The Salina Journal from Salina, Kansas • Page 11

OURNAL Great Plains VIEWPOINTS B2 B3 FUN B4 LINCOLN Controversy rocks mysterious stone Lincoln man says he will translate message of stone that was found 80 years ago By DAVID CLOUSTON The Salina Journal File photo This stone was discovered by a farmer near Beverly in 1919. LINCOLN Dean Jeffries thinks he's figured out the message inscribed on what he believes is a pre-Columbian stone tablet found years ago near Beverly. Others think the tablet is a 20th century flimflam. Nonetheless, Lincoln is preparing for Friday, when Jeffries will publicly reveal his interpretation of the message of the Beverly mystery stone. For years, Jeffries, Leoti, and his brother, Keith, Russell, have studied the inscription on the stone, which was part of a limestone slab discovered by a farmer near Beverly in 1919.

The stone is about a foot long, 9 inches wide and 2 inches thick. On one side, framed by a beveled edge, are carved hieroglyphic characters. In 1920, the stone was donated to the Kansas Historical Society, which studied it before storing it away, undisplayed. Former state archaeologist Tom Witty, now retired, declared the piece a worthy curiosity but believed it was too clean and too distinct to be of credible historical value. In 1993, the state returned the stone to Lincoln County, and it since has been on display in the county museum at the Kyne House.

At 5 p.m. Friday, the Lincoln County Historical Society plans to have a public grand opening for its museum annex, in conjunction with its annual ham-and-bean fund-raiser at the Catholic parish hall. The Kyne House and new annex are on main street, a block south of the parish hall. 'Everything proved me right' As part of the event, Dean Jeffries will speak after dinner on his translation of the inscription and his conclusion that the artifact was carved by Europeans who traveled the area before the arrival of Columbus to the Americas in 1492. "I had translated the bulk of it by 1992," Jeffries said.

"I waited this long for something to prove me wrong. But everything that's come up has proved me right." Jeffries, an electrical contractor, is an amateur epigrapher who has used textbooks and records of objects discovered by others to identify the characters on the stone. But in doing so Jeffries has been caught between the rock and the hard attitude of skeptics who place the stone's origin not before Columbus, but more likely a 1900- era hoax or practical joke. Asked about the chance that the stone predates Columbus, Lauren Ritterbush, professor of sociology, anthropology and social work at Kansas State University, said: "Basically there's a very remote chance of that." The earliest known contact between Europeans and Native Americans in the Kansas region remains the voyage of Coronado in 1540. "He contacted only a small percentage of Indians, but even so, the European influence began then," Ritterbush said.

"We ob- serve the acquisition of metals, glass and') the introduction of the horse. We call ita'i' proto-historic period." Kensington Rune stone a hoax Probably the most well-known and controversial relic thought by experts to be a hoax is the Kensington Rune stone, found in the late 1800s in Minnesota, she said. The stone, found by a Swedish farmer, suggest- ed Scandinavians had visited the area before anyone else. Yet the writing on the stone was a combination of Norwegian and: Swedish, not likely for the period, and some of the words wouldn't have existed then. "It was clear from the very start it was- n't authentic," Ritterbush said.

Jeffries says he's read of 2,000 examples of contact between the old world and the new world before Columbus, and he believes there's a reason those contacts weren't better documented. "Columbus got. all the publicity," he said. "But most of the people coming over-" here wanted to keep it a secret because they were getting filthy rich." BRIEFLY Salina teen accused in stabbing case A 19-year-old Salina man was arrested Monday in Abilene for attempted second-degree murder for stabbing another teen-ager. A tip from someone who knew Salina police were looking for the other 19-year-old led them to an Abilene home where the man was staying, said Lt.

Mike Sweeney on Tuesday. Jonathan Michael Gordon, 400 Rahm, was arrested without incident around 10:45 p.m. Monday by Salina and Abilene police and taken to the Saline County Jail. Gordon was arrested for the March 31 stabbing of Brad Reed, Salina, who suffered three wounds while he was near the 500 block of West Crawford Street. According to police, the stabbing occurred after Reed got out of the car he was riding in and confronted a man walking on the sidewalk.

That man stabbed Reed in the abdomen, cut his chin and stabbed the back of his left thigh. Reed's friends took him to Salina Regional Health Center. He has been released. Salina kindergartners get 'I Like Me' books Kindergartners from Shirley Isin's class at Whittier Elementary were delighted to receive "I Like Me" books Tuesday from Salina narcotics officers. "They were very excited to find their names in the books and have their friends autograph them," Isin said.

Drug Task Force Lt. Joe Garman and Salina Police Chief Jim Hill handed out the books to the students as part of the "Kindergartners Count" program sponsored by the Southwestern Bell Pioneers. The group raises money, prints and delivers books to Kansas students. The hardback, 36-page books are personalized for each student. Hill said they contain each student's name, friends, teacher, principal, school, city and state.

Isin said a list of student names and their friends was put together in November so the books could be printed. Court program to be at Bethany College today LINDSBORG "The U.S. Supreme Court in Review" a program to help students and the public gain knowledge about the United States Supreme Court, is scheduled today at Bethany College. The program takes place in Lindquist Hall at 6:45 p.m. The program, sponsored by the Law and Order Club of Bethany College, was developed by the judges of the Kansas Court of Appeals.

Two or three recent high- interest cases from the U.S. Supreme Court dockets will be presented in an interactive style by Court of Appeals Judge G. Joseph Pierron. Audience members will have the opportunity to play the parts of litigants, lawyers and judges. Train crossing to be closed temporarily Old U.S.

Highway 40 will be closed at the train crossing west of the Farmers and Ranchers livestock sale barn at 7 a.m. Tuesday. The closing will allow Union Pacific Railroad to repair the grade crossing. The road will be reopened before dark. From Staff and Wire Reports KANSAS CITY MURDERS Suspect's tips lead to grisly discovery 56-year-old man arrested after five decomposing men are found at his KG home By CHRISTOPHER CLARK The Associated Press KANSAS CITY, Mo.

A man charged in the death of one of five men found rotting in his rented Kansas City home apparently had little intention of evading police for long. Gary Beach, 56, was arrested Tuesday after leaving a handwritten card listing the names of the dead and how they could be identified. He also left a signed greeting card whose handwriting was matched to the list. "It's pretty that that list was left so that whoever found the bodies would be able to know who the victims were and be able to address the matter in a rational manner," Jackson County prosecutor Bob Beaird said. Beach, a limousine driver, was charged late Monday with first-degree murder in one of the killings.

Beach's stepnephew 45-year-old Kenneth Gulley, of Independence was found with a bullet wound on his face. Beach was being held without bond in the city jail and was scheduled for arraignment this morning. Three other victims were identified: Michael Davis, 32, Kansas City; Mark Nelson, 28, Kansas City; and Christopher Conrad, 27, Overland Park, Kan. Efforts to identify the fifth body were hampered by advanced decomposition and may require the man's dental records, officials said. Neighbors heard gunshots All five men had been dead for days.

Neighbors reported hearing gunshots from inside the midtown home early Friday morning, and said the home's air conditioner ran nonstop since then in an apparent attempt to slow decomposition. Beaird would not say how the other men died or why Beach was charged with Gulley's death and not the others. "I don't want to say anything that would jeopardize this investigation," he said. It didn't take long for police to catch Beach. Before he was captured without a struggle Tuesday morning at a hotel parking lot just five blocks from the crime scene, Beach called relatives to let them know The Associated Press Jarret Lanpher of the Kansas City, police department, searches through items Tuesday on the front lawn of a house rented by murder suspect Gary Beach in midtown Kansas City, Mo.

Five bodies were found at the house Monday. his whereabouts, Sgt. Dave Bernard said. Beach even made calls to the department's robbery unit and tips hotline. Bernard would not say what Beach said during those calls.

Investigators spent much of Tuesday pulling evidence from Beach's house, including doors and filled boxes and bags. Beach was the home's only permanent occupant, police said, though investigators said Davis may have recently moved in. Beach and all five victims worked in the taxi and limousine business, but it's not known how they made their way to the home before their deaths. Neighbors heard four gunshots between midnight and 2 a.m. Friday from Beach's one-story bungalow near the city's Westport entertainment district.

Days later, they recoiled at the stench wafting from the house. A mystery 'across the street' "This is really quite a mystery," said Judy Bigler, who watched as investigators probed the home. "I can't believe something like this could happen right across the street." Monday's grisly discovery was set in motion when relatives of Gulley, who was last seen March 31 in North Kansas City, went to the midtown Kansas City home because another relative of the missing lived there. They asked North Kansas City police to accompany them. At the house, officers knocked on the door and looked around outside but found nothing wrong.

After the North Kansas City officers left, the relatives kicked in the back door and stumbled upon a body inside. They then notified Kansas City police. BY GEORGE The best way to read a book is to write in one I ignored my wife's perfectly good advice until I read it in a book For years, my wife has teased me for being so neurotic about books. Our house is full of books, shelves and stacks and rows, old and new, borrowed and blue. And Rebecca has read far more books than I ever will, devoured them, dashed through them, evaluated them, appreciated or dismissed them, bought them and given them away.

She also uses books for coasters, scribbles telephone numbers on flyleaves, tears out the blank pages toward the back to use for shopping lists, all without a second thought. I was aghast. Books, after all, are to be treated with care. They are the minds of great people, living and dead, containers of wisdom, history and genius. Well, Rebecca says, the words, the ideas, found in many books may, indeed, be great and good.

But the book itself is so much high-acid paper that is only going to turn yellow and dissolve in a matter of years. You might as well get the maximum use out of one before it, like us, turns to dust. It is not as if the thoughts contained in these rectangles of dead trees are going to spill out onto the ground and be lost to humanity forever. There are thousands, if not millions, more copies of any good book, plus the memories of readers, where these ideas will survive. What makes a copy of a book GEORGE B.

PYLE The Salina Journal unique, Rebecca says, worth leaving to your children or discovering at a secondhand store, are the odd scribblings or impromptu bookmarks left in its pages. Last month, when a journalism fellowship allowed me time to research the big issues of modern agriculture, I set about attacking the large stack of books I had acquired on that subject. It was a daunting prospect because, even though I have always been a voracious reader of newspapers and magazines, I often have a difficult time getting through a book. Every volume, no matter how well reviewed, recommended or anticipated, has seemed a forbidding sea of gray type that I wished I had read but could not seem to read. The prospect of spending a month of my time, and a good bit of someone else's money, to read thousands of pages of serious thoughts and accounts, seemed like a failure waiting to happen.

I should have been listening to my wife. Instead, I bought a book called "How to Read a Book." It changed everything. Though I had never heard of this book before, the preface to the 1972 revision explained that it had been a huge best-seller when it was first published in 1940. The update was the work of the book's original author, philosopher Mortimer J. Adler, joined this time around by Charles Van Doren.

The book is more than 400 pages of ideas and details, but the basic point is simple: Reading is not a passive activity but an active one. To avoid having the eyelids grow heavy, the reader should not just hold a book but actively engage it. That means physical activity, not just mental. That means moving a finger or a pencil along the lines of the book so that you move forward without losing your place or drifting to and fro about the page. And yes, it means writing in a book.

It means adding exclamation points, question marks or rebuttals in the margins. It means noting the parts you like, the parts you don't understand, the parts you think are pure bunk, the parts that remind you of other books you have read or are reading. It means looking for mistakes, and not assuming that just because something is written in a book that it must be true. The authors go so far as to insist that readers mistrust the books they read, that we view them with some suspicion, and don't view books with any particular awe'or reverence. It works.

Approaching books with such an active and critical attitude makes it a thousand times easier, and more fun, to read a book. In my case, though, I failed to take seriously an idea I had been fully exposed to for years until I read it in a book. Sorry, Rebecca. SUGGESTIONS? CALL BEN WEARING, DEPUTY EDITOR, AT (785) 823-6363 OR 1-800-827-6363 OR E-MAIL AT.