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In December, reports surfaced that Eldon Audsley, who oversees Kansas City's liquor-control division, had been removed from the position after he was ticketed for drunken driving.
Also in December, Attorney General John Ashcroft, the son of an Assemblies of God minister, who is known to request that he be anointed with oil before taking any public office and who has said, "It's against my religion to impose my religion on people," reportedly praised a German antiterrorist law that, according to the Associated Press, "allows authorities to ban religious organizations used as fronts for extremists."
Surrender, Dorothy
In June, the Oskaloosa Public Library cancelled a Harry Potter reading program, which had been presented in libraries throughout the metro area, after townspeople complained that it had been promoted as an event for "aspiring young witches and wizards."
Reading Is Fun and Mental
In August, a Liberty man pleaded guilty to theft charges after he failed to return 389 books he had checked out from the Mid-Continent Public Library the year before.
Country Yammer
The Lake of the Ozarks was hyped in August when Grammy-nominated St. Louis rapper Nelly and an entourage of 3,000 guests showed up at the Shooters 21 nightclub. Because his place was already packed with 2,000 people, club owner John Teichman grew concerned and called the cops, who peacefully dispersed the crowd. Oops, wait a minute. It turns out Nelly was playing a show at the Ice Palace in Florida that night. The club's general manager later told the Associated Press that Teichman "is not of the generation who would know who Nelly is."
What's in a Name?
The owner of two 80-pound Akitas, who faced trial in March because his dogs had allegedly attacked a four-year-old boy in Kansas City, Kansas, was named Andre Huskey.
The Kansas City, Kansas, Area Chamber of Commerce might have been thinking wishfully in March when it hired new CEO Cindy Cash.
Resigning her position at the end of the 2000-2001 school year was Shawnee Mission Northwest swimming coach Ginger Waters.
Thelma Hurt of Independence sued Bayer Corporation in August, claiming that she fell ill after taking one of the company's cholesterol-lowering drugs.
The fired Kansas City Star editorial-page editor who nabbed a $97,000-a-year job doing public relations work for the Missouri Department of Transportation and its miles of undrivable roads was Rich Hood.
Death Becomes Him
In October, a Miami County man was driving home from his fields when his tractor's hydraulic hay-moving arm became stuck in the ground; the tractor stayed in gear and started bouncing violently. The driver -- whose blood-alcohol level was higher than .2 percent and whose tractor didn't have a seatbelt -- was killed by all the bouncing.
Cattle Call
$450,000: amount of money raised for the American Royal, Friends of the Zoo and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in an auction of sixty fiberglass cows at Starlight Theatre on October 25
$57,000: amount of money raised for the Fund for Families of the World Trade Center at the cow parade auction
$5,000: cost to a corporation, business, group, family or individual to sponsor a cow
$3,000: opening bid for each cow auctioned off October 25
$1,000: stipend paid to each cow-decorating artist
$500: amount of reward offered by CowParade Holdings Company in July for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any individual caught vandalizing, damaging, removing or stealing any of the cows
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