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     Planting flowers, trimming bushes, pruning shrubs, laying sod and picking up trash are all in a springtime day's work for Allen Mitchell.

     Mitchell is a supervisor of landscaping for Facilities Operations, the University of Kansas's landscaping department. His daily work begins at 6:30 a.m., just as the sun is beginning to shed light on the campus he and 33 others work so hard to clean and beautify.

     "We work hard all the time," Mitchell said. "Everything's gotta get done, but we take the top priority. Commencement's coming up, so that's what we're fixing up for now."

     On Sunday, May 17, several thousand students will take the traditional walk through the campanile, down the hill and into the stadium. On that day, Facilities Operations Landscaping Director Mike Lang wants to make sure that the campus leaves a lasting impression on the graduates as they say their goodbyes. This requires cleaning, decorating and maintaining 800 acres, which can be a lot of money (usually around $53 thousand) during tough economic times.

     "That's the crew's real issue, for us to make it look its best," Lang said. "The students who spend all their time here are graduating and all the families are in town, so it's very important."

     Steve Green, associate director of Facilities Operations, said that the landscaping department spent about $1.37 million on landscaping last year and will spend about the same this year. Green said lawn maintenance, which includes mowing and trimming, costs approximately $376 thousand per year, which is enough money to pay for the tuition of 109 in-state students or 41 out-of-state students. Green also said that all of the money spent on landscaping comes from state general funds.

     Lang said the money spent on landscaping is harder to come by than it used to be. To combat the weak economy, Facilities Operations made a few changes; the department ordered fewer annuals this year and the landscaping crew will instead plant longer-lasting flowers like roses or tulips. Lang said he normally spends about $14 thousand on annuals, and this year he only spent about $11 thousand. He also said that several flowerbeds were taken out, with the exception of those that have high visibility, such as the Chi Omega fountain, Strong Hall, Budig Hall and the KU Visitor Center.

     Green said a hiring freeze was also administered as a result of the budget cuts. There are two vacancies because of the freeze, and the Facilities Operations budget was cut by 4.1 percent during the current fiscal year.

     "We went through a period where budgets were stable, we had new revenue coming from the tuition increases, we were able to spend a little more on turf, we were able to put in some flower beds, put a little more color in campus, do some repairs and buy some equipment," Green said. "Now all that's kind of been thrown into reverse, and it's gotten harder again."

     Despite the cost of landscaping elements in an unstable economy, Mitchell said that landscaping has a profound affect on both residents and visitors who drive down Jayhawk Boulevard and past the trimmed hedges, blooming flowers and lawns of fresh green grass. He said alumni will return years after graduating and comment on how the campus is still as beautiful as the day they left.

     Landscaper Andy Peterson agreed. With his dirty gloves clasped tightly around a well-worn rake, he smiles at what he and the other landscapers have accomplished.

     "I think a pretty campus tells you a lot about the school; it helps a lot to have a pretty campus with stuff well-maintained instead of really ugly bushes," Peterson said.

     To maintain that beauty, landscapers labor in the snow and sun, creating a campus beautiful enough to brag about. And beauty isn't the only positive aspect of landscaping; Green said there are silver linings behind the cloud cast by an unstable economy.

     "The one good thing for us right now is fuel prices; we're paying $1.77 a gallon for the fuel that we buy and we were able to lock that in for a year," Green said. "The bad part is kind of living under this cloud of not knowing what the state's going to have to do to our funding to balance the budget. So we'll just adapt and survive. We'll do our best."

If there's one thing 58-year-old poet Gary Lechliter knows how to write about, it's his native state.

In a poem titled "Practically Nothing" from his 2001 book, Under the Fool Moon, Lechliter writes, "Remains of the Kansas prairie. Wolves, bears, cougar and bison are gone. And west of Lawrence, on Highway 40, plywood duplexes impinge on wheat fields and locust groves where cattle graze by real estate developers' signs."

Lechliter grew up in the small town of Arkansas City, in the middle of a prairie scene similar to the one described in "Practically Nothing."  During his youth, he was the student who was always a little different from his classmates. He was the friend who accepted everyone, no matter his or her race or sexual orientation. And he was the daydreamer who gazed out the classroom windows at the Kansas landscape, wondering what lay beyond the flat southeastern countryside of the state he now writes about with such familiarity.

A child of the '60s, Lechliter used those daydreams to pull himself through tumultuous times.

"I went through that very turbulent, frightening decade; three major political assassinations, the threat of nuclear war, Vietnam, and living in a very stilted, conservative town," Lechliter said. "The things we did as kids and as teenagers to kind of overcome that fear of nuclear war and those things...we played. We dreamed. We wrote."

A majority of Lechliter's conservative farming community did not support his liberal views of life, but he connected with other dreamers who understood what it felt like to be out of the ordinary. Lechliter valued the friendships of many different people; he appreciated their camaraderie rather than focusing on their lifestyle. He also began to turn away from Southern Baptist teachings and adhere to a more humanistic view of living.

"I began to be very accepting of lifestyles that people in Kansas, and the majority of the people in the country, aren't," Lechliter said, leaning back comfortably in his rocking chair and gazing across the room through round, black-rimmed glasses. "That's how I grew up, and that's how I remain today."

It wasn't until Lechliter's senior year at Pittsburg State University that poetry became a regular part of his life. Lechliter's adviser prompted him to enroll in a poetry class for an easy A, and what began as a simple suggestion turned into a starting point for what would become Lechliter's lifelong pursuit.

Poetry became Lechliter's niche, and he used his views of life as an outsider to reach others with his words. He developed a style and philosophy all his own, neglecting flowery language for a more down-to-earth style. To achieve this, Lechliter used his experiences and everyday situations as inspiration for his poems.

Relatable themes weave in and out of Lechliter's poetry. He wrote verses about dysfunctional families, the Kansas landscape, and local myths and legends. He overcame tough times through his writing, such as his turbulent relationship with his father, his divorce from his first wife and a close friend's suicide. His words were therapy, and several poems came from his tough experiences, poems that were shrouded in anger and sadness.

"The poetry he was writing when we got married, he was really angry at his ex-wife, so it was really dark. But he started writing again in [University of Kansas English Professor] Brian [Daldorph]'s class and Brian was a good influence," Lechliter's wife, Camille, said. "He's very quiet. His thoughts go on inside his head, and I think this is the way that his insides can come out, his thoughts can come out. I'm glad he's got that."

Lechliter wrote through the good times and the bad. But in 1999, Lechliter's ability to write at all nearly came to a screeching halt when he fell from a ladder and barely survived. Stuck in the hospital with a hematoma in the right side of his head, broken ribs, a punctured lung and a separated shoulder, he could have given up on his writing and his life. Instead, he let the experience open up a part of his mind he had never let out before. He started to come to terms with who he was as a writer and as a person.

"You live and die as the person you finally become--I began to write from that aspect," Lechliter said. "With me, it took until I was 30 to finally settle down and say, 'this is who I am.' I'm not going to play games. I'm not going to pretend to be somebody I'm not."

Armed with a new outlook on life, Lechliter persevered through the pain. His persistence won him two awards the same year as his near-death experience: the Langston Hughes award and the David Ray award. These awards joined several others on Lechliter's list of accomplishments--he was published in journals across the country, including UMKC publication "New Letters," and Lawrence's own "Coal City Review."

Other poets also took notice of Lechliter's unconventional attitude towards life and the emotional truth in his writing.

"I'm really struck by the soulfulness that is natural to Gary, and by that I mean he's not afraid of dark ideas," Mary Wharff, a former co-editor of I-70, said. "He's not afraid of writing about them or considering them, and yet his poetry isn't stuck in darkness. It moves in and out of tough things."

Lechliter went beyond writing in 2002 when he founded I-70 Review, a literary magazine based in Lawrence that featured poets who lived along its namesake, Interstate 70. Four issues were released before Lechliter had to call it quits because of a lack of funds, time and available co-editors. But I-70's influence is still felt in Lawrence's literary community. Lechliter's editor, Brian Daldorph, hopes it will return.

"I-70 will be sorely missed. Gary had worked hard to establish it as a quality independent literary journal," Daldorph said. "We're all grateful to Gary for what he was able to do with it. We're hoping for a comeback."

Even though I-70 came to a halt, Lechliter continues to write and remain true to himself and his differences, regardless of what happens.

"There was one time when I tried to kind of join the crowd, tried to fit in, pretend to be somebody I was not," Lechliter said. "Finally I said, 'I can't do this. I can't die a phony. I can't die somebody that I'm not. This is what I believe, this is what I don't believe. This is who I am.'"

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CONTACTS

Gary Lechliter:         (785) 832-8942

Camille Lechliter:    (785) 832-8942

Mary Wharff:            (785) 838-464

                                mgwharff@sunflower.com

Brian Daldorph:        briandal@ku.edu

            Changes in the downtown parking system may lead to less change in parkers' pockets.

            Business owners downtown presented a proposal for parking system changes, such as raising meter prices, to Downtown Lawrence Inc. Thursday. Downtown Lawrence plans to present the proposal to city commissioners in late spring.

City Commissioner Mike Amyx said changes in the parking system would be beneficial for the downtown area.

            "Raising the price for the sake of raising the price is something we don't want to do," Amyx said. "Parking is very limited for a very popular commercial retail, and you want to make sure people have time to shop and time to eat and don't have to worry about feeding the meters, but at the same time everyone has to have the opportunity to park for stores to be able to prosper."

Jonathan Douglass, assistant to the city manager, said some of the changes being discussed are the addition of short-term parking spaces designed for food pick-up, extended enforcement hours, raising overtime fees from $2 to $3, and raising meter prices from 25 cents per hour to 50 cents per hour.

Douglass said the changes would encourage shoppers to spend less time parked on Massachusetts Street, which would create room for other shoppers. This action is called "turnover" or "churn," and Douglass said it's good for businesses downtown.

            Jane Pennington, executive director of Downtown Lawrence, agreed.

            "A lot of people who work downtown park on Massachusetts Street, and they just go out every two hours and pump quarters into the meter," Pennington said. "Raising the cost and reducing the amount of time that they can get makes it more inconvenient for long-term parkers and gets them to park other places than Massachusetts Street, so the benefit is opening up space for shoppers and quicker turnover for those spaces."

Pennington said landscaping and beautification of the downtown area was one of the city's primary interests in raising the meter prices.

"The city had come to one of our members and mentioned that parking fees were an area they were going to have to look at in order to generate more income for the city budget," Pennington said. "Our desire was to put forward some suggestions for how those changes might happen, so we're helping them communicate the importance of the changes in exchange for them continuing the landscaping of downtown."

Douglass said the actions taken with extra money also depend on the financial impact of the changes, but he said the funds for maintenance in the parking garages and salaries for the parking enforcement staff would receive some of the money.

Even though Lawrence could raise downtown meter prices to 50 cents, parking on Massachusetts Street would still be cheaper than surrounding areas. Topeka meters charge 90 cents per hour, and Kansas City meters charge $1 per hour. Douglass said there are also several local locations competing with Lawrence's downtown area for revenue, and the price to park in these areas may affect the city's decision to change Lawrence's parking system.

"There aren't many downtowns that are quite as vibrant as ours, and there are also some other places that compete with downtown," Douglass said. "If you look at Zona Rosa or Country Club Plaza or the Legends or any of those areas, they're quite a bit different from downtown in terms of what kind of parking is available, but they probably are competitors for downtown."

Douglass said there would be costs that come along with the changes. But he said the city would want to start altering the parking system as soon as possible.

"We'd have to change out the plates on the meters that say what the rates and enforcement times are, and staff would have to go reprogram those meters," Douglass said. "If we do decide to make any changes we would probably recommend that we would make them over the summer sometime, and implement them as soon as we can."