FEATURES: Harvest of Arts, Lawrence's first-ever all-arts festival, runs through Saturday in downtown Lawrence, Page 5.
丰台区卫生局
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
VOL.102.NO.27
TUE$DAY, SEPTEMBER 29.1992
(USPS 650-640)
ADVERTISING:864-4358
NEWS: 864-4810
Perot to let volunteers decide
Texan's campaign lies in the hands of his supporters
The Associated Press
DALLAS — Ross Perot refused yesterday to say if he would rejoin the presidential race, but most of his top supporters said overtures from President Bush and Bill Clinton had not quelled their desire for Perot to make a late entry.
On a remarkable day even for tumsultuous political year, Bush and Clinton courted Perot and his backers by sending high-level delegations to lobby the support of his volunteers and outline the positions of the two major-party candidates.
Perot has been on the sidelines since July, when he announced he would not run.
"There is no messianic drive here
have a candidate or to have me as a
candidate," Perot told reporters. "If the volunteers . . . feel that it's appropriate that I run, certainly I am going to honor their request. Then, I will give it everything I have night and day."
Perot complained that neither Bush nor Clinton had a credible deficit-reduction plan and has said he would enter the race if his supporters so desired, enabling him to push his own deficit-reduction plan.
The Texas billionaire said he hoped to make his decision Thursday after hearing from his supporters, although he said the decision could be postponed until Friday. In an evening appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live," he announced a new toll-free telephone number where those not already working for him could register their support.
Perot's wife and three of his five children joined him in the studio, all saying they would support him if he decided to run.
Perot exerted in the spotlight and said he held much common ground
with both camps when it came to economics, although neither Bush nor Clinton accepts Perot's bitter medicine for erasing the deficit in five years.
After each delegation detailed their economic programs and fielded questions from Perot's 50 state coordinators, Perot said he was leaving it up to his volunteers to decide whether he should join the race.
The Perot state leaders returned home to brief their volunteers on presentations in which both Clinton and Bush supporters argued their candidate's views were closest to Perot's.
While they praised both delegations, it was clear most of Perot's top backers were not swayed.
"My personal feeling is there still is a pretty wide gap between what the two parties want and what we want," said Orville Sweet, Kansas coordinator.
Overall comments left the impression that Perol's legions will urge him to enter the race when they report back to him in the coming days.
Uncommitted Perot
Born: June 27,1930, in Texarkana, Texas
Texas billionaire Ross Perot is on the presidential ballot in all 50 states, but he has not committed to run for office. He said last night on "Larry King Live" that he will make the decision this week.
Education: U.S. Naval Academy
Married: Margot Birmingham in
1956, five children
Career: NFBbldgt
Career highlights:
IBM salesman. 1957-62
IBM salesman, 1957-62
Founds Electronic Data Systems (EDS) on $1,000 in 1962
EDS funds to IBM
Sells EDS to General Motors for $2.5 billion in 1984
Founds Perot Systems Corp. Washington, D.C. in 1988
Perot first declared that he would consider running for President Feb. 20. On July 16, however, Perot said that he would not run for office.
Sean M. Tevis / KANSAN
SOURCE: Current Biography, Fortune
Show proves it takes all kinds
By Delin Cormeny
People are strange.
I don't mean just odd or out of the ordinary. I'm talking waaay out there. Bizarre. Alien. really weed.
The Jim Rose Circus Side Show crawled out from under a rock and entertained an iron-stomached crowd last night in a two-hour, freak vandeville act at Liberty Hall.
Two banners hung behind the stage proclaiming, "It's Science" and "Beyootiful," while the five performers/masochists, well, entertained.
"This is a show about altering the body," *ringleaderJim Rose said.* "It's spectacle of human endurance and body contouring."
The first half of the show was relatively tame . . . relatively.
But by the end of the show, it was unclear who endured more — the spectators or the spectacles.
There was the fire eater; there was the glass eater; and there was Matt the Tube, who bent nails and lifted a woman with his teeth. But these were merely warnings of what was to come.
The Tube pulled out a condom and stuffed it up his nose and out his mouth. One end hung out his nostril and the other out his mouth. To the delight of the audience, he pulled it out and reversed the process.
Then came Mr. Lift-O, dressed in black stockings, heels and a red satin dress. He dangled irons on wire coat hangers hooked to his earrings. He hung on a oanger dangling from his pierced nose, then lifted a suitcase on a oanger dangling from his pierced tongue. He lifted a concrete block by a chain attached to earrings hanging from his pierced nipples.
"Ladies, don't try this at home," Mr Lift-O said to the audience.
And if that weren't enough, he attached two irons to a coat hanger dangling from the earring that was pierced through the tip of his penis and swung the iron back and forth between his legs.
The crowd was spellbound. Jaws dropped and eyes popped out.
Mr. Lift-O's jaw dropped and his eyes popped out.
They gave Mr. Lift-O a standing ovation.
After a 15-minute break, a voice echoed through the macaque theater.
"Ladies and gentlemen of Lawrence," Rose said. "I must warn you this second half may cause damage to your psyche."
The Torture King restarted the festivities.
"How can he do that?" bewildered spectators asked one another. "Doesn't that hurt?"
He pushed sharp, three- and four-inch needles through the skin of his arms, larynx and eye socket. He unveiled his chest, which was adorned with 40 such pins arranged in a symmetric pattern, and he pushed a six-inch needle through the side of his cheek, into his mouth cavity and out the other cheek. He removed it exquisitely while sucking.
— excruciatingly slowly.
In his next stunt, the aptly named Torture King held a fluorescent light in his mouth and let an electric current run through a hand-held rod and through his body, illuminating the light.
For the grand finale, the Tube stuffed a seven-foot long, thin rubber tube up his nostril and into his stomach. A large cup-like syringe was attached to the end, and with Jim Rose's help, the Tube poured a beer, chocolate, kumquat juice and Maalox into it. Then — you guessed it — he sent it down the hatch.
But the fat lady hadn't struck a chord yet, and he proceeded to regurgitate the now-blackened mixture into the cup via the still-inserted tube.
Call me prude or call me weak, but when the other four players and special guest Allen Epley, bass guitarist for the rock group Ministry, came onstage and actually drank the vile liquid, I just about regurgitated too.
People are strange.
Kathleen Driscoll / Special to the KANSAN
Mr. Lift-O, a member of the Jim Rose Circus Side Show, suspends a cinder block from his puppies in a performance at Liberty Hall, 642 Massachusetts.
Wescoe Terrace now serves up hot breakfasts
See story, Page 3.
Put your bowl of Cheerios ... hold. KU students and faculty this semester can eat hot breakfasts each weekday morning at Wescoe Terrace Cafeteria. The cafeteria started serving breakfast Aug. 24. Since then, morning business has doubled, an employee said.
Eastern Parkway funding denied
Kansan staff report
Rod Bremby, assistant city manager, said the funding was rejected by the Joint House-Senate Conference Committee on Transportation because the parkway project was not mentioned specifically in either the House or Senate bill.
Lawrence city officials were notified Friday that their request for $8.2 million in federal financing for the Eastern Parkway project was denied by a Congressional committee.
"When the committee got together to confer, they decided that no new projects would be added to the bill, and Lawrence was a new project," he said.
Bremby said the committee did not consider any new projects because it wanted to keep a limit on its spending.
President Bush promised to veto the bill if it exceeded set spending limits.
Not only did the committee not consider new projects, but it also cut funding for old projects by 20 percent, Bremby said.
Bremby said the city would go back to the committee when it meets next year to ask for money for the project.
The parkway, a separate project from the South Lawrence Trafficway, would link the trafficway from Kansas Highway 10 east of town to Sixth Street downtown. It is part of an overall project to build a circumferential road system around Lawrence.
Eastern Parkway
"Next year we'll be easier," he said.
"They'll be familiar with the project, and they'll know what we're trying to do."
Federal financing of the proposed Eastern Parkway was denied yesterday.
Source: City Manager's Office
Sean M. Tevis / KANSAN
Facing life's challenges
Valerie Bontrager / Special to the KANSAN
A KU student copes with cerebral palsy as she pursues a degree and her dreams
Bridgid
Schwilling,
a Lawrence
senior who
has cerebral
palsy, chats
with a friend
between
classes outside
Wescoe Terrace
Cafeteria.
By David Bartkoski
Kansan staff writer
Dana Palmer remembers a day in the autumn of 1989 when she saw her friend Bridgid Schwilling fall for the first time.
The two were walking back to Dana's house after a meal at Taco John's when Bridgid tripped on an uneven sidewalk and fell near the intersection of Ninth and Alabama streets.
"I was embarrassed for her and me because I didn't know how to meet her when she fell." Dana said.
Bridgid is a 42-year-old KU senior with cerebral palsy, a condition usually caused by an injury to the brain around the time of birth. It can affect a person's body movements, speech and intelligence.
Although she has had more than four years to learn the local terrain, Bridgid still falls because of uneven sidewalks or a lack of guide rails or slippery pavement when it snows.
She has not allowed cerebral palsy, which sometimes limits her ability to move quickly, to limit her activity as a student at the University of Kansas.
She takes five classes, works 13 hours a week at the front desk in McColum Hall and is a member of Campus Christians. And with the help of Social Security, a Pell Grant and her job at McColum, Bridgid has managed to support herself financially.
Hermother, Karen, describes her as "spunky."
She recalled a time when Bridgid finished second at a marathon fund-raising dance in high school.
"She came home and cried because she didn't make first," she said after pausing to hold back her tears. "it thinks it so outstanding that Bridgid has so much vim and vigor about things."
Bridgid usually ignores the dark red scabs on her right hand caused by her falls and rarely complains about the right side of her body. That is where her cerebral palsy shows.
As she walks across campus, her right arm is bent and lifted in front of her body. She steps forward with her left leg and then her right leg, which drags a little as she walks.
Dana said Bridgid's disability made her more appreciative of the little things in life.
"I remember we were at the library one time," she said. "I run down the stairs and left her behind. I thought how I've never even appreciated being able to run down the stairs and the things that my body can do."
Bridgid has made significant adjustments to perform daily tasks that most people take for granted, such as getting dressed or styling her hair.
Her right hand is partially closed, like the hand of a person with severe arthritis.
When she ties her shoes, she does most of the tying with her left hand and uses her right index finger to pull the loop through to the end.
"I can get dressed in five minutes," said Bridgid, who is 5 feet 4 inches tall and has light brown hair. "Add a couple of minutes if you count putting on my shoes."
"I get tired a lot easier than most people," she said. "When things get to be too much, I turn to God."
Walking around campus can be taxing for Bridgid, who has arthritis in her brids and knees and sometimes relies on the KU lift van, a service that transports permanently and temporarily disabled students to and from campus.
The pink walls in Bridgid's dorm room on the 10th floor at McColum are covered with inspirational posters and pictures, including two homemade posters on her door with passages from the Bible that she says strengthen her in tough times.
Pictures of family and friends are among the colorful displays on desks and bulletin boards.
"She likes to make jokes a lot and play with puns," said Michael Himan, a former KU student who met Bridgid at a dance during Hawk Week in 1988.
---
One of the posters in her room lists the 12 female rules of dominance, an example of the sense of humor that a friend of hers noticed.
A 1974 photo on her desk shows 4-year-old Bridgid and her mother dressed in identical, two-piece purple velvet outfits. It reveals no sign of Bridgid's cerebral palsy.
The picture was taken in California, where Bridgid came into the world weighing 2 pounds, 3 ounces.
Her mother, who gave birth to Bridgid three months prematurely, said her first concern was Bridgid's life.
"She was the smallest child ever to survive at the hospital," her mother said. "At the time, she had respiratory problems, which probably caused the cerebral palsy."
Cerebral palsy can manifest itself in a variety of ways, some more severe than in Bridgid's case.
Of the estimated 500,000 people who have cerebral palsy in the United States, several thousand have spinal cord ediments and are in wheelchairs.
Mike Shuttic, assistant director of the Student Assistance Center, said he was not sure how many people at KU had cerebral palsy.
The people with the most severe cases require daily supervision and must use voice machines.
"Only a handful of people have told us they have cerebral palsy," he said. "I would say five or less people have told us that."
Many people who have cerebral palsy have great success dealing with their disabilities, and some, like Bridgid, are able to support themselves financially.
Right now there is no known cause for the condition that put Bridgid in a school for the disabled in California until she finished the third grade.
When she began attending a public school in the fourth grade, the teasing began.
She says she endured humiliation throughout her elementary and high school years.
"Boys at school would imitate the way I walked," she said. "They would act like I was retarded."
The teasing also hurt Bridgid's outlook on dating.
Continued on Page 8.