and watches seizures unfold on a daily basis. And he can’t imagine doing anything else.

Henrius was born in L’Artibonite, a small farming community in northern Haiti with a population of 4,000. He’s the oldest of his two brothers and two sisters. His father was a farmer, and his family is considered middle class in Haitian terms, but that classification doesn’t come close to translating to the American social classes. He began working odd jobs at the age of 12. From a very early age, he found the most rewarding life experiences were helping those less fortunate than him.

“I aim to serve other people,” Henrius said. “That’s my thing.”

He’s been doing his thing – on an official level – for almost twenty years, beginning with a two-year stint in the Peace Corps in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. It was in 1989. Henrius was 20 years old. For the next seven years, he worked at orphanages and at a center for homeless boys. It was at one of those orphanages that Henrius met a woman named Caroline, a volunteer at the orphanage. She was a student at the University of Kansas at the time, majoring in Anthropology and Haitian Studies. She was living in Haiti for a year, had become fascinated with Afro-Caribbean culture, and was interested in buying some Haitian-made bongo drums. After inquiring with locals about her quest, she found herself at the Henrius family home.

The art of drum making has passed down through generations in his family. Henrius himself makes drums. He plays them every Sunday at Greater Pentecostal Temple, his church in Kansas City, and he gave lessons in Lawrence for several years beginning in the late 1990s.

Caroline’s first impression of the local drum-making man was slightly different than her impressions of him today.

“To be honest, he asked me out twice before I said yes,” Caroline said. “He was always so sharp looking, he had lots of friends – lots of female friends. I sort of took him as a player,” she said, laughing.

She soon began to understand the true Henrius, a man who is highly thought of, who loves to make people laugh, and who’s as “tenacious as a bulldog,” Caroline said.

“If he has his mind set to do something, he will do it. He will find a way,” Caroline said, “if it takes him the rest of his life.”

The two ended up falling in love, and they married in 1997 on Valentine’s Day. In late 1998, Caroline began making plans for the two of them, along with Henrius’ two young children, Darline and Stevie, to move back to Lawrence with her when she was scheduled to resume her studies at the University of Kansas. Henrius landed on American soil in December 1998.

Henrius’ transition into the United States proved far easier because of Caroline, an American citizen. He started out with a worker’s visa, and now he has legal resident status, although he and Caroline are now separated. His cultural transition, however, proved a more painstaking process.

“I probably was maybe, 25 percent fluent in English,” he said. Henrius studied English for a short time in Canada.

Beyond the language barrier, the way of life in the United States took time to get used to.

“The people here, it’s always rush, rush, rush,” Henrius said. “The fast food, everything is so fast. And a lot of times, people aren’t as helpful. In Haiti, a person doesn’t need to know you to help you. It’s slower, more friendly.”

That’s not to say he doesn’t appreciate his adopted country. It’s given him a job, which means money that he can send to the rest of his family in Haiti once a month. The health care is far superior. The government isn’t in such total disarray that a Democratic election is nearly impossible. And compared to Haiti, the current gas price signs here are a welcoming sight for Henrius’ eyes.

“You think they’re high here,” Henrius said. “They’re $16 in Haiti. That’s why you just don’t drive there.”

He knows he’s fortunate to have made it here. Often, families in Haiti pool their money for years in an effort to send their most promising child to America. The chosen one will board a boat, and take on the burden of carrying his or her entire family from then on. Sometimes the family gets an envelope of money several months later, sometimes not. And sometimes, the family never hears from their promising sliver of hope again.

Henrius now has that duty of providing for his entire family. That burden has been even heavier since last August, when he made the difficult decision to send his children back to Haiti to live with their mother and his parents. No schooling in Haiti is free. He sends more than $300 a month for 8-year-old Darline and 9-year-old Stevie to attend school. If he failed to make a monthly payment, his children would not be allowed in the school until the payments came. It’s relatively rare to have immigrant parents living in the United States send their children back to their native country for school. But Henrius said he is glad he did.

“They were losing their identity, and losing their ability to speak French or Creole,” Henrius said. “I want them to know where they’re from. They can master English later.”

Henrius makes an effort to return to Haiti as often as he can, and he intends to go this July. But for now, he speaks to his children on the phone every Saturday. During a recent conversation, Henrius asked Darline what she had learned that day. She said she had learned to count to 10 in Spanish and French.

“Well you already know that stuff, silly,” Henrius said. “But okay, tell me. Count to 10 for me.”

As it turns out, she meant 100. Henrius sat patiently listening to his daughter count to 100 in two languages other than either of her true native languages. He said moments like those remind him that his decision was a good one.

“Just 8 years old, learning Spanish, French and Creole and English,” Henrius said. “I’m proud.”

Henrius also has an adopted son who lives with Henrius’ parents, a 12-year-old boy named Luck Enson. The boy recently fell off a ladder and broke his leg, and has to remain in the hospital. Medical bills, which are paid by Henrius, are swelling. On top of that, he also sends cash to his parents every couple months.

“I get paid every two weeks, and I usually send every other paycheck to Haiti,” Henrius said. “It’s hard, but I must. I want to.”

He admits he wishes he were paid more to do his job, just to alleviate some financial stress on himself and his family back in Haiti. But it’s not about the money. His job at Community Living Opportunities (CLO), where he’s worked since 2000, is more than a means of getting by. He truly loves what he does, and feels a connection with each person he works with there. The feeling is mutual. John Pelot, Jim’s father and co-founder of CLO, said Henrius goes beyond the call of duty when dealing with the residents.

“He’s very willing to take Jim places and do things with Jim that he otherwise wouldn’t be able to do,” Pelot said. “I’m very grateful for him and his positive attitude.”

Although Henrius is the one with the title of “teacher,” at CLO, he finds that the individuals he works with on a nearly daily basis have shown him and taught him more than he could imagine.

“These people, they need someone to care for them,” Henrius said. “I love to teach them what I’ve learned through my experiences. But more often, they teach me. And what they teach me means more.”

Posted by Ashley Thompson at 05:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dorthy Pennington taps her foot to the beat. She sways to the music that she plays on her keyboard and belts out the lyrics “We shall overcome.”

Some of Pennington’s students sing along. Some can’t stop laughing. Whether they race home to tell their friends about how their teacher made them sing today or take today as a lesson in how African Americans use music as a rhetorical tool, who knows? Pennington would prefer the latter.

But this is just another day in Pennington’s Rhetoric of Black Americans class. It’s no music class but today Pennington is showing off her passion for music – not to show off her talents but to teach.

“This is something she lives every day,” says Kendra Fullwood, a second year grad student in English who sits in on Pennington’s class.

Pennington, the only African American teacher in the Communication Studies department and one of the first black students to earn a masters degree at the University of Kansas, always thought while growing up in Mississippi that music was going to be her life. But she hit a fork the in road and although music didn’t go away, she found another passion.

“Teaching for me, it’s been a life objective,” Pennington says.

Pennington is now being recognized for her life objective. Recently Pennington was chosen as one of 10 scholars for a new book, Black Pioneers in Communication Research. Pennington’s research and books surely made her one of over 100 candidates, but take a peak into her classroom, maybe her office or see her out in the community, and you might begin to understand why her peers see her as a pioneer.

In the classroom

“Are your antennas up?” Pennington routinely asks her students.

Today, there is no need for her to ask. The music has their full attention.

Dorthy Pennington teaches her students about African American rhetoric through music. Pennington plays the organ at her church in Topeka and is also the choir director.

“That was a first for me,” says Brandon Gasaway, Grandview senior and one of Pennington’s students. “It kind of caught me off guard a bit.”

Pennington does that. She is always searching for new ways to engage her students. She has found music does the trick.

“Music really touches the spirit in the way that few other things do,” Pennington says.

The same can be said for Pennington.

“She brings history alive for students. She makes alive something that must seem quite foreign to them,” says Robert Rowland, Communication Studies department chair.

True, Pennington brings history alive for her students. Casaway says Pennington has given him a new outlook on history, particularly African American history. But Pennington has her reservations about the student-teacher relationship.

She finds herself wanting more. Pennington wants her students to like her and she wants to impact their lives, but she sees flaws in the education system at the University level.

“It doesn’t really seem to have any immediate rewards or payoffs,” Pennington says. “All that we know from this teacher-student relationship is the sense of evaluations. But we don’t often have a chance to have a follow up relationship to actually know how well you did – it’s like what you call an instantaneous evaluation.”

You get the sense that the lack of instantaneous gratification was starting to wear on Pennington. Was she making a difference in students’ lives?

A couple years back, a former student gave her a shot of rejuvenation.

Pennington was at Wichita Heights high school performing as Sojourner Truth, a traveling act she did on the side for several years. While Pennington was eating lunch in the teacher’s lounge at the school, the school’s ROTC officer, a man she recognized for some reason, approached her and said, “Do you know your class at KU changed my life?”

The man, a retired officer in the Air Force, was in one of Pennington’s classes in the 1980s. He told Pennington that when he was in her class, he was an angry person and had kept his anger bottled up inside.

Dorthy Pennington sings a civil rights song to her Rhetoric of Black Americans class. Pennington writes some of the music she performs.

He then told Pennington that she changed his life. She was the one who gave him a sense of direction and purpose. She believed in him and helped him quell his anger and turn his life around.

Pennington told the man to write her a letter saying everything he had told her and to give it to her the next day. He did and Pennington keeps the letter in her office – a reminder of why she belongs in the classroom.

In her office

Step into Pennington’s office, spend a couple hours and you get a snapshot of her life.

The office is cluttered full of 34 years worth of books, folders, magazines and newspapers stacked nearly to the ceiling.

“Oh goody!” she shouts.

She just found another magazine clip to show her students today. She will hurriedly drive over to the Lawrence library before her 1 p.m. class to make a copy of the clip – something most her students will pay little attention to but she never shies away from using another teaching tool.

Here’s one of Pennington’s students now. A grad student that Pennington is helping set up a trip to New Orleans to visit several churches in the black community. Five different students will come and go in just over an hour and Pennington never ignores a request for help.

“Dr. Pennington is so approachable,” says Shannon Rutledge, Fort Collins junior and another one of Pennington’s students.

It’s not as if Pennington has a ton of time to spare for her students. Along with teaching two classes, she’s in the process of writing her fourth book. The book is about case studies of interracial communication during Hurricane Katrina.

Pennington is supposed to send a finished product to her publisher by June 1.

In the community

People around Lawrence know Pennington. Just ask Fullwood, the second year graduate student that sits in on Pennington’s classes.

Fullwood moved to Lawrence two years ago after studying English at Shaw University in her hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina. Fullwood wants to incorporate African American Rhetoric with literature and preaching.

When Fullwood told people that she met around town what she wanted to do with her life, she says she got the same response from almost everyone she talked to, whether it was at the hairdresser or in the grocery store, “Do you know Dorthy Pennington?” Fullwoods says they would ask. “You need to meet her.”

“She has taken her scholarship into the community,” Fullwood says. “It’s not just meant for the academic space but it’s also meant for outsiders, the community in which she’s living.”

Pennington has made herself a staple to Lawrence and surrounding communities. Her love of music has taken her to a church in Topeka where she is the organist and choir director.

“Music is near and dear to me,” Pennington says.

In the past, Pennington has used her musical gifts to not only teach, but to entertain. She says she has visited nursing homes in the past to share her music with others. “I’m not a music therapist. I have zero training in music therapy. But I would like to think that sometimes it’s sort of a therapeutic role,” Pennington says.

Her music, like her life, is motivated by her values. She has written religious songs and her music is full of lessons she hopes to pass along. The lessons she has already shared have made her one of the most influential African Americans in Lawrence and in the communication’s field.

“We’ve known she’s a pioneer for many years,” Rowland says.

And as a pioneer, Pennington marches to her own beat in her research, in the classroom, in her music and in her life.

Posted by Curtis Moore at 05:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A grey-haired man stands in the shadows of a stoplight on the corner of Seventh and Mass., playing his tenor saxophone. It’s 10-a-clock on a breezy Tuesday night, and like most other nights, the streets around Liberty Hall are washed with the lonesome sounds of Dan Kozak’s music. In front of him there is a jar to collect tips, sheets of background information, and CDs for purchase. A piece of paper is taped to a near-by trashcan with the slogan, "Enriching Your Stroll Downtown.”

He knows this corner well, as he has played here for over three years, for two to three hours each night. While this venture can bring in upwards of $70…after talking with Kozak, it soon becomes clear money is not his main motivation. Kozak lives in Topeka, but he gladly makes the trek to Lawrence to play the nights away.

Dan Kozak playing his tenor saxophone. Dan makes the commute from Topeka to play in Lawrence for 2 to 3 hours every night.

Kozak first fell in love with jazz in the 1950's, when he was living in New York. In 1971 he made his way to Kansas as he was exploring the country. It was here, that he rented, and played his first tenor saxophone. Mentor Richard Mason, found that Kozak was a natural, blowing clean notes from the time he started, and from there, he could not separate himself from music.

Today, one source of inspiration for Kozak comes from rising above the hard times he endured at the turn of the century. Kozak suffered four heart attacks in 1999 and 2000, and underwent multiple-bypass surgery. Years of playing the hard musician lifestyle finally caught up to him, and the drugs and alcohol took their toll on his mental stability. It was during this period that his girlfriend, and mother to one of his children, left him.

Dan Kozak playing at the Coleman Hawkins Festival in Topeka. Kozak co-founded the festival in 1996.

There are many aspects of Kozak that are quite different from most gritty street musicians. Among his achievements, Kozak has lead numerous groups made up of an impressive array of musicians from Topeka and Lawrence. He hosted and produced 2 jazz radio shows on well-known Topeka stations, and played at multiple church concerts and art fairs in the 1990s.

But Dan is perhaps most known in his hometown for producing, directing, and performing the widely popular Coleman Hawkins Neighborhood Festivals (Coleman Hawkins once lived in Topeka) from 1996 to 2001. In addition, he released 2 albums in 2001 on Earthstar Records, an independent artist-owned record label. They’re entitled, “Handmade Topeka,” and “Tao and Grace.”

Dan Kozak's 2001 album "Tao and Grace". Dan's other album, Handemade Topeka was also released in 2001.

Kozak hasn’t felt it necessary to earn income from playing in the streets, since he raised funds for the Coleman Hawkins Neighborhood festival. In the past, he earned a living by playing shows in establishments all around Kansas, but music venues are changing their line ups, and playing engagements have all but dried up. "There are hardly any clubs around that have live jazz anymore," said Kozak.

In the meantime, Kozak has a part-time job in the music department of Barnes & Noble in Topeka, where his CDs are bestsellers in the local music section. The music manager, Shannon Bartel, has worked with Kozak for several years, and she said, “He’s brilliant with music, and has very eclectic tastes… He knows everything from John Coltrane and Coleman Hawkins, to Bob Dylan and other rock and folk groups.” In 2001, the Barnes and Noble had an in-store concert and CD signing party featuring Kozak. Bartle said that he regularly brings in a lot of fans as customers.

LINKS:

Listen to Dan's songs on Lawrence.com
Earthstar Recordings (home of Dan Kozak's Music)
information on "Just Jazz," Kozak's next festival

Posted by Barton Vandever at 04:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Imagine quickly making a forecast and preparing graphics, styling your hair and touching up your make-up, then lights, camera, action, live, on-air in front of a city of viewers, pointing at a large florescent green board as if what the viewers were seeing was actually there, explaining in simple terms an atmosphere that is far from simple. This is typical Saturday and Sunday mornings for Julie Broski, weekend meteorologist for KCTV5 in Kansas City. The job comes with many stresses and challenges, but it is a career she chose and one she loves.

A career in television seemed to fit for Broski who grew up around a television studio. Her father, Fred Broski, has an extensive background in television. In his television career he read commercials, he was a M.C. for children's shows, he read news stories, and finally began presenting weather forecasts, although never having a meteorology degree. "I never really put my feet down in concrete," Fred Broski said. For him what was important was working in television, not what he was doing specifically.

Working for a number of years in the Kansas City spotlight, Fred Broski became very popular among local viewers. He said that while growing up his daughter Julie Broski saw that his television career made him a good living, and that he had fun doing it. Julie said that her father worked often during the evening and night hours so in order to see him she would frequently visit the studio, and she loved being there. After doing some behind the scenes work and some reporting, Julie discovered that is was television weather she wanted to do. She got a Bachelor of Science in Meteorology and Communication from Mississippi State University and has been broadcasting the weather ever since.

Before coming to Kansas City to broadcast the weather, Broski worked in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Hartford, Connecticut. These different cities brought different challenges to Broski's broadcast meteorology career. While in Hartford Broski had to forecast nor'easters, fierce winter storms that form over a large bodies of water and bring strong winds and usually many inches of snow, a weather feature she was not all too familiar with growing up in the Midwest.

Broski began working at KCTV5 in Kansas City in December of 1998. She is happy to be in a place she is familiar with and close to her family, however, that presents is own challenges. Broski doesn't want to feel that she is a part of Kansas City television because of her father's legacy. Luckily, she said that in her previous cities she was able to establish her career independently from her father's well-known glory. Now in Kansas City she enjoys how critical her father is of her work and the good feedback he is able to provide from watching her in the comfort of his own living room.

During this time of the year Broski's broadcast meteorology career seems to get busier. In Kansas City the spring means severe weather. "Severe weather is definitely more challenging," Broski said. This year so far she has been into the studio almost every week during unscheduled hours to help with severe weather coverage. During severe weather coverage she mainly answers phone calls, which commonly ring in from reports and chasers, and analyzes the weather behind the scenes.

Matt Stewart, anchor/reporter at KCTV5, said he wanted to see Broski on-air more during times of severe weather because she doesn't allow the stressful situation to affect her broadcast.

Broski feels that it is essential for meteorologists to keep up with the weather even when not on the clock because it is always changing. Doing this makes forecasting easier when at work. Despite weather watching being a consistent part of her life, she manages to find time to enjoy many hobbies and to help the community outside of broadcast meteorology.

In 2005, Governor Kathleen Sebelious appointed Broski to the Kansas Council on Early Childhood Special Education for a four year term. Broski said the council meets once per month and can share topics discussed during meetings to the Governor or to the House of Representatives. The council's main focus is to provide services to children, aging from birth to five years, who have special needs. Broski's 5-year-old daughter has special needs and so she wants to be involved in what the community is doing to help young children with special needs.

Broski's area of interest in school was not just meteorology. She earned a Masters Degree in Education from Baker University. She said she enjoys teaching because by it she learns. In the past, Broski has taught at different levels of education ranging from giving weather workshops at elementary schools, to teaching a disaster class at Baker University. She enjoys both sides of the educating process, as she is always yearning to take classes about any subject matter she said.

As if teaching, the Kansas Council on Early Childhood Special Education, and broadcast meteorology weren't enough, Broski also enjoys writing. She studied Theater and Film at the University of Kansas and enjoys writing screenplays, and making documentaries. She also enjoys free-lance writing. She has a book published, titled "Being Me." This book focuses on a deaf child having the same interests as other children and wanting to be loved for just being who he/she is.

Broski stays busy with her job and her personal life. Despite receiving random e-mails from viewers about her hair being ugly, which is common for all female broadcasters she said, she likes working on television. Even though the spring usually adds more work to her already busy schedule, she always finds time to be with her family and support her wide variety of hobbies.

Posted by Sarah Jones at 03:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Working on the unairconditioned seventh floor of the Natural History museum at the University of Kansas, Mark Robbins sits crammed away in the back corner of a stuffy, poorly lit room full of six-foot high filing cabinets containing bird specimens, listening to recordings of bird vocalizations from his most recent ornithological field trip.

Though his work as a bird expert has brought him national recognition from scientists and amateur bird watchers alike, Robbins has always remained humble, stressing how much he enjoys his work.

“The fame is very minimal in this field, and the pay is absurd,” he says. “I do this for a love of birds and natural history.”

Robbins has been at the center of a key ornithological debate for months now. He was consulted in several national stories about the existence of a bird thought to be extinct. Through it all, Robbins carries out his duties with a quiet dignity because he enjoys natural history and the study of birds so much. He’s never wanted to do anything but study animals—except maybe tour with rock legend Neil Young.

The debate over the bird’s extinction began in April 2004 when a research team exploring the swampy forests of southeast Arkansas documented what they thought to be an ivory-billed woodpecker. The crew scribbled down drawings and even captured it on video tape in a grainy four second clip as it flew away. The last hard evidence of the bird’s existence came more than 60 years ago and since then it was thought to be extinct. That is, until all this new evidence came into play.

A pileated woodpecker specimen at the Natural History Museum at KU. The ivory-billed woodpecker is said to look much like the pileated woodpecker. Robbins thinks a bird like this specimen is probably what researchers in Arkansas saw.

Robbins led the argument against the bird’s existence. He claims that the video is not conclusive enough. He says that there is no way to irrefutably prove that the bird pictured is not a pileated woodpecker, a slightly smaller, relatively common bird.

“There is nowhere in the United States where you could house a population of ivory-billed woodpeckers,” he says. “It’s almost science fiction to think there would be ivory-billed woodpeckers around today.”

He says that because this group is claiming that the ivory-billed woodpecker still exists in remote parts of Arkansas, the federal government is now diverting millions of dollars away from protecting other endangered species to help protect this supposed bird. That’s a lot of money to be throwing around on something as questionable as this evidence, which is why he cares so much about the debate.

“The bird is kind of minor compared to the human dynamics on both sides of the debate,” he says.

Robbins says he has always had a fascination with natural history and nature. Although it has taken him years to learn so much about birds, it was his fascination with nature in general that helped him become such an authority on ornithology.

“My first love was actually reptiles,” he says. “Even though I’m an ornithologist, I’m into the outdoors as a whole.”

Above all his favorite part about being an ornithologist is being out in the field exploring nature. As a kid he loved to run around and play in the wilderness, often picking up and bringing home all kinds of snakes, frogs and bugs. He was about 13-years-old when he first started noticing birds around his neighborhood. He then became actively involved in bird watching from then on he wanted to learn all there was to know about birds.

Some might argue that he has come pretty close. It didn’t come easily though. It took years of experience and research, beginning around age 13.

“I was exposed to a college atmosphere when I was growing up,” he says.

At 13 he went on an ornithology trip with a college class from Northwest Missouri State University, which is located in his hometown of Maryville, Mo. He became close with a professor there and spent a great deal of time in his office studying birds. He also began taking trips to Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge in northwest Missouri and exploring on trails.

His time spent in national parks and the wilderness has not diminished much since college, he says. He still likes to spend time outdoors with his wife Kathy and his 14-year-old son, Stephen.

“We go canoeing and camping whenever we can,” Kathy Robbins says.

For the most part, though, his family tries to keep out of the bird business. Of course they support him in his endeavors, but he says they are not particularly interested in birds.

“Obviously they’re not into birds as much as I am,” Robbins says. “They do show interest in issues like the ivory-billed woodpecker debate though because they know how important it is.”

Arpad Nyari, a PhD grad student being mentored by Robbins, is one person who does share his interest in birds. The two have gotten close while studying birds together and conducting fieldwork.

“Even though he spends a lot of time inside in the museum curating the collection, he really loves the outdoors,” Nyari says. “He got into this for the fieldwork.”

Mark Robbins, second from left in the back row, takes a break from fieldwork in Mexico to pose for a picture. Robbins spent his spring break in 1978 touring the Mexican wilderness with villagers collecting never before documented specimen.

Robbins spends about two and a half months of the year doing fieldwork, often times out of the country. His travels have taken him all over the globe, including several trips to China, Meixco and Ecuador. He has discovered four new species of birds and has written dozens of peer reviewed journal articles, including several about the ivory-billed woodpecker. He has also compiled over 3,000 recordings of bird vocalizations for study, which are stored in a laboratory at Cornell University. He is able to tell the difference between specific types of birds just by listening to the noises they make. He says this is key to recognizing birds in the wild because a lot of times he can’t even see the bird he is studying.

“He can tell slight differences among species just from a noise,” Nyari says. “He’s definitely obsessed.”

An exibit at the Natural History Museum at KU featuring several birds that are now extinct.

As the debate over the existence of the ivory-billed woodpecker rages on, Robbins points to a philosophy he thinks is important—extinction means forever. Through the use of vocalizations he hopes to prove that extinction does indeed mean forever for the ivory-billed woodpecker. But in the mean time, he just enjoys being out in nature chasing an elusive possibility.

Posted by Jacob Butler at 02:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jane Huesemann, Vice President of Gould Evans Architecture Firm in downtown Lawrence, loves her community. Like many Lawrence residents, she would love for the town’s issues, like the south Lawrence traffic way, the argument concerning residential vs. industrial areas, and the questions about westward expansion, to all be solved in a timely manner.

In fact, Huesemann thought it would be great if somebody would put together a team of experts that could come to Lawrence, assess our situation, and give us a plan for solving our problems. So when Huesemann and former mayor, Boog Highberger, heard that the American Institute of Architects was assembling just such teams, and sending them to eight communities around the country, they knew that this was Lawrence’s chance.

This summer, Lawrence, along with Syracuse, NY, Longview, Wash, Guemes Island, Wash, Hagerstown, MD, Northeast Mich, Northern Nevada and New Orleans, will begin receiving visits from one of the AIA’s Sustainable Design Assessment Teams, or SDAT. The team of volunteers contains architects, urban designers, hydrologists, economists, planners, attorneys and more, who will work with a local steering committee. Over the next year, the two groups will design a plan for Lawrence that will, according to the AIA, visualize the town’s future, help us understand our structure, and explore interactions between ecological, sociological, economic and physical systems.

“We could really use this outside source,” Huesemann said. “Outside experts lend credibility simply because they have fresh opinions.”

The SDAT’s fresh opinions aren’t free, but are only costing the community $5000, which is combined with a $15000 grant from the AIA. However, getting the AIA to send an SDAT to Lawrence took much more than shelling out the bucks.

Each town vying for the AIA’s help must go through a process that includes submitting a very lengthy application. In drafting Lawrence’s application, Mayor Highberger and Huesemann enlisted the help of Kira Gould of Gould Evans Architecture Firm in Boston, who was a member on the selection committee for last year’s SDAT applicants.

“We were looking for communities that are concerned about issues in a really broad way and that are defining their problems using a variety of lenses to bridge social, economic and environmental issues,” Gould said. “That’s exactly what Lawrence is doing, and I declined being on the selection committee this year because I wanted to help Lawrence get in.”

Gould feels that the SDAT visits could lead to some great new ideas as far as public thinking. “Lawrence is rich in ideas and engaged citizens,” she said. “If they have the opportunity to engage an outside perspective…I mean, why not?”

But how badly does our town need an outside perspective? What real effect will the opinions of non-residents have on Lawrence in a year, or two or ten? Nibley City, in Utah’s lush Cache Valley, was one of last year’s SDAT recipients. Nibley was visited by its SDAT team in June, five months before its new mayor, Gerald Knight, was elected to office. When asked about the effects of SDAT’s visit, Knight didn’t even know what SDAT or the AIA were. After some further explanation, he said, “I’ve seen some documentation on it, but I don’t really know if anything happened.”

Cache County Executive and author of Cache Valley’s SDAT application, Lynn Lemon, said that it’s not about instant results or miraculous fixes to local problems. “It’s raised awareness of some of the issues we’re facing,” he said. “It’s brought our county’s communities together and gave us some excellent long-term plans.

Gould said that the same long-term planning and raised awareness will be possible for Lawrence if the city keeps thinking about the larger issues and avoids focusing on the little things, like specific zoning issues and transportation problems. “It’s important for Lawrence to stay broad,” she said. “The SDAT board will relate the detailed things.”

Posted by John Benda at 02:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When Bill Lee was a young college student, his girlfriend gave him some advice. She, too, was in college, and told Lee that she had found the key to getting through college, and perhaps life, successfully.

“She told me, ‘Bill, if you want to get somebody to pay for your education, find a nitch. Do something obscure that nobody else is doing. Be the specialist. Be the most knowledgeable,’” Lee said. “I thought that was pretty good advice.”

Fast forward to October of 2005. Bill Lee had built the most comprehensive collection of original Kansas music ever. In the 25 years that he worked in radio, most of it in Kansas, Lee saved every bit of memorabilia from original Kansas rock & roll bands that he could get his hands on. “If they weren’t important enough to keep in the radio station’s library, they went into mine,” Lee said. “I didn’t care if it was good or not, I wanted it all.”

Lee’s collection, included over 2,000 LP records, between 4 and 5,000 forty-fives, at least 100 reel to reel tapes, several hundred CD’s and cassette tapes, not to mention rare live recordings of which there exist no other copies, plus posters, flyers, stickers, and years worth of research into Kansas rock history. Along with all of the memorabilia, Lee also had all of the official business conducted by his newly created Kansas Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In other words, Lee took his girlfriend’s advice and found his nitch.

So, in October of 2005, Lee and his nitch were living comfortably in his apartment…at Boardwalk Apartments.

“I was at work, so I happened to luck out,” Lee said. “I had the clothes I had on, and my car, and that was it.”

When the Boardwalk Apartments caught fire and burned down last October, Lee lost the entire collection that he had spent 25 years building, not to mention all of his own personal belongings. “It was just stuff,” Lee said. “I lost some great stuff, but I also lost three neighbors. I’d rather have them back.”

The stuff that Lee lost was to be the basis of a museum that he wanted to build for the Kansas Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. A few years ago, Lee decided that these Kansas bands that he had obsessed over for so many years deserved to be recognized for their contribution to local music. So in August of 2004, he created the Hall of Fame, and in January of 2005, held its first induction ceremony at Liberty Hall in downtown Lawrence.

The Blue Things, The Fabulous Flippers, Kansas, and The Red Dogs were just a few of the bands inducted that year. All four of those bands are covered extensively in Lee’s 1999 book, “Kansas Rockers: The First Generation,” an encyclopedia/discography of every Kansas band that Lee could find evidence of.

“Writing that book was part of my nitch,” Lee said. “When I was in college at KU in 1968, I wanted to write an encyclopedia of rock & roll bands, because it had never been done. In 1969, it was done twice, but by 1999, nobody had written one about Kansas bands, so I did it.”

The October Boardwalk fire was only the first of a trio of tragedies for Lee. In January, the Kansas Music Hall of Fame's second annual induction ceremony was bittered by the death of Lee's mother. "I went to the ceremony on Saturday night," Lee said, "and on Sunday morning, I buried my mom." Only a few weeks before his mother's passing, Lee also lost a lifelong friend to cancer: the old girlfriend that gave Lee the piece of priceless advice when they were still in college.

Tragedy hasn't made Bill Lee give up on his nitch, though. For a someone who has devoted his life to studying rock & roll's past, he's very adamant about looking to the future. "I've gotta face it. I can't do anything about the past, there's a limited amount of what I can do about the present, but tomorrow's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life. I'll just focus on that."

Posted by John Benda at 01:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As Katy Humpert parks her car in the driveway of her Lawrence home, she shows her nerves by fumbling with her keys and then with the door to her house.

Today is an important day. It is the first day that Humpert, Winfield senior, is bringing Adrian to her home for their bi-weekly tutoring session.

Adrian is a 24-year-old immigrant from Mexico who was paired with Humpert through Project Bridge, a city-wide organization that provides tutoring to members of the community who are learning English as a second language.

At the beginning of the semester, Humpert went to Project Bridge in search of volunteer work that would fulfill the requirement for her Spanish through service learning class. Today, after three months filled with countless sessions, the progress both have made is evident as they converse without a trace of a language barrier, switching easily between Spanish and English.

For Maria Alonso, the graduate teaching assistant of the course Spanish through service learning this spring, there is no better reward then witnessing a successful match of student and tutor as a result of the course’s two hour weekly volunteer requirement.

“The opportunity to interact with native Spanish speakers every week helps the student understand the dynamic of the Latino community in the United States because they are interacting with the people who form that dynamic,” Alonso said.

This semester, Alonso and Danny J. Anderson, professor or Spanish, began teaching a new course with the goal to educate students about problems and barriers Spanish speaking residents face daily and to employ students’ skills learned in the classroom to address these community needs. Alonso has used her personal experience as an immigrant from Spain as well as her professional experience as a volunteer within the Kansas Latino community, to guide her students through service learning. An educational experience in which students participate in a service activity that meets community needs, service learning is as a way to more fully understand the course curriculum. It is a teaching philosophy that 16 academic departments at the University of Kansas incorporated into their classes this spring.

Born in Galicia, Spain 28 years ago, Alonso was completing her undergraduate degree at the University of Santiago when she was presented with the opportunity to come to the University of Kansas through an exchange program. It was her uncertain employment future in Spain that prompted her to join the program as a full-time graduate student at the university and to teach classes in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

After completing her master’s degree in Spanish last year, this fall Alonso began taking classes in pursuit of a PhD in Education and this spring she began to develop and teach the course, Spanish through service learning. Alonso describes service learning as being based in the philosophy of education that in order to internalize what you are learning you must be able to experience it in real life situations.

“What would be the hope for the class is to learn the experience of being an immigrant and for them to become active in fighting discrimination in Kansas,” Alonso said.

The Center for Service Learning, opened at the university in September 2005, and this spring it offers more then 30 courses to students of 16 different fields of study. The recent influx of service-learning courses at KU and at universities nation wide indicates that professors and students agree with Alonso.

The KU Center for Service Learning is a member of the National Campus Compact, a coalition of more than 950 university and colleges and 5 million students dedicated to promoting community service, civic engagement and service-learning in higher education.

Linda Luckey, acting director of the KU Center for Service Learning, said the center was developed as part of the university’s initiative to encourage students in learning. The center works in conjunction with the global awareness program, which encourages students to gain an international experience.

When the Center for Service Learning opened this fall, its staff set out to determine if there were any existing service-learning classes at the university. They soon realized most of the faculty who were using service-learning components within their courses, had been doing so for years.

Luckey said that the center was funded to act as a resource and a support system for professors who elect to use service-learning within the classroom. There is no specific discipline behind the service-learning philosophy, but there is one specific goal.

“What we hope is part of every class is that they are engaging a real community need,” Luckey said.

As someone who emigrated to the U.S. from Spain only four years ago, Alonso remembers the hardships of having to learn English as a second language. But it are her roots in the Spanish language and her experiences that have made her effective in teaching service learning and helping other immigrants who were not presented with the same opportunities upon their arrival to Kansas.

“I think all people who speak Spanish here as their first language develop a global identity, but you lose the importance of your country’s origin,” Alonso said. “What comes first as your identity here in the U.S. is your linguistic origin, so that gives me a point of connection with people.”

Humpert, the student tutor, said that Alonso’s experiences as an immigrant and her connections with people in the Spanish speaking community has led to the appearance of countless native Spanish speakers in the Spanish through service learning course. They bring real life stories and accounts of concepts discussed in class. For example, what it is like to be a Spanish speaking immigrant in Kansas and in the U.S.

As Alonso continues her work with the service-learning course and her own course work toward the PhD in education, her end goal is to work with immigrant children. Last year she incorporated her linguistic experience with her interest of the social needs of immigrants. She worked as a social educator for the Juniper Gardens Children’s Project, a Kansas City organization that works with the KU Medical Center, to improve area children’s developmental and educational experience and thus their academic and social achievements.

She worked extensively within the Latino community and performed interventions with pregnant teenagers. The interventions begin during pre-natal, where Alonso conducted problem-solving exercises with the mother to make sure she was prepared for the new baby. Visits continue until the child is three years of age, “so we can conduct a lot of assessments of speaking skills to see if the child is developing properly,” Alonso said.

As a graduate research assistant in the Education Administration department, Alonso is currently working on a comprehensive plan for the prevention of child abuse and neglect. “It will connect the school with the social services and school programs to join all efforts to prevent this,” Alonso said.

Alonso is a perfect role model for other Spanish speaking immigrants. She shows daily how one can overcome language and social barriers and assimilate into American society, without giving up his or her cultural background. It is these attributes that make Alonso an invaluable resource to the university and to the Lawrence community.

Play video here to see service learning in action.

Learn more about the Center for Service Learning at the University of Kansas.

Read about Campus Compact, a national coalition of more than 5 million students and 950 universities dedicated to service learning.

Posted by Elyse Weidner at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bill Skepnek lectures every Thursday afternoon in the Student Union.

Bill Skepnek is both a successful lawyer and teacher in Lawrence.

Skepnek the lawyer owns his own law firm, Skepnek Law Firm, and handles mostly product liability cases. Skepnek typically charges around 250 dollars per hour.

Skepnek the teacher is a lecturer in the department of Western Civilization at The University of Kansas. At the University however, he hasn’t quite made the payroll. For Skepnek, who teaches an honors Western Civilization course, teaching is priceless.

Skepnek said he never wanted to be paid. “Teaching is my treat to myself,” he said.

Bill Skepnek is a full time lawyer in Lawrence and a father to four, yet he still finds time for a little volunteering. Skepnek volunteers to teach a Western Civilization course each semester at KU.

Skepnek spends numerous hours a week preparing for his class on top of his commitments as a lawyer. For Skepnek however, it is a labor of love. “Teaching is the best thing I do,” he said.

So, who is Bill Skepnek? This lover of Aristotle, Plato, and Descartes was once, as he described himself, “such a stud.”

Bill Skepnek was born on December 16, 1952 in Hinsdale, Illinois. The second of seven children, he grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. Skepnek began taking an interest to sports in high school, especially football. He went on to receive a football scholarship to KU and played all four years he attended.

Skepnek surprisingly did not take a Western Civilization class in college. “What they did was put all the jocks in the School of Education because if you were in the School of Education you didn’t have to take a foreign language or Western Civilization class, so I ended up not taking it,” he said.

Skepnek graduated from KU in 1974 and married girlfriend Susan Pearson who he met as a sophomore. Together they have four children.

Skepnek attended law school in 1975 at KU but said he can’t remember why he wanted to be a lawyer. “I think it was one of those things where my dad told me to go to law school, so I did,” he said.

After working at firms in Oklahoma City, Skepnek now owns his own firm on Massachusetts St.

Vada Devine, legal assistant at Skepnek Law Firm has worked with Skepnek for nine years and said she knows his true passion. “He likes the law but all these years it’s apparent to me his love is for teaching,” she said.

Teaching kind of fell in Skepnek’s lap when he met Matt Stein, a Lawrence Oncologist who was currently teaching a Western Civilization course at the University. The two men teamed up to teach the class for 12 years.

“I kind of learned how to teach while teaching alongside Matt,” Skepnek said. In 2003 he split off from Stein to teach his own class. Now, three years later, one can still find Skepnek effortlessly reciting the words of Dostoevsky and Machiavelli for his honor’s class in the student union.

For Skepnek, the obvious drawback for teaching is finding time in his busy schedule. “It’s a lot of work. I would say I spend between 10 and 15 hours a week grading papers, reading and preparing for class,” he said. “It’s definitely a lot of work.”

According to Whitney Devine, former student, Skepnek’s effort paid off. “He knew the material well and it was apparent that he had read everything numerous times,” said Devine.

Skepnek said wondering if he truly reached his students was one of the hardest parts of teaching. “I feel it’s a real responsibility. The students that I’m teaching, I don’t want to waste their time and I want to push the ball forward for them or help them push the ball forward,” he said.

Skepnek can rest easy that he atleast reached Jenny Hartman, former student. “I dreaded the thought of having to take Western Civilization, however to my surprise I found the course very interesting and I’ve applied what I learned to my other courses,” she said. “I left with such a positive impression of good’ol Bill.”

Skepnek’s hard work paid off in the fall of 2005 when he was asked to teach a class for the Humanities and Western Civilization study abroad program.

“My first reaction was how could I possibly take three months off? My next reaction was, how could I possibly pass up this opportunity?” said Skepnek, who accompanied 13 students to Paris, France and Florence, Italy to teach both Western Civilization I and II.

Teaching in Europe was the first time that Skepnek has been paid for his work at KU. Now Skepnek is back in the country and back to volunteering. He can be found lecturing every Thursday in Alcove B of the Student Union.

Skepnek said his future plans are to get his kids out of college and possibly coach high school football. He said, “I would like to continue teaching Western Civilization as long as they’ll have me.”

Posted by Rebecca Fritzel at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Angela Haar will hire the next Max Falkenstien. However, she will likely hire two of them, a color analyst for football and another one for basketball. Although the basketball analyst won’t be announced until the summer, a football analyst will be announced in the next couple of weeks, with David Lawrence as one of the top candidates.

Haar is the General Manager for ESPNplus at the University of Kansas and decisions like this one are part of her monthly agenda. “It’s not too stressful,” Haar said. “I love the challenge.”

Haar manages the Jayhawk radio and television networks and is charge of corporate sponsorships. An occupation as desired and coveted as Haar’s did not come easy to the 31 year-old, Illinois native.

Haar first began her path to success by attending Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. While most college students enjoyed their summers away from the demands of their studies, Haar spent each of her summers striving to find various employment opportunities, which would be beneficial to her future.

Haar sought after and eagerly accepted every internship opportunity that became available to her. “I highly recommend internships, they give you experience and tell you what you like and dislike,” Haar said.

Haar didn’t always prefer a degree in sports marketing. There was a time when any marketing degree would have sufficed. Spam changed all that.

One day while at Purdue, Haar’s marketing class had a guest speaker from Hormel Inc. “I was the first one to class and I sat front and center,” Haar said. The speaker didn’t motivate Haar into a career path, but he sure showed her what she didn’t want to do. “He talked about how he put Spam on nachos and it made sales triple,” Haar said. “I was like, no thanks, Spam isn’t for me.”

(The Weather Babe has come a long way)

At that point, she knew that she needed a more exciting focus. Soon after sports marketing became her path.

Her mother, Linda Haar, was surprised that her daughter chose sports. “She always liked sports, but she was more the cheerleader type,” Linda said.

Before ending up at KU, Haar made a couple of pit-stops along the way. After graduating Purdue with a sports marketing degree, she headed west to Wichita.

In Wichita she worked in the marketing department for the Wranglers. The Wranglers are a farm team for the Kansas City Royals. Haar only stayed long enough to acquire the nickname Weather Babe.

Then it was off to Tampa, Fla., where her ESPN career began. In Tampa she worked for the University of Southern Florida as an Account Executive. Haar was in charge of selling advertising for the athletic department.

After two years at USF Haar was recruited to the University of Kansas. “It was hard to leave the sunny weather,” Haar said. However, she knew that it was in the best interest of her career.

Climbing to the top was the hard part. Dealing with her profession being predominantly male wasn’t hard. Gaining the same respect men get was never an issue for Haar. "She has the desire to succeed and that has translated into respect," said Vince McKamie, Office Manager for ESPNplus.

More importantly then having the desire, is actually turning that into success.

And Haar definitely gets the job done. Since she was promoted to General Manager in 2004, sales have increased 25 percent. As a matter of fact, these increases impressed Lew Perkins, KU Athletic Director, so much that a deal was announced April 21, 2005, extending ESPN’s multimedia rights for seven more years. This $40.2 million deal insures that ESPN will be the only company to have media control over the University's athletics.

This was a huge accomplishment for Haar because the expectations were a huge challenge and they were able to greatly exceed them. “KU is a better place because we are here,” Haar said.

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Walk into a scientist’s laboratory and you’re bound to hear anything. Earthworm poop was the topic of discussion for two researchers Sam James and Steve Hasiotis last week. James the biologist and research associate at KU’s Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center, and Hasiotis the geologist, were engaged in an exchange about the creatures burrowing habits and fecal deposits. A topic perhaps left untouched by most researchers.

“Most people concentrate on the front end and what type of grass worms eat. I thought, well what about all the grass that comes out the other end?” James said.

Photo contributed by George Brown. KU biologist Sam James specializes in earthworm taxonomy and ecology. He travels the world searching for earthworms to classify them and study their relationship with North American grasslands. He is responsible for the discovery of an earthworm called Fimoscolex sporadochaetus in Brazil that was declared extinct in 2003. There are about 4,000 named species. He has 400 un-named species in his laboratory now.

Hasiotis had to take advantage of James’ expertise while he was on campus, a place James rarely visits. Instead, he is digging in the world’s soils in places such as the Philippines, the Caribbean and Fiji. James recently re-discovered an earthworm called Fimoscolex sporadochaetus in Brazil that was declared extinct in 2003. The earthworm he found in Belo Horizonte no one had bothered to look at for years he said.

“Just because something is declared extinct doesn’t mean it is, it just means no one has gone to look for it,” James said.

His long-standing work partner, George Brown, researcher for the Brazilian Corporation for Agricultural Research, tipped him off on this search. Brown continues to seek James' help because there is not an earthworm taxonomist in Brazil.

Photo Contributed by George Brown. Sam James and colleague George Brown work with students from the State University of Lodrina in Belo Horizonte, Brazil studying earthworm taxonomy.

“George gets pissed off when people don’t look for something new before they start calling it extinct,” James said. “When you don’t see large animals anymore, then yeah they are probably extinct, but in a small forested area there could be hundreds and thousands of worms.”

Brown said that it is important to find representatives of all earthworm species because they have many effects on the soil and plant communities, which provide nutrition to crops, cattle and in turn human beings. He said that understanding what they do is just a step. Understanding who they are and how to classify them is the first.

There are over 4,000 species worldwide and James sets out to find representatives of each species and also collects worms that may not be classified. He has about 400 un-named worms in his laboratory now. Based on where researchers have already gone, he heads a different direction.

"Sam is one of those adventure type persons who is not afraid to go to far away places and walk to the middle of nowhere to dig for worms," Brown said, "something that is increasingly necessary to find new species."

James’ interest in the interactions between North America’s grasses and grazers led him down the dirty path of earthworm ecology. Earthworms are his link to understanding how the grasslands have thrived in the country.

As a child growing up in Iowa, he used earthworms for bait when he went fishing. He doesn’t mind people using them for bait but he does care if they are being over-exploited. Florida and Brazil have this problem and the earthworm’s there are in danger of extinction. The baiting industry is regulated in Florida now he said, but it is not in Brazil although it is illegal to gather wildlife without a permit. The baiting rebels pushing their luck are helping James in a way.

“We see signs on the road that say ‘We Sell Earthworms’ so we stop, look and we’ll buy them if they are interesting. And we preserve them,” he said. “We ask where they got them but they won’t always tell us.”

Mapquest James and Brown are responsible for classifying earthworms in much of southern Brazil. There is no earthworm taxonomist in the country so James' expertise is highly valued.

So James and his colleagues go on pursuits to find them. Where they may end up is on someone’s private property. This has stirred up more than just the owners land. The owners are fed up with people digging for fish bait so they want something to kill the worms to prevent people from coming at all. This scares James.

“I’ll have to think of something that could safely get the worms out. An old remedy of hot mustard and water may work,” he ponders.

Though earthworms can provide an abundance of help to further various research such as arthritis therapy, some people find it hard to believe anyone could make a living digging in the dirt. James recalls a trip to southwest Texas where he was met with such criticism.

Avoiding the dismal motel room, he found a construction crew outside with the same idea. Within minutes, James realized they were far from like-minded. After all, the crew was there to dig into the earth to put in a gas pipeline and James was there digging for earthworms.

The crew drank beer while James obliged them and listened to their hunting stories. This may have gone on until the question came up, “So what do you do Sam?” The conversation then quickly took a turn.

“One guy kept getting drunker and madder. He was mad that I could actually make a living digging for earthworms and that I work for a university,” he said.

“Maybe it is a rural male thing, but not one wants to seem like they are interested in formal education. It is almost taboo. And these guys were representatives of that,” James said.

He was asked “When are you going to get a real job?” To which James replied, “I hope I don’t have to.”

James was forewarned he would be met with skepticism when he went to a communal village in Fiji. Any village outsiders are traditionally considered bad. Fortunately, he was told to bring a peace offering of Kava roots, an ancient crop of the western Pacific. With another professor and guide, James went to the village chief’s home to present him and his son with the offering. The chief inspected the roots wrapped in colorful ribbon and sang a traditional chant to acknowledge the peace offering.

Villagers crush the root and boil it in water to drink and feel its narcotic effects. He said after they drank and passed it around for a while they started to sing, and then they stopped and it was silent. In the distance, the neighboring village began to gently sing like a lullaby and the two communities took turns all night he fondly recalls. He is now a permanent friend of the village and is not required to bring the Kava root if he returns, but he said he probably would just in case they forgot.

Aside from his Fiji friends, James finds support from 200 other worm researchers he visits every four years at an International Earth Worm Meeting. This year’s weeklong convention is going to be held in Krakow, Poland. The Eighth International Symposium on Earthworm Ecology

Within a week, James will be walking along the Louisiana coast for specimens before going to finish his work in the Philippines where he has worked extensively and intermittently over the past few years. His family of four accompanied him for six months during one of his visits in 2001. They assisted him in his search in the remote woods.

James' wife Joy said he is the best person to travel with because he observes more than the average person. Though they may not always get to share in the knowledge because James takes off on his wild worm chase. She said once he starts a project he just keeps going and doesn’t really need to stop to eat and drink. Eight hours climbing mountains in the rain forest without rest and food was a bit much for her and the kids however.

“My oldest daughter Pearl got in a bush that was covered with leeches and she screamed, ‘I’m covered with leeches’ and at the same time we could hear Sam up ahead yelling, ‘I got a worm! I got a big worm!’” she recounted. “It’s always like that in a way, there is always this kind of thing going on.”

If he had to do it all over again he said he would be a geologist and not a biologist.

“I would do geology and spend all day looking for rocks. Wandering for worms is pretty much similar in some ways though.”

For now, this KU researcher will continue trail blazing digging for earthworms, the link to the world above.

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It’s a different type of lullaby that Joe Pascarelli sings while putting one-year-old son Baxter to bed. Lucky for his Kansas City audience, these lullabies may be the first step towards a new album.

As easily as he turns off the light switch to young Baxter’s room, Pascarelli transforms from daytime working and family man into the guitarist for one of the Midwest’s hottest blues bands.

The Hipnotics have been playing around the Kansas City area for the past several years, gaining attention and acclaim for their last album, Plannin’ and Accident.

“The band is more towards the rockin’ side of the blues” Pascarelli said, “taking old blues and putting a new sound to them.”

Guitarist Joe Pascarelli and vocalist Jay Mowbray of the Hipnotics.

And Kansas City has been noticing the new sound the Hipnotics are bringing to the blues. Arts and entertainment magazine “The Pitch” called Accident “more than just a late night souvenir,” and the bands attention only begins there.

In 2003, The Hipnotics performed at the prestigious International Blues Challenge. After beating 20 other acts fr