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Sports: Future bright for Yates Center athletics See B1
The Weekender Saturday, June 24, 2017
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‘Blood in the Water’
Power issues could be costly
Pulitzer Prize winner at Thursday Iola library program
By RICHARD LUKEN The Iola Register
Iola’s ability to generate enough electricity to fully meet the city’s needs will be discussed at length Monday by Iola City Council members. For the past decade — since the 2007 flood, to be exact — Iola has not been able to produce enough electricity to be considered a “partial-requirement electric utility.” With its stable of generators, Iola can produce 22.5 megawatts of electricity on
By RICHARD LUKEN The Iola Register
It’s been nearly 46 years since the Attica prison riots, but for many, the story is not yet complete. “Even today, it’s still a major, major fight, just to get the records,” notes Heather Ann Thompson, a historian, author, activist and professor of history at the University of Michigan. Thompson, who spent many a summer in Iola as a child, has penned the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Blood In the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy,” the first full accounting of the notorious chapter in American prisons that resulted in the deaths of 39 prisoners and guards. Thompson has zig-zagged across the globe virtually nonstop for the past year to talk about the book since its release last August. She was in Mexico City Wednesday, Paris earlier this month, and will be in New York in the coming days Thompson also will sneak in a stop in Iola next week. She’ll be at the Iola Public Library at 6 p.m. Thursday to speak about “Blood In the Water.” “I’m sure I’ll have plenty of family members here to fill the library,” she laughed. Thompson, 53, was born in Lawrence but spent much of her childhood growing up in Detroit. She’s the granddaughter of the late Frank and Helen Thompson of Iola
Heather Ann Thompson, who won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in History for her book “Blood In The Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy” will be at the Iola Public Library at 6 p.m. Thursday to discuss her book. Thompson has several relatives living in Iola. COURTESY PHOTO and Donna Curry and the late Jack Curry. She’s the niece of Iolans Larry and Gary Curry, and cousin of Clyde Toland. She is the daughter of Frank Thompson, lecturer emeritus in economics at the University of MIchigan, and Ann Curry Thompson, a labor lawyer in Detroit. Both were Iola High School graduates. Following Thursday’s presentation, Thompson will sign copies of her book — they’ll be for sale at the program — and will stick around a few days to visit with old acquaintances, and catch a much-needed respite from her break-neck schedule. “Iola’s a special part of my
a daily basis. To maintain its status, the city must generate 28 megawatts. To keep up, Iola purchases capacity from Chanute See POWER | Page A2
Tina Spiares and Russ Gardner are renovating the building soon to be known as Tina’s Place. The new restaurant is set to open in August at the location of the former Bonnie’s Cafe in Gas. REGISTER/ SHELLIE SMITLEY
childhood. I spent many summers swimming at the Iola pool,” she told the Register in a telephone interview from Seattle, her latest tour stop.
Gas restaurant set to reopen in August
“BLOOD IN The Water” tells the riveting story of preceeded the Sept. 9, 1971, takeover of Attica, an act of protest of what inmates contended was brutal prison conditions and mistreatment rooted in systemic racism; how four days of negotiations with authorities for a peaceful resolution eventually failed; and the subsequent retaking by New York state
By SHELLIE SMITLEY The Iola Register
The building best known by locals as Bonnie’s Corner Cafe is set to make a comeback in August. Tina Spiares and her husband Russ Gardner are hustling to complete a mound of renovations to the building that has been vacant since 2016. It was known as
See AUTHOR | Page A6
Ruth and Earl’s, but for less than a year. From painting to tearing out walls, Spiares and Gardner have their plates full. New plumbing throughout the gutted building is being installed and it has no gas lines. “We don’t know where the gas lines went,” Spiares See TINA’S | Page A3
Summer theater troupe puts the shake in Shakespeare By RICK DANLEY The Iola Register
For those whose ears reject the baroque pentameter of Shakespeare’s language but who still like to sip every now and then from the cup of classic literature, the Allen Summer Youth Theatre group has got a musical for you. The group delivers its final performance of “Jump ‘N’ Jive Juliet” — a riff on “Romeo and Juliet” — tonight at 7:30 at the Allen College Theatre. Admission is free. Spiced with just enough poetry to keep your parents happy, this fast-paced, hourlong ensemble comedy stays aloft on the winds of its exultant choreography, rapidfire dialogue and enormous overall charm. “Jump ‘N’ Jive” takes all of the dark strains of Shakespeare’s original — the “starcross’d,” “misadventur’d,”
The 18th Annual Allen Summer Youth Theatre presents “Jump ‘N’ Jive Juliet” tonight at 7:30 at the Allen College Theatre. Gaby Lampe, in the foreground, plays the namesake character in the funloving musical. REGISTER/RICK DANLEY “death-mark’d” teens as well as their morally defective families — and replaces it with belly laughs and the upbeat tinkle of swing-time music.
Quote of the day Vol. 119, No. 168
Set in 1940s Venice Beach, Calif., the premise is simple: Mr. Montague and his son Ron have booked the local community center for an upcoming
jitterbug contest. Mr. Capulet and his daughter Juliet have booked the same community center at the same time for a rehearsal of “Romeo and
“I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known.” -Walt Disney 75 Cents
Juliet.” It’s a bad case of double-booking, and it falls to Ron and Juliet to fix the logistical pickle. Will the entire farrago resolve itself in the form of one giant Montague-Capulet coming-together curtainclosing jitterbug extravaganza? It’s hard to say. You’ll have to see the show tonight to find out. But what’s certain is the champion caliber of the “Jump ‘N’ Jive” cast. Gaby Lampe as Juliet Capulet is a force. In addition to her gifts as an actor and dancer, the incoming Iola High School sophomore has a preposterously good singing voice. Whereas Shakespeare’s Juliet pulls lines like these out of her somber guts — “Is there no pity sitting in the clouds, / That sees into the bottom of my grief ?” — See THEATER | Page A5
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