Lawrence Journal-World 11-06-11

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DID YOU REMEMBER?

Daylight saving time ended today; fall back one hour

CLOSE, BUT NO WIN Late field goal pushes ISU past KU, 13-10 Sports 1B

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Oklahoma quake shakes city By Aaron Couch acouch@ljworld.com

Today’s forecast, page 10A

INSIDE

Coupon value in today’s Journal-World: Over $440! Wry commentator Andy Rooney dies Only weeks after retiring from “60 Minutes, ”Andy Rooney, CBS News’ longtime resident curmudgeon whose whimsical and acerbic essays turned the rumpled writer into an unlikely — and reluctant — TV celebrity, died Friday night. He was 92. Page 8A

Melody McKenzie said she’s not usually superstitious. But when she saw her kitchen table begin to shake late Saturday, the first thing that popped into her head was the film “Paranormal Activity.” “Things were moving on their own, and it just reminded me of that movie.” She wasn’t alone. Many other

Lawrence residents across the city said they weren’t sure what they had felt, or even if they had felt anything at all. But the U.S. Geological Survey confirmed it detected a 5.6 magnitude earthquake at 10:53 p.m. centered near Oklahoma City. Locally, Lawrence police said early today that there were no reports of damage or requests for assistance. “I’ve been through a lot of things but never an earthquake,” McKenzie said.

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Karen Shirk was at her home just north of Lawrence Municipal Airport when the tremor hit. “The windows were moving back and forth,” Shirk said. “It was kind of unnerving.” Her sister-in-law, Lawrence native Martha Evans, was in town visiting from Edmond, Okla., about 50 miles away from the earthquake’s epicenter. Evans spoke to her husband back in Oklahoma, who said their house

By Mark Fagan mfagan@ljworld.com

QUOTABLE

Often they come back from battle and then they have a new kind of battle.”

We check in with some older members of our community.

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INDEX Arts & Entertainment 9C-14C Books 12C Classified 1C-8C Deaths 2A Events listings 10A, 2B Horoscope 2C Movies 4A Opinion 9A Puzzles 2C, 11C Sports 1B-10B Television 4A, 2B, 2C Vol.153/No.310 56 pages

Nick Krug/Journal-World Photos

MICHAEL TANNER PLAYS GUITAR from the floor of a one-room shack built on a trailer, which he lives and sleeps in that is attached to his van. Tanner says he was given the nickname “Mayor Mike” by members of the Lawrence homeless community for his efforts in building a “village” for homeless people near the river in east Lawrence in 2008 that was eventually bulldozed by the city.

‘I feel a great sense of accomplishment’ sdhittle@ljworld.com

ONLINE: See the video at LJWorld.com

Michael Tanner, 52, has spent years trying to live rent-free in Lawrence, and he seems to have finally found the answer. Tanner lives in a 16-by-8-foot wooden structure — built on a trailer attached to a van — that he moves around the downtown area just often enough to avoid violating any city parking ordinances. Inside the structure, which he simply calls a “shack,” Tanner shows off his shelving, collection of guitars and sleeping area.

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“I feel a great sense of accomplishment,” said Tanner about his craftsmanship. “It’s a good, solid structure.” Tanner said he likes being selfreliant, and since being evicted

from an apartment in 2007, has eschewed homeless shelters. After being kicked out of a wooded area along the Kansas River by city

As members of a consolidation working group continue working on a proposal for combining, expanding or even building new schools — an effort they acknowledge will only become both emotional and divisive in the weeks ahead — a team of experts is compiling numbers behind the scenes to build a data-filled foundation for deliberations. RSP & Associates, an educational planning firm based in the Kansas City area, will deliver its initial reports Monday to members of the Central and East Lawrence Elementary School Consolidation Working Group. The data will indicate where students live, what economic issues they face, what programs they require, and then project how such information may change in the years ahead. By separating the district into focused sectors — including some 256 geographical “catchments,” such as neighborhoods, subdivisions, apartment complexes or other sites — RSP officials plan to give elected officials and their appointed advisers enough information to see the big picture in terms of the Lawrence school district’s future. “We’re using the latest data that’s available in the community to help guide decisions based on parameters that this community’s using to decide about consolidation,” said Robert Schwarz, CEO of RSP & Associates. “The answers will be evident in the data.” But likely not yet. The data going to members of the working group will be in a basic form: numbers, dots on

Please see HOME, page 2A

Please see DATA, page 2A

So to speak: KU has high number of language offerings

Even if it is just two students ... you’ve got two students with very unusual skills for a very low Students taking basic for- cost.” ahyland@ljworld.com

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MICHAEL TANNER SAYS he pays close attention to city ordinances with regard for where he can legally park his shack and for how long without being ticketed. He explained that he believes to be called homeless is to be stereotyped as being lazy and insists that his shack is proof of his ingenuity.

By Shaun Hittle

By Andy Hyland

Energy smart: The Journal-World makes the most of renewable resources. www.b-e-f.org

! For more on the earthquakes in Oklahoma, see page 7A.

decisions

So far this year, the Lawrence Police Department has handled 19 complaints against officers, according to Lawrence Police Chief Tarik Khatib, but specific details about those cases and how the department handled disciplinary action, will not be provided. Page 3A

COMING MONDAY

— Reporter Aaron Couch can be reached at 832-7217. Follow him at Twitter.com/aaroncouch.

Men who live in structures Data attached to vehicles relish to support closure freedom, not paying rent

Police chief defends complaint privacy

— Preston Girard, who is helping lead a nonprofit group in Lawrence aimed at helping veterans and their families navigate through the benefit process. Page 3A

was “really twisting, snapping and popping.” “We’ve had a few earthquakes in the past few years in Oklahoma,” Evans said. “But feeling it up in Kansas means it must have been much bigger than any we’ve had.”

SCHOOL CONSOLIDATION

LAWRENCE

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eign languages at Kansas University aren’t just greeting each other with an “hola” in Spanish or a “bonjour” in French, they’re also saying “pozdrav” in Croatian and “yaxshimusiz” in Uighur. KU offers nearly 40 languages, a high number for a state university, said LeaMarie Bistak Herron, assistant director of grant develop-

— Daniel McCarville, a master’s student studying political science and studying Uighur at KU ment for KU’s Center of Global and International Studies. That means KU is one of the few places in the country you can take classes in Uighur, for example. That’s

pronounced “WEE-gur” by most Americans and “ooeyGHUR” by most Uighurs. It’s spoken by nearly 10 million people in China’s Xinjiang region in the northwest part of the country.

And, yes, sometimes the number of students interested in taking the language can be rather small, said Mahire Yakup, a native Uighur speaker and linguistics doctoral student who serves in a part-time role as KU’s sole Uighur instructor. This semester, she’s teaching two students in the basic Uighur course and two students in the intermediate Uighur course. One of the students studying Uighur this semester is

Daniel McCarville, a master’s student studying political science from McCook, Neb. He got his undergraduate degree from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and became interested in the Central Asia region. “I came to KU because they teach Uighur,” he said. It’s similar to many other languages in the region, including Uzbek and Kyrgyz, so Please see LANGUAGES, page 2A


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