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Steve Jobs dies at 56
Kansas stands alone in defunding arts
LJWorld.com
KU hoops tickets for sale ——
‘Mini plans’ being sold for 1st time
Without listing a specific cause, Apple announced that Steve Jobs, co-founder and former CEO, died Wednesday. Jobs battled pancreatic cancer in 2004 and dealt with health problems ever since. He had resigned as CEO in August. Page 6A
By Mark Fagan mfagan@ljworld.com
Partly sunny
Nick Krug/Journal-World Photo
High: 83
Low: 58
Today’s forecast, page 8A
INSIDE Junior Achievement leaders featured Read profiles of this year’s Lawrence Business Hall of Fame laureates. Bob Billings, Shirley Martin-Smith, Gene Meyer, and Jim Owens are being honored tonight at a dinner hosted by Junior Achievement of Lawrence. Inside
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QUOTABLE
She took me in and treated me as if I was her own kid. She helped me get over that hump with everything that was Robinson going on.” — Kansas University basketball player Thomas Robinson, on Angel Morris, the mother of former KU players Marcus and Markieff Morris. Angel Morris will be honored with Headquarters Counseling Center’s “Life Saver” award on Friday for the support she’s shown for Robinson, especially after he lost his mother and grandparents Page 3A
COMING FRIDAY Scary! We’ll be at the Zombie Walk, so look for plenty of photos of the undead.
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VAN GO JAMS ARTIST TRIANNA ELLIOTT, 17, TOUCHES UP THE PAINT on a container she designed as work ensues Wednesday at Van Go Inc., 715 N.J. According to a report released by the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, Kansas is the only state to defund its arts commission. Van Go is one of several local arts organizations that previously received some funding from the Kansas Arts Commission.
As organizations across state struggle, commission says it’s working on plan By Scott Rothschild srothschild@ljworld.com
TOPEKA — A national arts organization on Wednesday said that despite budget problems across the United States, Kansas was the only state to eliminate state funding of the arts. “Like most areas of state spending, public appropriations to the arts have seen periods of growth and decline tied to state budget conditions. However, no state other than Kansas has responded to a recession by eliminating all public funding for its state arts agency,” according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies.
The group represents 56 state and jurisdictional arts agencies in the country and submitted its written testimony to the House-Senate Committee on Arts and Cultural Resources. The group also argued in favor of public funding of the arts, saying it helped promote a desirable quality of life, created jobs and encouraged artists and arts organizations to serve the public. “Using public dollars to finance the work of a state arts agency also avoids the significant drawback of the state putting itself in competition with constituents for private contributions,” the group said.
Gov. Sam Brownback vetoed all state funding — $689,000 — to the arts for the current fiscal year above the protests of many legislators and arts organizations statewide. Brownback said funding of the arts was not a core function of state government and said the state dollars could be replaced by private fundraising. The veto also cost the state $1.2 million in matching funds. Four months after Brownback’s veto, numerous arts programs and events have been cut back, the Kansas Arts Commission is down to $5,000 and the ability to leverage federal funds is nowhere in sight.
But Brownback’s appointees to the Kansas Arts Commission, which still exists in state statute despite the veto, and the leader of the Kansas Arts Foundation, a nonprofit organization to raise funds privately for the arts, defended the new system. “We are building a strong foundation on which the arts of the state of Kansas may depend for future generations,” said Linda Browning Weis, who is both chairwoman of the Arts Commission and president of the Kansas Arts Foundation. Please see ARTS, page 2A
Kansas University no longer scores enough pointsholding, ticket-buying fans to fill Allen Fieldhouse — a loss of demand that is leaving seats for the season’s most intense rivalries available to the general public. Officials at Kansas Athletics Inc. aren’t at all worried about the Jayhawks losing their streak of 164 consecutive home sellouts. Instead, t h e y consider the availability of tickets for the 2011-12 season as a prime opportunity for folks outside the Williams Fund to buy in. “We had the same thing last year, and they were gone well before the first game,” said Jim Marchiony, an associate athletic director. “We anticipate the same thing happening this year.” To help draw more fans, the department, for the first time, is selling tickets in seven-game “mini plans” without requiring membership in the Williams Fund, the donor organization that finances athletic scholarships and provides “priority points” for seating for men’s basketball games. The department did the same thing last year, but Please see TICKETS, page 2A
LAWRENCE MUNICIPAL AIRPORT
Sewer expansion project runs into major hurdles The sewer project involves digging a 28-foot hole to bury an underground sewage storage tank. But A deep hole in North Law- construction crews hired by the city are finding rence can get kind of tricky. that the amount of water pouring into the hole City-hired contractors are has far exceeded their expectations. By Chad Lawhorn
clawhorn@ljworld.com
finding that out at the Lawrence Municipal Airport, and their work is creating concern from North Lawrence residents about possible flooding and a loss of valuable groundwater in the area.
City officials recently confirmed that a project to expand the sewer service at the airport — which would allow for greater development on the airport property
— has encountered some major hurdles that have put the project months over budget. City officials also confirmed that the digging operations of the project
are creating concern among some area landowners that their groundwater wells will be harmed by the project. “We’re in full support of trying to grow development out here,” said Brian Pine, a member of Pine Family Farms, which relies on groundwater wells for many of its business operations. “But I think a little more thought was needed from the city on this project.”
The issue centers on the fact that when you dig a deep hole in North Lawrence, you get a lot of water in that hole because of its proximity to the Kansas River. The sewer project involves digging a 28-foot hole to bury an underground sewage storage tank. But construction crews hired by the city are finding that the amount of water Please see SEWER, page 2A
INDEX Business Classified Comics Deaths Events listings Horoscope Movies Opinion Puzzles Sports Television Vol.153/No.279
8A 1C-8C 7B 2A 8A, 2B 7C 5A 7A 7C 1B-8B 5A, 2B, 7C 24 pages
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Author discusses ways to address ‘nature-deficit disorder’ By Christine Metz cmetz@ljworld.com
In the mind of Richard Louv, the clump of trees at the end of a suburban culde-sac is just as important as Yosemite National Park in introducing children to the wonders of the natural world. “What is just as important as wilderness is nearby nature,” Louv said. “For a child, it can be a doorway to another universe.” Louv, an author of “Last Child in the Woods” and more recently “The Nature Principle,” spoke Wednesday night to a packed and enthusiastic auditorium at the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 N.H. The keynote speaker of the Built Environment and the Outdoors Summit, Louv coined the term “nature-
deficit disorder” in “Last Child in the Woods.” The term describes what has happened as children Louv grow up playing indoors rather than outside. It’s a shift the book claims has negative consequences to individual health, our social fabric and even to the creative process. Louv’s most recent book is “The Nature Principle” that envisions a future where lives are just as immersed in nature as they are in technology. Many in the crowd were already familiar with Louv’s work. Over the past several years, local retired real-estate developer John McGrew
has handed out hundreds of Louv’s books. They helped spark the local grass-roots organization Outside for a Better Inside. As a boy who grew up in a part of Raytown, Mo., where the tract houses ended and the fields and woods began, Louv said he developed his love of nature early. “I owned those woods,” Louv said. “They existed in my heart then as much as in reality. And they exist in my heart today. I sometimes go to those woods, and I find something there that I don’t find anywhere else.” To help return nature to urban and suburban environments, Louv advocated turning cities into “engines of biodiversity.” Backyards and rooftops would be planted with native plants. Cities would become corridors for
wildlife and the pathways of migrating butterflies. Those ideas, by Louv’s own admission, are outrageously idealistic and ones that won’t be accomplished by policy changes alone. “You don’t have to wait for permission. You don’t have to wait for a foundation grant,” Louv said. “You can just go out and do it now.” Louv’s talk ended with a standing ovation and was followed by a crowd in the Lawrence Arts Center’s lobby waiting for Louv to sign their books. Among them was Lawrence grandmother Linda Sturgeon, who planned to send the book to her grandson in Denver. “Please share this with your teachers at school,” she had written beside Louv’s signature.
She said Louv’s talk reminded her of her own childhood, which involved playing in creeks and riding a horse all over Leavenworth. She’d like her grandson to grow up in a similar world. McGrew was happy with Wednesday night’s turnout and believed that Louv’s message had already been taken to heart by Lawrence residents. He pointed to the 22 butterfly gardens planted at community schools. “There is no doubt it is catching and starting to make a difference,” McGrew said. “But it will be slow.” — Reporter Christine Metz can be reached at 832-6352. Follow her at Twitter.com/ SFHorizons.
! KDHE leader examines how to improve wellness in state at summit, page 2A