Kansas City
History comes alive
Photo courtesy Arabia Steamboat Museum
Excavators work to unearth the remains of the steamboat Arabia. The boat was travelling on the Missouri River in 1856 when it struck a tree and sank. One hundred and thirty two years later, the boat was found one half mile from the river and 45 feet underground.
Artifacts from steamboat show 19th Century life
Renee Knoeber/ KANSAN
Ron Maxon with his granddaughters, Holly Maxon, kneeling and Heather Maxon, of Lee Summit, Mo., watch the paddle wheel turn inside the museum.
Visiting from Overland Park, Donna Rode stops to look at goods within the museum.
Renee Knoeber/ KANSAN
By Val Huber
Special to the Kansan
It is Sept. 5,1856. The steamboat Arabia is on her 10th day of travel on the Missouri River from St. Louis to Omaha City, Neb. Only an hour ago, she passed the town of Kansas, which won't be known as Kansas City for 24 more years.
more years.
The Arabia makes her way around Quindaro Bend, about a mile south of Parkville, Mo., and about 10 miles south of what will become — in 117 years — Kansas City International Airport.
Neither the crew nor the passengers notice the fallen sycamore tree lying a few feet below the Missouri's surface.
It is nearly nightfall. The 130-odd passengers, mostly women and children en route to meet their husbands and fathers, are sitting down to dinner when the
s y c a m o r e
pierces the Arabia's oak hull.
One passenger,
Able D. Kirk,
described the incident to a St. Joseph newspaper:
"There was a wild scene on board. The boat went down till the water came
The adventure begins
The adventure in 1988 five families — Bob Hawley, sons Greg and David, Jerry Mackey and David Luttrell, their wives and children — began excavation of the Arabia. At the time, none thought it would result in the 33,000-square-foot Arabia Steamboat Museum that now stands in Kansas City's Historic River Market District.
Within 10 minutes of hitting the snag, the Arabia and her 200 tons of cargo were lost. However, all passengers and crew made it safely to shore. All except one horse that remained firmly tied to the Arabia's deck.
over the deck, and the boat keeled over on one side. The chairs and stools were tumbled about, and many of the children nearly fell into the water. Several of the men on board seized the life boat and started for the shore, but they came back, and the women and children were put in the boat."
"If we had known the size of the task before us, we probably never would have proceeded," Greg Hawley said.
The adventure began, said Hawley,
in 1895 when his brother David went
"Every time you dig,it's a major gamble."
Greg Hawley River Salvage Inc.
out on a service call for the family's refrigeration business and learned of a sunken river boat. He brought the story back to his brother, father and Bob Mackey who had collaborated with the Hawleys on treasure hunts in the past.
"I can't tell you how many people told us we wouldn't be successful," Hawley said. Even history was against them. In 1877, 1897 and 1974, three other efforts met with failure in trying to resurrect the Arabia.
They eventually enlisted the aid of David Lutrell, whose construction company provided the equipment and expertise for the excavation. By 1988, River Salvage Inc., the company created by the families, felt it had done enough research to begin excavation.
When excavation began, the boat was no longer in the river. By 1897.
erosion had changed the course of the Missouri, and by 1985, the Arabia lay in a farmer's field, about a half mile from the river's edge and 45 feet below ground.
"You're rolling the dice," Hawley said. "Every time you dig, it's a major gamble. At [the point of the core sample,] we didn't know if there were enough artifacts for a museum or even to fill up the back of a pickup."
The greatest problem was trying to get below the water table. Bob Hawley designed a system of irrigation pumps that would lower the water below the Arabia's depth by pushing water up and into a drainage ditch which ran into the Missouri. Excavation began in November.
By the time excavation was finished in February, the group had more than enough to fill the back of a pickup. The 200-ton cargo yielded everything necessary to build a frontier town: leather boots and shoes from Boston, English china, Chinese silk, canned fruit from New York and two prefabricated houses.
An enormous task
After excavating the site, the enormous task of preserving the artifacts still lay ahead. Hawley credits the cold water temperature and lack of sunlight and oxygen to the artifacts unusually good condition. He is careful to use the term "preserve" instead of "restore."
"We try to stabilize the artifact, preserve it in a way that is presentable, but only by using procedures that are reversible. So if we find a better process, we'll be able to change it," Hawle said.
Museums like the Arabia museum help to give a picture of what life was like in 19th century America, said Jim
Museuminfo
400 Grand Ave., Kansas City, Mo.
(816) 471-4030
(816) 471-4030
Group reservations (816) 471-1856
Hours: Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. - 6 p.m., Sunday noon - 5 p.m.
Ticket Prices: $5.50 for adults, $5 for persons 60 and older, $3.25 for children 4-12, free for children 3 and younger. Adult groups of 30 or more
$4.25 a person, for school groups
$2.5 a person.
Source: Kansan Start Research KANSAN
O'Barr, curator of the Bertrand Steamboat Museum at the DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge in Missouri Valley, Iowa. "The settlers would take their material culture with them," he said.
The perfect time capsule
The perfect dinner capsule
Although most of us picture life in the 1850s as rugged and without convenience, artifacts from the Arabia paint a different picture. Rows upon rows of glass, English china, tin and brass are displayed behind glass. Perfume from France was excavated in such good condition that the museum had the fragrance analyzed and duplicated for sale in the gift shop.
"The Arabia is a time capsule for that period," said Suzane Benda, conservator for the Kansas Museum of History in Topeka.
The clothing from that time capsule has been invaluable to film companies and others specializing in living history recreations.
The Arabia is especially valuable because it possesses hundreds of duplicate items. Most museums may have only one or two.
The plays of Samuel Beckett are explored by theater graduate students to define the relationship between author and director.
theater
Creativity explored in theater series
By Sara Bennett
Kansan staff writer
Theatergoers will get a double dose of absurdist drama at the Inge Theater this week when three short plays by Samuel Beckett are performed twice for the same audience.
"An Evening with Sam," the opening production in the William Inge Memorial Theater Series, consists of three 10-15 minute plays directed by graduate students in theater and film. Each play is performed two times. The first performances strictly adhere to Beckett's staging directions. The second performances reflect the directors' individual interpretations.
wright to director
John Gronbeck-Tedesco, professor and chair of the department of theater and film, said that the directors chose the format to demonstrate how interpretations of a work differ from play-
Gronbeck-Tedesco said the plays of Beckett are an ideal vehicle for addressing the issue of interpretation. Although his absurdist plays seem to encourage freedom of interpretation, Becket has been militant about controlling the staging of those plays, going so far as to time pauses down to the second and specify the sizes of props down to the inch.
"Beckett has placed himself in the middle of many controversies in the theater," Gronbeck-Tedesco said. "He seems to sponsor a great deal of interpretive freedom. The irony is he exerted enormous control over the staging."
That irony raises questions about the nature of artistic interpretation, Gronbeck-Tedesco said. Does the authority of interpretation lie with the playwright or director? Are some
interpretations better than others? "An Evening with Sam" grew out of discussions of those issues.
Three student directors were chosen for the project, and they chose their own play to direct. Lance Gharavi, Merriam graduate student, directs the play "Rockaby." Leslie Atkins, Topea graduate student, directs the play "Ohio Impromptu," and Sally Shedd, Ozark, Ark., graduate student, directs the play "Footfalls."
Shedd said she was drawn to the project because she was interested in the issues of interpretation.
"It's a pretty hot topic," she said. "Who has the real control, the playwright or the director? It's not black and white, and that's where it gets interesting."
Shedd said that directing the same show twice from different perspective.
tives was challenging but that she was able to use Beckett's strict prescriptions as a springboard for her own interpretation.
Shedd said directing for "An Evening With Sam" helped her learn about the power of artistic interpretation.
"For me, it's strengthened the value of creativity and interpretation," she said. "That's really the essence of what being an artist is. It's always different."
“An Evening with Sam” will run daily through Saturday at the William Inge Memorial Theater in Murphy Hall. Performances begin at 8 p.m. Admission is $3 for students and $6 for all others. Seminars will be held after the performances on tomorrow and Thursday for those interested in discussing interpretation-related issues.
Issues and trends at the University of Kansas.
Judge pays fine of $1 for man who stole cigarettes
In August, Judge Robert Schilbellberg released shoplifter Leroy Kelley without penalty in Lynnwood, Wash., even though Kelley had just pleased guilty to stealing two packs of Marlboros from a Safeway store. Schillbell fined Kelley $1, which the judge then paid out of his own pocket. Because he believed "the store is more culpable than (Kelley) is" for selling cigarettes in the first place because they are such dangerous products.
Government in action
Officials of the Katy (Texas) Independent School District sent parents formal letters of apology in September for having distributed a sexual conduct manual, which officials belatedly concluded went too far. Among the listed violations, resulting in expulsion, explained to all students from the first grade up, was having sexual contact with the genitals or anus of animals.
Money for art's sake
In August, the National Endowment for the Arts hurriedly withdrew funding it had granted to three California artists after it came under criticism from a New York Times report. Artists David Avalos, Elizabeth Sisco and Louis Hock were participants in the NEA-funded "La Frontera/The Border" project; their "art" consisted of passing out signed $10 bills to illegal immigrants to demonstrate to citizens the impact that aliens have on the economy. One of the artists said the project was about "the interaction of physical space with intellectual space and civic space."
Annoying ear wax
In August, Food and Drug Administration agents raided a store in Columbus, Ohio, that an inventory of "ear candles," which are hollow candies that in theory will loosen hard-to-remove wax from a person's ears. (The candle is placed in the ear and lighted on top; the oxygen sucked through the hollow canal creates a vacuum that loosens the earwax.) The FDA said neither the safety nor the effectiveness of the candles had been demonstrated.
Gentlemen, get your hats
In July, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration rescinded an earlier decision it had made to fine a Boise, Idaho, plumbing company $8,000 for rules violations during the rescue of a construction worker in a collapsed trench. Originally, the administration had cited the company because, among other things, rescue workers had failed to go get their hard hats and put them on before attempting the rescue.
)