March 16, 2009

The DigestWhat’s Happening at KVCC

What’s below in this edition One-woman show (Pages 1/2) Festival of Health (Page 16) Vol-job fair (Pages 2-4) Howard Tate (Pages 17/18) Teaching art (Page 4) Chinese movie (Page 18) Helping KAFI (Pages 4/5) U of M bound (Pages 18/19) Turbine time (Page 5) ‘Red Light District’ (Page 19) Relay for Life (Pages 5/6) The Blues ‘docs’ (Pages 19/20)

Fret ‘play-in’ (Pages 6/7) Parenting tips (Page 20) Fretboard Festival (Pages 7/8) Reading Together (Pages 20-23) ‘Faces of Success’ (Page 8) Volunteer ‘ops’ (Page 23)

Wellness screens (Page 9) Thanks, vets (Pages 23/24)

Terry Tempest Williams (Pages 9-12) KVM on tube (Page 24) Diversity confab (Pages 12/13) KAFI contest (Pages 24/25) Speech contest (Page 13) Art Hop’er II (Page 26) Deaf humorist (Pages 13-15) Recycle ‘em (Pages 26/27) NextEnergy chief (Pages 15/16) Afghanistan (Page 27)

And Finally (Pages 28/29)

☻☻☻☻☻☻‘Good Lessons from Bad Women’ here Tuesday

Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of Machine Gun Kelly, China’s only female emperor, a notorious woman pirate, the apple-bearing temptress known as Eve, Mae West, and a slave who went to court to win her freedom are all coming to KVCC.

They’ll be here on Tuesday (March 17), compliments of Dorothy Leeds’ one-woman show.

Her “Good Lessons from Bad Women” will begin at 7 p.m. in the Dale Lake Auditorium on the Texas Township Campus. Her performance, part of the college’s observation of Women’s History Month, is free and open to the public.

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Leeds’ “plot” is that people can learn to travel the right pathways in life by explaining the routes taken by women who, in their times, were infamous for questionable character, ill repute and moral standards.

The lone exception among her characters is Roosevelt, one of the nation’s most heralded “first ladies of the land.” Yet Leeds’ portrayal, which is superimposed throughout the performance and the other characterizations, explores how Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt sometimes felt in her lifetime that she, too, “was bad.”

Leeds, who majored in theater at Northwestern University and went on to roles in Broadway productions, uses each character and their experiences that overstepped the boundaries of their eras to offer some “good lessons” on how to exist today. The “bad-women” characters guide her from rebellions and an innate desire to be wicked to self-acceptance with the subtle lessons they impart.

“Along the way,” states a promotional brochure, “we all learn that deep in the recesses of some very wicked women, some good is lurking.”

During a hiatus from greasepaint and the roar of the crowd, Leeds became an entrepreneur, working in advertising, establishing a knitwear company, and traveling the lecture circuit offering presentations spiced with her “show-biz” ways. She’s written 12 books, including “PowerSpeak, Smart Questions” and “The 7 Powers of Questions.”

Along the way, she was a guest on “The Today Show,” “Good Morning America,” and Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show,” and been featured in scores of feature articles.

Three years ago, the concept of “Good Lessons from Bad Women” was spawned in her head. It premiered at the University of Wisconsin in 2006.

In three decades of performing, she has appeared on stages in Botswana, Mexico, Great Britain, Malaysia, Singapore and Egypt. She’s taken “Good Lessons from Bad Women” to Clemson University, the University of Michigan, the University of Florida and the University of Texas. Her list of corporate clients includes Pfizer Inc.

For more information about the performance at KVCC and about upcoming events for Women’s History Month, contact Mary Johnson at extension 4182.

Volunteer Fair, Job Expo combinedBecause volunteering leads to jobs and vice versa, KVCC is blending two of its

annual events designed to aid students and serve the community.Its Volunteer and Community Services Fair and Employment Expo for 2009 will

be held in tandem on the same day – Wednesday, March 25. Both are free and open to the public as well as to KVCC students.

From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Student Commons, representatives of human-service agencies will be joined by their counterparts from the business world in search of some new, energetic blood for their organizations.

Co-organizers Karen Phelps and Lois Brinson-Ropes of the KVCC Student Success Center estimate that about 60 prospective employers and some 25 nonprofit organizations will be taking part.

“There will be various community organizations present to speak to students about volunteering as a method to increase their career opportunities while benefiting the community,” said Phelps, the center’s work-experience coordinator.

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Representatives from the companies and enterprises will talk to participants about their organizations, the employment prospects, career opportunities, and the chances for internships and volunteer service, both of which look good on a resume.

“Past expos have attracted more than 1,000 job seekers,” said Brinson-Ropes, the center’s coordinator of student employment and internships. “Participants are urged to bring along resumes, a preparedness to be interviewed, and be appropriately attired.”

“This is “a win-win experience for the agencies and for students,” Phelps said. “The organizations will be in the market for a cadre of new volunteers to help them achieve their missions, while students will able to expand their networking among professionals in their career fields as they give something back to the community.

“Part of the college's mission,” she said, “is to produce well-rounded students and future members of the workforce who are more than willing to give back to their community and to invest in the human-service agencies that all serve us well.”

The Employment Expo, Brinson-Ropes said, “is a no-cost opportunity for students, KVCC alumni and residents of Southwest Michigan to visit with representatives from area businesses and industries that span the spectrum of occupations.”

Among the volunteer agencies taking part will be the Hospice Care of Southwest Michigan, American Cancer Society, Greater Kalamazoo Area Chapter of the American Red Cross, Borgess Medical Center Volunteer Services, Volunteer Center of Greater Kalamazoo, Boys and Girls Club of Greater Kalamazoo, Kalamazoo Regional Educational Service Agency’s Croyden Avenue School, Douglass Community Association, The First Day Shoe Fund, Girl Scouts of the Glowing Embers Council, Heart of Michigan, Housing Resources Inc., GIVE Faith in Action Program, In Home Support Volunteers, the Kalamazoo Department of Parks and Recreation, Kalamazoo Communities in Schools, Heartland Hospice, Kalamazoo County Poverty Reduction Initiative, Kalamazoo Free Clinic, Kalamazoo Gospel Mission, Ministry with Community, Sindecuse Health Center at Western Michigan University, Southern Care Inc, Big Brothers-Big Sisters of Greater Kalamazoo Inc., and the U. S. Tennis Association’s Boys 18 and 16 National Championship held at Kalamazoo College. .

Among the prospective employers who have indicated they will be available in the Commons during the four-hour event are:

Stryker Instruments, Kazoo Inc., Kalamazoo Electrical Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee, AFLAC, Modern Woodmen Fraternal Financial Services, the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety, Advance Employment Service, Greenleaf Hospitality Group and Radisson Plaza Hotel & Suites;

Trillium Staffing Solutions, the U. S. Army, radio stations WQXC and WZUU, WWMT Channel 3, T-Mobile, Cumulus Media, Consumers Credit Union, EmploymentGroup, Medical Resource Management, Reliv International, Right At Home, State Farm Insurance,

Michigan Indian Employment and Training Services, Pre-Paid Legal Services Inc., Residential Opportunities Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Accretive Health, Advantage Private Nursing Service In., The Air Zoo, Alliance on Healthcare, Bankers Life and Casualty;

Best Buy, Calhoun County Sheriff’s Department, Michigan Civil Service Commission, Clarion Hotel, Comcast, Life EMS Ambulance Service, Home City Ice,

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Lowe’s, Army National Guard, Michigan Works!, Micro Machine Co., National City Bank, Option Energy;

L. Perrigo Co., Pirates Island Aquatic, Primerica Financial Service, Robert Half International, Accountemps, OfficeTeam, Snelling Personnel Services, Speedway, the state of Michigan, Tendercare Kalamazoo Skilled Nursing Home, South Haven Hospital, Tradehome Shoes, the University of Phoenix, UPS, USANA Health, and Workforce Strategies.

For more information, contact Phelps at 4795 or kphelps@kvcc.edu or Brinson-Ropes at 4344 or lbrinsonrop@kvcc.edu.

Looking for folks who like to teach artTo help preview the opening of the next nationally touring exhibition about Japan,

its culture and art forms, the Kalamazoo Valley Museum is looking for people willing to lead some instructions in drawing.

As part of the third annual “Night at the Museum” on Friday, May 8, that will kick off the opening of “Jump to Japan: Discovering Culture Through Popular Art,” a cadre of art instructors – or people who feel comfortable teaching folks to draw – will lead informal classes in animation and “manga” (the Japanese version of comic-book art). The free drawing classes and a tour of the exhibit will run from 6 to 9 p.m.

Prior to the evening, the volunteer instructors will be schooled in how to guide children, families and individuals in teaching these two forms of artistic creative expression.

The deadline to apply is April 1. The contact person is Jennifer Austin, special-events coordinator at the museum, at 373-7970 or jaustin@kvcc.edu. Each prospective volunteer must submit a portfolio.

“Jump to Japan” will begin a four-month stay at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum on May 9.

Jointly developed by the Minnesota Children’s Museum and The Children’s Museum in Seattle, “Jump to Japan” showcases that nation’s amazing culture through activities based on animation, manga, woodblock prints and traditional scrolls.

KAFI seeks volunteers to make May festival specialWith more than 70 events planned so far for the fifth Kalamazoo Animation

Festival International, the college is looking for a cadre of faculty, staff and students to serve as volunteers and help make the four-day event in downtown Kalamazoo a success.

Slated for May 14-17, the festival has attracted 555 submissions of animation from 42 countries in the competition for $15,000 in prize money. The finalists will be viewable in a series of screenings during the festival, while professional animators from the major production studios and networks will be leading workshops and seminars.

“This is a great opportunity for any person interested in animation, film or any aspect of creative work,” says Anna Barnhart, the festival’s volunteer coordinator. “Volunteers will witness a major industry event taking shape as well as meet many big players in the expanding field of animation.”

Those who volunteer will act as greeters, runners, ticket takers, workshop monitors, gallery guides, and special-event helpers, Barnhart said. They will receive a free ticket to attend a seminar, screening or panel discussion for each four hours that they work.

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Students must be at least 16 to become a volunteer. The four-hour time slots on that Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday are 8 a.m. to noon, noon to 4 p.m., 4 to 8 p.m. and 8 p.m. to midnight.

Orientation sessions in Anna Whitten Hall are scheduled for Tuesday, April 28, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. and Monday, May 4, at the same time. The deadline to sign up as volunteer is April 20.

For more information and an application form, visit: www.gokafi.com, or contact Barnhart or Nikki Unterkircher at kafi@kvcc.edu, or by phone at (269) 373-7934.

Putting a good spin on the turbineWith apologies to The Byrds, there was a reason why there has been no “Turn!

Turn! Turn!” for the college’s 50-kilowatt wind turbine, but that reason is scheduled to be gone with the wind today (Friday).

According to Jim DeHaven, the day before the Feb. 18 celebration of its commissioning, the turbine pulled a Grand Funk Railroad and sent an electronic message that there was a disconnect in the electronic braking system for the propeller blades.

“We knew that we could force the blades to spin the next day for the photo op whether there was strong wind or light wind,” he said. “There was light wind, we forced the spinning, and then shut the turbine down in order to determine the extent of the problem. Later in the day, we discovered the disconnected cable.”

Each of the three blades has a cable near the hub. One of them is dangling loose some 50 yards in the air. According to DeHaven:

“Had the climbing rungs been shipped according to schedule,” DeHaven said, “we could have had someone climb up and connect the loose cable.”

All of this will be rectified on Friday (March 13) when the crane will be back on campus to install the climbing rungs and fix the loose cable as well. The crews will also be doing some work inside the turbine to improve its long-term performance.

DeHaven reports that the new 26-week, utility-grade wind academy slated to begin in October at the M-TEC has hired its two instructors.

Tom Sutton, who has been serving as an instructional manager in the KVCC Automotive Academy is switching over to be the wind-energy academy’s mechanical instructor while Greg Meeuwsen, a graduate of the KVCC program in electrical technology, will be serving as the electrical instructor.

The two will leave in April for Husam, Germany, for a five-week “train-the-trainer” program.

KVCC to field Relay for Life teamKVCC will be participating in the 2009 Relay for Life, the annual fund-raiser of

the Kalamazoo County Chapter of the American Cancer Society, and the Cougar team is looking for at least 60 staff, faculty and students to take part in the quest to raise $3,500.

This year’s event will be staged on Saturday and Sunday, May 30-31, over a 24-hour period from 11 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the Kalamazoo County Fairgrounds, which will be open for the entire duration of the event.

KVCC’ers, along with their friends and family, can camp on the grounds and take turns walking or running the track over the 24-hour period.

Co-captains Mary Johnson, Lynne Morrison and Ruth Baker are also coordinating a returnable-can/container collection as part of the fund-raiser. Receptacles for the 10-

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centers are located in the Texas Township Campus cafeteria, the technical wing, the Student Commons and the faculty lounge.

While the teams are coming together for a very serious issue - - the fight against cancer - - there is a great deal of fun and camaraderie for teams of family, friends and co-workers who choose to camp out for the entire event.

“Each team is asked to have a representative on the track at all times as a reminder that cancer never sleeps,” Johnson said.

There is entertainment and family activities, plus the victory lap by survivors and the luminaria ceremony at dusk that remembers those that have faced cancer.

To sign up as a participant and walk with Team KVCC or pick up a donation packet, contact Johnson at extension 4182 or stop by her office in the Student Commons. Morrison can be reached at 4164 and Baker at 4492. The walking times can be viewed online at http://classes.kvcc.edu/relay.

The Relay for Life supports those who have lost a loved one, offers encouragement to those who are currently battling the disease, and celebrates life with those who have survived.

But most of all, it is an inspiration to all who participate. All dollars raised go toward supporting services for cancer patients and their families, providing education and early-detection programs, and funding cancer research.

Kalamazoo is one of more than 4,000 communities across the continent that stage

Relay for Life events in the fight against cancer. More than $1 billion has been raised. Fretboard Festival’ ‘play-in’ deadline extended

With a booking to play in the fourth annual Kalamazoo Fretboard Festival as the prize, bands and performers throughout the state are invited to enter a play-in competition that will kick off the 2009 event in March.

Performers of all genres of music are invited to apply for the festival’s new wrinkle. The only restriction is that an instrument with a fretboard must be among the person’s or group’s arsenal.

Ten combos or performers will be chosen to play gigs of up to 10 minutes at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum beginning at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, March 27. Celebrity judges will select one of them to play on Saturday as the three-day festival continues.

The Friday-night “play-in,” as well as all festival events, are free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the Kalamazoo Valley Community College Foundation.

To enter, musicians and musical groups must submit a demo tape, CD or web link of their work, along with a brief biographical sketch. Ten acts will be picked to perform a live set on that Friday. The winner must be able to do a 45-minute gig on Saturday.

The entry form is available online via the museum’s web page. For more information, contact Jen Austin, the museum’s special-events coordinator at extension 7990 or jaustin@kvcc.edu.

Through late Sunday afternoon on March 29, the 2009 Fretboard Festival will feature performances by stringed-instrument virtuosos, instructional workshops for people who want to learn to play, and family-friendly activities.

This yearly salute to all stringed instruments -- and especially those that are crafted in this part of Michigan -- will be staged in the museum, the college’s Anna

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Whitten Hall next door, and - weather willing - the courtyard of the Arcadia Commons Campus.

The festival, which takes its name from the portion of a stringed musical instrument that allows a variety of notes to be played, will spotlight guitars, banjos, hammered dulcimers, ukuleles, and mandolins, as well as the artists who make music on them and the craftsmen who manufacture these instruments.

Concerts and workshops will again take center stage with even more choices than were available at the third festival that attracted some 2,500 people. Specific sessions are designed for those with exceptional, moderate and beginning skills.

The festival was conceived as a celebration of Kalamazoo’s long history of stringed-instrument design, manufacture, and performance. While guitars have been a vital component of this history -- primarily through the legacy of Gibson guitars -- adopting the moniker of “fretboard” allowed planners to consider all forms of crafted instruments that create harmonious sounds in all genres of music.

The museum’s website (www.kalamazoomuseum.org) contains details about performers, locations and times, and how to enter the “play-in” competition.

Fretboard Festival goes to 3 days, outdoorsThe Kalamazoo Valley Museum’s salute to the local legacy of “pickin’ ‘n’

singin’” will feature a pair of outdoor concerts, weather willing. Free to the public and nothing to fret about, the fourth annual Kalamazoo

Fretboard Festival will host a dozen concerts, 17 workshops, hands-on activities for children, vendors, and presentations on Saturday, March 28, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, March 29, from 1 to 5 p.m.

It is sponsored by the Kalamazoo Valley Community College Foundation. The event will be held in both the downtown-Kalamazoo museum and the college’s Anna Whitten Hall next door.

However, another new wrinkle for the 2009 festival is a Friday-night “play-in” competition when local musicians vie for a chance to perform as part of the Saturday line-up of concerts. The “play-in,” to be decided by a trio of celebrity judges, is set for Friday, March, 27, from 6 to 9 p.m.

Among the other performers on Saturday and Sunday will be:

♫ Brothers Kalamazov and headliner Steppin’ In It are the Saturday-afternoon outdoor bookings slated for the courtyard between the museum and Whitten Hall.

♫ Joel Mabus, the nationally known fretboarder and veteran of past festivals.

♫ Rachael Davis, as both an individual musician and with her family group, Lake Effect.

♫ Gerald Ross, a virtuoso on the traditional Hawaiian steel guitar and ukulele.

♫ Patricia Pettinga and Bill Willging, who specialize in traditional blues and folk music.

♫ The country-and-western twang of The Two Choices Band.

♫ Bluegrass music from The Mossy Mountain Band.

♫ the duo of String Cheese.

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♫ Jordan Lunardini.

♫ Friends of the Kalamazoo Folklife Organization.

♫ Celtic Roots. Several of the performers will double up as leaders of workshops on their

specialty instruments, including the hammered dulcimer, upright bass, cello, violin, banjo, dobro, acoustic guitar, and ukulele.

They will be joined by Miles Kusik (classical guitar), guitarist Mark Sahlgren, Jackie Zito (mandolin), Rock Bartley (clawhammer banjo), Nathan Durham (bass guitar), and David Bunce (banjo).

Mabus, nominated for the top award of the International Folk Alliance, will demonstrate how techniques of playing with a flatpick or with fingers produces different style of music on the acoustic guitar. Ross will show how to play a jazzy, swing style of ukulele.

Zito, co-founder of the Kalamazoo Mandolin and Guitar Orchestra, will span the history of her instrument in her workshop, while String Cheese’s Ali Haraburda and Diana Ladio will show how their specialties – the fiddle and cello – can become the melodic instruments for an entire band.

Sunday’s concerts and workshops are targeted for families. In addition to sessions that will demonstrate the skills needed to begin to play a fretted instrument, there will be a special “Songwriting for Kids” workshop led by Tiyi Schippers.

Another will focus on an instrument “petting zoo” and getting young children involved in these genres of music. Hands-on activities for children 6 to 12 are part of the Sunday attraction.

Also booked for Sunday is a presentation by Tom Dietz, the museum’s curator of research, about Orville Gibson and the beginnings of the Gibson Guitar Co. in Kalamazoo.

In between workshops, performances and demonstrations, visitors will be able to view exhibits.

Among those sharing their knowledge and their wares will be professionals who make Heritage, Kingslight, Big Bends, SVG and other brands of stringed instruments.

The first festival in May of 2006 attracted about 800. It was switched to a March date in 2007 to avoid competing with the Kalamazoo Animation Festival International and future conflicts with the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival.

The 2007 turnout that packed the museum and Whitten Hall led to the decision to move to being a two-day event last year.

For more information and events scheduled for the fourth Kalamazoo Fretboard Festival, call (269) 373-7972 or visit this website: www.kalamazoomuseum.org. Information is also available at the festival’s Facebook page.

‘Faces of Success’ is Women’s History Month topicIn celebration of Women’s History Month, the Arcadia Campus Student Success

Center will be hosting a “Faces of Success” presentation and panel discussion.It will be held on Tuesday, March 24, from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Room 128 of

Anna Whitten Hall. It is free and open to the public.

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The woman-to-woman discussion panel will consist of KVCC staff, students, and community members.

Refreshments will be served. For more information, contact student-success advocate Brandy Thompson at extension 7865.

Employee-wellness assessments under waySue Avery, a registered nurse who is the new wellness coach and coordinator for

Holtyn and Associates, is conducting free wellness screenings and counseling through April 21 for full-time KVCC employees and their spouses who are both new to the college’s program or continuing participants.

Beginning with the 2008-09 initiative, two key changes have gone into effect:● KVCC’ers and spouses can booked their own appointments through their own

computer instead of making a telephone call. This can be done by going to the Holtyn website: www.holtynhpc.com. and following the directions.

● Appointments now span 30 minutes instead of 20, meaning the available time slots are on the hour and half hour.

Avery will be at the Arcadia Commons Campus for employees in Anna Whitten Hall, the Kalamazoo Valley Museum and the Center for New Media on March 31, April 1, April 2 and April 3. The Texas Township Campus appointments began on March 11.

While payoffs in the past have focused on one’s personal and individual health, it is now starting to pay off in the pay checks of employees.

The one-on-one appointments include a glucose analysis, an HDL and cholesterol evaluation, a blood-pressure check, a body-composition reading, an assessment of cardio-respiratory fitness, an overall health survey, an individual fitness assessment, and a personal consultation.

The 30-minute screenings can be done on work time. For more information, contact Blake Glass, manager of the college’s Employee Wellness Program, at extension 4177 or bglass@kvcc.edu or Avery at (269) 267-3712 or savery@holtynpc.com. She can be contacted for assistance in enrolling in the wellness program for the first time and in registering spouses.

All full-time staff, faculty and administrators – and their spouses -- are encouraged to sign up for this college-sponsored program, even if previous screenings had not identified any health risks.

Participants should wear comfortable, loosely fitting clothing. Short-sleeve tops are recommended. Fasting is not required, but it is advised not to consume caffeinated beverages two hours prior to the assessment and to refrain from smoking.

The testing is paid for by the college.“Our employee-wellness program has been successful in helping to control

health-care costs for the college and in assisting staff members achieve their personal goals,” Glass said.

Author Terry Tempest Williams here March 23-24Terry Tempest Williams, naturalist, writer and the face of major environmental

protests against oil and natural-gas probes on public lands in the West, will return to KVCC’s Texas Township Campus Monday and Tuesday, March 23-24.

Her two-day appearance, part of KVCC’s “About Writing” series, will feature dialogues, exchanges and a reading for students and community residents.

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Williams will talk about her writing at 10 a.m. Monday in the Student Commons Theater, repeat the process at 2 p.m., and deliver a reading at 7 that evening in Dale Lake Auditorium. On the following day, she will talk about writing at 10 a.m. in the Commons Theater.

All are open to the public. Williams, who chronicles how nature, wildlife, environmental and wilderness

issues impact humanity’s physical and mental health, visited the KVCC campus in early April of 2004.

One of the featured commentators in “The West,” Stephen Ives’ nine-part PBS documentary, Williams was in the vanguard of protesting the federal government’s bid to allow petroleum and natural-gas explorations in the public part of White River Canyon in northeastern Utah, which is her home state.

The fifth-generation Mormon grew up in Salt Lake City near the lake. Williams launched her writing career during a 15-year stint on the staff of the Utah Museum of Natural History. She said she quit that job because “I was getting too comfortable. I was getting to be an exhibit.” Williams and her husband moved to a small hamlet near Moab in Utah’s canyon country about a four-hour drive from the capital city.

Inducted into the Rachel Carlson Honor Roll and acknowledged by the National Wildlife Federation for her conservation efforts, Williams first dented the national psyche in 1991 with “Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place.”

In “Refuge,” she chronicles the rise of the Great Salt Lake and the flooding of a sanctuary for migratory birds with her mother’s diagnosis of ovarian cancer in the early 1980s.

She believes her mother’s disease stemmed from radioactive fallout from the nuclear tests conducted in the Nevada desert in the 1950s and 1960s. It was critically acclaimed for being a “testament to loss and the earth’s healing grace.”

In response, Newsweek magazine identified Williams as a person likely to make “a considerable impact on the political, economic and environmental issues” facing the American West in the 1990s.

With the new millennium, she seemingly branched out in her writing genre in “Leap: A Traveler in the Garden of Delights” that offered her spiritual and mental insights into a 500-year old painting by Flemish artist Hieronymous Bosch.

While those who have followed her career wondered what all this had to do with her crusading for the American West and its remaining wildernesses, closer scrutiny showed that “Leap” was all about restoring one’s connection to the land, to what is sacred, and to each other.

That’s not too surprising when she cites as her favorite book, John Steinbeck’s “To a God Unknown” that she says explores the relationships between Americans, their landscape, and their faith.

Her expedition into spiritual journaling in “Leap” prompted trepidation that she might incur the wrath of the Church of the Latter Day Saints and its hierarchy. Married nearly 30 years ago in the great Mormon temple in Salt Lake City, she and her husband marked their 25th anniversary by burning the parchment of their betrothal certificate on the lake’s shores and tossing their wedding bands into the water. That’s because she began to paint a distinction between faith and religion, especially the need to break free from limiting orthodoxies.

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Asked to comment about any connections she sees between what Bosch created in his painting and contemporary America, she said: “Both eras are marked by a striving to break free from orthodoxy. I see that today in the ideological war between the old West and the new West over public lands, a conflict that could lead to an ecological reformation akin to the religious reformation during Bosch’s time. The list of such orthodoxies is endless: the fundamentalist religions, the TV networks, and now the big media mergers. I really do trust the voices of the people in reaction to these forces.”

Williams must have survived any official pillorying because an honorary doctorate of humanities was presented to her by the University of Utah. The Utne Reader selected her as one of the magazine’s 100 visionaries, defining a visionary as a person who could change another person’s life.

Along the way, Williams says she has constantly contemplated whether her liberal, activist and questioning beliefs might lead to her excommunication from the faith of her family and forbears.

To prepare for Williams’ second visit to KVCC, said English instructor Rob Haight who organizes the “About Writing” series, faculty, students and staff have been reading her latest book, “Finding Beauty in a Broken World.”

“Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place” weaves the author's personal experiences with observations of nature and humanity’s often-destructive impact on it. The new book also combines seemingly disparate elements -- her apprenticeship in mosaic design, the challenges facing the Utah prairie dog, and the genocide in Rwanda.

Commented Jennifer Sahn, editor of Orion Magazine: “’Refuge’ was an amazing book for what it did to bring the story of human health and the story of environmental health together in a really passionate way. No one had done that as passionately since Rachel Carson, and I think Terry is the most prominent woman nature writer since Carson."

Williams’ connection to nature was forged as a young girl. Her father ran a family pipe-laying business and took her out on jobs with him all over the American West. It was on these trips that she learned to pay close attention to the natural world. That skill came in handy when she was researching “Finding Beauty in a Broken World.”

"I watched prairie dogs every day, rise before the sun, stand with their paws pressed together facing the rising sun in total stillness for up to 30 minutes," she said in an interview with Caitlin Shetterly of NPR. "And then I watched them at the end of the day, take that same gesture 30 minutes before the sun goes down. They would press their palms together in perfect stillness.

“I don't mean to anthropomorphize,” she told NPR, “but when you look at a creature that has survived over the millennium begin and end each day in that kind of stance, it causes one to think about one's own life and speed and rapidity in which we live."

That family that she observed is one of the last remaining Utah prairie-dog communities on protected land. In 1973 the Utah prairie dog was put on the endangered species list, but, after lobbying from developers and ranchers, it was demoted to a threatened-species status. Most westerners see them as pesky rodents - more suited to extermination than protection.

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In the last section of “Finding Beauty in a Broken World,” Williams makes what some might consider a wild leap from the extermination of prairie dogs to the genocide in Rwanda.

"She's not saying a prairie dog is a human being,” commented one reviewer. “She's saying we're killing everything from the bottom to the top with no culpability, no accountability, no emotions, no considerations. She's just bearing testimony to the things she loves about life and about being alive."

Williams' decision to go to Rwanda followed a harrowing period in her life. Her brother had just died of lymphoma, a death she also believes is tied to nuclear testing. She had also been studying the prairie dogs' demise. Williams says she thought she couldn't handle any more death or pain.

"You know, I look at the plight of the prairie dogs," says Williams. "I look at my brother's death from lymphoma as a down-winder and I look at the causes that underlie any war, and I think if we look deeply enough, closely enough, we see the same symptoms. It's about power, it's about greed, it's about certain elements of the population that are expendable."

For Williams, it's this mosaic that needs to be pieced together so that humanity can learn from what it has done and repair what is broken.

Media’s impact on perceptions is Diversity topicThe clout of the media in shaping perceptions and the not-so-subtle messages that

enhance negative stereotyping highlight KVCC’s sixth annual Diversity Conference that is slated for Friday, March 27, from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Free and open to the public, the conference in the Dale Lake Auditorium on the Texas Township Campus has been designed under the theme of “Diversity: Perceptions and Realities.” This year’s co-sponsors include the Educational Community Credit Union and Eaton Corp.

During the four days prior to the half-day conference, the public will also be able to visit the “Hateful Things” exhibit, a collection of “routine” artifacts that portrayed and fostered negative stereotypes whether intentionally or subliminally. They will be on display in Room 4380 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday of that week.

The two keynote presentations are:● “Impact of the Media on Perceptions” – Jane Tallim, co-executive director of

the Media Awareness Network, will discuss the influence of the media in shaping a person’s thoughts, feelings and behaviors about members of both genders, gays and lesbians, racial and cultural groups and persons with disabilities. She will speak at 8:15 a.m.

● David Pilgrim, chief diversity officer at Ferris State University, will speak on the topic of “Not So Subtle Messages.” He believes that Martin Luther King, Jr. was right when he said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," and that diversity is more than a racial issue. His presentation will begin at 9:45 a.m.

Pilgrim will trace these messages from posters advertising the sale of slaves, to caricatures in cartoons to portrayals of Barak Obama as a monkey in his candidacy for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party. An editorial cartoon printed in a recent edition of The New York Post is the latest example of a racist image.

Pilgrim will also oversee a showing and discussion of the “Hateful Things” exhibit, which is based in the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia that he

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established on the Ferris State campus. It includes artifacts of everyday household items -- salt/pepper shakers, ash trays, advertisements, T-shirts -- that portray African Americans in a stereotypical or degrading manner, from Aunt Jemima to the board game called “Ghettopoly.”

“Anyone who understands or studies the social development of children and young people,” Tallim says, “knows that attitudes, values and self-esteem are well-developed by the teen years or even earlier. What young people see and here in the media shapes how they view the world and what is valued in society.”

Pilgrim said the “Hating Things” exhibit is designed to advance the museum’s mission of stimulating the scholarly examination of historical and contemporary expressions of racism, as well as promoting racial understanding and healing.

More information is available by visiting the committee’s web site at http://diversity.kvcc.edu . People should register in advance for the 2009 Diversity Conference on the college’s home page.

Protecting the planet topic for speech contestFormer and current communications students are eligible to take part in a speech

competition that focuses on the environmental health of Earth. Organized by the KVCC communications faculty, the “Going Green” competition

will culminate with public presentations on Tuesday, April 7, from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Student Commons Theater. The top four finishers will share $500 in prize money.

The competition is open to the first dozen students – presently or formerly enrolled in a Communications 101 class -- who submit applications by the deadline.

The participants will each take a global or grassroots perspective and present a speech – five to six minutes in length – to introduce the audience to “environmentally sound processes, products and/or practices.”

The April 7 event will be open to students, staff and the public. Visual enhancements using props and software are encouraged. Each

presentation will be judged for creative and innovative content, effective delivery, and the quality of the visual enhancement. The winner goes home with $200.

Applications are available by contacting instructors Patrick Conroy or Steven Ott.

He’ll not hear laughter he sparks tonightPeter Cook, a deaf storyteller, poet and humorist who is regarded as the Robin

Williams of his genre of comedic improvisation, will offer his distinct style of performance on Friday (March 13) on Kalamazoo Valley Community College’s Texas Township Campus.

Cook’s show will begin at 7 p.m. in the Dale Lake Auditorium. Tickets are $10 for general admission for adults and $5 for children under 12. There is a discount for deaf or hard-of-hearing students as well as for those over 65. They are on sale in the KVCC Bookstore.

Earlier that day, Cook will be conducting a workshop on “Creativity and ASL” for American Sign Language students from noon to 3 p.m. in the Student Commons.

Support for Cook’s performance and workshop was provided by a grant from the Kalamazoo Community Foundation.

Cook is also regarded as one of the most talented ASL poets on today’s scene.

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He uses similarities in sign direction or quality of movement, hand configurations and facial expressions to “rhyme,” just as words with similar sounds and endings rhyme in poetry.

Through singing, pantomime, storytelling and acting, Cook and his hands can create a moving sunset, the battle of Gettysburg and a march by Martin Luther King Jr. among other poetic images all rolled into one performance.

Cook has been featured in Public Broadcasting System programs and has performed at festivals worldwide.

For more than two decades, Cook and poet Kenny Lerner have collaborated in the Flying Words Project, which showcases the poetic and performance potential inherent in American Sign Language for both deaf and hearing audiences.

Cook lives in Chicago, where he teaches at Columbia College and operates his own video company.

"It was an accident," he said about pursuing his profession. "I was working on my one-man autobiographical show, called 'Your Eyes, My Hands,' in Chicago. As I was performing it, I realized that I was more into storytelling than acting out. I was talking to the audience directly. That is the power of storytelling. "I gradually became a storyteller as time went on,” he said. “My first storytelling event was the Illinois Story Telling Festival in the summer of 1995."

Cook said he learned to tell stories by watching other tellers at work. "I watched how they played with the audience and how they controlled their stories. I learned as I went on."

Cook has many tales to tell about funny things that have happened in his unlikely career.

"Once I was at a festival,” he said, “working hard telling stories, moving from one tent to another. Everyone was behind the schedule so we were running around. I arrived at one tent and started to sign my stories. For awhile, I thought it was strange that everyone was so quiet. Then I realized that everyone was blind. Why did they put me, a deaf teller, in front of blind people? That was an awkward moment, but it worked out."

The most satisfying part of storytelling for Cook is the reaction from the audience. “Their laughs and their smiles. If they are refreshed and energetic after the show, that's my reward. Also, seeing the eyes of deaf children gleaming while I tell them stories. That makes my day, too."

The greatest difficulty for Cook is the language. "Not many people know American Sign Language," he said. "I have been invited to many festivals and I have to bring an interpreter who can interpret my sign and voice them out. It is not an easy job."

The way a deaf teller uses a punch line is also completely different from most tellers, according to Cook, who changes his material depending on the audience.

If the audience is hearing and doesn't know sign, Cook incorporates some teaching into his stories so the listeners can learn about deaf culture as well as the language itself.

If he is performing for an audience that is deaf, his material will be different. "It will be more deaf-centered humor that will not work with the audience that has no idea about the deaf culture," he said.

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He has been featured at storytelling events nationwide, and has worked with deaf storytellers and poets in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Japan. In 2003, Cook was invited to the White House to join the National Book Festival.

For more information about Cook’s appearance in Kalamazoo, contact Su Cutler at extension 4482 or scutler@kvcc.edu.

“The 7 p.m. performance is not a workshop,” Cutler emphasized. “The purpose is to bring the Kalamazoo community and beyond together to enjoy a wonderful evening.”

NextEnergy chief to speak at M-TEC FridayThe role Southwest Michigan industries and businesses can play as the state

moves toward economic vitality in alternative and renewable forms of energy is the theme of the next Manufacturers Forum at the M-TEC of KVCC.

Keith Cooley, president and chief executive officer of the economic-development nonprofit NextEnergy based in Detroit, will speak on Friday (March 20) at 7:30 a.m. in the M-TEC located on the KVCC Groves Campus.

Sponsored by 1st Source Bank, the free breakfast forum for manufacturing companies can be registered for by contacting Patricia Wallace at the M-TEC at (269) 353-1290 or online at www.mteckvcc.com.

Launched in 2002, NextEnergy serves as a research catalyst and an engine for business acceleration for alternative and renewable energy.

As the nation’s economy struggles to adjust to global forces, U.S. industry seems poised to lead the way in a new manufacturing thrust designed to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, halt global warming, and take advantage of easily tapped wind and solar energies.

Before joining NextEnergy last November, Cooley served as director of the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth and as the chief executive officer of Focus: HOPE, a Detroit civil- and human- rights organization.

Prior to that, Cooley spent two decades at General Motors, rising to engineering director for the Cadillac division and eventually director of strategic planning, for GM corporate communications.

In a recent interview published by Business Review Western Michigan, Cooley advocates that, despite a dormant economy that might still be bottoming out, this is not the time for Michigan “to push the pause button on alternative energy.

“It’s clear,” he said, “that the kinds of challenges that we have from a fiscal point of view have put a damper on many, many folks that like to start new business,” Cooley said.

But now, he believes, might be the time to strike when the iron is hot, and the heat is coming not only from the office of Gov. Jennifer Granholm, but specifically from the economic-stimulus plan authored by President Barack Obama and the new administration’s commitment to moving the United States on the fast track to alternative and renewable sources of industry.

Cooley cited the governor’s challenge in her State of the State address. “The governor has laid down the gauntlet on the table on a 45-percent reduction in fossil-fuel usage, to get us away from the addiction, by 2020. . .I think we’re on the march toward some standards that are really going to push the envelope.”

Cooley believes Michigan contains the manufacturing infrastructure and the skilled workforce to be major player in these emerging industries.

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In that context, the governor has created the Great Lakes Wind Council, an advisory body inside Cooley’s former state department, as a public forum to begin to identify where, in the Great Lakes, wind-energy systems may be prudently sited.

"The Great Lakes are Michigan's most precious natural resource, and they provide tremendous economic value to the citizens of Michigan," Granholm said. "The availability, consistency, and velocity of wind in the Great Lakes make their waters uniquely attractive to wind-energy developers seeking to build offshore wind-energy systems. But we want to make sure we are prudent in this process of approval."

In addition to looking at ways to best engage Michigan citizens in a public dialogue about offshore wind so that statewide interests are considered, the council will identify criteria that can be used to review applications for offshore wind development.

The council will also identify criteria for mapping areas that should be excluded from offshore wind development and those areas that are most favorable for such development. A full report is due on the governor’s by Sept. 1.

Festival of Health to fill museum SaturdayThe best way to ward off disease and other medical maladies is to prevent them in

the first place, and that concept will again be part of the eighth annual Festival of Health slated for the Kalamazoo Valley Museum on Saturday (March 14) from noon to 4 p.m.

The free event will feature professionals and representatives from traditional and nontraditional health organizations presenting information, conducting demonstrations, providing free massages, and staging hands-on activities and health-related games for children that promote healthy habits and fitness.

Several will be giving away health-enhancement products.The Festival of Health will offer a full compendium of programs that teach people

of all ages the ways and means for achieving optimum health throughout the body. Among the topics will be:

the basics of family health health-teaching interactives choosing healthy snacks and the value of nutrition dental hygiene and cavity prevention coping with post-partum depression how to quit smoking free and low-cost medical-insurance programs available in the Kalamazoo area spinal screenings and posture evaluations how massage can ease stress foot scans vision screenings and the basics of eye care the importance of immunizations and lead testing reiki healing sessions. the role music and the arts can play in health and easing stress back supports, massage chairs, therapeutic beds and ergonomics. self-defense techniques that can boost self-conditioning how physical therapy works. The organizations that will be participating in the Festival of Health include:Bronson Medical Practices, Sands Chiropractic PC, Healthy Babies Healthy Start,

Rx Optical, Great Lakes Health Plan, KVCC Student Nurse Association, Juice Plus,

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Reiki Healing Energies, the Kalamazoo Center for the Healing Arts, Adamcz Associates, The Back Place, Blue Heron Academy and Gulcumatz Martial Arts.

For more information about the Festival of Health, contact the museum’s Annette

Hoppenworth at 373-7990. Tate brings rock’s days of yore to Lake

Vocalist Howard Tate and His Soul Band, whose brand of soulful rhythm and blues reaches back into the 1950s and ‘60s will the Saturday (March 21) Artist Forum attraction.

Tickets for the 7:30 p.m. concert are $20, and are on sale at the KVCC Bookstore, the Kalamazoo Valley Museum, and at the Lake ticket booth the night of the performance.

Co-sponsored by the college and the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, the remaining Artists Forum bookings are:

♫ Guitarist Chris Smither, who plays folk, roots and blues as he spins stories – Saturday, April 4.

♫ The roots rock of the Dave Alvin Duo – Friday, April 24.Tate, 69, was born in Macon, Ga., and moved with his family to Philadelphia in

the early 1940s. In his teens, he joined a gospel-music group that recorded rhythm-and blues-sides for Mercury Records and later for Verve Records.

“Singing just interested me from as far back as I can remember,” Tate said. “I started to sing around the house. My father became the assistant pastor at a Baptist church in Philadelphia. He asked me at about 8 years old, 'Why don't you learn a song and you can sing in the church before I give a sermon.'”

Deeply influenced by the greats of gospel music, his soul-music renditions of the late 1960s are regarded as some of the most sophisticated of the era with Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and B. B. King performing his “blues-drenched” compositions. Tate went on to work with Lloyd Price and Johnny Nash.

He also traveled the country as Bill Doggett’s vocalist in the decade’s earlier years. Over the next 10 years, he performed with Joe Tex, The Drifters, Jackie Wilson, Wilson Pickett, Sam Cook, Little Anthony and the Imperials, James Brown, The Temptations and other future members of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame.

After recording a single for Epic Records and a few songs for his own label, Tate retired from the record business in the late 1970s. He sold securities in the New Jersey and Philadelphia area, and in the 1980s developed a dependence on drugs, ending up living in a homeless shelter.

In the mid-1990s, Tate began counseling drug abusers and the mentally ill, and worked as a preacher. In 2000, a Jersey City disc jockey discovered Tate's whereabouts, and in spring of 2001 Tate played his first date in many years, in New Orleans. He was back in the business.

From Georgia to Philly to a church combo to R&B groups to solo fame to mob-land murder to retirement and disappearance to rediscovery, Tate has led quite a life.

Still preaching in his own church in New Jersey, Tate came back from virtually nowhere after having his fans and associates search for him for 20 years, a comeback that has included a European tour.

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Talking about his early days, Tate said “I had the big voice but I didn't know what to do with it. I was hitting falsetto everywhere in the songs. It would become monotonous. Now I know when to hit it and when not to.”

His single of "Ain't Nobody Home" mushroomed to the top of the charts overnight. “I was doing construction work as a mortar mixer supplying bricklayers, making good money,” Tate recalls. “I came home from work with mud all over my face and clothes, just filthy.” That’s how he got the news that the record reached No. 1 and he had to catch a plane to Detroit.

But he didn’t have time for a shower. He was given $1,000 for a plane ticket and clothes money. Tate would be picked up in a limo by a Verve Records promotion man who would take him to the theater where he would perform with Marvin Gaye at the top of the marquee. He still doesn’t know how he was ever allowed to board the plane.

From mixing mortar for 15 bricklayers working like maniacs to sharing a stage with Gaye in one day – that’s show business and Tate has lived it on the way up, and on the way down. Now he’s on the way up again.

For more information about this concert and others in the Artists Forum series, contact Dave Posther at extension 4476 or dposther@kvcc.edu.

Chinese film is next offering at Stryker TheaterA Chinese film that deals with a devastating disease that might be cured through

the use of stem cells is next in the Kalamazoo Valley Museum’s Thursday-night series of international and independent films.

The March 19 attraction is “In Love We Trust,” which originally was set to premiere at the 2007 editions of the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival. The film eventually missed both and ultimately had its first showing at the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival. It is alternatively known by its literal English translation, “Left Right.”

Some reported that it was officially delayed because of bureaucratic red tape as it awaited examination by the Chinese Film Bureau. The second delay was blamed on the fact the post-production editing had not been completed in time.

“In Love We Trust” follows a divorced couple living in modern-day China who discover that their daughter is dying of leukemia. Physicians inform them, however, that the child can only be saved with stem cells from an umbilical cord of a sibling.

Unfortunately both parents have since remarried. The film follows the emotional strain that this development brings to both marriages.

It will be shown at 7:30 p.m. in the Mary Jane Stryker Theater. There is a $3 admission fee. Financial support for the series is provided by the KVCC Foundation.

Including American-made films that relate to exhibits that will be on display at the time, here are the film bookings in the Stryker Theater through spring:

April 9 – “Standing in the Shadow of Motown” April 16 – “Eldorado” (Belgium) April 23 – “The Five Heartbeats” April 30 – “The Violin” (Mexico) May 21 – “Marion Bridge” (Canada).

Bound for the U of M’s Honors Program

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KVCC student Anthony Chase has been was selected for the $5,000-per-year University of Michigan Community College Scholar Award.

With the receipt of his transcript at the end of this semester, it is likely that the KVCC Honors Program member will be admitted into the U of M’s Honors Program. Chase is the seventh KVCC Honors Program graduate to be accepted into the University of Michigan over the last three years.

The home-schooled Chase, who be admitted into Michigan’s Residential College, is planning a career in the foreign service with an emphasis on the Middle East. He’s getting some practical knowledge about that part of the world and the Arabic language by working part time at the Tiffany Party Store, which is owned by Iraqui-American brothers and is located at the top of West Main Hill in central Kalamazoo.

‘Sunday Series’ to turn on city’s ‘Red Light District’As many American cities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries did, Kalamazoo

had its own infamous “Red Light” districts, and those eras will be relived in the next installment of the Kalamazoo Valley Museum’s “Sunday Series.”

“The Sins of Kalamazoo Were Scarlet and Crimson” on March 22 recounts the city’s red-light districts and speakeasies during Prohibition.

The presentation by Tom Dietz, the museum’s curator of research, is set for 1:30 p.m. in the Mary Jane Stryker Theater. All “Sunday Series” programs are free and open to the public.

In story, song and legend, there were places where businessmen, factory hands, and transient workers could find the kind of entertainment that civic leaders, ministers, and social reformers condemned as immoral and unhealthy.

From the mid-1880s through the 1920s, Kalamazoo’s den of iniquity was in the area bounded roughly by Kalamazoo Avenue and Edwards, Harrison, and North streets where a number of factories were based and four railroads intersected within a few blocks of each other.

Consequently, it attracted enterprises that would not have been welcome in residential neighborhoods. Some of Dietz’s material comes from “Fifty Years of Medical Memories,” the memoirs that Dr. Rush McNair, a Kalamazoo physician, published in the 1930s. Dr. McNair described his experiences as a doctor for nearly 60 years in Kalamazoo, including treating women who worked in the brothels.

After World War I, the Kalamazoo Police Department set up a unit to enforce prohibition and other violations of public morality. Officers Orville Sternbergh and Fester Kuilema were among those assigned to the unit that worked throughout the downtown area.

Sternbergh kept a personal diary of his work in addition to his regular police reports. Sternbergh reports they made arrests for bootleg alcohol, raided “speakeasy” nightclubs including one where the Corner Bar is now located, and broke up parties in gambling houses.

He also notes numerous arrests for prostitution in locations around downtown, including cheap hotels near the railroad stations. Sternbergh’s journals covered most of the decade of the 1920s until he left the police department.

Dietz will wrap up his current edition of the “Sunday Series” with “Red Terror in Kalamazoo: The 1948 Shakespeare Strike” on April 26.

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For more information, contact Dietz at 373-7990 or visit the museum’s website at www.kalamazoomuseum.org.

The blues celebrated in documentary twin bill SundayThe Kalamazoo Valley Museum’s free Sunday-afternoon showings of

documentaries during the winter semester feature connections to the first-floor exhibition that will be on display during that time.

“Meet the Velvelettes” is about the Kalamazoo singing group and its Motown connections.

The doubleheader booking in the Mary Jane Stryker Theater for Sunday, March 15, is “Feel Like Going Home” at 1:30 p.m. and “The Soul of a Man” at 3:30. Both are from the award-wining PBS series “The Blues.” The series will conclude with Clint Eastwood’s “Piano Blues” on April 19.

In “Feel Like Going Home,” director Martin Scorsese pays homage to the Delta blues. Musician Corey Harris travels through Mississippi and on to West Africa, exploring the roots of the music. The film celebrates the early Delta bluesmen through original performances by Willie King, Taj Mahal, Otha Turner, and Ali Farka Toure, and rare archival footage of Son House, Muddy Waters, and John Lee Hooker.

"I've always felt an affinity for blues music,” Scorsese said. “The culture of storytelling through music is incredibly fascinating and appealing to me. The blues have great emotional resonance

Written and directed by Wim Wenders, “The Soul of a Man” explores the lives of his favorite blues artists — Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson, and J. B. Lenoir — in a film that is part history and part personal pilgrimage.

The film tells the story of these artists' lives in music through a fictional film-within-a-film, rare archival footage, and covers of their songs by contemporary musicians, including Bonnie Raitt, Lucinda Williams, Lou Reed, Eagle Eye Cherry, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Cassandra Wilson, Garland Jeffreys, and Los Lobos.

"These songs meant the world to me,” Wenders said. “I felt there was more truth in them than in any book I had read about America, or in any movie I had ever seen. I've tried to describe, more like a poem than in a 'documentary,' what moved me so much in their songs and voices."

Interviewing, parenting workshop topics for studentsThe Student Success Center’s line-up of events and activities this month includes

seminars on how to engage in a productive interview, the keys to good parenting, and preparing for employment.

“Interviewing Strategies” is the topic for Wednesday (March 18) at 10 a.m. in the Student Commons. The parenting tips are set for Thursday (March 19) at 1 p.m. in the Student Commons Forum. “Preparing for Employment” is slated for Tuesday, March 24, at 1 p.m. in the Student Commons as well.

New this semester is a merging of the college’s annual Employment Expo and the Volunteer and Community Services Fair. Because each kind of incorporates the other, the combined events have been booked for March 25 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

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For more information about these and upcoming workshops for students during the winter semester, contact Pamela Siegfried, the center’s life-resources coordinator, at extension 4825.

2009 Reading Together events continuingThe 2009 Reading Together selection of the Kalamazoo Public Library, a trio of

memoirs of a New York Times columnist who is still based in his southern roots, is continuing with its series of special events.

Kalamazoo's annual community-reading program will bring Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg to town for a free presentation on Tuesday, April 14, during National Library Week.

KVCC’s Jim Ratliff is a member of the selection committee that chose Bragg’s “Ava’s Man,” “The Prince of Frogtown, and “All Over But the Shoutin’.”

Here’s what is booked for March:● Saturday (March 14) from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Portage District Library. This will

launch a “Write Your Life” series of presentations. The opening will feature author Bonnie Jo Campbell showing aspiring memoir writers how to search the nooks and crannies of their lives for stories that others will want to read. The series continues on Saturday, March 21 – same time, same station Author Michael Steinberg will offer strategies, techniques, and examples to help memoir writers discover the stories they most urgently need to tell. Registration is required by calling 329-4542, extension 600.

● Monday (March 16) from 7 to 9 p.m. at Friendship Village, 1400 N. Drake Road – a “Readers Theater” performance revolving around “Ava’s Man.”

● Tuesday (March 17) from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the Portage District Library, 300 Library Lane – a discussion of “Ava’s Man.”

● Tuesday (March 17) from 7 to 8 p.m. at the Zion Lutheran Church, 2122 Bronson Blvd. – a discussion of “All Over But the Shoutin’.”

● Wednesday (March 18) from 2:45 to 3:45 p.m. in the west wing of the Paw Paw District Library, 609 W. Michigan Ave. – “Pages and Pizza” is targeted for teens and “tweens.” Using the news articles of Bragg, the session will cover memoir writing, what makes an interesting story, and how to create news, journal and blog articles.

● Wednesday (March 18) from 7 to 8 p.m. in the Portage District Library, 300 Library Lane – a discussion of “Ava’s Man.”

● Thursday (March 19) from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Galilee Baptist Church, 1216 N. Westnedge Ave. – Robin Wright King, author of “ Poppa Was a Rolling Stone,” describes the financial, social, and emotional impact that an absent father has on his children.

With colorful language and emotional honesty, Bragg recounts in “All Over But the Shoutin’” a turbulent and poverty-stricken childhood in rural Alabama that gave rise to a career in journalism that led to the profession’s No. 1 prize for reporting.

It is described as “a sensitive but never self-pitying look at the fruits of his father’s abuse and abandonment of the family, and at his mother, who bore the brunt of the pain.” Bragg’s mother absorbed the cruelties of an alcoholic husband haunted by his service in the Korean War, and gave her life, in endless cotton fields, to make a living for her three sons.

In “Ava’s Man,” Bragg celebrates his maternal grandfather, Charlie Bundrum, a heroic figure whose life was symbolic of a people and way of life nearly gone today from

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the Southern landscape. It is also a study of the history and culture of the rural South, richly seasoned with all-but-forgotten lore and language.

“The Prince of Frogtown” completes the cycle of Bragg’s stories about his childhood. Bragg was convinced the last thing he wanted was to become a father. Now married and suddenly step-father to a young boy, Bragg looks back to move forward. Through conversations with people who knew his father, Bragg builds a picture of who Charles Bragg really was, searching for shreds of goodness in him. Stories about his father alternate with chapters about the developing relationship with his step-son.

Copies of the three books are located in KVCC’s libraries. Reading Together invites people of all ages from all walks of life to read and then

discuss important issues raised by a selected book. Thousands of county residents have participated in six previous Reading Together programs.

The Kalamazoo Public Library leads Reading Together with the collaboration of libraries, educational institutions, health and social service agencies, cultural, civic and religious organizations, businesses, the new media, and local governments throughout Kalamazoo County.

The Kalamazoo Community Foundation helped the library launch Reading Together with funding for the first three years with grants from it Better Together initiative. The library now provides major support for the program. Foundation grants, gifts and contributions from collaborating organizations make it possible to offer Reading Together to all of Kalamazoo County. KPL program specialist Lisa Williams coordinates the program.

The book-selection process continues Reading Together’s tradition of democratic community participation. A group of community members considers dozens of titles gathered from last year’s evaluation process, suggested by library patrons, staff, and community leaders, and recommended by librarians and educators.

Committee members read and discuss the suggested titles with these guidelines in mind. A good Reading Together book features:

● an author who will come to Kalamazoo during the Reading Together period;● beautiful prose that fosters an appreciation of literature;● availability in multiple formats such as large print, audio recording, Spanish;● reading level, vocabulary, length, and subject matter that appeals to adults as

well as high school and college students;● treatment of social issues relevant to our community.The trio of books was chosen for 2009 because Bragg’s memoirs of home and

childhood are related but not linear. They sufficiently connect so that readers could start with the newest book, “The Prince of Frogtown,” and then move on to one of the others.

Bragg says he learned to tell stories by listening to the masters -- the people of the foothills of the Appalachians. They talked of the sadness, poverty, cruelty, kindness, hope, hopelessness, faith, anger and joy of their everyday lives, and painted pictures on the very haze of the early evening when work faded into storytelling.

Bragg was born in Alabama, grew up there, and worked at several newspapers before joining The Times in 1994. He covered the murder and unrest in Haiti while a metro reporter there, then wrote about the Oklahoma City bombing, the Jonesboro killings, the Susan Smith trial and more as a national correspondent based in Atlanta. He later became Miami bureau chief for The Times just in time for Elian Gonzalez's arrival

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and the international battle for the little boy. He is now a roving correspondent based in New Orleans.

Bragg received the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1996 for his stories about contemporary America. He has twice won the prestigious American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award, and more than 50 writing awards in his 20-year career. In 1992, he was awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. He has taught writing in colleges and in newspaper newsrooms.

He lives in a shotgun double house not far from the levee and the train tracks in uptown New Orleans where he says he has cultivated several fine weeds in his back yard. He likes to fish when he can find the time. He has not fished in two years.

“Ava’s Man” recounts the story of Bundrum, a roofer, a carpenter, a whiskey-maker, a fisherman who knew every inch of the Coosa River, made boats out of car hoods, and knew how to pack a wound with brown sugar to stop the blood. He could not read, but he asked his wife to read him the newspaper every day so he would not be ignorant. To Bragg, e was a man who took giant steps in rundown boots, a true hero whom history would otherwise have overlooked.

In the decade of the Great Depression, Bundrum moved his family 21 times, keeping seven children one step ahead of the poverty and starvation that threatened them from every side. He worked at the steel mill when the steel was rolling, or for a side of bacon or a bushel of peaches when it wasn’t. He paid the doctor who delivered his fourth daughter with a jar of whiskey.

He understood the finer points of the law as it applied to poor people and drinking men; he was a banjo player and a buck dancer who worked off fines when life got a little sideways, and he sang when he was drunk, where other men fought or cussed. He had a talent for living.

His children revered him, Bragg wrote. When he died, cars lined the blacktop for more than a mile to say goodbye to “Ava’s Man.”

Gospel Mission, Habitat volunteering availableKVCC faculty members, staff and students in a building or food-serving mood

can engage in a couple of volunteering during this winter semester The beneficiaries will be the Kalamazoo Valley Habitat for Humanity and the

Kalamazoo Gospel Mission.On Wednesday (March 18), prospective volunteers can park in the Kalamazoo

Gospel Mission lot across from the new bus depot/train station in downtown Kalamazoo and enter through the center doors to the cafeteria no later than 4:45 p.m.

The mission is located at 448 N. Burdick St. Because they will be working in a warm kitchen, dress accordingly. The opportunity will be repeated April 15 Participants should gather at the Habitat for Humanity Restore at 1810 Lake St. by 8:30 a.m. on Saturday (March 21)

Volunteers should be in their construction togs. No experience is required. The Saturday construction adventure will be repeated April 18.

Volunteers can sign up on the Service Learning bulletin board for the mission and Habitat efforts. It is located in the corridor near the faculty and deans offices on the Texas Township Campus.

Veterans Appreciation Day here March 31

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The KVCC Student Veteran Association will be hosting an observance of Veteran Appreciation Day on Tuesday, March 31, in the Student Commons from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

It is being held in conjunction with the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Growth.

Those veterans in attendance will be treated to lunch, some music, and appreciation notes written by KVCC staff and students. Plans are also under way for some kind of a raffle.

Community agencies and the college will set up booths to share information about programs that can assist veterans in their pursuit of an education and in their adjustment to civilian life.

Also be considered is a display of historical memorabilia. More information is available by contacting Jack Bley, Kate Ferraro, Colleen Olson or Stacy Hoffman. Kalamazoo’s notorious murders get air time this month

This month’s offering on the Kalamazoo Valley Museum’s TV show tells the stories of some of the community’s most notorious slayings.

Based on “Murders Most Foul,” one of the museum’s “Sunday Series” presentations by Tom Dietz, curator of research, “Sins of Kalamazoo” is being aired by the Public Media Network (formerly the Community Access Center) on Channel 22 on the Charter cable system.

The March showings are: 7 p.m. on Sundays, 6:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, 6:30 p.m. on Fridays, and 11 a.m. on Saturdays.

Dietz is working with the PMN and its video productions coordinator Katie Reid to film monthly episodes that showcase an episode of Southwest Michigan history and the artifacts that help tell the story of this part of Michigan. This month’s artifact is a Gibson mandolin, which coincides with the museum hosting the Fretboard Festival later in March.

While sensational slayings are the stuff that fill the columns of tabloid newspapers and the airtime on cable news programs these days, 75 or more years ago sins against the Sixth Commandment in little ol’ Kalamazoo were enough to attract the attention of newspapers across the nation. “Major New York and Chicago newspapers took note of the murder of Sheriff Benjamin F. Orcutt on a cold December evening in 1867 during an attempted jailbreak,” says Dietz who will relive several of these murderous tales.

“They also provided coverage of the story of the ‘Flying Bandit’ murder in 1935,” he says, “as well as when one priest murdered another in 1924. And, when a respectable middle-aged couple murdered their elderly neighbor because they believed she was a witch, papers across the country picked up the story.”

April 30 deadline for KAFI music/animation teamsBorrowing from a blending of the art forms of music and animation that began

with Walt Disney’s “Fantasia,” KVCC and Western Michigan University majors in those fields will compose original scores and set them to film in a new competition for the 2009 Kalamazoo Animation Festival International (KAFI).

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Teams of students from the two schools will vie for $5,000 in prize money and their creations, which must be completed for judging by April 30, will be showcased as part of the fifth KAFI set for downtown Kalamazoo May 14-17.

Called the Kalamazoo Animation And Music Competition (KAAMC), the first-of-its-kind partnership between WMU and KVCC will have animation and music students competing for $2,500 for best animation and $2,500 for best musical composition, with the possibility that the same team could win both awards.

A special KAFI screening will present the top entries and the winners will be announced at the festival’s wrap-up event on May 17.

The KVCC students are:Anna Barnhart of Kalamazoo, animation/illustration; Mark Meringa, a Comstock

High School alumnus majoring in computer-assisted design and manufacturing; Devon Faust, a Galesburg-Augusta graduate majoring in animation and web design; Kalamazoo Christian High School alumnus Craig Penning, majoring in web design; Philip Crain, a Loy Norrix High School graduate majoring in animation; Jacob Ingram of Battle Creek, animation; Carson Befus of Kalamazoo, a major in audio engineering; and Mervin Kaunda, an international student from Zambia who is majoring in animation.

The Western contestants include: Kelly Davidson of Paw Paw, music composition; Kenny Beaus, a mechanical-engineering major from Kalamazoo; and Kristen Rocha of Kalamazoo, who is specializing in film media at Western.

A team is composed of one or more animators and one or more musicians, but there was no limit to the number of members per team to produce a finished film that is no longer than six minutes, two-thirds of which must feature the musical composition.

Successful units will practice team-building skills through collaboration and promote creativity of the two arts by scheduling regular meetings, storyboard updates, testing and final reviews during the contest period. No previously created material can be used for this competition. Music compositions may either use computer-generated or processed sound as a major component, or consist of sound created on an electric musical instrument, such as a synthesizer or sampler. Compositions that combine acoustic instruments and/or electric or computer sound are also accepted, but must be quality recorded/mixed/produced as part of the film. Animation may use any software application or style.

Among the criteria to be judged will be: quality and design of the finished piece; transitions from one idea to the next; musical and visual innovation used; integration of the two art forms; degree that music enhances the animation; and degree that animation enhances the music.

The idea for the music-animation collaboration was developed during a brainstorming session between KAFI staff and one of the festival’s funders, the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation of Kalamazoo. The original idea was to advance the appreciation of the two art forms in the visual and audio world, to enrich the artistic talents of students and educators in the Kalamazoo area, and to create a blended masterpiece of animation and music.

Given a successful inaugural, the plan is to extend it regionally for students in middle and high schools, and then on a national/global level to the world of professional animators and musicians for future KAFIs.

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Among those from KVCC, which has hosted the four previous festivals, and who conceived the new competition and organized its parameters are: Lauren Beresford, director of operations for the M-TEC of KVCC; KAFI operations manager Margaret Noteboom, and instructors Linda Rzoska, Kevin White and Aubrey Hardaway. Representing WMU are David Colson, director of the School of Music, and Anders Dahlberg, artistic director in the School of Music’s Bullock Performance Institute.

Information about this competition and the 2009 KAFI is available through Noteboom at (269) 373-7883 or www.goKAFI.com.

KVCC’s other Art Hop’erRon Cleveland, exhibits coordinator at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum, was

another KVCC’er who had a role in the March 6 Art Hop in downtown Kalamazoo.As a member of the 20-member Kalamazoo Mandolin and Guitar Orchestra, he

was booked for a performance that evening in the Kalamazoo Public Library.He was joined in the Art Hop spotlight by student Thomas Wrench, whose

graphic designs and photographs were showcased that evening in the upper-level offices of the Public Media Network (formerly known as the Community Access Center) in the Epic Center. They will be there throughout March.

Wrench believes his generation should exude a sense of volunteerism, adopt an attitude of giving something back to the community, and a have commitment to make things better for people. But the 2005 graduate of Plainwell High School doesn’t preach this philosophy – he illustrates it.

How good is his work?Here’s what veteran instructor Karen Matson says: “Tom is the best student I've ever seen go through our graphic-design program.

Phenomenally talented, professional, and articulate. He also works as a lab tech in our practice lab at the Center for New Media.”

Now a Kalamazoo resident, Wrench celebrated his graduation from high school with a six-month stay in California, followed by another six months in Spain, Germany, Italy, Austria, The Netherlands and other places European that could be sampled by a 40-day backpacking adventure with two high school friends.

Back he came to Southwest Michigan and, although not thinking specifically about college, established a residence in the Vine Neighborhood.

“I had worked on the student newspaper in high school,” he said, “doing page design with computer graphics and I took several journalism courses. It’s what I really liked about high school, but, again, I never thought about it in college terms.”

Call it fate or harmonic convergence, but Wrench walked into the Center for New Media – walking distance from his pad – and everything seemed to fit. “It felt like I was meant to be here,” he said.

Starting courses in the fall of 2006 as a graphic-design major, Wrench believes he’s been steered to wanting to assist nonprofits in their various missions that deal with real-life, human situation by instructors Andrea Stork, Thomas Mills and Matson.

He’s considering launching an enterprise with Mills that would focus on the missions of nonprofits initially in Southwest Michigan, and then maybe nationally. “I think my generation has a huge responsibility to work for the good of others and to improve their communities,” Wrench said.

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Wrench’s display at the Public Media Network includes 12 photographs and 10 graphic-design projects, each focusing on a nonprofit and social responsibility.

The 22-year-old Wrench inherited a sense of comfort and creativity in working with the electronic wizards of this age from his father, who is a computer analyst. “I grew up with them,” he said. “I had always done well in art in elementary and middle school, so it was an easy shift for me to be creative with a computer.”

Don’t dump those old batteriesIn cleaning out your office and workspace as the winter semester winds down,

remember this – ● the KVCC initiative to recycle used and unused rechargeable and alkaline

batteries, which keeps them out of landfills where their assets will be lost forever.Recycling boxes for both rechargeable batteries as well as alkaline batteries are

located in the following areas: the M-TEC Facility Shop; the Arcadia Commons Campus Facility Shop; Texas Township Campus Facility Services; the museum’s carpentry shop; the college’s audio-visual department; the automotive-technology and heating-ventilation-air conditioning labs; and in Computer Services.

The lead-acid batteries used in cars, trucks, motorcycles, boats, and other motorized equipment can be recycled by taking them to the Household Hazardous Waste Center operated by Kalamazoo County Health and Community Services at 1301 Lamont Ave.

This drop-off center is on the edge of the county fairgrounds. Information about what else can be deposited there is available by calling 383-

8742.The recycling containers for dead batteries generated by on-the-job use at KVCC

are provided by the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corp. (RBRC). RBRC's Charge Up to Recycle!® program is designed to keep rechargeable

batteries out of the solid-waste stream, adhering to the federal and state laws requiring the proper disposal of some types of used rechargeable batteries.

This program offers community and public agencies the tools to implement a simple, no-cost recycling plan.

These batteries are commonly found in cordless power tools, cellular and cordless phones, laptop computers, camcorders, digital cameras, and remote-control toys.

U.S. policy in Afghanistan in spotlight TuesdayKVCC students and staff are invited to attend a presentation about U. S. foreign-

policy concerns in Afghanistan that is being sponsored by WMU’s Haenicke Institute for Global Education.

Here’s the schedule:The Kirsch Auditorium will be the site on Tuesday (March 17) when journalists

and videographers Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould discuss “True Adventures in Afghanistan.” Their remarks begin at 6 p.m.

The institute is partnering with the World Affairs Council of Western Michigan, Kalamazoo College and Davenport University to present these insights.

A question-and-answer session will follow the presentation. There is a $10-per-person cost. Parking is free.

Comprehensive information about the speakers is

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accessible on the institute website at:http://international.wmich.edu/content/view/1477/2/

The communications officer for the Haenicke Institute is Margaret von Steinen, a graduate of the KVCC Honors Program. Her telephone number is 387-3993.

And finally. . . Two fellows are sitting next to each other in a New York bar.

After awhile, one looks at the other and says, "I can't help but think from listening to you that you're from Ireland."

The other guy responds proudly, "Yes, that I am!"The first guy says, "So am I! And whereabouts from Ireland might

you be?"The other guy answers, "I'm from Dublin, I am."The first guy responds, "Sure and begorra, and so am I! And what

Street did you live on in Dublin?"The other guy says, "A lovely little area it was, I lived on

McCormick Street in the old central part of town."The first guy says, "Faith, it's a small world, so did I! So did I!!And to what school would you have been going?"The other guy answers, "Well now, I went to St. Mary's of

course."The first guy gets really excited and says, "And so did I. Tell me,

what year did you graduate?"The other guy answers, "Well, now, let's see, I graduated in

1964."The first guy exclaims, "The Good Lord must be smiling down

upon us! I can hardly believe our good luck at winding up in the same bar tonight. Can you believe it - I graduated from St. Mary's in 1964 my own self."

About this time, a woman walks into the bar, sits, and orders a beer.

The bartender walks over to the frequent customer shaking his head and mutters, "It's going to be a long night tonight.” “Why?” she asks.

"The Kelly twins are drunk again." ☻☻☻☻☻☻

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