545 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(01/30/08 5:47am)
The Minnesota Twins reached a tentative agreement Tuesday to trade Johan Santana to the New York Mets.\nAfter months of deliberation, the Twins agreed part with two-time Cy Young Award winner to the Mets for outfielder Carlos Gomez, and pitchers Phil Humber, Deolis Guerra and Kevin Mulvey, two people familiar with the deal said, speaking on condition of anonymity because no announcement had been made.\n“If it’s true, obviously, you’re getting arguably the best pitcher in the game,” Mets third baseman David Wright said.\nThe next step is for the Mets to negotiate a contract extension with Santana, who is eligible for free agency after this season. Santana is owed $13.25 million this year and likely will seek an extension of at least five years worth $20 million annually.\nTeams are given 72-hour windows to reach agreements on contracts in tentative trades. If the Mets and Santana reach an agreement, the players being traded would have to pass physicals.\nThe Mets emerged as the top candidate for a trade after the winter meetings, when the New York Yankees withdrew their offer, which included pitchers Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy, and the Red Sox refused to improve their proposals, which included pitcher Jon Lester or outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury and prospects.\nTwins general manager Bill Smith called teams last weekend and asked them to make their best offers. Smith informed the Mets on Tuesday that he was accepting their proposal.\nA left-hander who turns 29 in March, Santana gives the Mets a replacement for Tom Glavine, who left New York to return to the Atlanta Braves. New York’s rotation also includes Pedro Martinez, John Maine, Orlando Hernandez and Oliver Perez.\nSantana is 93-44 with a 3.22 ERA in eight major league seasons, winning the AL Cy Young Award in 2004 and 2006. He has been less successful in the playoffs, going 1-3 with a 3.97 ERA.\n“For our younger pitchers to develop under a guy like Pedro, a guy like Johan, you can’t ask for any better situation,” Wright said. “He’s going to go out there and he’s going to give you seven or eight innings every five days and he’s going to get you a win. That’s just what it comes down to. I’ve gotten a chance to get to know him a little bit the past couple years. He seems like a great clubhouse guy. He’s going to fit in perfectly with the chemistry that we have.”\nWith Santana gone, there is a big opening in the Twins’ rotation. Francisco Liriano is on track to return after missing last season following elbow surgery, but Carlos Silva signed with Seattle as a free agent, leaving youngsters Scott Baker, Boof Bonser and Kevin Slowey as the starters with the most experience.\nHumber, a 25-year-old right-hander, has made one start and four relief appearances for the Mets during the past two years, and went 11-9 with a 4.27 ERA last season for Triple-A New Orleans. The 22-year-old Gomez batted .232 in 125 at-bats with New York last year and .275 with 19 steals in the minors.\nThe tentative agreement was first reported by USA Today on its Web site.
(11/29/07 5:54am)
Suggestive sculptures personify a slippery subject today at IU’s second annual Latexhibition in observation of World AIDS Day, which will be held Dec. 1. \nAn internationally recognized clinician will join the condom-laden art exhibit on campus, which recognizes the day that raises awareness of the AIDS epidemic and how to prevent the spread of the disease. \nDr. Brian Dodge, associate director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion, said World AIDS Day began in 1988. Events throughout the world, including those on campus today, are held this week to commemorate the day. \n“With the mission of our center being education, research and \ntraining, this is a great opportunity to share the work we do with community,” Dodge said.\nTo promote sexual health and education, the IU Center for Sexual Health Promotion is hosting the Latexhibition art contest from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. today in the Dogwood Room of the Indiana Memorial Union. Artists from the community create displays for the art exhibit that includes latex barrier devices to promote preventing sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. Dodge said the event attracts people from across the country, as well as the community, to be creative with latex to commemorate the event. \nCenter Research Coordinator Christopher Fisher, who organized Latexhibition, said the purpose of a condom-laced art show is to “promote sexual health through art.”\n“We invite students, faculty, staff and community members in Bloomington to design some kind of artistic piece out of latex, condoms, dental dams, anything made out of latex,” he said. \nWhile the Latexhibition’s Web site has photos of the winners’ entries from last year, Fisher said some entries were especially memorable. \n“One entry was a window box piece that had an all-American hotdog stand, with fries, soda and a hot dog wrapped in a condom,” he said. “The message of the piece was ‘Don’t forget to wrap your wiener!’”\nAlso featured that year was a Christmas tree made entirely out of condoms, a Magic Eye picture spelling the word “Safe” and a snowman made out of multiple latex products.\nA panel of judges will review the artwork and award monetary prizes to the best displays.\nIn addition to Latexhibition, the Center for Sexual Health Promotion is sponsoring a speech from Dr. David Malebranche, a sexual health researcher and clinician from the Emory University School of Medicine. \n“We usually just have one speaker a year, and this year we were really fortunate to have Dr. David Malebranche,” Dodge said.\nDodge said Malebranche is a professor in general medicine and only one of the few researchers sponsored by the National Institute of Health to conduct research on black bisexual men. He will deliver his speech, “Black Bisexual Men and HIV: Time to Think Deeper,” at 7 p.m. today in the Dogwood Room of the IMU. \n“He also has a clinical practice in which he routinely works with HIV-positive people in Atlanta on a diverse spectrum,” Dodge said. “He embodies everything I think of about the day: researching, treating people (and) educating about HIV/AIDS.”
(10/12/07 3:11am)
Neon Wrigleyville and Budweiser signs on the walls shine through the windows of Bloomington’s newest addition to the dining scene. The signs are the only way to spot the restaurant since its outdoor sign was stolen last week. \nA cluster of triangular red and white banners celebrating IU championship basketball teams hang on the walls, and dark wooden tables and chairs line the room, leading up to a window that opens up to the kitchen. Six high definition televisions are mounted high on the walls.\nWelcome to Billy’s Chicago Place.\nOn Monday the restaurant, located at 208 S. Dunn St., opened for business. Owned by 23-year-old IU graduate Billy Fenton, the menu of this Windy City-inspired restaurant features items such as burgers, Italian beef sandwiches and gyros. The main feature is the Chicago-style hot dog, which is covered with mustard, relish, onion, tomato, pickle and peppers.\nWith his brown hair sticking out of a Cubs baseball hat and clad in khaki shorts, a white sweatshirt and blue and white flip-flops, Fenton doesn’t dress like a businessman. But he certainly is one. \nAs an IU student, Fenton realized that many students come from Chicago, but Bloomington didn’t have any restaurants that served food from the city. Because Chicago is about four hours away from Bloomington, Fenton knows many people haven’t tried Chicago-style foods.\nFenton, who studied telecommunications and Spanish, said he has wanted to open a restaurant since his freshman year at IU. He said he is not drawn to a stereotypical office job, which is why he wanted to open a restaurant and bar. He likes working with people and is attracted to the excitement and “craziness” of the business.\nThe restaurant is open Sunday through Tuesday from 11 a.m. to 1 a.m., and until 3 a.m. Wednesday through Saturday. With only 15 employees, Fenton knows he will be working long hours.\nMost of the employees are students, waitress and senior Amy Larson said. \nAs a recent graduate, Fenton thinks being open late is an attractive feature. Billy’s Chicago Place serves beer from both the Chicago-based Goose Island and the local Upland breweries, as well as several other types of beer. The bar will offer daily specials, including $1 Old Style and Pabst Blue Ribbon on Tuesday nights.\nThe restaurant has about 115 seats, 60 outside and 55 inside. The inside is split into two parts, with one side for all-ages and the other for a bar. In order to thwart underage drinking, no beer will be allowed in the all-ages side after 10 p.m. It will, however, be permitted in the bar and outside areas. After 10 p.m., underage patrons will not be able to sit outside.\nFenton has been planning to open the restaurant since August 2006. He originally hoped to be open the restaurant this August, but construction and permits set him back. The building that houses the hot dog and burger joint used to be the location of Amused! clothing. Because it wasn’t a restaurant before, Fenton said the whole kitchen had to be installed, along with new bathrooms.\n“Everything has blown me away,” Fenton said. “You need a permit to get a permit in this town.”\nWhile the official grand opening won’t take place until Homecoming weekend, Larson said the business is “doing well.” Fenton said between 80 and 100 people visited the restaurant on Monday evening.\nSo far, the only Fenton’s marketing tactics have been flyers and word-of-mouth advertising. He may advertise more later, but for now he’s not worried. \n“There’s no better word of mouth than a college town like Bloomington,” Fenton said.
(09/06/07 2:58am)
On Sep. 1, alarmed that there were Arabic-speaking men who “looked mean” on her late night flight from San Diego to Chicago, Leigh Robbins demanded to get off the plane in order “to protect her kids.” Her commotion forced the men to be questioned and searched by American Airlines and airport security, with no probable cause other than Robbins’ unsubstantiated panic. \nNever mind that these seven Iraqi and Iraqi-American men were working as consultants at Camp Pendleton helping to train U.S. Marines. Never mind that one of the men said his mother was killed by Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime. Never mind that the airline and airport police officers probably violated these passengers’ Fourth Amendment rights.\nInstead, I’d like to focus momentarily on Leigh Robbins, the 35-year-old homemaker who raised the “alarm.” What made her do it? It’d be easy to chalk up her response to xenophobia, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Robbins is trying to contact the seven men to apologize and seemed genuinely frightened for her children, who were with her at the time. \nRather than Arab-hating, Robbins represents the fear-driven world that Americans inhabit these days. As she said, “I can’t describe how afraid I was. … How can you overreact when it’s your children?” This gut-wrenching fear caused her to toss all reason out the window and caused the airline to illegally search seven men for flying while Arabic. The same fear has caused our elected officials to strip us of our First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendment rights without so much as a peep of discontent. \nThe specter of 9/11, which has loomed for nearly 6 years, has brought our public discourse to a standstill. We can all relate when Robbins says, “All I could think of was 9/11.” I admit, it’s hard not to think about the risk of catastrophe on the horizon.\nAt the same time, think about all that this bunker mentality has cost us. All the goodwill the world showered upon us has evaporated after two bungled wars and a prickly foreign policy that is all stick and no carrot. We’ve lost all the aforementioned rights, along with any semblance of the rule of law. In six years, we’ve lost what it ever meant to be an American.\nAfter all this, the spirit of America still lives on in this story, but not in Leigh Robbins. It lives on in David Al Watan, one of the “very frightening” men who so scared Robbins. Born in Nasiriyah, Iraq, he fled the country, first to a refugee camp then to the United States, where he now works as a consultant for the Marine Corps. Humiliated, he did what a good American should do: he filed a complaint in a court of law. Al Watan stated, “I am an American. I love this country. I would die for it.” As long as Al Watan is willing to die for a country too scared to sit next to him on an airplane, there’s hope for us yet.
(08/29/07 1:14am)
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. – Colonial Williamsburg is more than costumed interpreters in tricorn hats making speeches about revolution or craftsmen demonstrating silversmithing and other trades.\nThe restored 18th-century capital of Virginia also features the nation’s first folk art museum, now in a new, roomier home.\nThe Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum reopened earlier this year after being closed during a two-year, $6.1 million expansion project that gave it 11 galleries in 11,200 square feet of exhibition space that can be adjusted to display a wide range of pieces.\nIts former location had 10,800 square feet of exhibition space divided among small, cutup rooms, making it much less flexible. \nAbby Aldrich Rockefeller, a driving force in the founding of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was one of the first collectors of folk art. She began buying work from non-academically trained artists in the early 20th century, when folk art was considered beneath collectors’ notice, said Ronald L. Hurst, Colonial Williamsburg’s vice president for collections and museums.\nShe gave her 424-piece collection to Colonial Williamsburg in the 1930s. Her husband, John D. Rockefeller Jr., was a principal benefactor in the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg, and she saw folk art “as a complement to what was going on here,” Hurst said.\nAbby Rockefeller died in 1948, and her husband built the folk art museum to honor her. It opened in 1957 in what was then a state-of-the-art facility.\nFive decades later, change was sorely needed.\nThe small rooms couldn’t accommodate large exhibits and the fluorescent lighting made paintings look washed out. And attendance had fallen as fewer people were willing to make their way to the museum, two blocks away from Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Area, Hurst said.\nThe new museum was built in what had been a walled outdoor garden adjoining the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, one of Colonial Williamsburg’s more popular offerings. The DeWitt museum is close to the Historic Area and to the downtown Williamsburg shopping district, Merchants Square.\nThe new space has more vibrant colors on the walls and better lighting that makes the artworks glow. In one room featuring landscapes and cityscapes, louvers on the windows adjust automatically to retain the ambiance of natural light.\n“Again and again, people have walked in, seen their old favorites and said, ‘Have you cleaned all the paintings?’ “ Hurst said. “The answer is ‘no.’ They are simply properly lighted now.”\nThe new space also has room to show off more of the museum’s collection, which has grown to more than 5,000 objects from the 18th century, when Virginia was a British colony, as well as the 19th and 20th centuries. Currently, about 510 pieces are on view.\nThe exhibits show off a wide variety of the museum’s holdings, including silhouette portraits, quilts, sculptures, stoneware and musical instruments such as a carved combination rhinoceros and hippo –“Hippoceros” – that has a phonograph embedded in its body.\nA gallery of painted furniture shows how artisans painted cheap materials like pine and poplar to look like more expensive wood, such as mahogany.\nAn exhibition on mourning art explores honoring deceased loved ones and heroes. It includes paintings, medals and quilts created to honor President George Washington after his death in 1799 and memorial pictures done in needlework by schoolgirls.\nOne exhibition, “Down on the Farm,” is focused on children. It follows the story of Prince, a carved wooden dog, as he explores the countryside. The story is told in verse in book pages mounted at kid-level and is illustrated by pieces such as wooden horses and weather vane roosters.\nThe biggest piece in the museum is an entire room saved from an 1830s North Carolina country house that was falling apart.\nAnother gallery features portraits. Most of the subjects are not famous. One of Hurst’s favorites shows a woman named Deborah Glen, painted in 1739, just before her marriage with a wreath symbolizing her virtue.\n“The staff all tease me because they know whenever there’s a portraiture exhibit, they have to put Deborah in,” Hurst said. “Or I come in and say, ‘Where’s Deborah?’”
(05/25/07 1:58am)
IU security guard Bryan E. Kern, 39, was arrested May 11 for a misdemeanor battery charge and impersonating a law enforcer.\nOn May 8 at 2:22 a.m., Bloomington Police DepartmentBloomington Police Department Officer Walter Harris was dispatched on a call for an assault. Harris was told two suspects in a silver Jeep were leaving Steak ‘n Shake, 1919 N. College Ave., going southbound on northbound College Avenue.\nHarris stopped the Jeep at 17th and College. IUPD Officer Brian Oliger informed Harris that both suspects in the silver Jeep were IU security guards. Oliger stated Kern was wearing a black uniform with the security patch on shoulder, a black duty belt and a shoulder microphone.\nAccording to police reports, Kern stated he pulled into the drive-through at Steak 'n Shake and asked the employee at the window for two separate orders. The employee explained company policy allows only one order per vehicle. Kern stated he pulled up to the window where they talked again, and when he refused to make an order, she slammed the window closed.\nKern then parked his vehicle and walked into the restaurant, where he walked up to the employee and asked her why she had an attitude.\nKern said that while speaking with her, another employee intervened and she began bumping him with his body. After she told him to leave the serving line, Kern said she pushed him and he left the establishment.\nHarris went to Steak 'n Shake to speak with the employees who were there. The employee who had been at the drive-through window said Kern refused to place an order and came into the establishment, pointing his finger in her face.\nThe victim said another employee intervened and told Kern to leave the service area, and if he didn’t, she was going to call the police. Kern reportedly replied, “I am a police officer.”\nAfter Kern stated he was a police officer, he put his hands on her chest and pushed her away.\nA witness stated she saw Kern come into the restaurant and place his finger in the victim’s face, saying he was a police officer and she should never be rude to him.\nThe witness also said Kern yelled at the employee who intervened and he did shove her.\nIUPD Capt. Jerry Minger said Kern was suspended immediately with no pay.
(05/24/07 12:57am)
A man exposed himself on 10th Street and Indiana Avenue on May 19 at approximately 10:47 p.m, BPD Sgt. Jeff Canada said, reading from a police report. The complainant was walking east on 10th Street going toward Indiana Avenue when a man pulled down his shorts and began to dance in front of her, Canada said.\nShe screamed, and he ran behind Yogi’s Bar and Grill. Police officers did not locate anyone afterward.\nThe man was described as being in his mid-40s, 5 feet 7 inches tall, extremely skinny with a light-colored beard, short blonde hair on the side of his head and balding.
(05/17/07 4:00am)
Instructor: WEEKEND
OBJECTIVE: Arm you with a quick list of what's hot (and cool) this summer.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: We know it's not fancy. And we know it's not everything there is to do this summer. But hey, what else have you got that will help keep your feet moving and your stomach full all summer long?
DON'T FORGET: IU takes a strict stance on plagiarism. To review these policies feel free to consult the IU Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities and Conduct at:
http://dsa.indianan.edu/Code/
(05/14/07 6:07pm)
BLACKSBURG, Va. – The image most people have of Kevin Sterne is harrowing: a photo showing a tourniquet wrapped around his wounded leg as rescue workers rushed him out of Virginia Tech’s Norris Hall.\nBut on Saturday, there was a new image of the 22-year-old former Eagle Scout, jubilant and full of life as he limped across the stage at the university’s Cassell Coliseum using a crutch and displaying a grin to accept his degree in electrical engineering.\nThe crowd rose to its feet and cheered Sterne in one of the most poignant moments of the morning commencement ceremony at the College of Engineering.\nIt was one of several campus ceremonies in which individual colleges and departments handed out diplomas to students, including posthumous degrees to those killed in the April 16 attack at a dormitory and classroom building.\nThe College of Engineering was hit particularly hard, with 11 students and three professors killed in the shooting.\nEngineering Dean Richard Benson was overwhelmed, his voice breaking at times, as he spoke about the slain. \n“Forgive me,” Benson said quietly as he paused to collect himself while commemorating professor Kevin Granata, who was shot in a hallway as he tried to save students during the rampage in which 33 people were killed.\nThe widow of G.V. Loganathan accepted a teaching award in honor of her husband, a man Benson said students fondly regarded as the best professor they ever had, the kindest person they ever met and incredibly wise.\nAnother slain professor, Dr. Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, was remembered by the dean for his “profound courage” in blocking his classroom door so his students could escape out the windows. He was among those killed by student gunman Seung-Hui Cho, who took his own life.\nProfessors, students, their families and friends wept openly as those attending the political science department’s ceremony were asked to remain silent while a bell chimed for each of their nine slain students as their posthumous degrees were awarded.\nProfessor Edward Weisband said he has vivid memories of each of them in class, “attentive, bright, caring.”\nHe promised their families that their children’s empty seats “shall always remain in any class I teach.” \nAs the overflow crowd rose to honor several of the department’s six injured students who were able to attend, Weisband said, “We take inexpressible joy in your survival.”\nAt an English department ceremony, nearly all of the 135 graduating students and many faculty members stood when asked if they knew someone killed or injured in the shooting spree. The crowd of several hundred rose and applauded loudly as posthumous degrees were awarded to sophomore Ross Abdallah Alameddine and senior Ryan Clark who was one of two students killed in a dormitory before the gunman moved to the classroom building.\nEnglish professor Nikki Giovanni read “We are Virginia Tech,”a poem she penned hours after the rampage that infused a campus convocation with strength the day after the shootings. She was inspired, she said Saturday, by the desire to convey that “what we do is more important than what is done to us.”
(04/30/07 4:00am)
The IU softball team’s hopes of making the postseason took a huge hit this weekend when they dropped a pair of doubleheaders to Big Ten foes Penn State and Ohio State. \nThe matches were opportunities for IU to knock a team like Penn State out of position and propel the Hoosiers into one of the final eight spots needed to qualify for the Big Ten tournament.\nIU softball coach Stacey Phillips was said that even though IU has struggled, the season is still not over.\n“We still have a week left in our season,” Phillips said. “There has been a lot of ups and downs this season. Lots of ups early.”\nPenn State pitcher Ashley Esparza allowed only four hits and struck out 11 as she led the Nittany Lions (23-18, 4-5 in Big Ten) to a victory in Game 1 of the doubleheader. \nIn the second game of the series, walks and home runs were the theme as Penn State defeated IU 14-1. \nThe Hoosiers ran into Big Ten leader Ohio State in the second doubleheader and discovered why the Buckeyes are one of the elite teams in the conference. \nOhio State used strong pitching to sweep the Hoosiers 5-2 in the first game and 9-0 in the second. In Game 1, Ohio State’s Kim Reeder allowed two runs, one earned, on four hits in 5 2/3 innings of work to get the victory. In Game 2, Buckeye pitcher Jamee Juarez showed no letdown after earning Big Ten Pitcher of the Week accolades. Juarez allowed only one IU hit and walked one batter in shutting out the Hoosiers. It was a day when the Buckeyes’ pitchers were hitting their spots and the Hoosiers were caught fishing.\n“Good pitchers get ahead so they can throw their pitches, not the batters’ pitches,” Phillips said.\nThe Hoosiers hopes of making the Big Ten tournament were all but dashed with the doubleheader sweep. All the Hoosiers can do now is look forward to a pair of games with arch-rival Purdue to end the season. \n“We’ve got nothing to lose right now,” Phillips said. “We’ve got a competitive group of players. You can throw the records out the window when it’s IU and Purdue.”\nThe lone bright spot during the weekend was sophomore Monica Wright’s etching her name into the IU softball record books. Wright entered the top 10 in single-season rankings in both games started (30) and innings pitched (231). She also moved into a tie for fifth with 45 appearances on the season. \n“We were fortunate Monica wanted to be a Hoosier,” Phillips said. “She filled a large void; we really needed her. Her work ethic is one of a true competitor. She has meant a great deal to us.”\nThe Hoosiers travel to West Lafayette to face Purdue on Saturday before wrapping up the season Sunday at home against the Boilermakers.
(04/20/07 4:00am)
The historic Bloomington restaurant where tables and chairs once sat quickly became a blank canvas for nine Master of Fine Arts printmaking students.\nNoel W. Anderson, Paul Bohensky III, Joshua Brennan, Lee Busick, Julian Hensarling, Nate Herman Kuznia, Young Suk Lee, Dora Lisa Rosenbaum and Jeremy Sweet embarked on their journeys with little more than tools, paint and open minds when they started work on their exhibit, “Pre-Demolition Installation Exhibition,” just a few weeks ago.\n“It’s a show with the graduate printmaking department in conjunction with our graduate seminar class, based around installation and printmaking,” Hensarling said.\nTheir exhibition is set to open Friday at Ladyman’s Cafe, 122 E. Kirkwood Ave. The cafe is a historic restaurant that was closed last December after more than 50 years of business and will soon be torn down.\n“We are having the freedom of a space that is going to be destroyed to do whatever we want, which is kind of a unique opportunity in the art world,” Sweet said. “Most galleries don’t want you cutting into their walls and painting directly all over their floor.” \nThe artists are completing the exhibition as a requirement for their seminar course. Their professor, Althea Murphy-Prize, organized the event. Although this is the first year anything like this has been done, Murphy-Prize said she hopes it will become a trend that will continue for years.\n“I think it is an exciting opportunity. Any opportunity to have a space not only to make an installation piece, but to react to the space and allow your work to interact with and react to the space is always exciting,” Murphy-Prize said. “What I’ve enjoyed that they’ve done is a lot of them have thought about the history of the space and tried to incorporate that into their own conceptual ideas.”\nThe graduate students found out they would be working with the former cafe just three weeks ago and have been there only two. About a week and a half was spent cleaning, clearing out the space, repainting walls and tearing up carpet to create a clean area the artists could work with.\n“We came in here with a pretty blank slate. We had a couple general ideas of things we would have been interested in trying, but for the most part the majority of the work in here started the moment we walked in the door,” Hensarling said.\nBefore they could begin, permission to use the space had to be granted. Murphy-Prize contacted Heartland Group owner Travis Vencel, who Murphy-Prize said has an appreciation for the arts and was excited to see the space put to use.\nEach of the artists have individual pieces at the cafe. One titled “Pie in the Sky” features various figures drawn by Bohensky alongside a hanging piece of pie that when viewed from the outside of the window can be seen within the figures. Busick contributed a piece focusing on the former cook of the cafe and the struggles he had when it closed. \nBrennan’s piece focuses on the perspective of what the actual cafe looked like and how different people interpret it. Kuznia used the idea of Ladyman’s famous pie to create a piece portraying 290 pieces of feces symbolizing the death of the cafe, along with the death of food in general. \n“I hope to create a unique visual experience that people don’t traditionally get to see, based on scale and technique and taking it out of the context of the newspaper and making it larger than life,” Sweet said about his piece, a blown-up comic strip drawn directly on the wall, inspired by the large number of people that would sit in Ladyman’s and read the paper.\nThe artists are eagerly anticipating the opening and reception, taking place from 8 to 11 p.m. tomorrow evening.\n“We are on the strip where everyone is going to be hanging out for Little 5. Stop by,” Anderson said. “We are the best artists in town. I guarantee it.”
(04/19/07 4:00am)
The nicest thing I can say about "Disturbia" is that I might have liked it more had I seen it when I was 11, but even at that age I think would have been hesitant to admit that I was at all entertained by such a lame cinematic offering. Other than the absolute climax of the film, "Disturbia" is not suspenseful, let alone scary. \nThe plot consists of the tired "the guy living next door hitting on my mom is an alien/psycho/vampire" stock story line used by countless films and young adult novels. \nBut it has what I am sure was meant to be a fresh, "contemporary" angle in that the protagonist (Shia LaBeouf from "Even Stevens") is confined to his home and spends most of his time spying on the neighborhood through a pair of binoculars. Of course, when you remember how long ago Hitchcock's "Rear Window" came out, the freshness of the concept really starts to wilt. \nI couldn't shake the feeling that the dialogue was slightly too forced, the acting a little less than good and the overall look and feel of the entire production a little too much like something I would expect to find on the Disney Channel. And that was even before I recognized it was former Disney star LaBeouf in the lead. I understand that every actor has to start somewhere and I get excited when I see a young actor grow. The problem is that with "Disturbia," LaBeouf has not grown and the worst part is it looks like he was really trying. There are a couple of moments in the film where LaBeouf tries to showcase his acting, moments in which the shot focuses in on his face and lingers just a bit too long as he attempts to express an emotion.\nThere is a bit of gore but very little action. Apparently it is OK for a PG-13 film to get to show the serial killer's workshop and his dead victims as long as the kids don't get to see any actual killing. There is really no action of the sexual kind either, though it is certainly promised throughout the film as the relationship with the girl next door develops. Ultimately, I'm hesitatant to recommend "Disturbia" even as a film to see with a younger sibling. It seems too nasty for really little kids and contains too little entertainment for anyone else.
(04/17/07 4:00am)
BLACKSBURG, Va. – A gunman massacred 32 people at Virginia Tech in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history Monday, cutting down his victims in two attacks two hours apart before the university could grasp what was happening and warn students.\nThe bloodbath ended with the gunman committing suicide, bringing the death toll to 33 and stamping the campus in the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains with unspeakable tragedy, perhaps forever.\nInvestigators gave no motive for the attack. The gunman’s name was not immediately released, and it was not known if he was a student.\n“Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions,” Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said. “The university is shocked and indeed horrified.”\nBut he was also faced with difficult questions about the university’s handling of the emergency and whether it did enough to warn students and protect them after the first burst of gunfire. Some students bitterly complained they got no warning from the university until an e-mail that arrived more than two hours after the first shots rang out.\nWielding two handguns and carrying multiple clips of ammunition, the killer opened fire about 7:15 a.m. on the fourth floor of West Ambler Johnston, a high-rise coed dormitory, then stormed Norris Hall, a classroom building a half-mile away on the other side of the 2,600-acre campus. Some of the doors at Norris Hall were found chained from the inside, apparently by the gunman.\nTwo people died in a dorm room, and 31 others were killed in Norris Hall, including the gunman, who put a bullet in his head. At least 15 people were hurt, some seriously.\nAt an evening news conference, Police Chief Wendell Flinchum refused to dismiss the possibility that a co-conspirator or second shooter was involved. He said police had interviewed a “person of interest” in the dorm shooting who knew one of the victims, but he declined to give details.\n“I’m not saying there is someone out there, and I’m not saying there is someone who is not,” Flinchum said. Ballistics tests will help explain what happened, he said.\nSheree Mixell, a spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the evidence was being moved to the agency’s national lab in Annandale. At least one firearm was turned over, she said.\nMixell would not comment on what types of weapons were used or whether the gunman was a student.\nStudents jumped from windows in panic. Young people and faculty members carried out some of the wounded themselves, without waiting for ambulances to arrive. Many found themselves trapped behind chained and padlocked doors. SWAT team members with helmets, flak jackets and assault rifles swarmed over the campus. A student used his cell-phone camera to record the sound of bullets echoing through a stone building.\nAlec Calhoun, a 20-year-old junior, said he was in a 9:05 a.m. mechanics class when he and classmates heard a thunderous sound from the classroom next door – “what sounded like an enormous hammer.”\nScreams followed an instant later, and the banging continued. When students\n realized the sounds were gunshots, Calhoun said, he started flipping over desks for hiding places. Others dashed to the windows of the second-floor classroom, kicking out the screens and jumping from the ledge of Room 204, he said.\n“I must’ve been the eighth or ninth person who jumped, and I think I was the last,” said Calhoun, of Waynesboro, Va. He landed in a bush and ran.\nCalhoun said that the two students behind him were shot, but that he believed they survived. Just before he climbed out the window, Calhoun said, he turned to look at the professor, who had stayed behind, perhaps to block the door.\nThe instructor was killed, he said.\nTrey Perkins, who was sitting in a German class in Norris Hall, told The Washington Post that the gunman barged into the room at about 9:50 a.m. and opened fire for about 1 1/2 minutes, squeezing off about 30 shots.\nThe gunman first shot the professor in the head and then fired on the students, Perkins said. The gunman was about 19 years old and had a “very serious but very calm look on his face,” he said.\n“Everyone hit the floor at that moment,” said Perkins, 20, of Yorktown, Va., a sophomore studying mechanical engineering. “And the shots seemed like it lasted forever.”\nStudents said that there were no public-address announcements after the first shots. Many said they learned of the first shooting in an e-mail that arrived shortly before the gunman struck again.\n“I think the university has blood on their hands because of their lack of action after the first incident,” said Billy Bason, 18, who lives on the seventh floor of the dorm.\nSteger defended the university’s conduct, saying authorities believed that the shooting at the dorm was a domestic dispute and mistakenly thought the gunman had fled the campus.\n“We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur,” he said.\nSteger emphasized that the university closed off the dorm after the first attack and decided to rely on e-mail and other electronic means to spread the word, but said that with 11,000 people driving onto campus first thing in the morning, it was difficult to get the word out.\nHe said that before the e-mail went out, the university began telephoning resident advisers in the dorms and sent people to knock on doors. Students were warned to stay inside and away from the windows.\n“We can only make decisions based on the information you had at the time. You don’t have hours to reflect on it,” \nSteger said.\nSome students and Laura Wedin, a student programs manager at Virginia Tech, said their first notification came in an e-mail at 9:26 a.m., more than two hours after the first shooting.\nThe e-mail had few details. It read: “A shooting incident occurred at West Amber Johnston earlier this morning. Police are on the scene and are investigating.” The message warned students to be cautious and contact police about \nanything suspicious.\nJunior Everett Good said of the lack of warning: “Someone’s head is definitely going to roll over that.”\nEdmund Henneke, associate dean of engineering, said that he was in the classroom building and that he and colleagues had just read the e-mail advisory and were discussing it when he heard gunfire. He said that moments later SWAT team members rushed them downstairs, but that the doors were chained and padlocked from the inside. They left the building through an unlocked construction area.\nUntil Monday, the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history was in Killeen, Texas, in 1991, when George Hennard plowed his pickup truck into a Luby’s Cafeteria and shot 23 people to death, then himself.
(04/04/07 3:00pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>In the back seat of a Ford Explorer, Eric Gordon and his 9-year-old brother Aaron sip Baja Blast Moutain Dew and snicker at a DVD that’s blasting rap music. It’s Sunday, and for the Gordon family that means basketball. Then again, for the Gordons, just about every day means basketball.The destination today is Municipal Gardens on the north side of Indianapolis – the site of Aaron’s park league championship game. When they get there, the regular family files out of their regular SUV and embarks on a regular Sunday afternoon. But what’s extraordinary about this ordinary scene is the 6-foot-4, 18-year-old with a man’s body and a boy’s face. It’s the great Eric Gordon – the one they call “E.J..” He’s the No. 2-rated high school basketball player in the nation, and the leading candidate for Indiana’s Mr. Basketball. Just a few weeks ago he dropped 43 points on Michael Jordan’s kids during a nationally televised game.You wouldn’t think any of this, though, watching an oversized high schooler slap hands with family friends then take a seat along the sidelines. As Eric Gordon Jr. leans over to hug his aunt and grandma, you have to remind yourself: This might be the man who restores the glory to IU basketball. Just like his father before him, and just like his little brother these days, E.J.’s basketball career started in the historic gym at Municipal Gardens. As a 5-year-old, he played in the 7-8 year-old division. At 8, he jumped up to the 11-12 year-old bracket, and by fifth grade he was already playing in national tournaments through the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU).None of this surprised Eric Sr. too much. E.J. began showing signs of his gifts almost immediately after his birth on Christmas Day, 1988. He took his first steps at six months and was walking on his own three months before his first birthday.“We always knew he was coordinated,” Eric Sr. says, “We just never knew how coordinated he would turn out to be.”It was around fifth grade when the Gordons finally found out. The family was in Dallas, Texas for a national tournament, and E.J.’s squad had a game against another AAU team from Arizona. E.J. had never been much of a scorer, but rather a true point guard. But on this day he went off for 43 points, his team won the game, and they eventually finished second overall.“That was probably the highest scoring game I ever had as a kid,” E.J. says. “And that was at a national event.” Just two years later, as a seventh grader, E.J. got a letter from Wabash College asking him to consider playing basketball for their school. It was an exciting moment – getting recruited before being a teenager – but there were would be many, many, many more letters to come.Watching Aaron play supports the existence of a basketball gene. The youngest Gordon pulls down boards and sinks mid-range jumpers, inspiring E.J. to admit that his little brother is actually a better shooter and rebounder than he was at the same age. It’s hard to think of E.J. ever having struggled with his shot, as just two nights before he drained threes from four feet beyond the arc like a sniper shooting at tin cans.With Aaron’s team losing in the final quarter, the youngest Gordon sneaks a glance at his older brother, and E.J. gently lowers and raises his large, outstretched hands. He whispers a little as he mouths the words: “calm down.” It is reminiscent of the final moments of E.J.’s sectional semi-final. With the victory secured, E.J. glanced up to his father who pointed back at him and nodded in approval.Eric Gordon Sr. has always served two roles in the life of the child who bares his name: father and coach. Eric Sr. was the first person to hand his son a basketball, and he’s been teaching E.J. what to do with it ever since. “In some ways, he’s always going to be my coach,” E.J. says. “Even if he isn’t out there on the court.” Eric Sr. set the tone early for his son, coaching him at every level up until high school. As a fifth grader on the AAU team that finished second place nationally, E.J. would always be matched up against the biggest, meanest sixth grader in practices. Eric Sr. would run full-court, one-on-one drills and every time E.J. looked to him to call a foul, he would just look the other way. “That is when (E.J.) took things to another level,” Eric Sr. says. “He’s just been there ever since.”That toughness was put to the test this past year, but it didn’t come in the form of a big, mean sixth grader. It came in the form of a phone call. During his junior season, E.J. had verbally committed to play college basketball for Bruce Weber at the University of Illinois. The location of the school along with Weber’s track record developing guards weighed most heavily on E.J.’s decision to choose Illinois over schools like Arizona, Notre Dame, and Duke. IU didn’t make the short list mostly because the coaching controversy surrounding then-head coach Mike Davis left E.J. with little assurance of who he would be playing for by the time he got to campus.But that March the landscape changed when IU hired Kelvin Sampson to replace Davis as head basketball coach. Sampson, in turn, hired Jeff Meyer as an assistant. Back in the ’80s and ’90s Meyer coached at Liberty University, and during that stint he brought in a defensive-minded forward named Eric Gordon – soon to father a son of the same name...In the span of just a few weeks, not only did E.J. come to know what coaches he would play for at IU; he literally knew one of the coaches he would play for at IU.Sampson had recruited E.J. while at Oklahoma, and after arriving in Bloomington he got in touch with E.J.’s high school coach Doug Mitchell. Considering their original doubts about IU had been removed, the Gordons felt it couldn’t hurt giving their in-state school a second look. This past fall E.J. visited IU, and after informing coach Weber that he was talking to the Hoosiers, the bidding war was officially on. Weber began calling more frequently and even paid a visit to E.J.’s mother, Denise, at Warren Central High School where she teaches business education.The back and forth game intensified over time, as each school continually “showed E.J. the love,” as Eric Sr. put it. The ordeal weighed heavily on the high school senior – even affecting his play on the court. But in the end, analyzing a worst-case scenario helped him realize his best-case scenario.“Let’s just say you’re having a god-awful day,” Eric Sr. told his son. “If you woke up that morning, and things are just bad, what place do you feel most comfortable? At Indiana, you’ve got maybe a thousand students who went to North Central, or one of the public schools where you grew up. You’ve got your buddy A.J. (Ratliff), he went to North Central, and he knows what you’re going through. You can easily call your parents, and they can zip down in 45 minutes. You can talk to the coaches, any of them, and they know the family pretty good. You can talk to the assistant coach – he coached your dad. When you think of it that way … It’s a no brainer.”All of a sudden, the decision was simple, but the predicament was far from it. E.J. had given coach Weber his word. A call had to be made, and E.J. wanted to be the one to make it. “I was proudest (of E.J.) when he said he wanted to be the one to make that call,” Denise Gordon says. “He stood up and took that responsibility all on his own. He handled it like a champ.”On Oct. 13, 2006, E.J. made the trip down to Bloomington, signed his letter of intent to play basketball at IU, and served as the guest of honor at that evening’s Hoosier Hysteria – the official kickoff to the basketball season. That night Eric Sr. sat with E.J. and had the pleasure of hearing his son’s name – his name – chanted by 14,000 of Indiana basketball’s most avid fans. His boy had found a home. The cranking sound of the buzzer echoes through the tiny gym at Municipal Gardens, and Aaron’s team has lost the championship game. Eric Sr. is quick to point out that the opposing team has more fifth graders than Aaron’s team, but that hardly brightens the mood of a 9-year-old.After receiving his second place plaque, Aaron slumps next to E.J.. No words are spoken. The two just sit there silently. E.J. then places his big, left hand on his brother’s slender, right knee.No more than a couple seconds pass before a woman approaches E.J. and explains how happy she is that he changed his mind – she’s been an IU fan her entire life. Then come the photograph seekers, the autograph seekers, and the general supporters who tell E.J. to, “keep up the good work.” Next thing Aaron knows, he is posing for pictures with his brother and members of the team that just beat him. E.J.’s grandmother, Carolyn, laughs and boasts about her celebrity grandson. On the way out of the gym, the family passes the display window by the front door that contains signed photos from former Div. I basketball players like Chris Thomas, Eric Montross, and Steve Alford. On the top shelf, front and center, is a framed picture of E.J. that’s signed: “Thanks for helping me develop my skills – Eric Gordon.”To deny the attention, the publicity, the hoop-la, would be to deny reality. When you’re 18-years-old and they sell your T-shirt in the lobby of a high school basketball game, you’re kind of a big deal – especially when that shirt features the Michael Jordan logo and reads “Air Gordon.”“When you first start going through it, it’s fun,” E.J. says. “Everybody is giving you compliments and telling you how great you are. But over a certain point it can change you mentally and change how you play.”When it gets to be too much, there is one, simple solution that keeps things from getting to E.J.’s head and that, he says, is, “My Dad.”Eric Sr. doesn’t keep his son grounded by force, but rather by reminding him of his roots and reinforcing his goals. After all, beneath all the signatures and smiling photographs is still just a kid who’s favorite thing to do is hang out with childhood friends from his quiet neighborhood just beyond the bustle of central Indianapolis.The reality is, E.J. has never lifted a weight but his mother will tell you he eats like a horse. In fact, the biggest trouble E.J.’s ever found himself in came when he ate his father’s Steak ‘n’ Shake.“I was starving,” Eric Sr. says. “That really pissed me off.”E.J. will tell you that life is “all about being happy.” His Facebook profile is brief, but it ends with: “I think I’m a good person to talk to and be around. And I love to meet new people.”That’s where E.J. comes from in life, but the attention, now, is all about where he’s going. He says his goals are to win the Big Ten, and hopefully win an NCAA championship. On a personal level, E.J. would like the chance to be National Freshman of the Year and maybe even a candidate for National Player of the Year. E.J. stipulates all of these with “hopefully,” but his father is quick to remove any doubt about IU’s prospects for next season – on the lone condition that junior forward D.J White returns for his senior season.“I see no reason IU wouldn’t be a top-five team preseason and they would compete for a national championship,” he says. “There is just no way in my mind that I can see anything different.”On the way home from the game Aaron and E.J. return to giggling at the DVD that pumps out rap music. They’re watching Hoops Mix Tape, a collection of high school highlight reels from the likes of Vince Carter, Kobe Bryant, and Lebron James. After a couple minutes, E.J. says, “play mine.” They shuffle past clips from current high school phenoms Derrick Rose and O.J. Mayo, and get to the section simply titled “Eric Gordon.” Draped in his brother’s massive arm, Aaron grins ear-to-ear as the four-minute montage ends with a scene from E.J.’s AAU game last summer. E.J. gets the ball on a fast break, and some poor kid thinks about defending him before E.J. skies and dunks over the sap – thighs to eyes – leaving his opponent heaped on the floor.It’s surreal to think that somewhere else in the country, some random basketball fan has probably shaken his head and laughed at this dunk, calling it “sick” or “ridiculous.” It’s surreal because at this moment, Aaron can fall over, laugh, and think to himself, “That’s my brother.” But as the clip ends, the surreal once again becomes real. E.J. asks Aaron for some of the candy he got after the game, and the two start to argue over which clip to watch next. Suddenly, there’s no need for reminders about potential or restoring Hoosier glory.It’s just a regular family, in their regular SUV, on a regular Sunday afternoon.
(03/20/07 4:00am)
NEW YORK – Three police officers surrendered Monday to face charges in a shooting that killed an unarmed groom on his wedding day that stirred outrage around the city.\nThe officers were accused of firing nearly 50 shots at three young men in a car outside a nightclub, killing Sean Bell and seriously wounding two of his friends. Two other officers involved were not indicted.\nThe eight-count indictment charges detectives Michael Oliver, who fired 31 times, and Gerard Isnora, a decorated undercover officer who fired 11 shots, with first-degree and second-degree manslaughter, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said Monday.\nThose charges are classified as violent felonies with mandated jail time if the men are convicted. The maximum punishment for manslaughter is 25 years, Brown said.\nDetective Marc Cooper, who fired four shots, faces a misdemeanor endangerment charge, Brown said. The indictment says he fired a bullet that passed “through a window of an occupied AirTrain station.”\nOliver also was charged with endangerment in connection with a bullet that went through the window of an occupied house. All three were suspended without pay.\nTwo other policemen were not charged but have been placed on desk duty along with their supervisor as the NYPD continues its internal investigation.\n“We are a long way from a conviction,” said defense attorney Philip Karasyk, who represents Isnora.\nThe case renewed allegations that the NYPD is trigger-happy, as well as accusations of racism. Bell was black, as are the other victims; three of the officers are black, and two are white.\nThe Rev. Al Sharpton said at a news conference with the wounded men and Bell’s fiance that the indictment “falls short of what we want. Clearly, all five officers should be charged; all officers acted in concert.”\n“This case, at its best, is a return to grief for all of those involved,” he said.\nMayor Michael Bloomberg acknowledged that some people would be disappointed in the grand jury’s decision.\n“We have to respect the result of our justice system,” he said. “Although a trial will decide whether crimes were committed in this case, day in and day out the NYPD does an incredible job under very difficult circumstances.”\nMonday morning, the three policemen surrendered to the NYPD’s Bureau of Internal Affairs, then were whisked to the Queens court complex. A phalanx of plainclothes law enforcers and family members surrounded them as they were rushed into the building for fingerprinting and processing before their arraignment later Monday.\nBrown said he would oppose any attempts to get a change of venue for the trial.\n“This is where public opinion is equally divided, in my opinion,” he said.\nGrand jurors declined to indict on the more serious counts of second-degree murder, and attempted murder, or the lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide.
(03/09/07 5:00am)
Few can argue against technology improving education. But some professors worry its expanded use is starting to have a negative impact in the classroom.\nMany students enjoy the advantages of using a laptop in the classroom, but some admit it offers them the opportunity to get off-track in class.\n“I’m a slacker sometimes and space off in class,” senior Kyle Telechan said. “I use (my laptop) to network with my friends in class.”\nBut many students who use laptops in class – even those like Telechan who say they “space off” – claim it makes the learning experience much simpler.\n“If the professor says something I don’t understand, I will go on Wikipedia and look up whatever I didn’t understand,” Telechan said. “If I miss class notes I can also e-mail my friends (who use laptops to take notes) and get the notes a lot easier than (copying) paper notes.”\nIn an unscientific survey of 202 IU faculty and staff members conducted by the Indiana Daily Student, almost all said laptops can distract from class lessons, and many have personally witnessed distracted students. But most of the surveyed faculty and staff members said they believe some students are using laptops for classroom purposes.\n“I am sure that (laptops) are being used for other purposes rather than class by some students,” instructor Jeanie Alter said in an e-mail. “However, there are others that take notes and look up topics relevant to class.\n“I have even asked students to look up an answer to a question for me. It was just another way to keep them engaged and taking responsibility for their learning.”
(02/22/07 5:00am)
KISSIMMEE, Fla. – Need a reliable starting pitcher? Chuck James is your man.\nLooking for someone to install a set of double-pane windows or put in a new door? He can handle that, too.\nIn a throwback to the era when baseball players routinely worked during the offseason to make ends meet, James worked until January at a blue-collar job, getting up at daybreak and not returning home until long after the sun went down.\nNever mind that he was coming off a strong rookie season with the Atlanta Braves. Never mind that he now makes a six-figure salary. For James, it just seemed natural to return to the job that he’s had during past offseasons.\n“I don’t like being in the house very much,” said James, who went 11-4 with a 3.78 ERA in 2006. “Working a job keeps my mind off baseball and gets me out into the real world a little bit. I realize this is kind of my vacation. I treat my other job as work.”\nThe 25-year-old left-hander was employed by a family friend who contracts with Lowe’s to install windows and doors. It was hardly a glamorous job – James had to set his alarm for 6 a.m. so he could make a long drive through Atlanta’s notorious traffic to meet his crew, clean out the truck and pick up supplies.\nOnly then would he actually begin a project, staying at it as long as there was daylight. James would usually get home around 8 p.m., giving him a couple of hours to eat dinner, work out and spend time with his new wife before he headed to bed.\n“Putting in windows is kind of easy,” he said. “Doors are a little tougher. You’ve got to make sure you get them straight and all.”\nIf there’s anyone who appreciates the perks of being a major league player, it’s James. He can’t believe that someone is always standing by in the clubhouse, ready to take care of his every whim. Heck, he’s still amazed at how many pairs of cleats everyone gets.\n“I’m not going to say we came from the poor part of town. We did all right. But we got a pair of cleats and a glove, and we had to go out there and play all year,” said James, who grew up in a rural area northwest of Atlanta. “When I got two pairs of cleats in the minor leagues, I was pretty pumped up about that. When I came into spring training this year, it was like Christmas all over again.”\nWith his homespun demeanor and simple approach to life, James is a constant source of amusement in the Braves clubhouse.\n“Did you hear about the time he was bitten by a snake?” manager Bobby Cox asked reporters.\nJames recounted how he was walking through the woods at 4 o’clock in the morning – that’s another story – when he felt a piercing pain in his right leg. He took another step and felt an even stronger pain. Finally getting into the light, he saw one fang mark on the outside on the ankle, two more on the inside and blood pouring everywhere.\nThere wasn’t a hospital nearby, and it didn’t matter anyway because heavy rain had turned the road into a muddy mess. One of his friends looked at the wound and declared, “If it hasn’t killed you yet, you’re not going to die.” Even though his leg was badly swollen the next day, James didn’t even bother going to a doctor.
(02/20/07 5:00am)
The sun hasn’t even crested on a cool morning in 1956, but 16-year-old Ken is already hurling newspapers out of the passenger window of his $75 dollar Chrysler. When he gets to the Dixon house he shifts his ’38 into park and walks up to the house before stopping next to the car parked in the driveway. For some reason – he’s not sure why – he tries lifting the latch-handled door, and for some reason – he’s not sure why – he grabs the golf clubs out of the back seat and puts them in his trunk.\nThe sun breaks the horizon that morning to the crisp “whack” of iron striking plastic. Ken has neatly arranged all of Mr. Dixon’s golf balls in a row, and sends every last one into the dawning Indiana skyline. When the balls are gone and the fun has ended, Ken takes the clubs to the local pawn shop and exchanges them for more money than he’s made that entire week delivering newspapers. \nBut when the sun sets that day in 1956 Ken sits in silent reflection behind the bars of the Jeffersonville jail. He would be released two weeks later on the condition that he go back to Mr. Dixon and apologize for stealing the clubs. Ken would do just that and he would be well received by the gentleman who served as one of the town’s local lawyers. And when Ken said goodbye that lawyer would hand him 50 cents and tell him to go ahead and get a haircut. \nHe wouldn’t know it sitting in the barber chair that day, but the next time Ken Nunn would stand before Mr. Dixon he’d be getting the haircut before the visit – not after. \nIn 1962 Ken took his wife Leah to see the newly released movie “To Kill a Mockingbird,” starring Gregory Peck and a young Robert Duval. When they went to the drive-in they would normally bring their own popcorn and Coke, but on this night they splurged. The Princess Theater was packed, so Ken and Leah took a seat in the third row of the balcony and envied those who’d come early enough to sit down front. One hundred and twenty-nine minutes later, Ken stood up from his seat knowing what he wanted to do with his life.\n“The blacks had always been my friends growing up, they were my next door neighbors,” he said. “When I saw Peck defend a black man accused of rape, and the whites were really down on him for that, I just really related to that.”\nThe next day Ken went to the IU School of Law and asked for an application.\nIt took a handsome actor in a southern-style courtroom, slow ceiling fans spinning overhead, but Ken had finally found what he’d been searching for since rejoining school at age 17. The first two years of Ken’s undergraduate study had been spent pursuing accounting but without any real passion or desire. Ken considered much of his schooling to that point frivolous, so when he finally set his sights on a law degree he felt something education had never granted him before – excitement.\n“I had to take him seriously,” Leah said. “We went to Lexington and applied there, and he was going to apply to others. He said, ‘We’ll go any place we have to go until I get in.’ I knew that wherever they took him I was going to go.”\nKen, Leah, and their two kids struggled through those law school years under the mantra, “If you didn’t have to do it, you didn’t do it.” In other words, the pantry was rarely stocked with chips or cookies. But Ken eventually graduated among the bottom few students in his class, but he’ll be the first person to say, “Not one person comes and asks what was your class ranking. All they are interested in is what can I do for them now?”\nThe working world welcomed Ken a lot like Law School did – he had made it there, albeit barely, but he’d have to earn his success. The first Nunn Law Office was a two room loft with a view of south Walnut Street in downtown Bloomington. One room featured a card table with a folding chair for the secretary and another for clients to wait in. Ken’s office had the other two folding chairs and a law dictionary – that’s it. The only thing that could pass as a decoration was a lonely piece of string – barely a few inches long – that hung from the ceiling along one of the walls in Ken’s office.\nThis whole story starts in a separate set of rooms in a separate part of Indiana. They comprised Ken’s first home, and one room had a stove that kept the house warm and the other had a bed where little Kenny could dream about bigger things. \nAt nine years old, Ken sat at home one day when a knock came on the door. His mother peeped out the window and saw a Jeffersonville Sherriff. Ken can vividly remember this story today.\nHe remembers his mother saying, “Kenny you do this. Tell them I’m not here.” \nSo he reached up to the door-knob, turned it, and greeted the large man in uniform. \n“Young man is your mother here,” the officer asked.\n“No.”\nMother’s conscience got the best of her and she stepped into the doorway to speak to the sheriff. The officer walked away a few minutes later and the Nunn family was left with court papers that gave them a week to get out of the house.\nA few days later they had found a new home, and Ken’s mother explained that he had to take a new route home from school because they didn’t live at the old house anymore. But sure enough, that afternoon Ken ended up right back at the old house and he walked around it astonished by the emptiness. He stepped inside and walked up to his bedroom door and whispered the last words he would say in that house.\n“You’ve been a good door and I’ll miss you.”\nWith that, Ken kissed the door goodbye and found his way to his new home – something he would soon grow accustomed to.\nUp until age 17 Ken’s childhood was marred by fights, failures, and flirts with a life of delinquency. Jeffersonville High School was lucky to see him three times in a week, and by the time Ken finished the only class he attended regularly – driver’s ed – he dropped out.\n“My mother let me write my own excuses so that was easy,” he said. “I didn’t have to leave the house and fake going to school; I would just say I wasn’t feeling good and sleep until noon.”\nBut a year later an accident landed Ken at a new school with a new outlook on life. As an older kid with a car, his friends asked him for a ride to school one day. Ken asked, “What school?” And they said, “High School.” Ken agreed and he entered the doors of Clarksville High School the next day. \nIt was here that Ken would help an honor student named Leah dissect a frog in biology class, and she would help him write his notebook in return. It was here that the principle would warn Leah’s parents about the new boy she was hanging around with: he would either bring her down or she would make him a better person. It was here that Ken would only miss three days of school in three years.\n“Had I stayed in Jeffersonville and not met my wife, I probably would have been a high school drop out,” Ken said.\nShortly before graduating Ken and Leah were stopped at a traffic light when the truck behind them collapsed the back bumper of Ken’s Chrysler. The next day they waited for the insurance man to leave church where they met in the parking lot. Ken said he didn’t have any insurance, but the accident was the other guy’s fault and hopefully something could be done. Fresh after visiting with the Lord, the insurance man looked the car up and down, and then looked Ken up and down before saying, “Sorry, we’re not going to pay you.”\nKen was slowly developing a theory of justice.\n“You look at the old westerns and old cowboy shows, and the bad guy was invariably a lawyer,” Ken said. “He’s the guy that is always trying to steal the ranch because there is oil underneath it. So the poor, little lady keeps having cattle stolen from her, and she can’t make the payments. So the lawyer keeps saying ‘I’ll buy it from you’ – conniving, no good. That was my perception of lawyers for many, many years.” \nYears later, back in one of the four folding chairs, Ken sat with a yellow notepad in his lap as a poor, little lady took a seat across from him. She needed help in her divorce case, something Ken had never handled before but he was in no place to be turning down clients.\n“I have no idea why she stayed,” he said. “She shouldn’t have.” \nThis would be the theme for a while with Ken. A client would enter his office, having just been turned down by 11 other lawyers in town, and Ken would take the case. Why? “I didn’t have anything else to do.” \nBut before long Ken would have some Gregory Peck moments of his own. Take, for instance, the black IU student on trial for stealing billfolds from dorm rooms.\nThe prosecution had two sets of witnesses and that was all they needed. There was the student that claimed to have seen the defendant in his room scrounging through pants pockets, and the police officers who arrested the defendant. In front of an all white jury in 1969, it was an open-and-shut case.\nBut Ken started destructing the symbolic wall that stands between any defense lawyer and a verdict of not guilty. He first impeached the two police officers as one claimed to have seen the defendant take roughly 25 steps out from the door, throw the billfold into the bushes, and then have the handcuffs slapped around his wrists. The other officer testified that they had met him at the dormitory door. As for the eyewitness, that required a little more craft.\n“Have you ever been in trouble with the police,” Ken remembers asking the witness.\n“None at all.”\nKen had done some digging and gathered verbal confirmation that the witness had received a littering ticket in New Jersey. But he grabbed a small stack of papers just for effect.\n“You just said you didn’t have anything at all, but what about your event in New Jersey,” Ken recollects.\n“Oh, oh well yes. I got that, but it was just littering.”\nKen went back to his desk, grabbed another small stack of insignificant papers and asked, “Is that all sir? Is there something else you want to tell the jury now?”\n“Well… yea… There was that incident in Mexico.”\nCredibility gone. Case won. Ken received several letters from lawyers around the state after that verdict came back “not guilty,” all of them congratulating the new guy in town. \nKen sits behind a wooden table and reaches for the pitcher of water to pour himself a glass in hopes of quenching his bone-dry throat. His rattling hand clanks ice cube after ice cube against the side of the pitcher and into the bottom of his glass. He doesn’t want to take a sip because his hands are shaking too hard. That’s because his chair, his table, and his glass of water are all resting inside the Indiana Supreme Court and Mr. Dixon just filed into the room wearing a black robe. He’s known as Judge Dixon now.\nEach man remembers the other, and each man knows that the other remembers. But when the final gavel pounds, Ken has won the case and he is actually glad that he stands before Mr. Dixon again.\n“In some ways I am proud that our paths crossed,” he says. “And the way they did because maybe he felt like I did learn my lesson. Maybe he felt like I wanted to change my ways, which I did.”\nNowadays Ken can sit in a leather chair that doesn’t fold flat with plush carpet under his feet and a giant office over his head, and tell you that he’s never felt rich. Not because he doesn’t acknowledge his success, but because he hasn’t forgotten his past. You can sit in front of him and say that your car is about to be repossessed, and he can shoot right back, “Well, I can relate … I’ve had my car repossessed too.” \nAnd you better believe that he can tell the story.
(02/14/07 5:59am)
On a hot day in August last year, student trustee Casey Cox and his bride, Melissa, recited their vows at the Rose Well House on campus.\n"I am afraid to say that we never kissed there before our wedding kiss," Cox said. "So we didn't partake in the tradition."\nThe tradition that Cox refers to involves a 99-year-old custom that has been around campus since 1908. Campus tour guides reference the open-air pavilion, located between Maxwell Hall and Wylie Hall, as a romantic tradition in IU history, peaking at Valentine's Day.\nA custom of the Rose Well House says a woman is not a true college "coed" until she is kissed within the structure at midnight as the 12 chimes of the Student Building clock ring out, according to a manuscript in the IU Archives titled "Traditions of IU" by Marvin Shamon.\nFor women, the curfew on campus used to be 11 p.m. So being out at midnight, the manuscript says, was "risky."\nCox and his wife met as undergraduates at IU. They both thought Bloomington would be the best place for them to marry because of their involvement in the University.\n"I have seen pictures of weddings performed at the Well House," Cox said. "We married on the 12th. But on the 11th the weather was warmer and awful, but by Saturday morning it was gorgeous and worked out very nicely."\nKen Gros Louis, chancellor and vice president of academic affairs, said the Rose Well House was known as a place for couples to be engaged.\n"I know a lot of students over the years that have been engaged or asked to be married in the Well House," Gros Louis said.\nCox is one of the most recent students to tie the knot there, Gros Louis said.\nAt one time, there was an organized walk near Kirkwood Hall during which freshman women strolled at midnight to gain the privilege of being called "coeds." But when the Rose Well House was constructed, the kissing concept took over that tradition.\nTheodore F. Rose, a member of the board of trustees in 1908, presented the Rose Well House to the University as a gift to his graduating class, but he didn't have the romantic tradition in mind.\nProfessor Arthur Lee Foley of the physics department designed the Rose Well House. As a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity, Rose recommended the construction be based on the outline of the octagonal Beta badge.\nBeta fraternity brothers would propose to their girlfriends in the Rose Well House.\nFamiliar territory for dating and courting, the Rose Well House was also known as the centralized place on campus to meet people. Dates would walk through the woods nearby, an act that was seen as a courting method before its construction.\nBesides just a tradition of kissing, the stone windows to the Rose Well House were originally windows to the Old College Building. The windows were situated on the original campus site, according to the manuscript.\nFirefighters used the fire cistern -- a structure used for holding liquids, usually water -- to fight fires, which once "plagued" the University. There is now a water fountain inside the Rose Well House, but it only offers a trickle of water. Often, in the warmer months, people came to the Rose Well House to give away glasses of water from the fountain, as well as to sell five-cent glasses of lemonade.\nWhile Cox himself did not practice the traditional kiss with his wife prior to their marriage, he hopes the conscious awareness of the tradition will remain in others so the history can live on.\n"Campus legends are important in furthering the culture and student life in the university," Cox said. "I hope there are still some students that perpetuate the legend. It is important to the existence of our identity as a university"
(01/29/07 8:00pm)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S.-backed Iraqi troops on Sunday attacked insurgents allegedly plotting to kill pilgrims at a major Shiite Muslim religious festival, and Iraqi officials estimated some 250 militants died in the daylong battle near Najaf. A U.S. helicopter crashed during the fight, killing two American soldiers.\nMortar shells, meanwhile, hit the courtyard of a girls' school in a mostly Sunni Arab neighborhood of Baghdad, killing five pupils and wounding 20. U.N. officials deplored the attack, calling the apparent targeting of children "an unforgivable crime."\nTwo car bombs exploded within a half hour in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing 11 people and wounding 34, police Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qader said. Three ethnic groups -- Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen -- are in a bitter struggle for control of that oil-rich area.\nIn addition to confirming the two Americans killed in the helicopter crash near Najaf, the U.S. command announced three combat deaths from Saturday -- one Marine in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Anbar province and two Army soldiers in the Baghdad area.\nAuthorities said Iraqi soldiers supported by U.S. aircraft fought all day with a large group of insurgents in the Zaraq area, about 12 miles northeast of the Shiite holy city of Najaf.\nCol. Ali Nomas, spokesman for Iraqi security forces in Najaf, said more than 250 corpses had been found. Iraqi army Maj. Gen. Othman al-Ghanemi also spoke of 250 dead but said an exact number would not be released until Monday. He said 10 gunmen had been captured, including one Sudanese.\nProvincial Gov. Assad Sultan Abu Kilel said the assault was launched because the insurgents planned to attack Shiite pilgrims and clerics during ceremonies marking Ashoura, the holiest day in the Shiite calendar commemorating the 7th century death of Imam Hussein. The celebration culminates Tuesday in huge public processions in Karbala and other Shiite cities.\nOfficials were unclear about the religious affiliation of the militants. Although Sunni Arabs have been the main force behind insurgent groups, there are a number of Shiite militant and splinter groups that have clashed from time to time with the government.\nIraqi soldiers attacked at dawn and militants hiding in orchards fought back with automatic weapons, sniper rifles and rockets, the governor said. He said the insurgents were members of a previously unknown group called the Army of Heaven.\n"They are well-equipped and they even have anti-aircraft missiles," the governor said. "They are backed by some locals" loyal to ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.\nAbu Kilel said two Iraqi policemen were killed and 15 wounded, but there was no word on other Iraqi government casualties.\nA U.S. statement said the American helicopter went down while "conducting operations to assist Iraqi Security Forces" in the attack. It said two crew members died and their bodies were recovered. The statement did not give any information on why the aircraft crashed.\nThe mortar attack in Baghdad occurred about 11 a.m. at the Kholoud Secondary School in the Adil neighborhood, police and school officials said. The principal, Fawzyaa Hatrosh Sawadi, said students were mingling in the courtyard during a break in exams when at least two shells exploded.\nThe blasts shattered windows in classrooms, spraying students with shards of glass. Associated Press Television News footage showed pools of blood on the stone steps and walkways.
