Fair Parking Page A2 Police offering permits
MONDAY September 9, 2013
NFL Page B1 Colts defeat Raiders
Weather Partly cloudy skies with a high of 87 and a low of 67. Tuesday slightly warmer. Page A6
GOOD MORNING
The Auburn, Indiana
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Root, root, root for the Cubbies Syria: Shipshewana’s Doris Davis poses with a few of her favorite Chicago Cubs treasures: a Cubs T-shirt, a Ryne Sandberg life-sized cutout and a baseball bat autographed by former Cubs catcher Jody Davis. Doris, who turned 98 this summer, has been a lifelong Cubs fan.
Expert to speak at Pasture Walk AUBURN — Ralph Voss, owner and operator of Voss Land and Cattle Co. in Linn, Mo., and writer for Stockman GrassFarmer and Acres USA, will be speaking at a Pasture Walk on Thursday. Voss will discuss his experiences with soil amendments such as raw milk, sea salt, molasses and liquid fish; plus cattle genetics, rotational and high-stock-density grazing, extending the grazing season, and much more. The Pasture Walk will take place at the Steve Provines farm, 2347 C.R. 38, Auburn, from 1-3 p.m. and again from 6-8 p.m. It is open to the public, especially anyone who is interested in hearing about innovative grazing techniques. Light refreshments will be provided. For more information, contact the DeKalb County Soil & Water Conservation District at 925-5620, ext. 3, or the LaGrange County Soil & Water Conservation District at 463-3471, ext. 3.
Semitrailer veers off road, driver killed PORTAGE (AP) — State police say a truck driver was killed when the semitrailer he was driving west on the Indiana Toll Road veered off the interstate and struck a concrete bridge deck. The victim has been identified as 48-year-old Michael Hall of Covington, Ga., about 35 miles east of Atlanta. State police say the accident happened about 9:35 a.m. Sunday in Porter County, about 5 miles west of State Road 49. Police say they don’t know what caused Hall to veer off the highway. Hall was ejected and pinned under the box trailer. He was pronounced dead at Porter Regional Hospital in Valparaiso.
ONLINE CALENDAR Find out what’s going on in the area this week kpcnews.com
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Classifieds.................................B6-B7 Life..................................................... A5 Obituaries......................................... A4 Opinion .............................................B4 Sports.........................................B1-B3 Weather............................................ A6 TV/Comics .......................................B5 Vol. 101 No. 248
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explained. “I had the checkerboard for the bases and the outfield. And I would just move them around as they got their singles or their home runs, or put them back in the dugout if they struck out.” A good student, Doris went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University and work toward her master’s. She eventually settled into a teaching career, like her father, first teaching high school and eventually spending 25 years teaching at the University of Wisconsin at Stephens Point. She retired in 1977. It was after she retired that Doris kicked her love of the Cubs up another gear. She would take in at least 30 games each summer in Chicago, catching the South Shore into the city and then riding the El
BEIRUT (AP) — The U.S. government insists it has the intelligence to prove it, but the public has yet to see a single piece of concrete evidence produced by U.S. intelligence — no satellite imagery, no transcripts of Syrian military communications — connecting the government of President Bashar Assad to the alleged chemical weapons attack last month that killed hundreds of people. In its absence, Damascus and its ally Russia have aggressively pushed another scenario: that rebels carried out the Aug. 21 chemical attack. Neither has produced evidence for that case, either. That’s left more questions than answers as the U.S. threatens a possible military strike. The early morning assault in a rebel-held Damascus suburb known as Ghouta was said to be the deadliest chemical weapons attack in Syria’s 2½-year civil war. Survivors’ accounts, photographs of many of the dead wrapped peacefully in white sheets and dozens of videos showing victims in spasms and gasping for breath shocked the world and moved President Barack Obama to call for action because the use of chemical weapons crossed the red line he had drawn a year earlier. Yet one week after Secretary of State John Kerry outlined the case against Assad, Americans — at least those without access to classified reports — haven’t seen a shred of his proof. There is open-source evidence that provides clues about the attack, including videos of
SEE DAVIS, PAGE A6
SEE SYRIA, PAGE A6
Video at kpcnews.com Doris Davis talks more about growing up as a Cubs fan and shows some of her memorabilia in video at kpcnews.com. Scan the QR code to watch it on your tablet or smartphone. PATRICK REDMOND
Shipshe woman, 98, keeps cheering for her team NEIGHBORS BY PATRICK REDMOND predmond@kpcmedia.com
SHIPSHEWANA — Doris Davis is a big Cubs fan. Davis, 98, of Shipshewana, saw her first game in 1926 at age 11. While she doesn’t recall all of the details of that game, she does remember the experience. “I was sitting out in right field,” Davis said. “Oh, I was excited.” Turns out being a die-hard Cubs fan came naturally in the Davis household. “My dad was a Cubs fan, and we used to go up to Chicago every summer a couple times,” she said. “Load up the kids in the back seat and mother and dad in the front seat, and away we’d go.” Her mother, Ida, knew nothing about the Cubs when she first met and then later married Niles Davis, Doris’ father. Ida eventu-
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ally became as big a Cubs fan as anyone in the family, spending part of her honeymoon in Chicago watching a Cubs game. Baseball was a summer centerpiece of the Davis household when Doris was growing up. She figured out how to use the family’s checkerboard to visually chart the games she’d listen to on the radio. “I had the checkerboard, and I had the gum labels — I had to cut the edge off gum envelopes because we didn’t have Scotch tape at that time — to name all the players, and I had to move them around on the checkerboard,” she
Doubts linger
Band of Republicans pushes immigration in U.S. House GROVELAND, Fla. (AP) — In the five weeks since he declared his support for a comprehensive immigration overhaul, U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster has gotten an earful. One constituent told the secondterm Republican that immigrants carry disease. Another said immigrants would steal jobs away from Americans. Webster “You cannot stop illegal immigration by rewarding it,” another man said at a recent town
hall-style meeting in Groveland, a rural community west of Orlando. “Amnesty is a reward.” As Congress returns to work this week after its summer break, Webster faces perhaps an even tougher crowd: fellow Republicans. Webster is among about two dozen GOP lawmakers who support an eventual path to citizenship for millions of people who are living in the U.S. illegally. These Republicans are facing the daunting challenge of trying to persuade colleagues to follow them. Most Republicans oppose this approach on citizenship, and there is little political incentive for them to change their minds. Only 24 of
233 Republicans represent districts where more than one-quarter of their constituents are Hispanic. Even so, some in the Republican Party argue that its future hinges on whether the House finds a way to embrace an immigration overhaul, which is a crucial issue for the country’s fast-growing bloc of Hispanic voters. Supporters of a path to citizenship point to demographic changes and business backing that have helped sway Webster, who for years opposed immigrant-rights legislation, as potential motives for wavering lawmakers to sign on. “I think as a country we need to do something,” Webster said in
an interview, echoing the rhetoric of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and other prominent Republicans. “Doing nothing is amnesty.” The small but growing band of Republicans is trying to strike a balance between conservative activists who want border security and immigration advocates who want a path to citizenship. Many come from swing districts with sizable Hispanic populations that could make a difference in next year’s elections, tipping the balance of power in the GOP-controlled House. The lawmakers also feel the pressure from business interests that rely on immigrant labor.
More parents opting kids out of standardized tests DELAWARE TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) — While his eighthgrade classmates took state standardized tests this spring, Tucker Richardson woke up late and played basketball in his Delaware Township driveway. Tucker’s parents, Wendy and Will, are part of a small but growing number of parents nationwide who are ensuring their children do not participate in standardized testing. They are opposed to the practice for myriad reasons, including the stress they believe it brings on young students, discomfort with tests being used to gauge teacher performance, fear that corporate influence is overriding education
and concern that test prep is narrowing curricula down to the minimum needed to pass an exam. “I’m just opposed to the way high-stakes testing is being used to evaluate teachers, the way it’s being used to define what’s happening in classrooms,” said Will Richardson, an educational consultant and former teacher. “These tests are not meant to evaluate teachers. They’re meant to find out what kids know.” The opt-out movement, as it is called, is small but growing. It has been brewing for several years via word of mouth and social media, especially through Facebook. The “Long Island
opt-out info” Facebook page has more than 9,200 members, many of them rallying at a Port Jefferson Station, N.Y., high school last month after a group of principals called this year’s state tests — and their low scores — a “debacle.” In Washington, D.C., a group of parents and students protested outside the Department of Education. Students and teachers at a Seattle high school boycotted a standardized test, leading the district superintendent to declare that city high schools have the choice to deem it optional. In Oregon, students organized a campaign persuading their peers to opt out of tests, and a group
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of students in Providence, R.I., dressed like zombies and marched in front of the State House to protest a requirement that students must achieve a minimum score on a state test in order to graduate. “I’m opposed to these tests because they narrow what education is supposed to be about and they lower kids’ horizons,” said Jesse Hagopian, a teacher at the Seattle school. “I think collaboration, imagination, critical thinking skills are all left off these tests and can’t be assessed by circling in A, B, C or D.” For many parents and students, there have been few to no SEE TESTS, PAGE A6
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