40 years ago: LHS students settling in for new semester

From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Jan. 30, 1974:

  • Lawrence High School students were beginning to settle into the routine of a new semester. In Art Sloan’s fantasy and fairy tale class, students were beginning their first major project of reading J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.” The reading of the trilogy was to cover the entire third quarter, with students using class time to discuss and interpret the books. Students were also required to write a series of short critical papers on the works.
  • Firefighters were still hosing down items taken from a house fire at 1405 Oak Hill today. The blaze had apparently started from items stored too near a water heater, fire officials said. Total damage was estimated at $3,000 to the building and property.
  • A “bomb of some sort” had exploded in the 10th floor stairwell of Kansas University’s Oliver Residence Hall overnight, breaking a window. No injuries had occurred as a result of the incident and there were no suspects, according to Capt. Bob Ellison of KU Security. Pieces of plastic, some burned paper, and matches had been found at the scene.
  • Area residents looking for firewood were being permitted to remove timber from government land near the Clinton Dam project. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were offering timber removal permits from the project office west of Lawrence.
  • Women nationwide were responding with outrage and incredulous laughter at the recent suggestion of a General Electric official that the increase of “liberated women entering the labor force in the same manner as men” was doubling the nation’s per capital energy consumption and was therefore a major cause of the energy crisis. “We are becoming energy gluttons not because women are out working, but because General Electric are pushing energy-consuming appliances down our throats,” retorted Ellen Zawell, head of the National Consumer Congress. Gerrie Cook, an administrative assistant at the Federal Aviation Administration, said that she, as a working woman, was actually helping to save energy: “I’m not home all day … to run the cleaner or to watch all those soap operas on the television.” Julie Harmon, a postal employee in Miami, countered the official’s charge with the recommendation that, if he really wanted to blame women, he ought to blame the mothers of the Wright brothers and Henry Ford. “After all,” she said, “their sons invented the airplane and the automobile.”