UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Tuesday, September 6, 1994
5A
News of the weird
WRONG PLACE WRONG TIME
In July, a 32-year-old woman who works in the wardrobe department at Universal Studios in Hollywood got lost while driving on the lot and found herself following a tram. The tram, carrying visitors, proceeded down the middle of the "Red Sea" attraction, in which the waters are mechanically parted for the tram. However, at the instant the tram completes the trip, the water is released. The woman was trapped in the middle of the "sea" for about an hour until firefighters rescued her.
NEWS OF THE JUDGMENT-IMPAIRED
Reuters News Service reported in August that prisons in Rumania are experiencing a wave of inmates' hammering nails into their skulls in order to be transferred from overcrowded cells to prison hospitals. Nails that go an inch deep or less are removed without surgery, but several men have driven the nails into their brains.
In July, the town council in Peru, Vt., ordered Roland Williams out of his house for a
month while authorities cleaned the place up. Williams had been purchasing large quantities of dog food and cola every day to feed the hundreds of rats that had been gathering on his property. And in New York City, officials reported in May that a woman feeding cereal and singing to rats in her apartment also relinquished her bed to them while she slept in a chair.
In March, suspected drug dealer Anthony Mason, 21, took off running from police in Durham, N.C., as they attempted to question him. Mason was wearing fashionably droopy sweat pants. During the chase, they slipped down his legs and sent him sprawling, making for an easy arrest.
Police in Coldwater,
Police in Coldwater, Ontario, suspected that it was potential thieves who placed the bomb that exploded inside the night deposit box at the Toronto-Dominion Bank in June. However, Constable Doug Langlois said he doubted the culprits got any of the money because the blast sent the several thousand dollars flying through the air and brought neighbors out quickly to fight for whatever money had not been burned or shredded by the explosion. In June, in Morristown, N.J.
son, 34, for drug possession. Robinson had stopped his car to allow a parade with police escorts to pass. About a dozen officers were standing in front of Robinson's car when he decided to pass the time by counting the 10 vials of cocaine he had with him
In June, in Morristown, N.J., police arrested Stanley Robin-
Jill Mayfield, 21, accepted the marriage proposal of Doyle Kelley, 35, in June, in Joplin, Mo. It would be Kelley's third marriage; Joplin police have charges pending against him for strangling his first wife and drowning the second in a bathtub. And in April, Lilian Elease Lewis, 42, married Lucien Samuel Sherrod Jr., in Nashville, Tenn., despite Sherrod's present incarceration on charges that he killed his second wife and an indictment against him for attempted murder of his first wife.
In May 1993, Eric Jason Fann, then 21, was in jail in Kansas awaiting extradition to serve time in Texas for burglary. According to his later confession, Fann so feared Texas prisons that he deliberately threatened to kill President Clinton, figuring that such a threat would get him a federal prison sentence instead of the Texas time. In July 1994, he was convicted and indeed sentenced to 30 months in federal prison, but the sentence is to start at the end of his Texas sentence.
Robbery suspect Phillip Christopher Hines, 23, was shot by police in January in Odenton, Md., inside the grocery store he was accused of robbing. According to police, Hines charged at them while velling. "Bang! Bang!"
In July, officials at California Polytechnic Institute at San Luis Obispo set up a video camera to find out who was responsible for a rash of vending machine break-ins on campus. One man was caught on tape and arrested, and the police seized his truck. The Los Angeles Times reported that the man later paid the impound fee on the truck with 924 quarters.
Kissimmee, Fla., high school history teacher John Blumberg was suspended for five days recently for poor judgment for staging a reenactment of the assassination of President Kennedy for his class. Blumberg took the class out into a field and had a student fire a rifle, which was the same model as the one used by assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, three times at a target as far away as Kennedy was from Oswald, to demonstrate Oswald's firing pattern. Custom officials, aided by drug-sniffing dogs, arrested Mary Gray, 43, of Chicago at O'Hare Airport in June as she returned from Jamaica with 27 pounds of marijuana in her suitcase. She said she
thought the marijuana would be undetectable because it was sprinkled with a "magic voodoo potion" that she had bought from a witch doctor in Jamaica.
THE WEIRDO AMERICAN COMMUNITY
In April, in Rochester, N.Y., Jeffrey Watkins, 24, was convicted of breaking into five mausoleums and stealing the skull of a woman who died in 1933. Watkins, who refers to himself as "The Grinch," wrote in a confession that he had slept with remains inside coffins: "I'm a walker of both sides. What I mean is good and evil. I feel safe with the dead, and I can trust them. I need their company to make me peaceful inside."
LEAST JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE
On July 16, a 21-year-old man was fatally stabbed in the chest in a New York City subway train. Witnesses said he was stabbed because he was apparently victorious in a starring contest with the man who killed him.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
September 6,1994 PAGE 5A
music
Reggae legend Burning Spear will take a stab at Lawrence
By Jenny Brannan
Kansan staff writer
"I feel more in control of my performance and more mature," said Winston Rodney, known worldwide as Burning Spear.
After 25 years in the music business and five Grammy nominations for Reggae Album of the Year, Burning Spear is bringing a taste of Jamaica to Lawrence.
Rodney's stop in Lawrence tomorrow is part of his 25th anniversary tour, which is now in the United States. The tour started in Japan and then moved to Canada.
Rodney's world tour is important to him because of the opportunity to touch many kinds of listeners.
"It's good dealing with something not only for myself," Rodney said. "It involves all different races and colors."
Rodney said his music was a tribute to the African people who influenced the world.
"The message is in the music, and music is in
the message," Rodney said.
Rodney's musical name originated from the African freedom fighter and Kenya's head of state, Jomo Kenyatta, who was known as Burning Snear.
In 1969, Bob Marley helped Rodney discover the recording company, Studio One, where Rodney recorded his first hits.
He has made it through the past few decades of success on a worldwide scale without having formal musical training.
"It's a self-learning and a self-teaching." Rodnev said. "It's a self-experience."
Of all the experiences Rodney has had since the '60s, he said he was touched most by a trip to Africa in the early '80s.
"It was like I was born again," Rodnee said.
"Africa is where all Black people came from."
After winning awards such as the Jamaican Federation of Musicians 1900 Award for
With some 26 albums under his belt, Rodney awaits the release of his newest album, "Raspa Business," in the spring of 1995.
Album of the Year, putting out the 1933 album "The World Should Know" and touring with bands such as UB40, Talking Heads and Clash, Rodney couldn't be more satisfied with his work.
"I'm feeling great," Rodney said. "I'm feeling proud. I'm feeling outstanding. I'm feeling like me."
Chris Giordano, general manager of the River Valley Music Cafe,1601 W. 23rd St., said that it was a stroke of luck that brought Rodney to Lawrence.
"He just happened to be coming through, and we rolled him." Giordano said.
Rodney will be giving away free compact discs, concert tickets and posters at 5 p.m. tomorrow at Streetside Records,1403 W. 23rd St. He will perform with Urban Safari tomorrow night at River Valley Music Cafe. Tickets cost $11 and may be bought in advance at any Ticketmaster location or at the River Valley Music Cafe ticket office.
Winston Rodney, "Burning Spear"
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