Christmas display gets out of hand
Neighbors sue over enthusiastic display of holiday lights
The Associated Press
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — For years, Jennings and Mitzi Osborne have caused traffic jams as they've dazzled passersby with their vast and ever-growing Christmas displays, which twinkle with more than a million lights.
But when they bought the houses next door to expand, neighbors decided they had had enough electrified holiday cheer. Their lawsuit, demanding that the Osborns pull the plug on their holiday display, went to trial Monday.
The Osborne's say their light show, begun in 1986, is their constitutionally protected way of sharing the sea.
son's cheer.
The lawsuit was filed after the Osbornes, who own a medical testing laboratory, strung 1.5 million lights last year and bought the houses on both sides of them with the promise of a bigger spectacle this year.
They haven't disclosed their electric bill, but one year they blew a transformer and blacked out part of their affluent neighborhood.
"It involves the construction and operation of an enormous and spectacular Christmas light display, in a residential area, of such size and extravagance that it has become a tourist attraction," attorney Gary Corum said in his opening statement on behalf of the neighbors who are suing.
The Osbornes' lawyer, Sam Peroni, said shutting down the display would violate his clients' First Amendment rights to freedom of
He said that apart from the normal increase in Christmastime traffic, neighbors suffer no harm from the display. The Osbornes' house-turned-Christmas card sits on Cantrell Road, a thoroughfare technically designated as a state highway and heavily used by suburban commuters.
speech and religion.
Pulaski County Chancery Judge Ellen Brantley acknowledged powerful feelings exist on both sides, but admonished all parties to "recognize the spirit of the season, keep a cheerful outlook and keep tempers under control."
The trial is being held in a borrowed federal courtroom to accommodate all the spectators. The judge has set aside more than a week to hear the case.
During the December extravaganza, visitors approaching the gate of
the Osborne home hear recorded Christmas music and receive candy canes and color postcards of the display.
Last year's light show included miles of red lights draped over the house, yard and brick wall. Christmas-tree-shaped masts of lights towered 80 feet above the house. Multicolored lights flashed from a suspended 30-foot globe. An illuminated carousel rotated in the air. Mickey Mouse drove a steam engine atop the brick wall, where lighted wise men, camels, Santa Claus, a sleigh and reindeer twinkled and 6-foot-high letters beamed "Merry Christmas" and "Happy New Year."
This year's display has the same, and more.
The Osbornes' attorney rejected the plaintiffs' offer Monday to settle for a toned-down display, saying he doubted the two sides could agree on one.
An accent on talk
An accent or a dialect can make a person vulnerable to prejudices and discrimination, but for some it's a way of expressing individuality
n. 1. The relative prominence of a region is greater intensity or by a greater intensity or by a smaller intensity.
2. vocal prominence or emphasis related to a
2. vocal prominence or emphasis related to a
particularly significant event of publication
N
By Brian James
No more than a word or a phrase will tip off most people that Linda Larivee is from Massachusetts.
When she drops the "r" sound in some words and adds it to others,—such as, "Pawking the caw is a good ideal"—heads turn and people look at her differently.
Often they will ask what it's like to live in Boston, Larrivee said. But people with accents and dialects do not always enjoy their different way of talking, or in Larrivee's case, "tawking."
She said that having a Boston dialect often meant dealing
Larrivee moved from central Massachusetts to Lawrence four years ago.
"If the accent is going to affect me, usually it will be in a negative way," said Larrivee, a clinical supervisor at the University of Kansas' speech-language-hearing clinic.
with people's negative perceptions or stereotypes of East Coast natives. On a recent day at lunch, for example, she said she was introduced to a woman by a mutual friend
"She heard my accent and assumed I wasn't nice either," she said.
Diane Paul-Brown, director of speech-language pathology at the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association in Rockville, Md., said an accent or a dialect made a person vulnerable to prejudices and sometimes discrimination.
"When I said, 'How are ya?' she said, 'Oh, I bet you're from out East.' And you know, she wouldn't talk to me for the rest of the time." Larrivee said.
Larrivie learned later that the woman had recently traveled to Boston and had not gotten along with the people she met.
An accent is a phonetic trait from a person's original language that is carried over to a second language. For example, an American can tell the difference between a German and a French speaker based on their accents, Paul-Brown said.
A dialect is a specific form of a language spoken in a
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"The important thing to remember is that the problem lies with perceptions,
not with accents, Paul-Brown said. Many people used the words "accent" and "dialect" synonymously, but they have different meanings, she said.
given geographic area. A dialect dif-
aven geographic area. A dialect differs from a country's standard language and encompasses differences in pronunciation and the use of regional expressions. A New England accent or a southern drawl are examples of dialects, she said. Rob Burisek, Downers Grove, Ill., senior, said he catches himself when he pronounces words "like a Chicagoan."
Words with the letter "a" — such as dad, accent, even Chicago — were especially troublesome, he said.
Complete strangers give me crap about it," Burisek said. "I'll be talking to someone for just a few seconds and they'll ask me if I'm from Chicago. It's crazy."
For KU international students, a heavy foreign accent often hinders communication with other KU students.
Eliecer Osorio, Herrera, Panama, sophomore, said that even though he had been at the University for two years, he still had to repeat words and phrases for people.
"It gets annoying when people cannot understand me again and again," he said. "It's a nightmare."
Osorio said he had difficulty understanding some Americans because of their dialects.
"It was like he was from another country," Osorio said. "I was answering him, 'yea, yea, OK, sure,' but I couldn't understand anything."
For example, when Osorio was traveling last summer to Tallahassee, Fla., on a bus, he could not understand a man from Tennessee who was sitting next to him.
Osorio said he thought he had improved his English vocabulary but needed to work on his pronunciation. Osorio thought he could lose his accent entirely in another year.
But sometimes losing an accent is tougher than people think, Paul-Brown said.
"They have to be strongly motivated and embrace the local language and accent," she said.
Sometimes the process is easier if they find help from a professional
Sometimes the process is easier if they find help from a professional speech pathologist or consultant, Paul-Brown said. However, accent reduction may be costly. Some private speech services offer 10- to 15-week courses and cost as much as $250 an hour. Group lessons and community college courses can be less intensive but usually offer better rates and a great deal of peer support. Paul-Brown stresses at the idea of an accent-reduc
that the idea of an accent-reduction program is not to remove all
traces of a person's native speech patterns.
"The focus is to enhance communication, not to suppress that person's linguistic culture," she said.
Larrivee and others said they were proud of their accents or dialects.
"I think an accent is a mark of individuality," Larrivee said. "It's part of my personality."
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
PAGE 9
NOVEMBER 30,1993
People and places at the University of Kansas.
Need a gift for that special stoner? It's 'Deals in Dopesville'
Abraham Krupinski, 19, and a 17-year-old roommate were arrested in Milwaukee in February on drug distribution charges. Recovered from their home, according to police, were 17 marijuana plants, gardening supplies, two books on marijuana cultivation and a hand-lettered board game they created, roughly resembling Monopoly, called Dealing in Dopesville. In the game, two or four players toss dice and make drug deals in different neighborhoods. In place of Chance and Community Chest cards are "Passport" and "Car alarm" cards.
Oh, no not another wedgie
In June an Iowa administrative law judge ruled that former dishwasher Tom Schneckloth had "good cause" for quitting his job at a restaurant in Glenwood, Iowa, and was thus entitled to unemployment benefits. The restaurant's owners — Kathy and Dan Smith — often had marital fights on the premises and would sometimes throw kitchen knives at each other, endangering Schneckloth and other employees.
So much for unity
Most of the 36 inmates jailed in Mason City, Iowa, started a hunger strike on the morning of May 12 to protest the quality and portions of the meals served to them. The strike went well at breakfast, but inmates became weary and dropped all of their demands by lunchtime.
Workplace hazards
Weirdo community
USA Today reported in October that two soccer coaches were asked to resign at Smith Academy in Hatfield, Mass., because they had permitted the older players to haze younger ones by pulling up their underpants, giving them "wedgies."
The London newspaper The Guardian reported in October that Great Britain's Department of National Heritage is likely to outlaw the Dec. 18 startup of a new satellite TV service, "TVs on TV" — an all transvestite channel. The channel originated in Germany. A representative said the voyeur audience is expected to be at least 10 times the crossdresser audience.
No wonder cats hate people
Fat pigs get no respect
A hospital in Birmingham, England, came under fire in August for its attempts to defray the cost of an expensive, sophisticated cancer scan-
See Weird,Page 10.