January 2014

January 2014

southwest michigan’s magazine

Arcus Center Rising Building foundations for social justice

Crime writer

Jeremy Brown

The handcrafted drums of

Gerren Young

up front encore

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Financial Advice for You on Your Road Through Life

January 2014

southwest michigan’s magazine

Arcus Center Rising Building foundations for social justice

a part of

SM

Anything but Common®

Jeff K. Ross

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Contributors

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Contributing Poets

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Encore Magazine is published 9 times yearly, September through May. Copyright 2014, Encore Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Editorial, circulation and advertising correspondence should be sent to: www.encorekalamazoo.com

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117 W. Cedar St. Suite A Kalamazoo, MI 49007 Telephone: (269) 383-4433 Fax number: (269) 383-9767 E-mail: Publisher@encorekalamazoo.com The staff at Encore welcomes written comment from readers, and articles and poems for submission with no obligation to print or return them. To learn more about us or to comment, you may visit www.encorekalamazoo.com. Encore subscription rates: one year $27, two years $53, three years $78. Current single issue and newsstand $4, $10 by mail. Back issues $6, $12 by mail. Advertising rates on request. Closing date for space is 28 days prior to publication date. Final date for print-ready copy is 21 days prior to publication date.

January

FEATURES Arcus Center Rising

Will Kalamazoo College’s new center become a hub for developing leaders who can change the world?

Art of Drum Making

Gerren Young is crafting beautiful — and sought-after — wooden drums.

Crime/Fighting Writer

Author Jeremy Brown delves into mixed martial arts, drug lords and cyber-crime.

At Home

Secrets of Building A Home Theater — Our special section on how to create the ultimate entertainment and ‘family space.’

16

CONTENTS 2014

DEPARTMENTS 6 Up Front

Cutting the Cord — Recycling old cell phones, laptops and other electronic devices is easier and more convenient than ever.

22 28 39

8 Enterprise

Funny Business — Improv Effects’ comedy approach to training is a hit with businesses.

10 Good Works

Combat Writing — A special writers’ group helps veterans preserve stories of their experiences.

Savor 12 Dinner at the Movies — Cinemas are offering drinks, food and new experiences to lure movie watchers.

14

Dynamic Deli Duo — Mom-daughter team revives traditions (and recipes) of Dip’s family restaurant.

46 The Last Word

More Than Home — A lot of sweat, tears and love went into making a ramshackle farmhouse a home, only for the owner to have to say goodbye.

On the cover: The steel skeleton of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. Photo by Erik Holladay

Corrections In Good Old Days (Dec. 2013), Encore reported that with a Life-care contract at Friendship Village “no matter how many years you live the price remains unchanged.” This is not correct; monthly fees may change yearly. However, if one outlives one’s assets, he or she will not be asked to leave Friendship Village if he or she has a Life-care contract, according to Christa Quandt, director of sales and marketing at Friendship Village.

In the article Monday Night Live (Dec. 2013), we erroneously reported that Jim Amos was a retired Western Michigan University professor. Amos retired as a supervisor of custodial services at WMU in 1992.

ARTS

32 Barn Stories

Mary Keithan’s barn photographs capture the iconic symbols of Michigan’s farming heritage.

34 Legacy of the KJSO

Three generations of musicians started with the Kalamazoo Junior Symphony Orchestra.

36 Events of Note 38 Poetry

w w w.encorekalamazoo.com | 5

UP FRONT ENCORE

Cutting the cord

Electronics recycling makes good use of old devices by

Marie Lee

Susan Sonday, owner of Emerald eCycling, stands with the many old computer processors that her company will recycle.

F

or every new cell phone, tablet, laptop and gaming console that Santa brought last month, there is usually an old one to be dealt with.

But because there is no Island for Misfit Electronics, these items often end up forgotten in a drawer, closet or, worse, a landfill.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

“We take almost anything with a battery and a cord,” says Susan Sonday, owner of Emerald eCycling, a Kalamazoo business that opened in June and specializes in electronics recycling and destruction of digital data. “We recycle all types of electronics, including cell phones, computers, DVD players, games consoles, cables and cords.”

And just in time for the after-Christmas season, Emerald eCycling is offering a community collection event from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Jan. 11 at the Girl Scouts Heart of Michigan headquarters, at 601 W. Maple St. Equipment also can be dropped off there between 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. the week preceding the event. Proceeds will benefit the Girl Scouts’ day camp.

The company joins a few other local organizations that recycle old electronic devices. Goodwill Industries accepts and recycles electronics, and Kalamazoo County offers electronics recycling at its household hazardous waste facility. Both take old televisions, which Emerald eCycling does not.

Emerald eCycling, however, does offer free pickup of electronic items in the greater Kalamazoo area. For outlying areas, such as Marshall, says Sonday, there is a small fee unless there’s a large quantity of items. “Often if there’s lots of stuff to pick up, we waive the fee,” she says.

6 | Encore JANUARY 2014

Emerald eCycling also offers drop-off services at its facility at 5111 East ML Ave. from 9 a.m. to noon Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and noon to 3 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays.

One reason people may put off recycling old electronics is the fear that the information stored on them will fall into the wrong hands.

“That can be one of the concerns with dropping your computer or phone off at a donation center,” Sonday says. “I will say that they have the best of intentions and do what they can to take care of it, but you can’t be fully confident that the data won’t be looked at from the time you hand it over to when it is recycled. When we receive a computer, we immediately shred the hard drives ­— you can watch us do it — and in this time of fraud, that provides peace of mind.”

For those who need digital data destroyed, the company shreds hard drives for $10 apiece and also provides a Certificate of Destruction.

“A lot of people don’t realize that not just computers have memory — copiers, phones and other devices all have memory that needs to be destroyed,” Sonday says.

Sonday launched Emerald eRecycling after a career working at the other end of the cord. An electrical engineer, she managed electronic products globally for Johnson Controls. Many European countries have laws requiring sellers of electronics to have “end of life” programs in place to deal with obsolete devices, so Sonday became well versed in electronics recycling.

She debunks the common perception that old electronic devices are a gold mine of precious metals.

“To be honest, a computer contains trace amounts of gold and other precious metals, (but) a lot of processing is required to extract those. We lose money on certain items like computer monitors and make small amounts on other items.”

The company makes up the losses through its fees for datadestruction services and by selling refurbished computers. Emerald eCycling is a Microsoft-registered refurbisher. “We clean up computers, update them and install new Microsoft software and sell them with a warranty,” Sonday says. “It’s a lower-cost way to get a good computer.”

Sonday says, however, that money isn’t her only reason for opening the business.

“Part of my motivation is to keep stuff out of the landfill,” she says.

“I genuinely believe people want to do the right thing, but you have to make it easy for them to do it. Our goal is to make it really easy and safe to be environmentally friendly.”

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Enterprise ENCORE

Funny Business

Improv Effects uses comedy approach for business training by

Tiffany Fitzgerald

Dann Sytsma and Brian Lam are yes men.

With more than 30 years of combined experience in business and improvisational comedy, the pair decided in 2012 to merge the two disciplines and create a new brand of team-building workshops using the “Yes, and …” approach. “‘Yes, and …’ is an improv tool comedians use to create a story onstage by building an idea off whatever someone has just said,” Lam explains. “If someone says, ‘This is a stickup,’ you have to say, ‘Oh, yeah, this is a stick up and …’ We expand on that idea in our workshops.”

When team members in companies say “Yes, and …” to their coworkers, they build on the ideas of their coworkers, validating one another instead of tearing down

8 | Encore JANUARY 2014

communication and losing valuable time and resources floating competing ideas, say Lam and Sytsma, “It’s not about taking a bad idea and making it great,” Sytsma says. “It’s about taking the ideas we have and sharpening them. You start to see people take more ownership when other people are contributing with them.”

“Yes, and…” is a new method to the companies they work with, but it’s second nature to Sytsma and Lam, who have trained at well-known improv theaters in Chicago — Sytsma at Improv Olympic and Lam at Second City. The two are also well versed in business. Sytsma founded Crawlspace Eviction, Kalamazoo’s longest-running improv theater troupe, and Lam is the owner

of Lam Creative Solutions, a Kalamazoo public-relations and marketing firm. Lam has a background in restaurant and business management; Sytsma, in chemistry. They call their new endeavor Improv Effects.

The two met three years ago when Lam interviewed Sytsma while writing an article on Crawlspace Eviction for Encore. Lam began working with Crawlspace Eviction, and, after an “aha” moment at a workshop when he realized how similar improv and business trainings are, he approached Sytsma about creating Improv Effects.

Improv Effects’ Dann Systma, far left, and Brian Lam, standing, laugh with Gazelle Sports staff members during a recent workshop the pair conducted at the store.

encore up front The duo started small, running local and regional workshops, but soon found their schedule filling out with training sessions across the country, including in Chicago, Toledo, St. Louis and Cincinnati. Their clients range from small businesses, like Gazelle Sports, to large firms, such as the health-sciences company PerkinElmer.

It’s been a quick rise to success, though Improv Effects is not the first or only company run by improv comedians that focuses on business training. But Sytsma and Lam contend they’ve got something the competition doesn’t.

“There are a lot of people with more experience in improv doing this, and some are a half step below Saturday Night Live,” Lam says.

“When it comes to applied improv, though, Dann and I have an edge because of our corporate backgrounds. We know what businesses need.”

“They’re good,” says Tim Martin, manager at Gazelle Sports’ Kalamazoo store, which had Improv Effects conduct a training workshop for its staff. “The workshop was a great balance of professional and fun. Trying to engage folks who are age 20 to 70 — which is the range I have on staff — is difficult, but they’re able to reach every age group and experience level.”

Gazelle’s staff deals with varied interpersonal situations every day so it is important for each staff member to think on his or her feet when engaging with customers, Martin says. That’s why improv training works well for Gazelle — it teaches staff to react in the moment and build off of what the customer says instead of pushing a company or individual agenda.

“We pride ourselves on not giving a sales pitch,” Martin says. “This training helps us learn how to make a sale without doing that.”

While Gazelle invited Improv Effects to help sharpen the staff’s quick thinking and communication skills, another local organization, OnePlace, asked Improv Effects to help community nonprofit leaders engage in conversations and use the “Yes, and …” technique to resolve conflicts quickly while building on ideas.

Gazelle Sports employee Sarah Matyczyn motions to co-worker Giancarlo Anemone as other Gazelle employees look on during an Improv Effects training session.

“What the workshop does is get into the power of response — sometimes it’s a simple ‘thank you’ instead of grunting and nodding,” says Thom Andrews, who directs this organization that provides training and development opportunities for nonprofit leaders.

“The power of positive response, just acknowledging people, was a key takeaway for us, but we also focused on active listening and responding on our feet.”

OnePlace has asked Improv Effects to present a second workshop, Andrews says.

The ability to teach people to adapt to shifts in the workplace and the world beyond was one of the reasons Improv Effects stood out to Andrews, he says. He could see the immediate application of the training as it was happening.

And, in case you were worried, you don’t have to be a comedian to take something away from the workshop.

“There’s no pressure to be funny or profound at all,” Andrews says.

“They make the situation very accessible to everyone. You just have to listen to the person before you and respond. Because of the nature of that format, it lends itself to funny situations. So you do laugh — not because people are being comedians but because it’s fun.”

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good works ENCORE

Putting It on Paper

Combat writers group preserves memories of military experiences by

Tiffany Fitzgerald

T

he story of a war is a compilation of fragmented memories — the individual stories of citizens and soldiers pieced together into one narrative.

When soldiers don’t tell their stories of combat, that narrative is lost and everyone suffers — the soldiers, who never find an outlet for their emotions; the families of soldiers, who never know what their loved ones sacrificed and learned; and society, which never grows from the experiences of past generations.

Making sure those stories aren’t lost was Margaret von Steinen’s motivation for creating a combat writers group in 2009. The writer and communications officer for Western Michigan University’s Haenicke Institute for Global Education says she started the group to help bridge the gaps between soldiers and their memories and between soldiers and the public. The group meets on the second and fourth Tuesday of most months at the Portage District Library, and during each hourlong session, veterans are asked to write about a trigger that von Steinen thinks up for the group.

“I’ll give them a trigger that can relate to all of them, like marching or ammunition,” she explains. “The different ways one trigger can get manifested is always surprising. From every trigger, there is a wide mix of stories, and often the trigger brings up a memory that the writer hasn’t thought of in years.”

10 | Encore JANUARY 2014

Members of the combat writers group include, back row, from left: Bert Murphy, Rudy Hanson, Bud McDonnell, Dick Westerman, Don Rice and Bob Short; front row, from left, George Dales, Margaret von Steinen and Dick Weaver.

Once the group members write their stories, they share their memories with the rest of the group. After the session is over, von Steinen encourages the veterans to keep their written stories, type them up, share them with family members and even try to publish them if they’d like. She offers her support through any process they choose. On Veterans Day, the group hosts an event at the Portage District Library to share their stories with the public.

Group member Bob Short, a veteran of the Vietnam War and a regional coordinator for Buddy-to-Buddy, a volunteer veteran support program, collects his typed stories in a binder.

“War is a unique experience that you never forget and you never put behind you,” he says. “I spent my 21st and 22nd birthdays in Vietnam, and I’ll never forget the experiences I had. Writing is a good way to get them off my chest.”

Writing with other veterans is particularly helpful, he says. “We have an understanding of the range of emotions — excitement, exhilaration, fear, sadness and anger.”

But while the group has the therapeutic effect of helping veterans give voice to their feelings and experiences, both Short and von

Steinen emphasize that the feelings and experiences aren’t always weighted with fear and grief. “There are sometimes a few tears, but there are a lot of laughs too,” Short says.

The group’s size changes often, as veterans move in and out at certain points of their lives, but it has a core of about seven members who have served in conflicts ranging from World War II to Vietnam. Von Steinen and Short explain that while Afghanistan, Desert Storm and Iraq veterans are always welcome and sometimes stop by, they usually have too much on their plates — raising families, going to college, deployment, careers — to commit to the group long-term.

Although she’s not a veteran of combat herself, von Steinen’s experience as a journalist and writer enables her to serve as the group’s facilitator. She knows how important storytelling is, she has a genuine interest in hearing the stories of the veterans who come to the group, and she learns from every shared experience.

“I’ve learned that you can use a helmet to eat out of, that you can take a shower in a monsoon rain with a bar of soap,” she says.

“And I have a heightened awareness of what it feels like to be at the other end of that crosshair. As a civilian, you can read books and it makes an impression, but when you hear these stories firsthand, it hits home a lot harder.”

Short says von Steinen’s enthusiasm to learn from the group is what makes her the perfect facilitator.

“She likes hearing these stories,” he says.

“She listens and is not judgmental in any way.

We’ve all grown to trust her.”

That trust is important if a combat veteran wants to feel safe enough to open up and share, Short says. He knows it takes a lot of courage to talk about experiences that many are encouraged to put behind them when they return from combat, but he encourages any combat veteran who likes to write and is looking for an outlet to try the group.

“Give it a try,” he says. “I don’t think one of us has had a bad experience, and it’s good to take some time out to remember.”

For more information about the group or for a meeting schedule, contact Margaret von Steinen at mvsteinen@gmail.com.

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SAVOR encore

Dinner at the movies

Movie theaters target grown-up tastes with drinks, meals by

Tiffany Fitzgerald

Amanda Lee and Keith Koenigskinecht enjoy a beer while viewing The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.

W

hen we think of eating at the movies, we tend to think of the theaters of our childhood: the intoxicating smell of buttered popcorn emanating from behind the snack counter, the thrill of drinking sodas the size of our faces as we’re shrouded in darkness, popping Good & Plenty candies or nachos into our mouths, eyes glued to the screen.

But that’s the problem, say movie-industry analysts. The moviegoing generation has grown up, and until recently theaters hadn’t grown up with them.

In 2001, the revenue of movie houses started to drop, according to the Motion Picture Association of America’s theatrical marketing statistics. Experts can’t seem to agree why, though certain factors are cited as 12 | Encore JANUARY 2014

possible reasons. The bad economy may have forced parents to save money on babysitters and dinner by ordering pizza and renting a DVD. Redbox, Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, BluRay and the advancement of good, affordable sound and television equipment made it possible to turn your living room into a more comfortable, less intrusive entertainment experience. Or maybe when recession-burdened moviegoers decided to pinch pennies and go out, they wanted to spend their money on more extravagant experiences.

Whatever the reason, in reaction to the loss of revenue, movie houses had to take a new direction and create a niche experience that had the comforts of home but couldn’t

be found in the living room. The strategy worked. For the first time since the downturn, the movie-theater industry made money in 2010, and the rapid expansion of in-theater dining and drinking experiences has been credited in part for the upward trend.

That expansion just recently made its way to Southwest Michigan. Portage’s Celebration! Cinema opened Oscar’s Bistro in October, offering an in-house restaurant dining option that allows patrons to buy beer, wine, appetizers and meals and either eat them in the Bistro or bring them into the theater. The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, which opened a month later in downtown Kalamazoo, became the first movie theater in the area to serve dinner directly to patrons seated in the theaters. It also has seating near the box office for those who want to dine before or after a movie.

Both movie houses offer craft beer and restaurant-quality food like sliders, sweetpotato fries and fried pickles, but Celebration! also offers D-BOX seating — seats with special simulators that move you with the action of the movie. Alamo enacts a strict no-talking and no-texting policy and requires all patrons under 18 to be accompanied by an adult for a maximum movie-friendly atmosphere.

James Sanford, creative manager at Alamo Drafthouse and former local movie critic, says Kalamazoo is a perfect place for a dining cinema because of its love of the arts.

The company that owns the theater is based in Austin, Texas, and has nine other locations in the U.S. “A large part of coming here had to do with a sense that Kalamazoo loves movies, and certainly the theater,” Sanford says. “We also saw the explosion of microbreweries in the area, three local colleges and an enormous movie theater left vacant right in the middle of downtown. It was really a perfect fit.”

Just after opening, Alamo already felt at home here, Sanford says. Patrons commented on how different the experience was. It wasn’t just the chance to have new foods at a theater that wowed them, Sanford says. It was that Alamo seemed to bring a theater into a restaurant.

Patrons at Celebration! seem pleased with their new options too. Steve VanWagoner, vice president for marketing and relations at Celebration!, says Oscar’s Bistro has been incredibly successful, and the amped-up, all-inclusive movie experience is providing exactly what patrons have been asking for all along — more.

“It’s going really well so far,” he says. “There aren’t a lot of people eating in the Bistro yet, which we’d like to see, but there are lots of people taking food into the movie.”

VanWagoner thinks the in-theater dining trend is a combination of the industry evolving and a response to customer demand to have new experiences at the movies.

“We believe that if you don’t stay fresh and relevant, people will find another way to spend their money,” he says. “We’ve been in business over 69 years, and you can follow the evolution through film, stadium seating, digital movie platforms, 3-D, IMAX, D-BOX seat, motion simulator experience.

And now it’s evolving the food and beverage experience. It seems to be just a natural evolution.”

To make the customer’s experience more exciting and enjoyable, Alamo keeps its eye on trends among its audiences, Sanford says.

“It’s always fun to see what different audiences like to eat and drink,” he says. “We sold a lot of milkshakes during ‘Catching Fire,’ for example. I don’t know why, but people love to drink milkshakes while watching Katniss Everdeen swing from trees.”

Celebration! keeps up with the buy-local trend as it uses locally sourced foods in its dishes, including maple syrup from Paw Paw in its sauces.

“We are a local business,” VanWagoner says. “We were born and raised right here in Grand Rapids so a number of items on the menu at Oscar’s Bistro are Michigan-grown or locally made products. We always want to add some local love.”

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SAVOR encore

Dynamic Deli Duo

Ribfest winner and her mom carry on Dip’s tradition by

Dianne Charles

L

John A. Lacko

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ast August Jessie Patterson stood behind her tantalizing display of ribs, mixed greens and macaroni and cheese, serving long lines of people that sometimes extended out to the curb.

She was one of 18 vendors at Ribfest, an annual festival and rib-cooking competition in downtown Kalamazoo that is organized by Kalamazoo Community Advocates.

She represented Kalamazoo’s Park Street Market. Some of the other vendors came from as far away as Arkansas, Texas and Ohio.

She says that when she won first place for “Best Ribs in Kalamazoo County,” Mo Pritchard, of Big Mo Ribs and a perennial winner, told her, “You beat me. You’re good.”

“I was intent on people liking my food more than winning a prize,” says the 50-year-old Patterson, who

14 | Encore JANUARY 2014

Park Street Market’s deli manager, Jessie Patterson, right, and her mother, Willie Mae Joyce, cook up tantalizing home-cooked food from Joyce’s recipes that were used at Dip’s restaurant, which closed after 18 years in business. Their ribs, at left, were voted the “Best Ribs in Kalamazoo County” at last summer’s Ribfest.

was competing in Ribfest for her third year.

“I have been cooking for over 20 years.”

Patterson is the manager of the Park Street Market Deli, where her prize-winning ribs and array of side dishes can be found seven days a week. The recipes she uses originated with her 65-year-old mother, Willie Mae Joyce, who works in the deli with her. Joyce also makes many of the desserts, including sweet-potato pie and cakes, for the deli and the store’s catering business.

Patterson began managing the deli in 2010 and, according to store director Kiar Gamsho, was one of the first employees hired. “Everyone is glad to have Jessie managing the deli,” Gamsho says.

The deli is located in the back of the store and is open daily from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. On Sundays, it features pot roast and stuffing.

People in large groups and small cue up for the meals after nearby church services conclude.

“Our stuffing is a big favorite,” Patterson says. “Many remember us from Dip’s.”

Dip’s, the Joyce family’s restaurant, was located at the corner of Douglas Avenue and North Street for 18 years.

“Dip’s was named after my father, J.C. Joyce. His nickname was Dip,” Patterson explains. “And Mom is still called Mrs. Dip.” Joyce says she would like to write a cookbook “one of these days.” For now, she is busy working in the deli with Patterson, the oldest of her four daughters, creating the dishes she has been cooking since she was a young girl in Mississippi.

The restaurant veteran says she likes their location in Park Street Market. “We can select meats and fish and other items from the shelves,” Joyce says.

“It’s really wonderful being here.

Whatever we need is at our fingertips.”

To prove the point she picks up one of the decorated birthday cakes she makes that are available in the deli and shows it to admiring onlookers.

“We cook everything here,” she says proudly.

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Building Foundations for Social Justice

Arcus Center develops leaders who want to ‘fix the system’

by

16 | Encore JANUARY 2014

ZINTA AISTARS

the inherent dignity of all people is recognized, the opportunity to develop one’s full potential is available to every person, and systematic discrimination and structural inequities have been eradicated.

“But the mission of the center is to develop emerging leaders and sustain existing leaders in social justice and human rights. We differ from social-justice service because we see things as systemic, and we want to fix the system,” she explains. “We want to address the ‘why.’

If we want students to work to eradicate poverty, then they need to understand poverty’s underlying causes.”

Toward that end, the center focuses its programs and activities on promoting social justice and the advancement of human rights by educating and training leaders. That training is provided through a wide range of opportunities, including awards, internships and fellowships for Kalamazoo College students and faculty. But those opportunities go beyond the campus’s borders as well — the ACSJL has fellowships and the Global Prize for Collaborative Social Justice Leadership Prize that are available to anyone anywhere (see box, page 19).

“A social leader is someone with a passion to see a more just world, a person who wants to understand and help others understand world issues and the blockages to justice — racism, sexism, homophobia,”

Just a steel skeleton in this photo, the new building for the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, on Kalamazoo College’s campus, is expected to be completed early this summer.

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Erik Holladay

T

he nearly 10,000-square-foot building on the corner of Academy and Monroe Streets in Kalamazoo is still under construction, just bare cement and crews in hard hats covering its rising steel skeleton like worker ants. But while the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (ACSJL), at Kalamazoo College, is still months from its anticipated grand opening in June, its reach is already extending across the globe.

Kalamazoo College has had a commitment to social justice and leadership development as part of its curriculum since its founding in 1833. In 2009, the college took that commitment one step further with a $200,000 planning grant from trustee and alumnus Jon Stryker’s Arcus Foundation for the establishment of a socialjustice leadership center. A year ago, the Arcus Foundation made a $23 million endowment grant to fund the new center. Within that funding was money for the construction of a new building on the edge of the college’s campus, in the West Main Hill neighborhood, that is estimated to cost $5 million and was designed by Chicago architect and MacArthur Fellow Jeanne Gang.

“Our vision is pretty clear,” says Lisa Brock, the academic director of the ACSJL and the center’s interim executive director. The center aims for a world in which “every person’s life is equally valued,

Brock says. “Nothing about social justice is a hammer. There are people who want to give, but that is not the kind of person we are seeking here.”

The idea of one person being a giver and another a taker, Brock says, is a false one, and a social justice leader discerns that falsehood.

“Both sides give, both sides take, both sides grow,” she says. “When a student comes to us with an idea for change, we talk to them about bringing the voices of those impacted into the decision-making. Talk to those you want to help. Listen. That idea of paternalism, that you know better than those you want to help about what they need, is wrong. Never assume you know better.”

Brock came to Kalamazoo three years ago from Chicago, where she was the chair of the humanities department at Columbia College. “I loved what I heard about ACSJL, and I loved that the Arcus Center was based on an endowment,” she says, meaning that the center was a dream with deep roots, not just a passing vision.

She learned about social-justice leadership growing up in southern Ohio, near Cincinnati.

“It was a segregated but changing area,” Brock says. She admits to having been an activist all her life, fighting for girls’ rights and black rights and against police violence and judicial misconduct in Washington, D.C. “I had the passion,” she says.

Brock attended Oberlin College, in Ohio, and earned a bachelor-of-arts degree from Howard University, in Washington, D.C., and a Ph.D. in African history from Northwestern University, in the Chicago area. She became a leader in the anti-apartheid movement in Chicago, lived in Mozambique as a Fulbright Scholar in the 1980s, and merged her academic interest with southern African social-justice struggles. In the mid-2000s, Brock helped establish the Chicago AntiApartheid Movement Collection at Columbia College Chicago, leading an effort to endow an international travel scholarship at the college and develop study-abroad programs in South Africa and Cuba.

She has brought that rich experience to Kalamazoo, where she and the other ACSJL staff work hard to make the new center a vital part of Kalamazoo by partnering with community organizations and individuals..

“Everything we do, we try to involve the community in some way,” she says. “I would 18 | Encore JANUARY 2014

like this new building to be a destination place for the people of Kalamazoo. I would love to see community members dropping in to visit, school field trips to bring schoolchildren here to learn about social justice. People have been contacting me with all kinds of exciting ideas. I would like to have an art exhibit here every six months or so for the community.

Art can move you to take up an issue. Art can be an entry point into social change.”

Kalamazoo College President Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran also talks about the connection between ACSJL and the Kalamazoo community: “The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership builds on the strong historic connection between the college and the community. Through the center’s programs, social-justice leaders from around the globe come to Kalamazoo

“The Arcus Center is nurturing leaders here in Kalamazoo and around the world. And once the new building housing the Center is complete, it will be a destination for people interested in both social justice leadership and architecture.”

— Kalamazoo College President Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran to interact with local activists and academics, and K students deliver their talents and energies to partner organizations areawide.”

In its three years of existence, the ACSJL has already helped to foster an array of social-justice projects both locally and globally.

One of those is a project exploring the connection between play and social justice undertaken by Kalamazoo’s Michelle Johnson. Johnson, the co-founding executive director of Fire Historical and Cultural Arts Collaborative, a nonprofit on Portage Street that fosters the development of youth and emerging artists, used her ACSJL fellowship to develop a program she calls Playgrown.

“During this fellowship, I researched intergenerational play and focused on how play functions as a basic need,” Johnson explains. “I collected local, national and international data and visited playground organizers and manufacturers in Europe. But, most importantly, I played. I did all of this in spaces built with full-grown bodies in mind.

“My ACSJL fellowship to retreat and pursue international research on play and social change was an invaluable experience.

I can honestly say that my ability to focus on my dream that the fellowship allowed catapulted me into making Playgrown a reality. Playgrown provides destinations for reintegrating play into physical activity and invigorating urban space for neighborhood residents and members of the larger community.”

Johnson is now helping to create the first Playgrown installation in urban Detroit and is planning a similar installation in Kalamazoo.

Another fellowship recipient, Alyce Brady, has a project with more of a global reach. A professor of computer science at Kalamazoo College, Brady received an ACSJL Fellowship for two years to collaborate on an academic record-keeping software project in Sierra Leone, a country that has been beset by civil war and ethnic strife. The project involves the University of Sierra Leone and Njala University.

“Developing academic record-keeping software doesn’t sound very exciting compared to developing web applications or mobile apps, for example,” admits Brady, “but accurate record-keeping is a fundamental need for all institutions of higher learning.

Having computerized, accessible academic and administrative records will help both universities establish and communicate educational requirements, monitor and support students’ educational progress, forecast programmatic and institutional needs, and assess and document progress toward institutional goals.

“We hope to support the ongoing efforts in Sierra Leone to rebuild its governmental and educational infrastructure. The two Sierra Leonean universities have an important role to play in that effort, providing education, supporting research, and producing alumni who have been and will continue to be instrumental in the rebuilding of their nation.”

ACSJL

Arcus Center Initiatives The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership has a many-tiered approach to supporting the pursuit of human rights and social justice: • It awards a $25,000 Global Prize for Collaborative Social Justice Leadership biennially for innovative and creative projects.

• Through its Social Justice Leadership Fund, it provides grants of $500 to $1,500 to students to develop projects, attend conferences or receive training.

• It plans to hold an academic, activist conference biennially for thought leaders to gather and discuss their ideas. The first conference, titled “With/ Out, ¿Borders?” will take place in September.

• It provides faculty and visiting fellowship programs to college faculty as well as local, national and global social-justice leaders.

• It awards student scholarships each year and incorporates student internships, projects and study-abroad experiences into its social-justice pursuits.

ACSJL

• It offers approximately 40 socialjustice programs and events to the public each year.

The Chicago firm Studio Gang Architects designed the new Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership.

Renderings show, top, an exterior view; center, the unique delta shape of the building; and bottom, an interior view featuring a sunken conversation area to encourage dialogue among center visitors.

(Courtesy of Kalamazoo College)

w w w.encorekalamazoo.com | 19

Zinta Aistars Lisa Brock, interim executive director of the ACSJL, came to Kalamazoo from Chicago’s Columbia College to work at the center.

ASCJL’s efforts are definitely having an international impact. Its Global Prize for Collaborative Social Justice Leadership, a biennial $25,000 prize honoring an innovative and collaborative social-justice and human-rights project anywhere in the world, drew 188 applicants in its inaugural year, according to Brock. The center found it couldn’t choose one winner, so instead in May announced it would split the award among three recipients: the Dalia Association, a Palestinianled community foundation dedicated to civil society development; Language Partners, a prisoner-created and -led bilingual educational program in Illinois that develops language, leadership and job skills post-incarceration in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and Building Power for Restaurant Workers, a restaurant-worker-driven wage justice project in New York City founded by workers displaced by the 2001 bombing of the World Trade Center. Each recipient received $10,000.

“The Global Prize provided a singular opportunity for the Kalamazoo community to learn about innovative social-justice initiatives throughout the world, and many in the community served as hosts for the contestants,” Wilson-Oyelaran says.

But Brock points out that social-justice issues are found everywhere, even close to home, which is why the ACSJL has established a $5,000 Regional Prize for a project originating in Southwest Michigan. The 2013 Regional Prize was awarded to Welcoming Michigan, a regional partnership seeking to educate and organize across immigrant and U.S.-born communities throughout Michigan.

“People tend to think that social justice is something that is needed ‘over there,’ but it is needed everywhere. We can’t give without being given. We become better people,” says Brock. “The Arcus Center is making an impact on the college campus, in our community, nationally and internationally.”

As its physical structure evolves from a steel skeleton to a curvy, delta-shaped building nestled within a grove of trees, the Arcus Center is poised to become the world’s first purpose-built structure for social-justice leadership development, according to its architects. The building’s facade will feature wood masonry – a regional, traditional building method that incorporates local, sustainably harvested white cedar. According to Studio Gang Architects, this is the first instance in which this building technique, which is both low-carbon and highly insulating, has been employed for a project on an institutional scale.

Within its walls, there will be new beginnings as well, as a search is conducted this spring for a new executive director to replace Jaime Grant, who stepped down in September after leading the ACSJL for three years. With a new building, a new director and new initiatives on the horizon for the Arcus Center, there is no doubt this is a period of excitement on the Kalamazoo College campus and beyond.

“The Arcus Center is nurturing leaders here in Kalamazoo and around the world,” says Wilson-Oyelaran. “And once the new building housing the center is complete, it will be a destination for people interested in both social-justice leadership and architecture.”

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Gerren Young crafts wooden bongos, congas and more by hand by

David Wak

photography by

ERIK HOLLADAY

W

hen Gerren Young began playing the drums more than a decade ago, he was curious about how the instruments did what they did. Maybe too curious.

“In elementary school I got in trouble for pulling on the snare drum snares because I wanted to see how they worked and was shocked at how loud they were. So was the music teacher,” Young recalls.

Now Young knows exactly how drums work because he makes them. In a wood shop in the old Gibson Guitar factory on Parsons Street, on Kalamazoo’s north side, Young crafts all kinds of drums, from bongos, drum sets and snare drums to cajons, which are wooden box drums associated with Latin music, and his oddly cool-looking cajon congas. Young’s drums are as much art as they are instrument and are becoming sought after by musicians far and wide.

Gerren Young poses with a number of the wooden drums he’s crafted in his workshop in the old Gibson Guitar factory in Kalamazoo including one of his signature cajon congas which is the box-shaped drum on the far right.

w w w.encorekalamazoo.com | 23

Above, snare drums created by Gerren Young boast the insignia for his company, Generation Custom Drums.

Opposite page: Young sands the shell of what will become one of his custom wooden drums.

24 | Encore JANUARY 2014

“I was struck by (Young’s) choice of materials and artful design,” says Kalamazoo percussionist Carolyn Koebel, who played in the local band Blue Dahlia. Koebel initially had Young repair the front plate on her own cajon but eventually ended up buying a new cajon from Young, along with a set of cajon congas. “The congas are my go-to choice for live performances, not only for their powerful sound but because they’re visually stunning,” she says. “They are absolutely top-notch.

The artistic aesthetic is on par with the best products out there. … Well, it easily exceeds them.”

Young, 29, grew up in Comstock Township and started drumming in the sixth grade, playing in school and marching bands. The shop classes he took at Comstock High School fostered an interest in woodworking. After seven years of working in the building trades and traveling after graduating from high school, Young determined he wanted to “do something artistic” and decided to combine his passions of drums and woodworking.

“When I decided to make drums, they needed to be built in a way that wouldn’t be

directly competing with big companies,” he says.

Young began by making stave drums, constructed out of separate pieces of wood and built from top to bottom like barrels.

Most mass-produced drums are constructed horizontally with layered “plys” which are sheets of thin wood. Young makes his drum sets thicker at the edges and slightly thinner in the middle for broader tuning, which makes the drums more fragile, but the sound is worth it, he says. “They will respond at any dynamic level, and that (design) broadens the tuning range over most manufactured drums,” he says.

When Young started out, he made his first drums at his stepfather’s wood shop and it took him six attempts before he made a decent one. These multiple attempts are understandable, he says, because the process of drum making demands precise angles on the staves and allows only small errors in measurement — being off by even 1/100th of a degree results in an unplayable drum.

His first attempts resulted in some painful lessons. On one attempt he was sanding a

drum on a spinning lathe using a sandpaper block when he switched to a scraper to smooth out some gouges on the exterior of the drum. The lathe was set so fast it was humming, but everything else seemed balanced — until the explosion.

“The drum is gone, and there’s blood dripping down my face,” he says. “The drum had disintegrated, and I was lucky not to have lost some teeth or an eye.”

Even so, he ended up with six stitches and eight staples in his head. ”Luckily, most of my other lessons involved hurting drums rather than myself,” he says.

Once he mastered the stave, Young moved on to making snare drums, entire drum sets, cajons, cajon congas and tri-tone bongos, a rectangular box split into three sections for three different tones. He says he is constantly looking for ways to refine his skills and techniques and expand his repertoire.

An example of his commitment to innovation is his cajon conga drums, which have a unique octagonal shape based on a homemade drum he saw in Chicago. Young’s cajon congas are tall and tapered and have w w w.encorekalamazoo.com | 25

Gerren Young has used his woodworking skills to branch out into furniture and cabinets. Here he assembles a cabinet, the top of which is intricately inlaid wood crafted by Young.

“breather” holes at the bottom that give them a full, woody sound.

Young is a currently a one-man operation, and while he prefers to stay small, that situation may change soon. The demand for his drums has increased steadily, especially for his cajons. He sells his drums through his website, GenerationCustomDrums.com, fielding phone calls to provide quotes. He also has sold his drums on consignment at music stores such as Tree of Life, in Chelsea, and Skinny Beats, in Asheville, N.C., and at music festivals such as Blissfest, near Petoskey.

Kalmazoo Children’s Chorus member Isobel Steele performs during a recent concert.

26 | Encore JANUARY 2014

Depending on a drum’s size, it can take Young up to 18 hours over as many as three days or more to shape the drum, apply veneer and finish it. He tries to use exclusively Michigan woods, such as locally harvested walnut, maple, oak, cherry, sycamore, hickory and ash, which he gets from the Kalamazoo lumber mills Handley’s Hardwood Lumber and West Side Sawmill. The exceptions are exotic woods that he salvages from other contractors or woodworkers. A basic three-piece drum set without snare goes for $2,100 or more, depending on the wood.

One musician says the reason Young’s drums are in demand is simply because he makes great-looking and -sounding drums. “He has the best

cajon drums out there,” says Randall Moore, a percussionist with the Ann Arbor folk-rock band The Ragbirds. Moore played a friend’s cajon built by Young and had to have one of his own.

Another admirer of Young’s drums is Traverse City drummer Mark Alderman, who plays with Soul Patch TC and other bands and who bought a used drum set made by Young. ”I’m especially proud when other drummers ask me about my one-of-a-kind set and I tell them it’s handcrafted and made from Michigan woods,” Alderman says. “Gerren’s doing some unique things.”

Young has definite ideas on how drums should sound. “Some drummers want their drums to sound just like drums on recordings, but that’s the wrong way to think about it,” he says. “Drums really need to best fit their musical situations live instead of merely aping the sounds on records.”

For example, Young recently built a drum set for a drummer who plays both hard rock and jazz so the challenge was to build one set that would serve both styles well. “I made one set that could be played for any style, depending on how high or low the tuning,” he says.

Young admits that coming to this way of thinking about drums was an evolution.

“The sounds I started with are different than now.” But there have been other evolutions in his work as well. For example, he just built his first Taiko drum, a heavy drum used in traditional Japanese drumming. Big and very loud, the Taiko weighs about 30 pounds, with skins held down by heavy metal bolts.

Young also plays some of the drums he makes. He’s a percussionist for Deep Waters, a Kalamazoo alternative folk band, and is part of a traditional Japanese drum troupe called Michigan Flying Dragon. He also will fill in periodically on percussion for other bands.

But from day to day, he is in his woodshop, turning wood into musical works of art or making cabinets and dining-room tables, with an eye toward expanding that aspect of his business. While Generation Custom Drums may be ripe for growth, Young wants to avoid getting too big and losing what makes his products unique — his dedication to creating great-sounding, high-quality drums.

He sums up his philosophy in four words: “More art, less product.”

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ems he’ll try almost anything eremy Brown is curious. It se acter to try it for him. ar ch l na tio fic a t ge st lea or at al ’s tried himself: mixed marti he rs ree ca d an ies bb ho A few rning ing haunted houses and lea arts, technical writing, runn career . Brown also considered a tracking and survival skills tion preferred writing crime fic he ed cid de t bu me cri ing fight of out, as he is the author s rn tu it e, oic ch od Go instead. as Find>Fix>Finish, The les tit ch su th wi , ers rill th eight crime No Teeth.

Kalamazoo Kid and Show as month, comes up with ide is th 39 s rn tu o wh n, ow Br e ering things like: What lin nd wo by s ok bo his of for some there ry commandos go into if of work would crack milita

w w w.encorekalamazoo.com | 29

weren’t any wars? And what would happen if a whole bunch of assassins retreated to the same village?

“Part of writing is being curious all the time,” Brown says. “Something catches your eye and sort of makes an itch until it gets scratched.”

For Brown, writing crime fiction wasn’t something he set out to do. The Paw Paw native attended Western Michigan University, where he started out studying criminal justice before switching to English. After graduating in 1998 with an emphasis in creative writing, he worked in various jobs, including as a technical writer at Pfizer Inc. At one point he ran seasonal haunted attractions with friends. He enjoyed the work so much that in 2004 he moved to Florida to design scary attractions full time. But that position didn’t turn out to be the dream job he’d hoped for, so he returned to Michigan, resumed technical writing and decided to apply to the FBI. At about the same time that he passed the FBI’s first-phase entrance exam, a childhood friend who worked at the Scholastic publishing company approached him about a project. They were looking for a writer for a two-book mystery series for children ages 9 to 12 and offered Brown a contract to write Crime Files: Four-Minute Forensic Mysteries.

“I felt like I had to choose one or the other, and I thought if I really want to do the FBI, it’ll always be there. The book contract won’t always be there so I went with that, and I think it was the right choice,” he says. “I think

I liked the romantic version of the FBI — the novel and film version. I don’t think I would have liked the actual nearly as much.”

Looking back, Brown says “I was trying to find satisfaction in a job that maybe wasn’t ever going to happen.” He wanted to be “super-passionate” about a job, but his true love was writing. “I needed to come to the realization that sometimes a job was just a job.”

Working on the Crime Files books gave Brown not only his first taste of a dream job but also that very sought-after foot in the door of publishing, which would be needed as he transitioned to writing books for adults.

For his first book for adults, Brown found inspiration in one of his hobbies. He had taken up mixed martial arts in college and had trained in close-quarters combat with a man who taught a seminar titled “The Art of the Suckerpunch.” Brown was intrigued by the thought that “there’s an art, a style, to basically cheap-shot somebody.”

“I wanted to write something along the lines of a Philip Marlowe character,” but not a typical cop or detective, he says. He wanted to merge the noir and fight worlds with a character whose first instinct was to fight — and fight dirty. Thus was born Woodshed Wallace, the protagonist of Brown’s Suckerpunch (no relation to the recent film Sucker Punch) and Hook and Shoot, both published by Medallion Press, in Chicago. Brown is currently at work on a third book in the series.

While writing Hook and Shoot, Brown jumped into mixed martial arts a bit more, but he eventually withdrew from fighting.

“It got to the point where I was training for research purposes with guys who were training to put food on the table.” He had great respect for professional fighters and didn’t want to say, “I’m just here for research purposes so let’s not go too fast.” But he was very sore. “After that, I toned down on the training and was very grateful for Google and YouTube.”

Although Brown no longer fights and although he spends his days in front of a screen thanks to his day job at S2 Games in Portage where he works as a lead writer of “lore” about the characters in the game Heroes of Newerth, he is no couch potato.

He is a certified CrossFit instructor and enjoys working out with his wife, Ellen Hector, a physical therapist. Brown still likes big physical challenges too. He recently participated in his second Tough Mudder, an endurance obstacle-course event.

Brown has sorted out his hobbies from his passion. The level of dedication required to be serious about things like mixed martial arts “just didn’t resonate with me,” he says.

On the other hand, he is willing to get up at 5 a.m. every morning to write before work, which might seem “crazy” to others. “That’s just what works for me,” he says.

Brown has found that experimenting with different publishing methods also works for him. His main goal as a writer is to be read, and he became frustrated by the traditional

Covers from four of Brown’s seven crime thrillers.

30 | Encore JANUARY 2014

publishing process. “I got so tired of asking for permission to publish a book, to put it out there for anybody that wanted to read it,” he says.

He had shown the manuscript for Suckerpunch to five or six publishers before it was accepted, and each time the book was edited numerous times as it went up the chain of editors until it reached the publisher, who rejected it.

“Hopefully you end up with a better book at the end (of that process), but who knows?” he says. “And then by the time somebody finally picked it up, it had been rewritten, reworked to please all these people who ended up not wanting it, rather than me writing the book I wanted to write.”

Brown was curious about self-publishing and decided to try it. Although there are trade-offs in going without the services of a traditional publisher, he likes that he can hire a proofreader and specify what kind of editing he wants. He tells them: “If something doesn’t make sense, let me know, but I’m not looking for style editing. Don’t change the tone.”

Even better, Brown can get his books to readers sooner. Once a book is ready, he can publish it as an e-book with the press of a button, and “within 24 hours you can buy it.” Also, unlike paperbacks, e-books will never sell out or be remaindered. “If by some chance one book does hit, and people buy that book like crazy, they might check out all my other books, and they’re all there, ready to go,” he says.

And Brown is cranking the books out.

He has self-published four books. The most recent is PeaceTakers, which was inspired by his day job and published in August. “It’s serial novel about a video game company … that gets invaded by its exiled co-creator and his crew of brutal mercenaries,” Brown says.

“Some of the things I want to explore with the project are the controversy over violence in video games and the anonymity of places like online forums, where people can quickly lose all decency and humanity. When players care more about the game and their account stats than the people who make the game, something is wrong.”

Brown also has also created a website for the fictional game, complete with a fictional user forum.

Jeremy Brown and his wife Ellen Hector walk in the woods near their home with their dog, Gracie Bones Jones.

The other books Brown has self-published include The Kalamazoo Kid, published last April, and two books in 2012 — Find > Fix > Finish and Show No Teeth. In The Kalamazoo Kid, Brown returns to the world of mixed martial arts while also experimenting with a slightly different publishing model. It is part of a series of “fight pulp” novellas published under the pen name Jack Tunney, created by Paul Bishop, an author and L.A.P.D. detective who is also an interrogator on the reality television show Take the Money and Run. Bishop read Suckerpunch and approached Brown about writing a book for his Fight Card series. “The way it works,” Brown explains, “is each guy writes his own book, submits it to Paul, he looks at it, (and if he thinks) it looks good, they have it edited and the cover designed at no charge to the author, and then the author self-publishes it under his name and Jack Tunney’s name. So I get the benefit of all these authors co-promoting each other, but I get all the royalties. It’s kind of these authors banding together to form their own little publishing group for crosspromotion.”

It is a low-risk experiment, he says. “We’ll see if this works. If not, we’ll move on to the next one.”

While writing Find > Fix > Finish, a thriller about a private security team protecting a client from Mexican drug lords, Brown kept a phrase in front of him to remind him of his characters’ attitude: “Relax, it’s only life and death.”

“These guys, their job is to carry weapons, stand between their client and the bullets, kill people. That’s their job so they’re not going to be all freaked out and tense all the time,” he says. “I like characters who don’t really take anything too seriously, especially themselves.”

Brown’s attitude toward life, his job and his writing is similarly relaxed.

“It’s a very enjoyable job, very fulfilling,” he says of his day job at S2 Games. “And I think I found that balance where I enjoy the people I work with, I enjoy the work, but I can leave it there (when it’s time to go home). My goal and dream was to write for a living, which technically I’m doing.”

w w w.encorekalamazoo.com | 31

arts encore

Drawn to Barns

Photographer’s project preserves icons of state’s farming heritage by

Kit almy

In 1990, shortly after photographer Mary

Keithan acquired an 8x10 view camera of the sort used primarily in the 1800s and early 1900s, she took a picture of a Southwest Michigan barn and launched herself on a nine-year project photographing barns across Michigan.

Keithan, who lives in Macomb County, was taking a photo-printing workshop from George Tice at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. She brought her new camera, and the first picture she took was of an Amish barn she discovered while driving in the countryside near Kalamazoo.

“I liked the way it came out so much that I thought, ‘Well, I think I’ll do a series of barns — maybe lasting a few months or a year 32 | Encore JANUARY 2014

or something — and drive around and find some interesting barns in Michigan,’” Keithan recalls. “And what I thought would be a short project turned into a major project.”

At first she approached the barns as a visual artist only, attracted by the variety of architectural styles and the interesting compositions she could create. But when she began exhibiting some of these photographs, she found people were interested in learning more about the barns. She started keeping records of their locations and talking with their current owners or neighbors to learn the history of the barns and the farms they stood on.

Keithan was so fascinated by the regional differences in barn architecture and the

Mary Keithan’s view camera uses 8x10-inch negatives.

In photographing Michigan barns, Keithan had only enough film holders to take eight photographs a day with that camera so she took smaller-format photos with another camera to plan each composition. With the view camera, she says, “I never took more than one photograph (of each barn) so I was being very careful when I made the large-format exposures.”

diverse ethnic backgrounds of the farmers that she eventually visited of southeastern Michigan as well as others from the central and every county in Michigan. “I saw, I don’t know, a thousand barns or northern Lower Peninsula and the Upper Peninsula and one from something. I didn’t photograph every single barn, but I chose the ones Kalamazoo County. The Kalamazoo Valley Museum will supplement the exhibit with agricultural artifacts from the museum’s collection. that I thought had artistic merit.”

Over the years since taking the original photographs, Keithan She found barns of different sizes and shapes — round, octagonal and even 14-sided — and others built with noteworthy materials, has gone back to check on some of the barns. Some are no longer including logs, concrete and brick. Some of the barns had functional standing, others have been restored and some repurposed, such as one that is now an antique store. features such as a central silo that Some barns have been sided with made it easier to feed livestock Michigan’s Heritage Barns aluminum. “Better than having or thick brick walls that provided What: A photography exhibit supplemented by them fall down,” she says, because enough insulation to store potatoes agricultural artifacts. there is still a chance for restoration. and onions through the winter.

“When you speak to the people, While Keithan was working on Where: Kalamazoo Valley Museum, 230 N. Rose St. the barn project, she sometimes they’re interested in telling you When: Jan. 25-June 15. learned that a barn was not long their whole history and the way their grandfather came over and for this world, usually because of More information: www.kalamazoomuseum.org prohibitive maintenance costs. “If started the farm and how their lives they keep the roof in shape, it will revolved around it,” Keithan says. “A lot of the farmers took pride in their barns, and that was the first usually last quite a while. … Otherwise the weather and the elements structure they built before their homes, and they would decorate just destroy it,” she says.

At least one unused and deteriorating barn was saved thanks to them with certain architectural adornments.”

Keithan included some of these details in the photo captions in her one of Keithan’s photographs. A local historical society wanted to exhibitions, eventually attracting the attention of the Michigan State move a barn to a park where the group was recreating a historic University Museum, which purchased a group of her photographs and farmstead. “And they needed some kind of a proof or verification that created a traveling exhibition. Her photos also have been compiled it was worthy of the funds needed to move it,” Keithan says, “and they in a book, Michigan’s Heritage Barns, published by Michigan State used my photograph in the book as supporting evidence that it was important enough to be bothered with.”

University Press.

Keithan still photographs barns occasionally and sees her work as The MSU traveling exhibition, Michigan’s Heritage Barns, will be on display at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum from Jan. 25 through creating a historical record. “I’m preserving the barns on film, if not June 15. The 22 photos include several from Keithan’s home region otherwise, and I’ll try and continue to do that.”

w w w.encorekalamazoo.com | 33

arts encore

Musical Legacy

KJSO can boast three generations of musicians from one family theresa coty-o’neil

From left, grandmother and oboist Fran Klooster, her daughter Janet Channells and granddaughter Holly Channells, both French horn players, all got their start playing with the Kalamazoo Junior Symphony Orchestra.

I

n 1952, a talented young Kalamazoo Junior Symphony Orchestra member and oboist named Fran Klooster was asked by Conductor Julius Stulberg to solo with the orchestra. While running to catch a bus shortly before her debut, she slipped and fell on a frozen late-spring puddle and broke her leg. But in the spirit of dedicated performance, she made sure the show went on, leg cast and all.

Today, as the Kalamazoo Junior Symphony Society celebrates its 75th anniversary, Klooster has added more to the KJSO’s history than this colorful tale – she is the start of a family legacy. Klooster’s daughter, Janet Channells, played French horn for the KJSO and toured with the group to Europe 34 | Encore JANUARY 2014

in 1977, and now granddaughter Holly Channells, also on French horn, is a current KJSO member and active participant in its anniversary season.

“The people in this community are very fortunate to have a youth orchestra of that caliber and with such an impressive legacy,” says Klooster, who went on to perform with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra for more than 50 years and may be the longest-serving member ever. “I’m glad I was a part of it. I’m glad my daughter was a part of it, and I’m glad my granddaughter is a part of it.”

Initially introduced as the Little Symphony in 1939 by Conductor Eugene Andrie and inspired by KSO founder Leta Snow, the KJSO has grown into an organization that

features three training orchestras, four small ensembles and a rich history as the thirdoldest continually running youth orchestra in the nation.

The 75th anniversary season promises to be especially exciting, featuring worldrenowned violinist Midori doing a residency and performing solo in a collaborative concert with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra; a solo by prominent pianist Alon Goldstein in collaboration with the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival; an alumni orchestra conducted in part by former KJSO Conductor Robert Ritsema; and an international tour to China.

“For the 75th, we are taking the basic work of learning music and playing it at the highest level we can possibly achieve and then sharing it with other organizations in town and with these really great artists,” says KJSO Conductor Andrew Koehler, who is also an assistant professor of music at Kalamazoo College and conducts the Kalamazoo Philharmonia. “As in the trip to China, we are sharing it with an even broader public. We are showing what Kalamazoo is up to and what is taking place here.”

One thing that has taken place is that the KJSO has had long-lasting effects on those who have made music with the organization.

“It was a major influence on my musical career,” says Janet Channells, who grew up inspired by her mother’s musical life and now teaches French horn, piano and baritone, performs with the Battle Creek Symphony and plays principal horn in the Kalamazoo Concert Band. “Realizing I must be pretty good if I can get into the Junior Symphony was a catalyst for making music my profession.”

Koehler, too, says “music can be a transformational experience.” But that transformation can look different for Courtesy photos

by

different individuals, he adds. “It may be that someone comes to truly and profoundly love music. Or it may be that the transformation occurs at the discipline level and that someone comes to understand the values and rewards of hard work,” Koehler says.

For KJSO members, that hard work includes devoting time to private lessons, rehearsals (three-and-a-half hours on Sunday afternoons) and personal practice.

“By the time they finish getting these pieces ready to perform, they are in their heart and soul,” says Klooster, who watches as granddaughter Holly experiences the same joy she did.

Holly Channells, a sophomore at Gull Lake High School, is in her second year with the KJSO. “In Junior Symphony, everyone who is there loves what they’re doing,” Holly says.

“You share a common passion, and it’s very powerful.”

Holly’s mother, Janet, agrees. “The value of being in the organization extends beyond the experience,” she says. “You can form some lifelong friendships through your music.”

KJSO musicians are drawn from the Kalamazoo metropolitan area and nine surrounding communities and are a diverse lot.

“Over my 29 years at the Kalamazoo Junior Symphony, I’ve had the honor of seeing hundreds of young people come through our

orchestral training programs and have come to think of it as a sort of mini musical United Nations,” says Lee Fletcher, the Kalamazoo

KJSO Season Highlights Midori and Pyotr KJSO Concerto Competition Violinist Anna Nordmoe will play with Internationally celebrated violinist Midori.

4 p.m. Feb. 2, Chenery Auditorium, 714 S. Westnedge Ave. Among Friends KJSO Annual Ensemble Concert with works performed by string, brass and wind ensembles.

7 p.m. March 23, Dalton Center Recital Hall, Western Michigan University Real and Imagined Landscapes Grieg Piano Concerto with Alon Goldstein in collaboration with the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival.

4 p.m. April 27, Chenery Auditorium Ticket prices and information available at kjso.org.

Junior Symphony Society’s executive director.

“As long as you’ve done the work to play the notes and read the music, you become a

valued member of a unique team that must pull together in order to succeed.”

More than 95 percent of orchestra members go to college, and some have become performers in major orchestras, such as the Dallas, San Francisco and Minnesota symphony orchestras. Violinist Joshua Bell and former KJSO member Anthony Ross, both Stulberg International String Competition winners, have both soloed with the KJSO. Koehler and Fletcher both see the Junior Symphony as filling a valuable niche in the community.

“On the one hand, it’s creating a generation of young people who have precisely the sort of discipline and appreciation for culture that enrich a community,” Koehler says. “On the other hand, for those who come to hear our concerts, they will hear not perfect, but nevertheless, vibrant music-making from an orchestra that plays with real zeal and passion, which is very real and very exciting for an audience to behold.”

“KJSO members create something extraordinarily beautiful together that brings them pride in accomplishment and spreads great joy to others,” Fletcher says.” If that is not a prescription for life, then I don’t know what is.”

To learn more about the KJSO’s 75th anniversary season, visit kjso.org.

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performances of their compositions, 7:30 p.m. Jan. 21, Dalton Center Recital Hall, WMU. Free.

PERFORMING ARTS Plays Arsenic and Old Lace — Explore the madness of the Brewster home with two murderous aunts and their three nephews: a theater critic, a psychopath and one who thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt, 7:30 p.m. Jan. 10, 11, 16, 17, 18, 24, 25; 2 p.m. Jan. 19, Civic Auditorium, 359 S. Park St. 343-1313.

Seven — Stories about seven women written by seven female playwrights are told in a documentary play presented by Western Michigan University’s Department of Theatre, 8 p.m. Jan. 23–25, 30, 31, Feb. 1; 2 p.m.

Feb. 2, York Arena Theatre, WMU. 387-6222.

Musicals & Opera I Love A Piano — Farmers Alley Theatre presents a cabaret performance celebrating the works of Irving Berlin, 8 p.m. Jan. 2, 3, 4; 2 p.m. Jan. 5, 221 Farmers Alley. 3432727.

Hello, Dolly! — Sally Struthers of All in the Family fame stars as the strong-willed matchmaker, 7:30 p.m. Jan. 8, Miller Auditorium, WMU. 387-2300.

24, 25, 30, 31, Feb. 1, 2, 7, 8; 2 p.m.

Jan. 26 & Feb. 2, Parish Theatre, 426 S. Park St. 343-1313.

Dance Moscow Festival Ballet: Cinderella — Led by Sergei Radchenko, 3 p.m.

Jan. 12, Miller Auditorium, WMU. 387-2300.

Winter Gala Dance Concert — WMU’s Department of Dance presents new works by guest artists Peter Chu, Gabrielle Lamb and Marlo Stafford Martin, plus dances by WMU faculty and student choreographers, 8 p.m.

Jan. 30, 31, Feb. 1; 2 p.m. Feb. 1, Shaw Theatre, WMU. 387-6222.

Concerts The World of Schubert — Maestro Raymond Harvey and the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestera explore the life and times of Franz Schubert with special guests Stulberg Gold Medal-winning violinist Youjin Lee and vocalist Chelsea Helm, 3 p.m. Jan. 5, Dalton Center Recital Hall, WMU. 349-7759.

Faculty Recital: Tina Gorter — Pianist, 3 p.m. Jan. 18, Dalton Center Recital Hall, WMU. Free.

Dalton Wed@7:30 — A series of WMU School of Music concerts: Voice Faculty Showcase, Jan. 22; Finger Song Writing Project, featuring pianist Jeremy Siskind, Jan. 29. All concerts at 7:30 p.m., Dalton Center Recital Hall, WMU. 387-4667.

Collegium Musicum — This WMU early music vocal group is joined by guest artists Ellen Hargis, soprano, and David Douglass, viola da gamba, for a free concert, 7:30 p.m. Jan. 23, Dalton Center Recital Hall, WMU. Guest Artist Recitals — Maniacal 4, a trombone quartet, 8 p.m. Jan. 24; Fred Hirsch Trio, jazz, 7:30 p.m. Jan. 28, Dalton Center Recital Hall, WMU. Free.

Comedy Jim Belushi and the Chicago Board of Comedy — Belushi and a sketch comedy troupe, 8 p.m. Jan. 18, Miller Auditorium, WMU. 387-2300.

VISUAL ARTS Richmond Center for Visual Arts WMU 387-2436

Rock of Ages — An arena-rock love story set to 28 hits of the 1980s, 7:30 p.m. Jan. 23, Miller Auditorium, WMU. 387-2300.

Gilmore Rising Stars Series — Brazilian pianist Fabio Martino performs Liszt, Schumann,Haydn and Prokofieff, 4 p.m. Jan. 19, Wellspring Theater, 359 S. Kalamazoo Mall. 342-1166.

NYPOP Emerging Curators Series: Make/Do — An exhibit featuring five contemporary artists who engage with the notion of “performativity” and collapse the distinction between art and craft, Rosemarie Fiore, Erin Dunn, Saya Woofalk, Emily Noelle Lambert and Alejandro Guzman, Jan. 9–Feb. 14, Monroe-Brown Gallery.

Into the Woods — A musical that looks at Grimm fairy tale characters and what actually happens after “happily ever after,” 7:30 p.m. Jan.

New Music Concert — Faculty and student composers from WMU, Eastern Michigan University and Central Michigan University present

Caroline Gore: … mercurial silence … — An exhibit that looks at how grief and loss manifest themselves in society and how objects relate

to personal losses, Jan. 9–Feb. 14, Netzorg and Kerr Gallery.

Kalamazoo Institute of Arts 349-7775 Mountains and Waters: Landscape Paintings from China — Paintings selected by guest curator Joy Light from the collection of Joy and Timothy Light, through Feb. 2.

Boo! Images of the Macabre — The KIA brings out its most spooky and unnerving works, through Jan. 26.

Fantastic Rumpus: 50 Years of Children’s Book Illustration — More than 120 drawings from 31 artists, through Feb. 9.

Impressions: Selections from Stewart & Stewart — Works from 30 artists who have had their prints made at this recognized Michigan printmaking studio, through Feb. 23.

ARTbreak — Free presentations on art-related topics: The Artists of ‘Fantastic Rumpus,’ video followed by public tour, Jan. 7; Murphy Darden: A Documentary by James Watkins, about local artist, Jan. 14; Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak, documentary, Jan. 21; Two Brothers: Eliot and Fairfield Porter, presentation by local photographer David Curl, Jan. 28.

Guests may bring a lunch to these noon sessions.

Public Tours — Pay for gallery admission and get a guided tour of selected exhibitions at 2 p.m.

Sundays: Fantastic Rumpus: 50 Years of Children’s Book Illustration, Jan. 5; Art and Nature at the KIA, Jan. 12; Impressions: Selections from Stewart & Stewart, Jan. 19; Boo! Images of the Macabre, Jan. 26.

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LIBRARY & LITERARY EVENTS Kalamazoo Public Library 553-7879 or 342-9837 Movie and Popcorn — The Croods, an animated adventure about a prehistoric family’s search for a new home, 2 p.m. Jan. 3, Powell Branch.

Bookworms — A book club for kids in grades 1–3 (with accompanying adults) discussing L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, 4:30 p.m. Jan. 23, Central Library.

Portage District Library 329-4544 Healthy Habits: There’s an App for That — A program introducing technology that will help you eat better and stay fit, 7 p.m. Jan. 7, Long Lake and Gourdneck Lake rooms.

Michigan’s Heritage Barns: An Artist’s Perspective — This photo exhibit showcases our agricultural heritage and the wide variety of barns in the state, Jan. 25-June 15 (see related story, page 32).

Music at the Museum — K’zoo Folklife Organization acoustic jam, 2-4:30 p.m. Jan. 5, free.

Family Program — Magician Tom Plunkard and ventriloquist Richard Paul, 7 p.m. Jan. 10.

Historical Programs — Discussions and programs dedicated to local history: Speed Demons and Other Scofflaws, 1:30 p.m. Jan. 12; The Townships of Kalamazoo County — Comstock Township, 1:30 p.m.

Jan. 26.

NATURE

Combat Veterans Writing Group — A bimonthly workshop for veterans who have been in combat to write poetry, essays or fiction, 6:30 p.m. Jan. 14, West Lake Room (see related story, page 10).

Glacier Hike — Learn about glaciers and how they shaped the lands around the Nature Center, 2 p.m.

Jan. 5; additional activities, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Decades of Dazzling Dresses — An exhibit from the museum’s costume collection featuring unique dresses and accessories from 1880 to 1920, through Jan. 19.

St. Lawrence String Quartet sat, MaR 1, 2014 · 8 PM dalton Center Recital Hall, WMu

Dublin Guitar Quartet FRI, MaR 28, 2014 · 8 PM Wellspring theater, Epic Center

Imani Winds

Kalamazoo Nature Center 381-1574 Animal Signs Hike — Search for the clues animals leave behind, 2 p.m. Jan. 4; additional activities, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Kalamazoo Valley Museum 373-7990

FRI, FEB 7, 2014 · 8 PM Bell’s Eccentric Café

jaCoB and naoMI stuCkI MEMoRIal ConCERt

International Mystery Book Group — A discussion of the book Silence of the Rain by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza, 7 p.m. Jan. 9, Austin Lake Room.

MUSEUMS

Becca Stevens Band

Audubon Society of Kalamazoo 375-7210

sat, aPR 12, 2014 · 8 PM dalton Center Recital Hall, WMu

Jason Moran’s Fats Waller Dance Party a CollaBoRatIon WItH tHE gIlMoRE kEyBoaRd FEstIval

sun, aPR 27, 2014 · 4 PM & 7 PM Williams theatre gilmore theatre Complex, WMu

Wildlife in the Arctic — Mel Visser discusses and shows his photographs of Arctic wildlife, 7 p.m.

Jan. 27, People’s Church, 1758 N. 10th St. fontanachamberarts.org 269/382-7774

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w w w.encorekalamazoo.com | 37

Poetry encore

On Eating Raspberries From Our Garden in January The sweet, sharp taste of raspberries explodes in my mouth, hurling memories of summer heat, summer storms, summer journeys.

Feeding Winter Birds

I remember rinsing the tiny beehives and freezing them separately like jewels, then putting the hardened fruit into bags like children’s marbles.

Late January, snow melts into sky. I’m watching the vague border between yard and field, field and trees, ground and horizon. Gray morning. No sunrise. I am a window reflecting an image: tall man holding an infant, small boy beside, walking in slush and grass. Already a memory as they turn and wave, smile. The seed-filled half-orange hangs like a little fire on the branch of the boy’s arm. He places it in the oak tree on the highest limb he can reach. He watches it swing as it settles. We are another minute late for work. And another.

Before they leave, I’ll straighten their winter hats and feel their warm faces. Smell of earth in the air. We leave each other each morning and each night. We close our eyes.

Now snow falls and icy winds bellow from the west and from the north.

But inside of me is a warm glow and the taste of summer on my tongue.

— Janet Ruth Heller Heller is a Portage writer who has a poetry book titled Exodus coming out this month from WordTech Communications. She also is the author of the poetry book Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012), the poetry chapbook Traffic Stop (Finishing Line Press, 2011) and the children’s book How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Sylvan Dell, 2006).

— Julie Stotz-Ghosh Stotz-Ghosh teaches writing and literature at Kalamazoo Valley Community College. Her work has appeared in various journals and anthologies, including Poetry Midwest, Quarter After Eight and Sudden Stories: The Mammoth Book of Miniscule Fiction.

Encore invites area poets to share their work with Southwest Michigan readers. For consideration, submit your poetry and a short personal profile by e-mail to editor@encorekalamazoo.com or by mail addressed to Poetry Editor, Encore Magazine, 117 W. Cedar St., Suite A, Kalamazoo, MI, 49007.

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38 | Encore JANUARY 2014

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Home Theaters Hit the Big Time

w w w.encorekalamazoo.com | 39

What you need to create the ultimate family space by

Tiffany Fitzgerald

This page: Home theaters create a custom moviewatching experience with their comfy seating, specialized lighting and decor and high-tech equipment that offers picture and sound quality on par with those of a movie theater. (Images courtesy of Integrated Smart Technologies) Opposite page: Not all home theaters have to be darkened rooms. They can be light and airy like this multifunctional space that also serves as a living room. (Image courtesy of Buday’s)

T

here’s nothing better on a cold winter day than snuggling up to watch a movie, especially if you can snuggle up in your own home theater.

Home theaters offer the ultimate home entertainment options, and now, with the advancement of projector, speaker and media

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technology, home theaters offer picture and sound quality that’s on par with the qualities of a movie theater but arguably with more comfort and convenience.

If you’ve been wanting to turn that spare room into a home theater but aren’t sure what to expect, which products are hot or

whom to call once you’ve decided to take the plunge, we’ve got answers from the pros: Ed Buday Jr., president of Buday’s Home Electronics Simplified (www.Budays. com), who has been in business 11 years in Kalamazoo, and Troy Cuvelier, president of Integrated Smart Technologies, which has been in business 15 years and has one of its locations in Kalamazoo (www.istmi.com).

Cuvelier and Buday explain home-theater trends, exciting recent home-theater technology, and what to expect when you decide to add a home theater to your living space.

For the whole family One of the main reasons homeowners choose to put in home theaters is to replicate a moviegoing experience in the comfort of their own space.

“People want a home theater because they want a special space for enjoying movies and hosting special events,” Buday says. “They want to hit one button, have the lights dim and the projector turn on, just like in the theater. It’s better than having a movie theater in a way. It’s an amazing experience.”

But the pursuit of awe-inspiring theatrical sound and picture quality isn’t the only reason for installing a home theater. According to both Buday and Cuvelier, family is the most compelling reason to convert a room to a theater.

“We typically see a lot of customers that have families and want a central gathering point,” Cuvelier says. “They want their kids to stay at home and enjoy being there or to want to have their friends over too — almost like a hangout spot. The space usually becomes the most favorite area in the whole house too. It’s a lot of fun.”

What is a home theater?

A comfy couch, a nice set of speakers and a large-screen television might seem like a home theater, but technically it’s not. So what

makes a home theater a home theater? Everything from lighting to sound to screen and projector.

“An actual home theater is traditionally specified to a single room,” Cuvelier says. “It’s a dedicated space used for the purpose of watching movies and TV.” Even though home theaters have almost exclusively resided in a special room of their own in the past (usually on the lower level of the home), Buday and Cuvelier say that lately people are moving toward a more multi-functional space, a “lifestyle theater.”

“Many people want a multi-functional space with different entertainment options,” Cuvelier says. “That can include maybe a bar in the background, a pool table or a hangout spot. In some instances we design the space so you can still close the theater area off from rest of the entertainment space when you want to watch a movie.”

Whether the home theater is its own room or part of a bigger entertainment space, there are a few components that are included in most home theaters and help to make the space stand out from a normal living-room arrangement.

“A home theater, equipment-wise, is a projector and a screen, of course,” Buday says. “The screen can be fixed, like a picture frame on a wall, or motorized so it can roll up and down. There will also be a number of speakers and subwoofers — the number depends

(continued on page 43)

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access them easily. Home theaters kind of spoil you.”

Different options

The Runco Windowall screen allows multi-tasking viewers to watch several programs at once.

(Image courtesy of Buday’s)

on the space — and some other components, like a BluRay player, Play Station, Wii, etc.

And a home theater can be controlled with a super-remote. When you click ‘watch TV,’

it turns on everything. Then there are extras.

We ask our clients for their favorite channels, for example, and we’ll put the logos of those channels on the home screen so they can

Not all home theaters are created equal. Because each theater is built-in as a customized living space, the options for how the theater looks and functions are seemingly endless.

Some of the most common choices are the size of the screen, the number of stereos, the type of entertainment systems to include, and the type of seating, including whether or not to use stadium-style risers. All options depend on budget — home theaters can range from under $10,000 for more basic systems to $20,000 to $50,000 for typical whole-room designs to more than $100,000 for specially designed, large in-home theater systems. Home theaters may seem expensive, but many whole-family entertainment options are, Cuvelier says.

“For about the price of a swimming pool or boat, you have something the entire family can use day or night, any time of year,” he says.

Since the design of a home theater has to take into account acoustic and aesthetic

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parameters, both Buday’s business and Cuvelier’s offer in-house design services.

“When it comes to designing a space, we’re looking at it from an acoustical standpoint,” Cuvelier explains. “We want there to be the best sound and picture possible, but we also want it to be beautiful when it’s done. We don’t want the equipment and speakers to be the focal point of the room. We want the design to be the focal point.”

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The trends The last thing to know before committing to building a home theater is what’s trending so your theater can incorporate the newest technologies. Buday and Cuvelier offer up these suggestions:

ns Ser ving Ka l am eratio n e G az e e oo Thr

• Themed theaters. According to Cuvelier, a theater’s theme “can be anything from an Old World theme to a favorite sports team.” If there’s a style, team or region you particularly love, such as country music or Tuscany, the space can be made to reflect your interests tastefully.

• Hidden speakers. Did you know that you can build speakers right into the drywall of your home theater so that they are invisible? “You give up a little bit of sound quality, but for people who really don’t want to see speakers, it’s a great option,” Buday says. Alternatively, it’s possible to make the space look however you’d like by using custom woodwork and cabinetry for the speakers.

372-3400

www.devisserlandscape.com

• LED lighting and projectors. “In all the other projectors, every 1,200 hours you have to replace the bulbs,” Buday says. “With LED, there’s 70 percent less heat generated than that of a regular projector, so there’s less damage to the equipment, and then you have a wider color gamut. You are going to see color like you never have seen it before.”

• Simple control. Both Cuvelier and Buday swear by one universal remote that simplifies the power on and off functions of the theater. With the remote, you can select a function, like “DVD” or “TV,” and the remote turns on the necessary components to run that function and can even dim the lights, move shades down to block light, and control the temperature.

Special advertising section

INDEX TO ADVERTISERS Advantage Nursing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Bell’s Brewery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Borgess Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

TRY

LOCAL

Bronson Healthcare Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Cooper’s Glen Music Festival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Cornerstone Office Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 CTS Telecom, Inc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Dave’s Glass Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 DeHaan Remodeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 DeMent & Marquardt, PLC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Derby Financial Associates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

“WAIT WAIT… DON’T TELL ME!” Miller Auditorium March 20, 2014 Tickets on sale January 17th WMUK.org

MUSIC LOCAL ARTS &NEWS

DeVisser Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Farm ‘N Garden—The Garden Center . . . . . . . . . . 11 Flipse, Meyer, Allwardt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Fontana Chamber Arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Gilmore Keyboard Festival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Gilmore Real Estate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Great Lakes Shipping Co. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Greenleaf Trust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Hospice Care of SW Michigan . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 HRM Innovations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Integrated Smart Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Kalamazoo/BC International Airport . . . . . . . . . . 47 Kalamazoo Community Foundation . . . . . . . . . . 43 Kalamazoo Regional Educational Service Agency . . . 44 Keystone Community Bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Lewis Reed & Allen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 LVM Capital Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Marvin Okun Agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Moors Golf Club . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Parkway Plastic Surgery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Rose Street Advisors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Jeff K. Ross Financial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Sharp Smile Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Varnum Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 WMUK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Woodwork Specialties Co. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 YMCA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

44 | Encore JANUARY 2014

encore The Last word

The Last Word (continued from page 46) although I dreaded push-mowing it a couple times a week. I threw myself into interior decorating. I scoured garage sales and thrift shops for furniture that I could refinish to fill the cavernous rooms. Lilac bushes (my favorite) bloomed in the backyard, and I could watch the boys ride bikes from my porch swing. Finally, after all the hard work, we were beginning to settle in, and I could relax and enjoy our house.

A few months ago I received a call from the insurance company. They said I needed to replace my roof or they would no longer insure me. I couldn’t believe it. I had spent my entire savings on the siding and didn’t have the funds for another project. I started scrambling to figure out financing for another huge project.

Less than a month later, my furnace died.

I called in a repairman. He informed me that the company that made my furnace had gone out of business 25 years ago. In other words, my furnace was a dinosaur. It was inefficient and had a dangerous carbon-monoxide leak.

He managed to put a Band-Aid fix on the furnace for the moment while I figured out

my next move. I couldn’t believe my bad luck.

I almost cried. In fact, I think I did.

Now here I sit, broke, in the house that was supposedly such a great investment. My new roof is being put on next week. My new furnace will follow soon after. As for me, I’m tapped out. My dream house has become a money pit. I’ve decided to cut my losses and sell.

As I prepare to pack up our lives and move on to the next step, I can’t help but remember my first impression of this house. I thought it would never be home to me, but it has been so much more than home. It has been a place to land, a place to heal after my husband’s death. Remodeling projects kept me busy when depression threatened to drag me under. Decorating lightened my mood and my wallet. Scavenger hunts at antique stores and garage sales filled my summers with joy. Every detail of this house is my own; it is a physical representation of the mental transformation that I went through.

This may not be the house my children learned to walk in, but it is the home where we learned to live again.

Tiffany Thatcher is completing her degree in English at Kellogg Community College, where she edits the school paper, The Bruin. She is a mother of two.

Have The Last Word Have a story to tell? Non-fiction, personal narratives about life in Southwest Michigan are sought for The Last Word. Stories should be no more than 1,000 words. Submit your story and contact information to editor@encorekalamazoo.com.

Helping your team play well together in the New Year!

Innovative Human Resources and Management Consulting 229 E. Michigan Ave, Suite 345 Kalamazoo 269.459.6060 www.HRMInnovationsllc.com

w w w.encorekalamazoo.com | 45

THE last word encore

This House Is More Than A Home by

Tiffany Thatcher

T

he house was not what I had imagined for me and my boys. It was a farmhouse that was at least 100 years old, with a ramshackle porch, and it left a lot to be desired. Inside, moldy carpeting slathered in ancient dog hair was ripped up and lying in a crumpled heap.

The kitchen was wallpapered in dark green; the trim was bright red. It looked like a Christmas tree had thrown up.

The appliances were not salvageable, since they were covered in rust and layers of grease. The house was still sporting its original wooden exterior, and there were places where you could look through the house from the outside. But my family convinced me that it could be salvaged and would be a good investment. All I could see was what it wasn’t. It wasn’t my dream house. I reluctantly made a ridiculously low offer, telling myself it would probably be rejected. But the bank accepted my offer, and I was now the proud owner of a 3,500-squarefoot piece of crap.

My brother-in-law — jack of all trades, master of none — went to work every night after getting home from his full-time job. With the help of my nephew and my dad, we ripped the interior of the house down to the studs.

46 | Encore JANUARY 2014

There were no floors, walls or ceilings for a few weeks as we slowly replaced the drywall. That effort was followed by weeks of painting, laying wood and laminate floors, staining and installing kitchen cabinet and replacing the entire bathroom. After six months of hard work, my boys and I could finally move in. True, trim was missing in every room and the siding was still in desperate need of help, but now it was our home.

I was thrilled when I was finally able to put up vinyl siding this past summer. The house looked nothing like its former self. It was beginning to resemble the house of my dreams. My boys loved having bedrooms to themselves after years of having to share. I loved my huge yard, (continued on page 45)

FLY HOME. BE HOME.

Hey. We just landed.

Be home in 10 minutes.

Safe. Simple. Convenient.

w w w.encorekalamazoo.com | 47

that’s where

I got my freedom back Lynne Perg Borgess Bone & Joint Institute patient

The Stryker Corporation designates the Borgess Bone & Joint Institute as the world’s first Center for Advanced Recovery in joint replacement. Of the patients who received joint surgery at Borgess, 84 percent went home independently, with no need for home care. That’s twice the national average and encouraging news for patients like Lynne Perg. Lynne spent years with debilitating knee pain until she came to Borgess and rediscovered the joy of living pain free. Rapid recoveries, better outcomes and the first Center for Advanced Recovery | Joint designation are just some of the reasons people choose the Borgess Bone & Joint Institute.

Patients who went home without home care (12-mo. avg.)

Borgess

84%

National Average*

42%

*Data compared to more than 100,000 patient records from 85 of the top performing hospitals throughout the nation, using independent, third-party measurements from Marshall Steele/Stryker Corporation recorded data.

Learn more at bonejoint.borgess.com

A member of Ascension Health®