Courtesy Allied Arts Council. New artwork selected for downtown traffic box.
An artist will grace Downtown St. Joseph Wednesday morning to bring life to the Allied Arts Council’s third traffic box art installment.
Artist Grace McCammond will be at the corner of 10th and Felix Wednesday, October 8 painting the traffic box. It’s the first themed project selected by the Allied Arts Council with a literacy theme due to the box’s proximity to the Downtown library.
McCammond is from St. Louis, Mo and was selected at the artist by a committee after multiple submissions were reviewed.
She said she created her artwork based around the continuity of literacy through the ages and its connection between past and present.
“The imagery of the open book, parchment, quill and ink, and hurricane lamp interwoven with books on shelves- the bright colors and bold lines linked in a style reminiscent of stained glass- is meant to convey a sense of the past and the present literacy as both a continuum and interconnected. Using St. and Joseph as book titles is a way of grounding that concept to a sense of place and indicating St. Joseph exists as part of and within that continuum of past and present,” said McCammond.
McCammond began in the mid 80’s as a photo retoucher and B/W lab technician, and returned to school in 1993 completing her BA from the University of Montana. In 1997, hoping to pursue art full time she moved in St. Louis, and purchased and rehabbed a building with friends opening Signature Arts. McCammond has a long list of professional artwork ranging from beer labels, several traffic signal boxes, murals and much more.
“Some artists create great art that make people think, make a statement or comments on important issues of the day and I think that is a wonderful use of art. But, for me, I view my work as acting on a much more modest scale… public art becomes part of our daily lives and engages us as we move through our day… public art can be like a friend seen on the street, we may not have time to stop and visit long but we can wave, say hi and move on with a smile. And that’s what I try to do with public artwork that I create,” said McCammond.
The box may still be in progress Thursday and Friday depending on weather, and progress on the piece.
Brett O’DellComplications have arisen in the case of a former Caldwell County evidence officer accused of stealing evidence. Brett O’Dell was scheduled for Circuit Court arraignment in Caldwell County Monday. But the case has been transferred to a new judge.
Officials say Daviess County Circuit Court Judge Daren Adkins will take over in the matter. A special prosecutor has also been appointed in the case. It’s not yet clear where, or if, the matter will go to trial.
O’Dell is free on $25,000 bond on two counts of stealing and two counts of possession of a controlled substance. He was charged a just over a year ago, accused of stealing pills and cash from the Caldwell County Sheriff’s evidence vault.
Last month he waived his preliminary hearing. But before Circuit Court arraignment could occur, O’Dell’s defense lawyer asked for assignment of a new judge. The Presiding Judge in the 43rd Judicial Circuit, Thoman Chapman, appointed judge Adkins to take over. Douglas Roberts was assigned as special prosecutor earlier.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The second total lunar eclipse of the year will happen early Wednesday. If the skies are clear, North Americans will be able to view it, especially in the West.
The National Weather Service reported the event begins at 4:15 a.m.
The total eclipse starts at 5:25 a.m. and will last an hour. The moon will appear orange or red, the result of sunlight scattering off Earth’s atmosphere. That’s why it’s called a blood moon.
Missouri Western soccer player Sarah Lyle has been named the MIAA Goalkeeper of the week.
Lyle completed her fourth and fifth shutouts of the season over the weekend, including an 11-save performance against Southwest Baptist on Saturday. The Bearcats had scored a combined 20 goals during a six-game win streak the Griffons halted. It was also Southwest Baptist’s first MIAA loss of the season.
Lyle leads the MIAA with a .902 save percentage and is second in shutouts and goals against average (0.57).
The sophomore from Duluth, Minnesota was a 2013 MIAA Academic Honor Roll member and becomes the first Griffon to be named an MIAA Athlete of the Week since Sept. 29, 2008, when Jenna Weis received the same award.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill is asking students and university officials across the state for help improving national legislation aimed at curbing sexual violence at colleges.
McCaskill on Tuesday continued her statewide tour at the University of Missouri-Columbia, where student advocates and survivors of sexual assault told her about challenges that sometimes prevent victims from reporting.
The senator’s visit comes days after the university enacted new sexual discrimination policies and during a national conversation about sexual assaults on college campuses.
The U.S. Department of Education reports 76 colleges and universities are under investigation for possible violations of Title IX. The federal anti-discrimination law prohibits sexual assault, stalking and dating violence.
McCaskill’s Campus Accountability and Safety Act would impose new policy guidelines and penalties of up to $150,000 for universities’ noncompliance.
Missouri Athletics announced that it will host the annual Black & Gold Scrimmage event, featuring both Mizzou Men’s and Women’s Basketball on Tuesday, Oct. 14. Held at Mizzou Arena, admission to the event will be free for all Tiger fans.
Doors will open at 5:30 p.m. and members of both basketball programs will be signing autographs on the Mizzou Arena concourse. Fans will receive a limited edition autograph card for the teams to sign. Scrimmages and skills competitions are scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m.
Head Coach Robin Pingeton is beginning her fifth season at the helm of Mizzou Women’s Basketball. Coming off of back-to-back postseason appearances, the Tigers look to continue laying the foundations of success at Mizzou. The team returns 10 players from the 2013-14 season including star three-point shooter, Morgan Eye, and adds three newcomers in freshmen Bri Porter and Carrie Shephard and junior transfer Juanita Robinson.
Mizzou Men’s Basketball will begin its first season under the direction of head coach Kim Anderson. The Tigers will be one of the youngest squads in college basketball this season with nine newcomers entering the program. The club’s 2014 recruiting class was ranked among the Top 15 nationally by various recruiting outlets. Three freshmen, Jakeenan Gant, Montaque Gill-Caesar and Namon Wright, were each ranked among the Top 75 players in their class and give Mizzou Basketball its largest incoming group of freshmen since 2008-09.
Deanna Hanson-Abromeit, assistant professor of music education and music therapy at the University of Kansas, is studying how music helps premature infants survive and thrive. Here, she strums the guitar for children at Operation Breakthrough, an early education child care and social services facility in Kansas City, Mo.-Todd Feeback/The Hale Center for Journalism at KCPT
By Alex Smith, KCUR
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — If the idea of music therapy brings to mind ’60s-era folk singers warbling to bemused patients, you haven’t seen Deanna Hanson-Abromeit at work.
At Operation Breakthrough in Kansas City, the University of Kansas assistant professor sings a good morning song to Daren, a curious, if slightly cautious, infant.
The tune is a simple one, and the singer bubbles over with enthusiasm, but her musical interventions are more of a conversation than a performance.
Hanson-Abromeit is engaged with Daren’s every movement, playing to her one-person audience in a way that might put Al Green to shame.
She watches his eyes and head while making constant changes to the music’s volume and tempo, trying to engage the baby’s attention.
Before the end of the second verse, Daren breaks into a big smile.
Struggling for respect
When Hanson-Abromeit started studying music therapy in the early 1990s, she received a warning from her college adviser: Have a backup plan. At the time, music therapy was struggling for respect, and many therapists ended up working as music teachers.
But the field has changed dramatically in the past few years, and now the KU assistant professor is considered one of the leading researchers working to uncover how music can help even the smallest premature infants survive and thrive.
“When we’re born a full-term infant, we can see, but our vision is protected in a way that we don’t take on too much stimuli for our systems to organize,” Hanson-Abromeit said. “And when a baby is born prematurely, those systems haven’t yet fully developed.”
She explains that premature infants are overwhelmed with information: noise, light, new people. A neonatal intensive care unit can be especially chaotic, and the babies’ brains aren’t developed enough to handle it all. The stress puts their nervous system into fight-or-flight mode, which robs them of the energy and focus their brains and nervous systems need to help them grow.
But if music has charms to soothe a savage breast, it also can soothe a newborn’s nervous system.
“We’re really trying to help them at a very basic neurological level organize at staying calm,” Hanson-Abromeit said.
Pre-recorded music won’t do the trick. The educational value of Baby Einstein DVDs largely has been debunked. Helping infants’ brains develop requires something more subtle: the kind of attentive interaction practiced by therapists like Hanson-Abromeit.
“We can change those characteristics of the music to be less complex,” she said. “And then build that up gradually for more complexity as the baby’s neurological processes can handle that, or we help them start to develop those things.”
Increasing understanding
Among Hanson-Abromeit’s admirers is Dr. Joanne Loewy, director of the Louis Armstrong Department of Music Therapy, part of Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital in New York.
“She’s a big brain in music therapy in many areas,” Loewy said.
An article published in the journal Pediatrics last year described a study by Loewy and colleagues that was one of the field’s big breakthroughs. Involving 11 hospitals and nearly 300 premature infants, it made clear the impact musical therapy could have.
“We were able to show that we could render other heart rates, different sleep patterns, improve caloric intake and sucking behavior, and that parent-preferred lullabies could decrease stress,” Loewy said.
For her part, Hanson-Abromeit has been striving to improve scientific understanding of music therapy.
Last year, she joined with researchers in the United Kingdom and Australia to form Music and Neuro-Developmentally At-Risk Infant, or MANDARI, to explore how music therapy affects the brain. The group had its first international conference this summer.
Formalizing the method
Hanson-Abromeit said the next step is to establish a formalized method for music interventions with premature infants. Through her clinical work and other research, she’s codifying how a therapist should respond when an infant looks away, for example, or shows an increased heart rate.
“Having some parameters in how we use the music and how, if we use the music this way, we should expect to get this outcome,” she said. “So, taking a little of the mystery out of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.”
Though Hanson-Abromeit’s field has made great strides with the help of neuroscience, she believes there’s still a lot to learn from the basics of music therapy: working with the newborns themselves to make a musical connection.
And as music therapy continues to gain professional respect, Hanson-Abromeit hopes her work will help take music intervention beyond the exclusive realm of the professional therapist.
“As we learn more about how and why music works with premature infants,” she said, “it’s going to be really important to help parents learn how to read those cues and adapt the music to help manage the symptoms that their babies are experiencing, whether it’s pain or agitation or discomfort, so that then they can also build really nice memories and experiences with their infant and create attachment and bonding through positive experiences.”
Charles BurgeA four-year long episode of child sex abuse, and the child pornography images that resulted, land a Kansas City man in jail facing a life prison term as a predatory sex offender
Platte County Prosecuting Attorney Eric Zahnd says Charles Burge is a prior sex offender. Burge, 35, was charged last week with first degree statutory rape, sexual exploitation of a minor, enticement of a child, and endangering the welfare of a child.
Zahnd says the investigation began with a request to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for help identifying a series of child porn images. The Department of Homeland Security in Boston began attempting to identify the victim in the images last March.
The series consisted of approximately 140 images which Zahnd says chronicle approximately four years of abuse of an 11-year-old girl. The images were altered electronically to hide things in the images that might reveal the perpetrator’s identity or location.
Authorities were able to identify the victim in the photos as a girl living in Platte County. They executed a search warrant at a residence, and found both the defendant and the victim, along with numerous items depicted in the background of the online images.
Prosecutors say Burge was convicted of rape in Arkansas in 1996. He is currently on probation in Platte County for failing to register as a sex offender. Burge has been charged as a predatory sex offender, which carries a mandatory life sentence. He is currently being held under $500,000.00 cash only bond.
MADISON, Ind. — A Kansas man has been identified as the victim of a weekend crash in Indiana.
The Indiana State Police reported the passenger killed in the crash Saturday afternoon on U.S. 421 as John Thomas Walker, 21, Arkansas City. Police say alcohol was involved.
Walker suffered fatal injuries as a result of a head-on collision when the vehicle in which he was riding crossed the centerline and struck a 2001 Dodge Ram pickup driven by Charles L. McRoberts, 37, Versailles, Ind.
JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri woman has pleaded guilty to three felony counts in a failed attempt to have two men kidnap her daughter from the child’s father.
The Joplin Globe reports Elise Deboutez of Nevada, Missouri, pleaded guilty Monday to arranging an attempted child kidnapping, first-degree burglary and armed criminal action.
The Jasper County prosecutor’s office says the plea deal would limit the 28-year-old woman’s prison time to 15 years.
Police say Deboutez recruited two Joplin men at a party last October to kidnap her 1-year-old daughter from the girl’s father, who had been given emergency temporary custody of the child.
The father hid in a bathroom with the girl when two intruders entered his home. Two shots were fired into the room before the men fled, but nobody was hit.
