¢ Some firefighters from Lawrence apparently came to the aid of U.S. Rep. Nancy Boyda (D-Kan.) last week, according to Roll Call and posted at RawStory.com. During the firefighters’ visit to the Capitol, Boyda got ill and eventually was diagnosed with gallstones.”Usually, constituent service involves a lawmaker helping a resident of his or her district,” Emily Heil writes for Roll Call’s Heard on the Hill column. “But the tables were turned for Rep. Nancy Boyda (D-Kan.) last week, when some visiting constituents came to her vomitorious rescue.”Heil reports that “{a] group of firemen from Lawrence, Kan., had dropped by to talk about their legislative priorities, a Boyda spokeswoman says, when the Congresswoman began to feel ill. Two of the firemen with EMT training helped her to a couch and stood ready to give her medical attention.””The lawmaker, in what is sure to be one of her most embarrassing on-the-job moments, then puked into a trash can while the firefighters and an aide looked on,” Heil writes.¢ Split Lip Rayfield musician Kirk Rundstrom, who died earlier this year from cancer, is the subject of a tribute at the site BlogCritics.org._I first saw Kirk playing with Scroat Belly in Lawrence, Ks some time in 1995. Though I’m not precise on the date, I’ll never forget the impression that Kirk left on me. One word comes to mind: energy. The man was Shazzam on guitar. He beamed (smiled right back at the Grim Reaper, I’d bet), he rocked, and yet tattooed, work-booted and capped by farm feed suppliers, the man never played the cocky rocker. When you watched him shred that acoustic (or electrified acoustic) guitar you witnessed an electrical storm on guitar strings._¢ A former KU graduate student in chemistry writes about long-distance relationships in higher education at InsideHigherEd.com._I commuted from Lawrence, Kansas to Kansas City every day while she made the walk up to Mallott Hall to do research. After a year of this I decided to regain my sanity and resigned my position to return to KU and obtain my Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry. We were happy to walk up the hill together once again!_¢ Christopher Orwoll, the former KU ROTC professor who has been named director of the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, does a Q&A with the Web site CollectSpace.com. _”I have always kind of been a space nut, and have kind of done this as a hobby, shall we say over the last – however many years is that – quite a few while I have been serving in the Navy. When I happened to start planning a trip for my family out to the Cosmosphere, I noted that the position here was open and kind of looked at it and said, ‘What better opportunity here with my background in the Navy, to maybe take a shot at working with the museum here and heading it up, combining, shall we say, hobby and leadership experience?'”_