WASHINGTON – Following Monday’s unexpected decision by the Supreme Court to deny – at this time – hearing further appeals in regards to same-sex marriage, Congressman Tim Huelskamp (KS-01) issued the following statement:

“According to the majority of this very Supreme Court in the Windsor decision, states and their citizens have the right and responsibility to define their marriage laws. It is shocking that at least six Supreme Court justices would allow unelected lower court judges to simply ignore the majority decision – and the Section of DOMA upheld in the Windsor decision.

“The only alternative to allowing these unelected liberal judges to impose their morality on all of America is to pass a constitutional amendment. To that end, last year I introduced the Marriage Protection Amendment (HJ Res. 51) to define marriage as only between one man and one woman.

“Like so many other states, the citizens of Kansas made an overwhelming decision to stand for traditional marriage when they adopted the Kansas Marriage Amendment. No one justice – no one court – no elite judicial activists should be permitted to redefine or un-define marriage to suit their distaste for traditional marriage.

“This most recent non-decision by the Supreme Court clearly demonstrates the need for a constitutional amendment on this issue.”

 

MADISON, Kan. (AP) — An eastern Kansas woman is asking the public’s help in finding a missing pet, and the animal shouldn’t be hard to spot: It’s a 9-foot-tall, 350-pound ostrich.

KVOE-AM reports the big bird disappeared last week from Rock Creek Ostrich Ranch, located near the southern Lyon County town of Madison.

Owner Nakita Elwood says the ostrich, named Eva, and others escaped from a pen. All of the others have been recovered.

Eva was last seen in an area between Madison and Olpe. Elwood advises the public against trying to catch the ostrich. She says Eva isn’t especially dangerous but frightens easily, and only responds to her calls.

Eva is part of Elwood’s breeding trio as well as a pet.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Police in Wichita are searching for burglars who stole $24,000 worth of hunting bows from an archery shop.

Authorities said the break-in at Diamond Archery happened around 4 a.m. Tuesday. Surveillance video showed three people prying open the front door and stealing 30 to 35 compound bows.

The burglars left in a dark SUV.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The second total lunar eclipse of the year will happen early Wednesday. If the skies are clear, North Americans will be able to view it, especially in the West.

You’ll have to get up very early or stay up very late, though, as the National Weather Service said the event begins at 4:15 a.m.

The total eclipse starts at 5:25 a.m. and will last an hour. The moon will appear orange or red, the result of sunlight scattering off Earth’s atmosphere. That’s why it’s called a blood moon.

By Alex Smith, KCUR

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — If the idea of music therapy brings to mind ’60s-era folk singers warbling to bemused patients, you haven’t seen Deanna Hanson-Abromeit at work.

At Operation Breakthrough in Kansas City, the University of Kansas assistant professor sings a good morning song to Daren, a curious, if slightly cautious, infant.

The tune is a simple one, and the singer bubbles over with enthusiasm, but her musical interventions are more of a conversation than a performance.

Hanson-Abromeit is engaged with Daren’s every movement, playing to her one-person audience in a way that might put Al Green to shame.

She watches his eyes and head while making constant changes to the music’s volume and tempo, trying to engage the baby’s attention.

Before the end of the second verse, Daren breaks into a big smile.

Struggling for respect

When Hanson-Abromeit started studying music therapy in the early 1990s, she received a warning from her college adviser: Have a backup plan. At the time, music therapy was struggling for respect, and many therapists ended up working as music teachers.

But the field has changed dramatically in the past few years, and now the KU assistant professor is considered one of the leading researchers working to uncover how music can help even the smallest premature infants survive and thrive.

“When we’re born a full-term infant, we can see, but our vision is protected in a way that we don’t take on too much stimuli for our systems to organize,” Hanson-Abromeit said. “And when a baby is born prematurely, those systems haven’t yet fully developed.”

She explains that premature infants are overwhelmed with information: noise, light, new people. A neonatal intensive care unit can be especially chaotic, and the babies’ brains aren’t developed enough to handle it all. The stress puts their nervous system into fight-or-flight mode, which robs them of the energy and focus their brains and nervous systems need to help them grow.

But if music has charms to soothe a savage breast, it also can soothe a newborn’s nervous system.

“We’re really trying to help them at a very basic neurological level organize at staying calm,” Hanson-Abromeit said.

Pre-recorded music won’t do the trick. The educational value of Baby Einstein DVDs largely has been debunked. Helping infants’ brains develop requires something more subtle: the kind of attentive interaction practiced by therapists like Hanson-Abromeit.

“We can change those characteristics of the music to be less complex,” she said. “And then build that up gradually for more complexity as the baby’s neurological processes can handle that, or we help them start to develop those things.”

Increasing understanding

Among Hanson-Abromeit’s admirers is Dr. Joanne Loewy, director of the Louis Armstrong Department of Music Therapy, part of Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital in New York.

“She’s a big brain in music therapy in many areas,” Loewy said.

An article published in the journal Pediatrics last year described a study by Loewy and colleagues that was one of the field’s big breakthroughs. Involving 11 hospitals and nearly 300 premature infants, it made clear the impact musical therapy could have.

“We were able to show that we could render other heart rates, different sleep patterns, improve caloric intake and sucking behavior, and that parent-preferred lullabies could decrease stress,” Loewy said.

For her part, Hanson-Abromeit has been striving to improve scientific understanding of music therapy.

Last year, she joined with researchers in the United Kingdom and Australia to form Music and Neuro-Developmentally At-Risk Infant, or MANDARI, to explore how music therapy affects the brain. The group had its first international conference this summer.

Formalizing the method

Hanson-Abromeit said the next step is to establish a formalized method for music interventions with premature infants. Through her clinical work and other research, she’s codifying how a therapist should respond when an infant looks away, for example, or shows an increased heart rate.

“Having some parameters in how we use the music and how, if we use the music this way, we should expect to get this outcome,” she said. “So, taking a little of the mystery out of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.”

Though Hanson-Abromeit’s field has made great strides with the help of neuroscience, she believes there’s still a lot to learn from the basics of music therapy: working with the newborns themselves to make a musical connection.

And as music therapy continues to gain professional respect, Hanson-Abromeit hopes her work will help take music intervention beyond the exclusive realm of the professional therapist.

“As we learn more about how and why music works with premature infants,” she said, “it’s going to be really important to help parents learn how to read those cues and adapt the music to help manage the symptoms that their babies are experiencing, whether it’s pain or agitation or discomfort, so that then they can also build really nice memories and experiences with their infant and create attachment and bonding through positive experiences.”

SALINA, Kan. (AP) — A central Kansas sheriff says there wouldn’t be so many inmates in his jail if the courts had more judges and staff members to handle their cases.

The Salina Journal reports Saline County Sheriff Glen Kochanowski told county commissioners on Monday that more than half of the inmates at the county jail were awaiting trial.

Only 19 of the 269 inmates at the jail on Monday had been sent there by the municipal court judge. Kochanowski says that as of mid-August, more than half were awaiting trial in district court.

The jail holds 192 inmates, with the overflow being housed in jails outside the county. The sheriff says adding judges and staff to the 28th Judicial District would reduce the time the inmates spend in the county jail.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — One of four people charged with killing a Kansas couple has pleaded not guilty and will testify against the other three defendants in exchange for his capital murder charge to be reduced.

The Wichita Eagle reports 19-year-old Brandon Smith appeared in Sedgwick County District Court on Monday in shackles and waived his right to a speedy trial.

The other defendants are Anthony Bluml, Andrew Ellington and Kisha Schaberg, Anthony Bluml’s biological mother. All three are to be arraigned on capital murder charges and could face the death penalty.

The four are accused of killing Roger and Melissa Bluml, who were fatally shot as they sat outside their rural Valley Center home on Nov. 15. Melissa Bluml died the next day, while her husband died about five weeks later.