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arts & culture
KANSAN.COM | MONDAY, FEB. 27, 2017
Aries
(March 21-April 19) Insights, breakthroughs and revelations percolate with this New Moon solar eclipse in Pisces. Discover something about the past. Begin a six-month philosophical, spiritual and mindful phase.
Taurus (April 20-May 20)
Begin a new phase in friendship, social networks and community with this New Moon solar eclipse in Pisces. Take a group endeavor to a new level.
(May 21-June 20)
Changes initiate a new phase in your career and profession with this Pisces solar eclipse. Take on new responsibility and launch your next endeavor.
Gemini
Cancer
(June 21-July 22)
Open a new door with your education, travels and exploration under this solar eclipse in Pisces.
Study with a master over the next six months.
Contributed photo
the next six months.
Leo
Adam Devine performed at the Lied Center on Thursday night. It was starred in "Pitch Perfect" and "Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates."
(July 23-Aug. 22)
New financial opportunities get revealed by this Pisces eclipse. Together you're more powerful, over the next six months.
Align priorities for growth,
especially today and
Virgo
(Aug. 23-Sept. 22) Advance a level with your romantic relationship under this Pisces New Moon solar eclipse. Partnership blooms over the next six months. Support each
Libra
(Sept. 23-Oct. 22) Embrace healthy lifestyle practices under the Pisces New Moon eclipse. Renewed energy floods your work, health and vitality. Nurture yourself before
caring for others.
Scorpio
(Oct. 23-Nov. 21)
This Pisces solar eclipse sparks a family, fun and passion phase. A romantic relationship transforms over the next six months.
It's all for love.
Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) Launch a new domestic phase under this New Moon solar eclipse in Pisces.Invent new possibilities for your family.Adapt your home to suit.
Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 1)
[Dec. 22-Jan. 19]
Miracles and breakthroughs arise in the conversation with this Pisces New Moon eclipse, Adapt communications to a new story. Share gratitude and appreciation.
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb.18) Break through old limitations and barriers in your relationship with money over the next few six months, with this Pisces eclipse. Step into new prosperity.
Aquarius
Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) A new personal phase dawns with this New Moon eclipse in your sign Take charge. Grow and develop capacities and skills over the next six months.
Pisces
months.
Adam Devine brings laughs to Lied Center
▶ JOSH MCQUADE
@L0neWOIlMcQuade
The two short words, "Heh, stupid," followed many jokes of actor-comedian Adam Devine's Thursday night stand-up show at the Lied Center. Devine is best known for his work on Comedy Central's "Workaholics," ABC's "Modern Family" and the "Pitch Perfect" movies, and his career path is still on the rise.
Devine performed an hour-and-a-half set that touched on subjects like being rich, global warming, dying polar bears and his mistake in thinking "Pitch Perfect" was a baseball movie when he auditioned. Omaha native Austin Anderson opened for Devine before he got on stage.
Anderson warmed up a nearly sold-out audience at the Lied Center, starting his set by mentioning how he is enjoying being in Lawrence. Anderson continued his 20-minute set discussing everything from being a Ninja Turtle in a man's body to fast-food chains' plan to slowly kill everyone. The crowd took to Anderson's set quickly.
“[Anderson] was really funny," said John Foster, a
student at the University attending the event. "They both did a really great job."
Anderson ended his set by introducing Devine to the audience and welcoming him onto the stage. Devine walked out to widespread cheering and applause from the audience. He opened his set with high praise for Lawrence and hate for the city he had just come from performing: Oklahoma City.
Instantly from that joke forward, Devine controlled the stage with a vivid, outgoing personality and animated body language.
"I loved Chris Farley growing up," Devine said in an interview after the show. "He was my favorite comic He was always falling through tables and running through walls. So to me, I knew early on when I was a kid, to get a laugh you could flip over a couch or fall down some stairs."
Devine's outgoing personality showed within his first bit of the night, where Devine describes his attempt to get away from fighting someone. First, run away — shown by him darting across the stage — and then advising the audience to act deaf to avoid a
fight, as "no one wants to be the person to punch a deaf person," he said.
Devine quickly redacted his statement, saying anyone who acted deaf during the fight would immediately be beaten up.
Devine then riffed about his work on Comedy Central's "Workaholics," and said his personality matches up more with Adam DeMamp than
anyone he's ever played
Between talking about differences in puberty between boys and girls and a dude's night out at the nightclub, a member of the Lied Center staff walked onstage to get backstage. Devine noticed,
"[In college] I was more like my 'Workaholics' character," Devine said. "Luckily I wasn't exactly like him or I'd be dead."
jumped in fear and took a deep breath.
"I thought that was an assassination attempt," Devine said.
Devine interacted with the audience throughout the set. At random points during the show, audience members shouted quotes from "Workaholics," "Pitch Perfect" and "Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates," prompting Devine to ask what the audience most knew him for. The majority of the audience applauded for "Workaholics," but the whole crowd laughed and applauded when he shared his thoughts on the people who come to his shows.
"I always assume there are at least three people who think they are at an Adam Levine concert," Devine said.
Whether it was acting like a T-Rex or yelling out to the crowd, Devine stayed strong until the end to give Lawrence the best show possible.
"I felt like the crowd was really loose and having a good time," he said.
Breaking the ice: How Lawrence became an olive branch between countries during the Cold War
-Edited by Paola Alor
Contributed photo
COURTNEY BIERMAN
@Courtney Bierman
Contributed photo Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev greet Lawrence resident Bob Swan Jr. at a private luncheon before Gorbachev's speech in Fulton, Missouri on May 6, 1992.
The Soviet shot putter didn't speak English. Then-mayor of Lawrence David Longhurst was trying to make conversation, but without much success. The year was 1983. The athlete was a part of a group of Soviets that was invited to Lawrence for the Kansas Relays.
Contributed photo
Lawrence resident Bob Swan Jr. and President Borsell Yoris toast Russian-American cooperation in the Red Room of the Kremlin on May 5, 1993.
"There was the stereotypical tension because they were the Soviets and we were the Americans, and so it was kind of awkward," Longhurst said.
Then the shot putter took out his wallet. He showed Longhurst a picture of his children. Longhurst took out his wallet and did the same.
"It was like everything just melted away," he said. "All of a sudden we understood one another."
The boundary was broken.
Now, at the Watkins Museum of History, there is an exhibit that explores Lawrence's diplomacy efforts during the Cold War - efforts that helped improve sentiments between Russia and the United States.
People don't think about how critical things were happening...right here in the not-so-long-ago past."
Steven Nowak Watkins Museum executive director
The 1983 Kansas Relays was the first event in more than a decade of Lawrence-Soviet diplomacy during the Cold War. It was one of the first times during the era that there was real contact between a delegation of Soviet citizens and the United States, Longhurst
said, a sort of olive branch extended between the nations.
Bob Swan Jr., a longtime Lawrence resident, is one of the founders of the Athletes United for Peace, the organization that invited the athletes to Kansas. Swan said the Soviet athletes set Kansas Relay records that still stand today.
"It was an amazing thing, because there weren't many things going on between the two countries," Swan said. "All the cultural relations were cut. They'd never seen anything like Americans clapping when a Soviet runner was winning a race against the Americans."
The relays were a success, and relations were peaceful for a while. Then, in fall of that year, "The Day After" premiered on ABC.
Brittany Keegan, collections manager at the Watkins Museum of History, said the movie shook Lawrence residents to their core. Although the threat of nuclear war had been hanging over Lawrence residents' heads for years, many of them hadn't considered the horror of surviving such an event.
The film, which takes place in Lawrence, follows several Kansas citizens' who survive a nuclear attack. People all over the country watched the movie, even President Reagan saw it.
A large group of residents watched the film together when it came out, and they then gathered at the Campanile. Mayor Longhurst had been invited to address the crowd, but when he took the stage, he was speechless. The event wasn't supposed to be solemn, but he said he estimates there were 1,000 people in front of him. Many of them were holding candles, and all of them were terrified.
"I was just standing there holding the microphone, and I said, 'Oh my god. I don't know what to say to you,' " Longhurst said.
People were scared, and something had to be done. Swan, Longhurst and a group of Kansas-based organizations began writing letters and proposals. Longhurst took a group of children to Washington D.C. to deliver the letters to the White House and the Soviet embassy.
For the next six years, Swan and his colleagues continued their work and planned events to foster diplomacy in Lawrence. Many of their efforts were organized through the Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice, a local grassroots organization that had grown out of Lawrence's anti-war movement, according to Watkins Museum executive director Steven Nowak.
The year 1990 was the culmination of their efforts with the Lawrence Meeting for Peace, in which Lawrence residents welcomed about 300 Soviet citizens into their homes for a week of cultural events and forums.
"All the feelings were right," Longhurst said. "The intent was right. It was a sincere effort to communicate and understand as opposed to posturing and arguing and proving the other side wrong—none of that stuff took place."
The guests were mostly professionals and ordinary citizens representing almost every Soviet republic.
The late Lawrence resident Millie Peters, a member of the Coalition for Peace and Justice, hosted two women during the Meeting for Peace. Peters died in 2016 at 99 years old, but her daughter Susan Ashley - although she doesn't remember much said she remembers how kind the women were. They brought gifts for the family, and they wanted to learn English curse words and go shopping at K-Mart.
"It was interesting, the things they wanted - boom boxes and things they wanted to buy that they just couldn't get there," she said.
One of the women, who Ashley said thinks was named "Reisa," was a teacher. She and Peters
corresponded by mail for a number of years after the meeting.
Three years later, Swan, Longhurst and other prominent Lawrence residents were invited to Moscow. They visited the Kremlin and met President Boris Yeltsin.
"He came around to each one of us individually and did a toast, which I thought was nice, and then I had the chance to talk with him a little bit," Swan said. "It was a real honor."
Nowak said Lawrence's Soviet diplomacy followed a pattern of grassroots activism that makes Lawrence unique. There were the settlers who insisted that Kansas remain a free state. There was the group of black high school students who staged a sit-in in the 1950s to protest racial inequality. There were University students who protested the Vietnam War on campus.
He added, now with Watkins Museum's exhibit, there is a way for people to see that they can change the world without leaving home even if home is a small Midwestern city.
"People don't think about how critical things were happening shaped our world right here in the not-so-long-ago past," Nowak said.
- Edited by Ashley Hocking
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