The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 6

THE COURIER-JOURNAL, TUESDAY, MARCH 26, 1991 3 Checks finalize flight from area Grants to film makers help preserve video art in TV documentaries The new program allowed KET to tap the resources of the state's independent film makers and bring Associated Press COVINGTON, Ky. The 1990 General Assembly solved a problem for Jean Donohue and other inde-T pendent film producers by making money available to complete their projects. The Covington film maker has received an $18,000 grant from the newly created Kentucky Educational Television Fund for Independent Productions. She is videotaping an artistic documentary called "Living in the Imagination of the Ohio River Val- ley." It will be a view of the valley that's part scientific, part romantic and highly personal. The documentary hopes to answer such questions as: Who splashed in the river in an-; cient days? What made them smile? How did they worship? Whose foot-I steps were the first in the Ohio Riv-- er's mud? The grant program established by lawmakers may be the only state-funded independent film program in the country, said 0.

Leonard Press, executive director of Kentucky Educational Television. He called the legislature's funding of the grant program $259,000 a sign of the state's commitment to cultural and artistic expression. "This is becoming more and more a video generation," Press said. "Video is a form more akin to print now. Some very good, very important things are being said video.

But it is still not cheap enough for anybody to do it. It's not like a book where you can do a little each night. Video docu- mentaries are an all-consuming thing. You have to be there when events are happening," he said. The grant program helps assure that independent film makers will be able to record events, to make statements, to ask questions that might otherwise go unasked, Press said.

"People who work at commercial stations have enough on their plates. They can't take the time to make what a lot of times amounts to video poetry," Press said. through the beginnings of Louisville aviation history, then concluded their page in it by emerging minutes later with their check. The man waved away my overture, got into his car and started the engine. The woman, Lucy Marlow, explained pleasantly that she and her husband don't have an airport-area house to lay claim to anymore theirs in Standiford was demolished before the courts put a stop to demolitions.

She turns on television now, she said, to the often-replayed news videotape of a bulldozer entering her bedroom. She said she and her husband are happy where they are, even though their new house is smaller. And with the old house gone, the Marlows decided they would pick up their $125 and go to dinner. "I imagine you will see a lot of people here today," she said, and was surprised to learn that hadn't happened yet on this windy afternoon. Happy, too, are Phillip Tischen-dorf, 80, and Florence Rabenecker, 82, brother and sister who had separate homes in Standiford, and who were brought to Bowman Field yesterday by their nephew, the Rev.

George Tichenor, and his wife, De-lores. All four now live together in Rough River, where Tichenor is interim pastor of Rough River Baptist Church. "If they would have asked them to sign for zero, they would have signed," George Tichenor said, to which his aunt, a 37-year resident of Standiford, declared, "That's right!" "I'm happy," she said. They had no ready answers about their intentions for their checks. "One hundred twenty-five dollars, you don't have to worry much about that," Tischendorf said, allowing that it doesn't go very far.

And they drove away, leaving behind a very still Bowman Field lobby, an unstirring piece of Louisville aviation history. French novel sections for The Courier-Journal. She said the novel's style may reflect Baguet's journalistic background. "It's concise," she said, "very smooth and polished, but with short, punchy sentences." Baguet's use of present tense and his inclusion of historical incidents, real people and references to other legal cases give the novel a documentary feel. For example, he mentions longtime activist Anne Braden and the local law firm of Allison, Soreff Garber.

Baguet's Louisville is a provincial town, quiet and conservative. But underneath this sleepy surface are fear and hatred emotions that periodically burst into the open. Those emotions are represented by the statue of George Prentice, whose columns in The Louisville Journal helped set off the "Bloody Monday" riots against German and Irish Catholics in Louisville in 1855. Prentice, writes Baguet, "is still there, fixed in his convictions on his granite base, facing the imposing municipal library." Baguet's narrative, said Cross, is cool, detached and often ironic. He doesn't take sides between his black and white characters.

He depicts both as isolated and ignorant, mindlessly guided by the prejudice they absorb in childhood. Only one character the novel's heroine, Florence Miller manages to break away from that tradition of anger and suspicion. Baguet acknowledged there are similarities between Michelle Tins-ley and Florence Miller. But he insisted that the similarities are superficial. "I made her up," he said.

"Florence is my creation, my daughter. Florence is me." Michelle Tinsley agreed. From what Baguet has told her about the novel, she doesn't recognize herself in the narrative. Since the Tinsley brothers were paroled two years ago a development that drew angry protest she and her husband have lived quietly in a small town far from Louisville. "We were flabbergasted by the novel," she said.

"Georges sent me a copy, but I can't read it." Continued from Page 1 hair-forever sum of $125, which also happens to be the price of the filing fee in a condemnation action. But, there's more. Sign the papers, the letter says, or you will be named as a defendant in a condemnation suit, to clarify everyone's ownership and rights. You may need a lawyer, and lawyers don't come cheap, and we think you will lose in the end. So, you have until Friday to decide.

Do it by mail, or come to Bowman Field and get your check on the spot. As of yesterday, 223 of 622 property owners had taken that step. I wondered about that figure, $125 wondered whether it really was adequate to break the will of anyone determined to stay in this fight or who genuinely believed his property rights remain valid. What's $125 to these property owners or former property owners: Three or four dinners out? Two new tires? A year's worth of newspapers, to follow the case through its first year in the courts? Might anyone who would take $125 just as easily take $10? Is the airport authority paying mainly the saved? What must it be like for an airport refugee to finally put the saga behind him? On two recent afternoons, while some of these property questions were hanging over a lengthy hearing in federal court, I found the Bowman Field lobby to be, for the most part, silent. One day last week a jogger came in for the water fountain.

Two voices fell from a balcony office. At one point, after 45 minutes of this, the glass door was opened against the wind, and held there by a daughter helping an elderly woman into the old airport. The mother, concerned about fallout from her former Highland Park neighbors over her decision to sign, wouldn't talk to me for publication. Another hour passed before a middle-age couple entered, strode Crime inspires Continued from Page 1 wandering from Chicago to New Orleans by Greyhound bus. To his European eyes, the Kentucky landscape seemed huge and empty.

Louisville also seemed empty and its emptiness attracted him. "I felt lonely there in a way I never feel in New York," he said. "It was a quiet, peaceful city, provincial. I felt I was digging in the grass roots of America, if I may say that." He heard about the Tinsley case during a later trip. He said he never met the brothers, but in 1984 he met Michelle Tinsley.

Baguet said he didn't feel the novel's descriptions of violence and prejudice would hurt Louisville's international image. "Racism exists everywhere, only in different forms," he said. "There's a lot of energy in this book, and that is very American. In that way, it praises America." He said the novel is selling well in France and Quebec. In May, he will appear as a guest of honor at the annual book fair held in Montpel-lier, Louisville's sister city.

No English translation of the novel is planned, he added. Baguet, a free-lance journalist who has traveled and reported extensively in North America and the Middle East, plans to make his fourth trip to Louisville this fall. He said his curiosity about Louisville was another chapter in his lifelong fascination with the United States. "It's a dream country for me America, the New World. I love to think of the millions and millions of people coming from Europe to realize their dreams.

But at the same time, I think because of the dream, it is the most violent country I've ever seen." By violence, he said, he means social violence. "It's very difficult to be poor in your country," he added. "The poor are rejected. When you are poor, you have failed. You are guilty.

In older, more traditional countries, you can be poor and not be rejected." Jocelyne Cross, a French instructor at the University of Louisville, read the novel and translated key Perkins introduces bill on black-lung benefits RSOOUP COMPILED FROM STAFF AND AP DISPATCHES Employers urged to fight drug abuse FRANKFORT, Ky. A state commission's plan for attacking drug and alcohol abuse includes big roles for Kentucky businesses and schools. It also urges a better assessment of the nature and extent of such problems in Kentucky and evaluation of current efforts to fight them. The plan released yesterday by the Governor's Commission for a Drug-Free Kentucky said people who abuse alcohol and other drugs cost their employers dearly through higher absenteeism, worker's compensation claims and on-the-job accidents. Employers should be encouraged to establish employee-assistance programs and to have supervisors trained to recognize and handle alcohol and drug abuse in the workplace, the panel said.

The group also proposed studies to determine the amount of alcohol and drug use on college campuses and by youths under 18, and the effect of such abuse on worker's compensation and unemployment insurance. Firefighters not exposed to PCBs MOSELEYVTLLE, Ky. Early test results indicate that firefighters who battled a three-alarm blaze at Green Coal Panther Mine were not exposed to PCBs. Six fire departments responded Saturday afternoon to the fire in the transformer of the strip mine's giant coal shovel. Afterward, firefighters were told to scrub down in case they were exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls, said Mike Bouvier, deputy communications officer for the Daviess County Fire Department.

They also were told to separate gear that could have been contaminated and store it in plastic bags. Bouvier said late Sunday that although oil in the transformer did contain PCBs, results of tests done by two private companies indicate that firefighters were not exposed. He said no PCB contamination was found on the equipment worn and used by one of the fire departments. Tests were to continue on the equipment of the other fire units. PCBs are a type of toxic chemicals believed to cause cancer.

The cause of the fire has not been determined; Bouvier said the state fire marshal is investigating. 2 officers charged with intimidation MIDDLESBORO, Ky. Two Middlesboro policemen and another man have been formally indicted on charges of intimidating a grand jury witness, an official said yesterday. Lt. Connie Hopper, 39, and Patrolman Steely Barnett, 28, were indicted Friday along with Benny Myers, according to Bell County Commonwealth's Attorney Bill Hayes.

The three had been arrested March 15 and charged with intimidating a witness in a Kentucky State Police arson investigation. The arson case is still pending, and officials could not release any details. Middlesboro Police Chief Jerry Harris would not comment on the indictments or whether the officers would be suspended. Mayor Troy Welch was not available for comment yesterday. Each man faces from one to five years in prison on the felony charges.

Hopper is appealing a 1989 vote-fraud conviction and one-year sentence. Hayes said Barnett is under indictment for vote fraud, and Myers, 35, faces a 27-count vote-fraud indictment. Hayes said the two officers may face more charges when the grand jury meets again April 11. All three men are free on $25,000 bonds. Father turns son in to face charge LEXINGTON, Ky.

The father of a 15-year-old boy turned him over to police, who had been looking for him in the fatal beating of another teen-ager. The youth was charged with manslaughter in the death of Robbie Lewis Byrd, who died last Wednesday, one day after he was beaten at Gainesway Shopping Center. The suspect was lodged in the Juvenile Detention Center yesterday pending arraignment. Sgt. Barney Kinman, head of the robbery-homicide squad, said the teen's father found him Saturday and took him to the police station Sunday afternoon.

The youth had not been home since the beating. Kinman said the boy did not live in the area where the killing occurred but he is a student at nearby Tates Creek High School. Witnesses said Byrd was attacked by a group of juveniles, but Kinman said officers were not searching for any more suspects in the case. Kroger extends computer giveaway The deadline for the Kroger "Earning for Learning" computer program has been extended to Dec. 31.

Under the program, schools that collect $225,000 worth of Kroger receipts receive a free computer. The program began last April and was scheduled to end June 1. But it has been so popular that Kroger decided to keep it going, according to the program's coordinator, Jackie Hall, an advertising assistant for Kroger's Louisville Division. Hall estimates that Kroger has supplied 600 computers to schools in the Louisville Division, which includes Lexington, Frankfort, Owensboro, Bardstown and several other Kentucky towns; several Southern Indiana sites (including Clarksville, New Albany, Floyds Knobs and Jeffersonville); and a few in Illinois. Kroger also has decided to offer a choice between IBM or Apple computers.

Until last month, only IBM computers were offered. Northern Lights may be seen again LOUISVILLE, Ky. Those who missed seeing an unusual southern appearance of the Northern Lights should get other chances, a University of Louisville astronomer said yesterday. Aurora borealis, commonly known as the Northern Lights, were reported seen from as far south as near the Tennessee border to Louisville in the northwest part of the state over the weekend. National Weather Service offices in Georgia, Alabama and Kentucky received many calls Sunday night about the phenomenon, seen as far south as the Gulf of Mexico.

It was also seen farther north, in such states as New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The aurora borealis usually can be seen only near the Arctic Circle. But Scott Miller, program director at the University of Louisville's Rauch Memorial Planetarium, said Kentuckians who missed the natural light show will have other opportunities. He said conditions for viewing the Northern Lights will be good for the next month or so before the days get too long and summer humidity makes nights hazy. The Northern Lights result when atomic particles from the sun meet the Earth's magnetic field, causing gas atoms to glow.

'Casino1 after prom brings protests PIKEVILLE, Ky. A program to keep Pikeville High School students off the streets on prom night has area ministers concerned that the school is promoting gambling. The Pikeville Area Ministerial Association wrote a letter to school officials expressing concern over the casino-like activities of Project Prom. Modena Sallee, an English and speech teacher at the high school, said the school will run a mock casino from midnight until 6 a.m. May 10 to give the students "something exciting" to do after the prom.

Sallee said members of the ministerial association discussed the situation with school officials. She said she was left with the impression that the ministerial association "wants us to continue doing what we think's best for the kids." But the Rev. Lowell Langefeld, pastor of the Pikeville United Methodist Church, said he was not satisfied with the talks. "I oppose gambling, that's just it, period," he said yesterday. some of their projects to the screen.

"In a sense, we are a video pub lishing house looking for talent, Press said. In the first round of grant applica tions, 56 film makers applied for a total of $850,000, "three times the amount we had," Press said. A panel of judges including KET staff members and video experts from outside the state ranked the projects and started stretching the money. The program funded 17 projects, he said. The grants are to be distributed between this July and next The grant limit was $20,000 per project.

Donohue's grant is one of the largest. Ron Lawson, another independent film maker from Covington, won a $7,150 grant to produce a documentary called "Big Bone State Park: The Return of the Buffalo." It will chronicle the history of Big Bone Lick State Park as well as the efforts to bring buffalo to the park. Lawson, who is a frequent producer for the PBS program "For Veterans Only," started filming the project long before he knew whether he would have funding. "I did videotaping on the day they brought the buffalo back. I taped at the Salt Festival at the park," he said.

Much of an independent film maker's work is done on speculation with the hope of selling it, Law-son said. He will spend the spring rounding up people who remember the early days of Big Bone Lick State Park to capture their memories. He hopes to have the documentary completed this summer. The grants allow KET first rights to air the films. The film maker retains rights to any other use.

Donohue said she plans to enter her film in several competitions. She won a national award last year for her documentary on coal-mining women, featuring miners and miners' wives from Kentucky and Wales. The bill also would limit the medical testimony a coal operator could submit to rebut the claim to one doctor's opinion and one X-ray to supplement that opinion. Black-lung groups have complained that coal operators and the Labor Department have unlimited resources and can submit dozens of opinions and X-rays to counter a claim. Also under the bill, widows, widowers and dependents of 25-year mine veterans automatically would get benefits if the miner was receiving black-lung benefits or had a favorable claim when he died.

Remarriage would not cost the widow benefits. Currently, the survivors can get benefits only if black lung contributed to or caused the death. Perkins noted that only about 5 percent of black-lung claims are approved. John Rosenberg, director of Appalachian Research and Defense Fund for Kentucky in Prestonsburg, said Perkins' bill "makes some really excellent improvements" in current law. Perkins filed a similar bill last year but it died as the session ended.

help Sloane Sloane, who spent about $800,000 on television, said he didn't know how much he could recoup, but hopes it's enough to pay off his $85,000 in campaign debts. "It could be a substantial amount to do away with any debt that I have. It would certainly put a big dent in it," he said in a telephone interview from Washington, where he is spending much of his time with a new group advocating a national health-care plan. Sloane said he is represented by the Atlanta law firm that filed the first lawsuit in the wake of the audit and collected at least $463,000 for Georgia Gov. Zell Miller and those he defeated last year.

Gordon Giffin, a lawyer in the firm, said its investigation also has broadened to Virginia, Florida, Alabama, Arkansas and Rhode Island, mostly involving 1990 races. He wouldn't say how many stations are being investigated. "In most of the states, we're far enough along to believe that the stations probably need to be analyzing their records with an eye toward refunds," he said. Information for this story also was gathered by The Associated Press. Associated Press WASHINGTON Rep.

Chris Perkins of Kentucky introduced a bill yesterday that would make it easier for miners and their families to qualify for black-lung benefits. The legislation, introduced in the House subcommittee on labor standards, would change an "unjust system" and "give the miner a fair chance" to receive benefits, Perkins, D-7th District, said. The bill would lessen the burden of medical proof for 10-year mine veterans who filed claims between July 1, 1973, and April 1, 1980. Un- der the bill, a single biopsy, X-ray or physician's report showing a "to- tally disabling respiratory ailment" would be sufficient evidence for approval. Miners who filed after April 1, 1980, and were turned down could get a new hearing before an administrative law judge.

It was in 1973 that the Department of Labor took over control of the black-lung program. The 1980 closing date was the last day a miner could file a claim under the more liberal 1977 black-lung amendments. TV refunds will Continued from Page 1 same money as before. McConnell said he has received $47,000 in refunds from various stations, which he wouldn't name, and hopes for more. He spent about $2.5 million on TV ads.

Adoption provides benefits both ways Continued from Page 1 better for the country." The Beattys' children were the fifth and sixth offspring of a woman who worked at a collective farm and couldn't care for them. The twins' birth mother had to approve the adoption. Ann Beatty said the family lived in a one-room shack, with only two beds, a dirt floor and no running water. Beatty says she plans to stay in contact with the woman and send the family annual care packages. The woman's only request was that Ann send her a picture of her two daughters with their new parents, and "give them a good Christian upbringing." Distributed by The Associated Press.

Woman who avoided tax gets new job Maginn returned a reporter's phone call yesterday but wouldn't answer questions because she was unsure whether she was authorized to talk with the press. Her predecessor, Gregory Coleman, recently passed the bar examination and left about a mdnth ago to practice law, Deputy Commissioner Bill Stinson said. He had earned $37,882 when he left. Maginn had moved to Indianapolis when her husband of several months accepted a promotion and a transfer. "With our need happening to coincide with hers," the bureau was able to hire Maginn, Stinson said.

"We're really happy it worked out that way." I To hire Maginn, the bureau had to get an exemption from the state Continued from Page 1 using poor judgment in this manner." He said then that she would be reassigned and her $49,500 salary would be reduced. A week later, Maginn was named his personal assistant, and she continued receiving her commissioner-level salary. As commissioner, she had overseen driver licensing, motor-vehicle licensing and the regulation and taxation of trucks. In Indiana, she will be deputy commissioner of excise tax and reg istration. ne is one of four deputies to Holmes.

"She's got marvelous experience. She's got a very good work record," Holmes said, adding later, "We saw no reason not to bring her on our team." Maginn will be paid between $43,200 and $43,500, Holmes said. hiring freeze established by Gov. Evan Bayh to cut personnel costs. 1.