lifestyles
Trapped by words
Daron Bennett / KANSAN
Most take writing checks for granted, but for Ed McKelvey it is a new skill learned with the help of his tutor Carrie Gordon, Wheaton, III. senior
KU employees are learning a valuable lesson from KU students: the impact of reading.
By Casey Barnes Kansan staff writer
After a lifetime of struggling to read sentences, Ed McKelvey, 57, has conquered three books and finished 21 pages of math in the past six months.
are part of a KU program called Partners in Learning, a student-run organization and the University's response to the nation-wide problem of illiteracy. A class, called Students Tutoring for Literacy, teaches students how to tutor. The students are then matched up with KU employees and Lawrence community members who want to learn new skills.
But that may only last until May.
Diana Bolton, founder of Partners in Learning and instructor of English 590, said she was told that the funding for the program would be dropped at the end of the school year.
But in an interview yesterday, Peter Casagrande, associate dean of liberal arts and sciences administration, denied telling Bolton that funding would be pulled. He said the University was re-evaluating the program and looking for an appropriate placement for it.
"She may be worried about the future, but we are very proud of the program and it is not going to be cut," Casagrande said. "We will fund it until May and in the meantime we are trying to find a new home for it."
Casagrande said the college originally invested money in the program five years ago because of its merit, but because its services are not limited to the college, it should be located permanently elsewhere.
"The program has helped the staff of the entire University both educationally and professionally," Casagrande said. "But because it is such a wide service, we have to find a permanent home for it within the University."
But McKelvey, who had to drop out of school in ninth grade when both his parents died, is going to take his opportunity and run with it.
"I don't want to go through the rest of my life with people telling me I can't read or do other things," he said. "Once you learn to read and do math, they can't take that away."
McKelvey, who became involved in the program after a friend urged him to, said being able to read had given him a new outlook on life. It has made him more independent
Even though he had to quit his job at Ekdahl Dining Commons because of heart problems, he still attends class twice a week.
and happier with himself.
"Before, I couldn't pay my bills, balance my checkbook or write letters to my sister and brother without somebody to help me do it," McKelvey said. "Now I can sit down and write letters everyday."
McKelvey is making a scrapbook of the classes he has taken and the names of his tutors so that he will never forget the people who gave him his freedom.
"When I get old and gray and can't get around anymore, I
want to be able to look back and see all that I did," he said. McKelvey encourages others to get involved in the program if they can because being literate is so important.
"I advise anybody to upgrade their life because it's a nice opportunity," he said.
Bolton feels the same passion for the program and the need for literacy on the KU campus. When the class was started five years ago, the main purpose was to let the students get a chance to practice what they learned in the classroom. Bolton and the students learned quickly that they got much more out of it than that.
Steve Wilson, Lawrence senior, took the class in the spring. He said the program is a partnership in the learning process.
"The people are very appreciative of what you are doing
and for the time you are spending helping them learn," Wilson said. "They have also taken a lot of initiative and gathered up a lot of courage to take the program."
Although the main goal is to learn educational skills, Bolton said the learning goes much farther than that.
"Working with employees, we have terrific successes," Bolton said. "People between the ages of 40 and 60 have learned to read through the program. I see the joy they have with their new skills. It helps their loyalty and their morals. It makes them feel better about themselves and helps reduce accidents that can happen when people can't read instructions," she said.
Plane crashes and perhaps even Chernobyl were partially caused by people who couldn't read, Bolton said.
"The ramifications are extensive," she said. "There is a practical and moral reasoning for the program. The Clinton administration is shooting for a literate American by the year 2000. We need to get learning back to the people and back to the basics."
Although the program has helped 65 employees in the last two years, the number of people who cannot read or do simple math is actually higher, Bolton said. But it is not just practical skills that suffer.
"The numbers on illiteracy are not accurate because adults are embarrassed that they cannot read," Bolton said. "We are a literate society and people that are not literate are shy, ashamed and have a low self-image because they don't feel confident."
The program was started by three students in English 590 and was originally designed to help people in the community prepare for their general equivalency diplomas.
But after the program got started, the students realized that people were not ready to write essays. They needed to master simple skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic first.
"People who take the course take it because they have an interest in literacy as a social and political issue," Bolton said. "They take the class because they have a career in mind and want to prepare themselves."
Students learning to read have many of the same motives.
At a university that's mission is to educate, young people should share the knowledge with the people who cut the grass, cook their meals and even give them parking tickets," Bolton said. "It is a partnership between students and employees who get time off from work to get tutored and exchange that time for learning."
Heard around Hollywood The latest news on the lives of famous people
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Genie Francis and Jonathan Frakes have produced the first of their own next generation.
General Hospital's Laura and Star Trek's Cmdr. Will Riker are the happy parents of an 8-pound, 6-ounce boy, Benjamin Ivor Frakes, their publicist said Friday.
The album, "Verse Chorus Verse," contains about 30 previously unreleased recordings from 1989 to 1994, including the band's performance last year on MTV's "Unplugged."
Four months after the suicide of the grunge rock superstar, a double album of live performances by his band, Nirvana, is set for release in November.
The Seattle-based group produced three albums before Cobain, 27, was found dead April 7. Its latest effort, "In Utero," was released late last year and made its debut at Billboard's No.1 spot.
SEATTLE — Kurt Cobain lives. On CD. aneway.
LOS ANGELES — Harrison Ford is off on another adventure to a mysterious land that was closed to outsiders for many years.
Ford's latest mission is to narrate "Mustang: The Hidden Kingdom," a TV documentary about an isolated Buddhist enclave in Tibet that recently opened its borders after decades of seclusion.
Ford starred as Indiana Jones in the trilogy of films starting with "Raiders of the Lost Ark," and most recently appears in "Clear and Present Danger," based on the novel by Tom Clancy.
The feudal community, in the Himalayas at 13,000 feet above sea level, is one of the few places where Tibetan culture flourishes undisturbed.
He won't be raiding any lost arks, though
The film premieres Aug. 31 to make it eligible for the Academy Awards. It debuts on cable TV's Discovery Channel on Sept. 11.
ATLANTA Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are off to Africa to check up on the worm situation.
NEW YORK — Pearl Jam probably shouldn't have expected Dave Abbruzzese to go quietly. After all, he was the drummer.
Abbiruzzese said Friday that he was fired
"For reasons that I don't completely understand, the other members of the band decided that it was necessary to fire me," Abbrusselz told ABC radio. "I was not aware of their decision, not involved with it, nor do I agree with it. But I accept it, and I'm proud to have been a part of what Pearl Jam was."
and did not leave "amicably" as the band's manager had insisted earlier in the week.
The Seattle-based band, led by singer Eddie Vedder, has sold more than 13 million copies of its first two albums, "Ten" and "Vs." A new album is scheduled to be released in the fall.
NANTUCKET, Mass. — Jimmy Buffett escaped virtually unscathed when the seaplanet he was piloting crashed into a wave on takeoff.
The singer best known for "Margaritaville" was alone in the nine-seat, twinengine plane when it flipped Thursday afternoon.
Buffett, 47, of Key West, Fla., managed to swim away and was picked up by a passing boat that carried him to shore.
Authorities said Buffett had no visible injuries but complained of pain.
he was nne ... He walked out with his friends," said emergency room nurse Donna Fleming.
The lawsuit says Copperfield used 1945 footage of Welles without the consent of Welles' daughter, Beatrice. But Copperfield said Thursday that he bought the footage from the widow of the film's producer, who said her husband owned all the rights to it.
"I presented his clip in my TV show as a homage to Orson, to show people this other dimension of an art he loved and was very proud of," Copperfield said.
SAN FRANCIISCO — Orson Welles' estate is suing Dawid Copperfield over his use of film footage of the late actor and director performing magic.
The lawsuit, filed on Aug. 24 in federal court in Los Angeles, seeks a portion of the profits from the television and stage shows in which Copperfield used the film. The lawsuit also seeks to stop Copperfield from using the footage.
LOS ANGELES — Burt Reynolds is recovering from surgery to repair a small tear in an old hernia.
Reynolds, 58, underwent surgery Aug. 22 at a West Palm Beach, Fla., hospital and then returned to his ranch in Jupiter, Fla., his spokesman, Joe Sutton, said Thursday.
"He was an outpatient, he wasn't in there long at all," Sohn said.
People and places at the University of Kansas.
news of the weird
LEAD STORY
— In July, after Willoughby, Ohio, police arrested Jamie V. Bradshaw, 23, for breaking and entering, they confiscated more than 450 items of women's underwear from his car and home, all stolen, according to police, from the laundry rooms and 10 apartment complexes over the past two years. Bradshaw is from nearby Painesville, population 15,000, where two years ago another man was convicted of stealing men's underwear, including at least one instance of cutting the briefs off of a sleeping man.
In June in London, lawyers for convicted murderer Stephen Young filed an appeal after learning from one juror that three other jurors had conducted a Ouija board seance during jury deliberations and "contacted" the dead man, who named Young as his killer.
COURTROOM ANTICS
In April, Rodney Williams, 21, appeared in a courtroom in Kelso, Wash., to explain why he had missed a previous court date on an assault charge. Fearing that the judge might not believe his excuse (his mother's recent fatal illness), Williams held up his mother's ashes, in a plastic box, and offered them for the judge to examine. Said of Judge Robert Altenhof, "You think you've heard it all, but somebody always comes up with something new."
The lawsuits Irene Geschke, then age 55, filed against a mortgage company in 1979 in Chicago just passed its 15th anniversary without coming to trial. There have been more than 530 motions and orders, and nine dates for trial have come and gone. Geschke claims the mortgage company caused her to go out of business when it wrongly foreclosed on a loan and is now acting as her own lawyer, managing the ton of legal documents involved in the case.
- Late last year in Bangladesh, Falu Mia, 60, was released from prison after 21 years. He had been locked up until his trial for theft in 1972, then found not guilty, but a lethargic bureaucracy failed to release him. He recently filed a lawsuit against the government for 21 years' back wages (about $26,000).
— In June, a judge in Thousand Oaks, Calif., dismissed neighbor's request for an injunction against Kathleen Adams, who the neighbors said lures squirrels to her home with food and thus
See WIERD, Page 5B.