Encore September 2012

SOUTHWEST MICHIGAN’S MAGAZINE

CLOSE TO HOME:

Greg Jennings TRANSFORMING EXPERIENCES FOUND AT SPIRITUALITY CENTER

PHILIP LEVINE: A ‘MICHIGAN TREASURE’

HOT AND DRY EQUALS GOOD WINE

Wendy and mostly sunny.

Wendy Linehan could have cried. It would have been unusual to do so at such a happy moment, in the middle of her job interview. But there she was, listening to the company’s top executive articulating his expectation of employees. There were no catchphrases, and no business book themes du jour. There was, instead, a clear premise spoken with conviction: “Do what’s right, honest and honorable, and always put the clients’ interests first.”

It was exhilarating to hear. And it was a first. Over the previous 20+ years, Wendy had been VP, director of private sales for a major bank, where she’d overseen a team of wealth management advisors and insurance specialists; she’d practiced law in the areas of probate and trust litigation and administration; she was securities-licensed, holding the Series 7, 66 and 24; and she’d earned BA and JD law degrees from the University of Michigan. But now, for the first time in her professional life, she was hearing what she had long wanted to hear. Not as an aside, but purposefully from William D. Johnston, Chairman and President of Greenleaf Trust.

Having now joined Greenleaf Trust as a Trust Relationship Officer, Wendy advises clients on trust- and estate-related matters and oversees day-to-day accounts and fiduciary requirements. As an integral part of a Michigan-based wealth management firm with nearly four billion dollars in discretionary assets, client satisfaction rates approaching 100%, and an unwavering focus on integrity and trust, she’s also in a position to significantly improve your well being. To learn how Wendy and Greenleaf Trust can help you achieve financial security from generation to generation, call us. Your own tears of joy may flow.

g r e e n l e a f t ru s t. c o m

2 1 1 s o u t h r o s e s t r e e t k a l a m a z o o , m i 4 9 0 0 7 2 6 9. 3 8 8 . 9 8 0 0 8 0 0 . 4 1 6 . 4 5 5 5

WHEN I STARTED FEELING DIZZY

AND LIGHT-HEADED, I SHOULD’VE LISTENED

TO MY HEART. Something wasn’t right. But like many women, I downplayed my symptoms and assumed the stress of my job was getting to me. Or maybe I wasn’t getting enough sleep. Turns out, I had a bad heart valve. And it was only a matter of time before it would give out. That’s when I turned to Bronson. Their cardiac services are rated best in the region, according to HealthGrades® (2012).

After being a patient, I can see why. I was able to go home a few days after having major heart surgery. And in no time, I was back at work and back to my self again. Although now, when my body tries to tell me something, I listen.

bronsonhealth.com/heart

SOUTHWEST MICHIGAN’S MAGAZINE

CLOSE TO HOME:

Greg Jennings TRANSFORMING EXPERIENCES FOUND AT SPIRITUALITY CENTER

PHILIP LEVINE: A ‘MICHIGAN TREASURE’

HOT AND DRY EQUALS GOOD WINE

PUBLISHER

ENCORE PUBLICATIONS, INC. EDITOR

MARIE LEE COPY EDITOR

MARGARET DERITTER DESIGNER

MARIA MAJESKI CONTTRIBUTORS

KIT ALMY, MARGARET DERITTER, ERIK HOLLADAY, BILL KRASEAN, BRIAN LAM, MIKE LANKA, LARRY MASSIE, BARBARA WALTERS CONTRIBUTING POETS

JENNIFER CLARK, ELIZABETH KERLIKOWSKE ADVERTISING SALES/BUSINESS MANAGER

KRIEG LEE ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE

CELESTE STATLER OFFICE MANAGER

RON DUNDON

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WWW.ENCOREKALAMAZOO.COM Encore Magazine is published 9 times yearly, September through May. Copyright 2012, Encore Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Editorial, circulation and advertising correspondence should be sent to: 350 S. Burdick, Suite 214, 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.

S E P T E M B E R 2012

features Greg Jennings He may play football in Green Bay, but his heart — and good works — are at home in Kalamazoo.

22

Transforming Experiences Transformations Spirituality Center provides many paths for those seeking the divine.

18

Treasured Poet When 2011-12 U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine reads in Kalamazoo this month, he’ll be back in his home state and among old friends.

28

Up Front

6

Pooch Parks It’s all fun and games for canines and their owners at the area’s new dog parks.

8

Good Works Teaching kids to fix bikes and get along with others is the mission of the Open Roads Bike Program.

10

Update As Encore celebrates its 40th year, we catch up with the man who started it all, Phil Schubert.

12

Photo Challenge You know you’ve seen it, but where?

Solve our picture puzzler and win a treat from Victorian Bakery.

14

Savor Good wine is one promising result of a hot, dry summer.

Arts

32

Delightful Dogs The canine-human connection inspires two local exhibitions.

33

The Quiet Place Author-illustrator team Sarah Stewart and David Small explore alienation and magic.

34 35

Poetry Events of Note

Departments

On the cover: Greg Jennings, photographed by Mike Lanka

17 40

First Glance Images submitted by local photographers.

46

The Last Word An unlikely rescue bridges the worlds of woman and beast.

Massie’s Michigan From Grand Rapids to the Wild West, Capt. John Gunnison left behind more than just his name.

UP FRONT ENCORE BY

KIT ALMY

Play, Spot,

Play Dog parks give pooches, owners room to roam

U

ntil summer 2010, there were no dog parks in the Kalamazoo area. As a result of a growing demand for places where dogs may run freely off-leash, there are now four. Two public parks departments found considerable citizen interest in dog parks in their five-year planning, while one entrepreneur opened a private dog park after learning Kalamazoo residents were driving up to one in Ada every weekend.

The parks’ success is nothing to bark at. Owners of two private dog parks are seeing slow and steady growth in membership, and Kalamazoo County Parks Director David Rachowicz says since a dog park was added to Prairie View County Park, in Schoolcraft Township, overall usage of that park has doubled.

“It’s a godsend for people with big dogs,” says dog owner Frank Hemphill, who brings Scooter and Buddy to Prairie View to run and socialize twice daily.

The parks vary widely in acreage, amenities and fees, but all share basic rules and provide drinking water, waste cleanup stations and a separate area for small dogs. Dogs are expected to have current vaccinations and to be non-aggressive, although Prairie View Park does not require registration. Visitors need only buy a regular County Parks vehicle pass to have access to the six-acre dog park, which includes a wooded section with trails.

The one-acre dog park within Fairmount Park — located at 1108 N. Prairie Ave. in Kalamazoo’s Fairmount neighborhood — includes agility jumps and a locking gate restricting access to registered members.

Parks Manager Mark Polega says that the addition of the dog park has revived a previously underused city park. “It will be a benefit to the Fairmount neighborhood,” he says.

6 | ENCORE SEPTEMBER 2012

Private dog parks offer pet owners more oversight for their money. The Bark Park — a five-acre park at 6604 Lovers Lane in Portage — also has a dog day-care facility so it is always staffed. “We’re here all the time,” says owner Meg Forrest. “We generally watch the dogs to see how they are and to make sure they’re getting along with everybody.”

The 24-acre Meadow Run Dog Park, in Oshtemo Township, features a swimming lake among its amenities.

Owner Patty Ruppel, who aspired to keep folks from driving long distances to take their pups to play, evaluates the sociability of dogs in addition to screening for vaccines. Memberships at private parks are the more expensive option, with annual memberships beginning around $200, versus the $60 charged for the city’s park, but Ruppel says, “Our members are paying us to be diligent about … owner responsibility for making sure that their dogs are social and healthy.”

Hemphill, on the other hand, likes the no-frills aspect of the county park, calling it a wise use of public funds, and says, “It doesn’t have the amenities, but it has the water, and that’s all you need.”

Dog parks are for human recreation as much as for the dogs. “Ultimately it’s about the people. It’s brought a whole new group of people out to our county park, so we couldn’t be more happy with it,” says Rachowicz.

Demand shows there is room for growth. Kalamazoo County will expand Prairie View Dog Park by five acres early next year and plans to open a dog park in River Oaks County Park, west of Galesburg, by early 2014.

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GOOD WORKS UP FRONT

BY

REMIX: 2012.2013 SEASON

MARGARET DERITTER

Bikes and belonging

Open Roads teaches children bike repairs and social skills

Enso String Quartet + Boston Brass Friday, September 28, 2012 · 8:00 pm Dalton Center Recital Hall, WMU

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Tempest Trio Saturday, November 10, 2012 · 8:00 pm Dalton Center Recital Hall, WMU

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Tokyo String Quartet Saturday, February 23, 2013 · 8:00 pm Dalton Center Recital Hall, WMU

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Friday, March 15, 2013 · 8:00 pm Saturday, March 16, 2013 · 8:00 pm Dalton Center Multimedia Room, WMU

Tia Fuller Quartet Saturday, April 20, 2013 · 8:00 pm Dalton Center Recital Hall, WMU

A Quiet Revolution Friday, April 26, 2013 · 7:30 pm Wellspring Theater, Epic Center

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Zac Hernandez, 12, replaces a bicycle tire’s inner tube while his sister Giuliani, 8, adjusts a shifter during a weekly Fixapalooza event offered by the Open Roads Bike Program.

At right, Open Roads founder Ethan Alexander.

E

than Alexander, his brother and their father used only bicycles for transportation from the time Ethan was 2 until he turned 12. One day the cart he and his brother were riding in behind his father’s bike flipped over and they went flying.

You might think this would be scary, but Ethan loved it.

“It was really exciting. My father scooped us up and cleaned us up and apologized profusely and said we could go to the store the next day and have any toy we wanted.”

Alexander, now 40 and living with his wife and two kids in the Edison neighborhood, has taken this sense of adventure and his love of bicycles and turned them into a nonprofit that teaches kids how to fix bicycles and get along with others. The Open Roads Bike Program also teaches safety, so kids won’t go without helmets the way Ethan and his brother did that day they took a spill.

A behavior specialist for the Kalamazoo Regional Education Service Agency (KRESA), Alexander started Open Roads in 2009 after taking a Kalamazoo Community Foundation workshop. He had wanted to learn about grant writing and ended up being challenged to think about how he could put his passions and interests to good use in the community. Naturally, he thought of bikes. But he also thought about kids in his neighborhood riding around with broken pedals and flat tires, kids who would knock on his door looking for something to do.

Margaret DeRitter

Friday, December 14, 2012 · 7:30 pm Wellspring Theater, Epic Center

Plus, Alexander collected Schwinns, and the numerous bikes hanging from his basement ceiling were threatening to pull it down. “My wife said, ‘You need to do something with these bikes.” He put all three together, wrote a grant proposal and received Kalamazoo Community Foundation funding to start Open Roads.

The organization has four part-time employees: Alexander as executive director, plus a head mechanic, social-skills instructor and program facilitator. Kids who participate can get their bikes fixed for free or earn a free bicycle by demonstrating bike-repair and social skills. Open Roads relies heavily on bicycle donations and volunteers and earns money by fixing and selling bicycles. Funding also comes from grants, donations and organizations that sign up for programs.

Every Monday night from May to October, Open Roads hosts an event called Fixapalooza in the Egleston Avenue driveway of board vice president Eric Sweet and volunteer Kathleen Cleary. One night this July, a dozen or more kids and at least half a dozen adults showed up. Before the session began, a face familiar to many county residents pulled up on a fivespeed Huffy Savannah. County Administrator Peter Battani had ridden from his Westwood home to drop the bike off for a tune-up and new brakes. It was his first time at Open Roads. “This is so cool,” he said. “Look at all the energy around here.”

The session started with introductions. “Circle up, everyone,” commanded a feisty 9-year-old girl, Tristan Sigsbee, attending Fixapalooza for her third year.

Everyone gave their name and one thing they like about bikes. Then came a review of five key expectations, using the acronym ROADS: respect, own your actions, attitude counts, discipline and safety.

The event moved on to bike repairs and ended with cleanup and pizza. Along the way, Cleary helped keep chaos at bay. “I enjoy being the child wrangler,” she jokes.

Open Roads also offers multi-week programs tailored to the needs of organizations that ask for them. These do a more intensive job of teaching social skills than Fixapalooza, says Alexander.

But even the Monday sessions can make a big impact. Tristan, for example, “came in kind of angry and defiant and didn’t really want to play,” says Alexander.

“Now every time she comes she hugs us.”

When Tristan’s father died suddenly last year, she ran immediately to the Fixapalooza house. She had no shoes or socks on and was sobbing, Cleary says, but when she was done getting her story out, the first question she asked was, “Will there be Open Roads on Monday?” The stable environment was a place where Tristan knew people cared about her, says Cleary.

It was also a place where, over time, she gained a sense of competence and confidence. One day a mother came to Fixapalooza furious that “some white dudes” had fixed her son’s bike, and it was Tristan who turned the woman’s attitude around, says Sweet.

“Tristan was replacing a tire, and (the woman’s) questions went from ‘What are you doing inviting him into your garage?’ to ‘How do you do that?’ (She) was mesmerized by this little girl replacing a tire and wanted to learn how to do it herself,” remembers Sweet..

“It was really educational for us to watch. We realized in that moment what Open Roads was all about.” www.encorekalamazoo.com | 9

UPDATE UP FRONT

Magazine’s founder finds his encore passion MARGARET DERITTER

Encore is starting its 40th year, and we are celebrating by taking a second look at some of the memorable people who have been featured within this magazine’s pages — finding out where they are and what they are up to now.

The subject of our inaugural Update feature is none other than Phil Schubert, who founded this magazine in 1973.

Mike Lanka

BY

W

hen Phil Schubert sold Encore in 1996 and was preparing to hand off the magazine to new owners after 23 years, he compared the mixed feelings he was having to the experience of a father walking his daughter down the aisle.

Looking back now, he says it was even harder than he imagined to give up his high-profile position as editor and publisher. “Before I sold the magazine I was somebody.

After I sold it I was nobody. I lost all my connections,”

10 | ENCORE SEPTEMBER 2012

he says during an interview on his backyard deck in Oshtemo Township.

So how did he get through the transition? “First of all, I don’t drink like a lot of people do,” says Schubert, who turned 83 in July. “I go down three or four days to the wood shop when I’m in Arizona (where he and his wife, Marcia, live for six months of the year) or to my garage workshop here in Kalamazoo. I’m a woodworker. Right now I’m making seven one-of-a-kind tables.”

UP FRONT UPDATE

But countering an observation that he must have quite a talent for woodworking, he is quick with a joke: “I had a lousy talent for it for the first two years. All I made was cutting boards.”

Schubert can seem gruff at first, grilling you about your credentials, but then wins you over with his wit and rascally grin. He clearly enjoys recalling his days at Encore — with a little prompting from his wife, Marcia — like the time he snagged an interview with the late Dorothy Upjohn Dalton by suggesting that her grandson take the photographs and the times he had former Western Michigan University president Diether Haenicke dress up as Santa Claus and 12 prominent businessmen as the WMU football team for “Guess Who” center spreads.

Schubert likes to show off his handiwork, too. In one room of his house, he points to a wooden table, a lamp and a bowl he made. In his workshop, he caresses big slabs of wood ready to be turned into painstakingly polished

tables. “I never sell them. I always give them away,” he admits.

He took up woodworking after he and his wife purchased a home in the retirement community of Green Valley, south of Tucson, Ariz. “It’s a very quiet community that is culturally oriented,” Marcia says.

That’s a good match for a pair who like to attend concerts and other cultural events at Miller Auditorium (where Encore has been distributed since its inception). During the winter, the Schuberts take in talks by cultural icons like Ben Vereen and Shirley MacLaine at a University of Arizona auditorium (“It’s not near as nice as Miller,” says Phil, ever the Kalamazoo booster).

It’s been 28 years that the Schuberts have been going out on the town together. They met in 1984 at a group for singles and were married five years later (they each have four children and together have nine grandchildren). “It was three years before she let me kiss her,” Phil jokes. “Do you believe that? ...

Well, it’s a good line.”

Once they got together, Marcia began helping out with the magazine. “Getting ahold of her” was his greatest accomplishment at Encore, Phil says. “She took the load off my back.”

“I did the stuff you don’t like,” Marcia retorts, like typesetting and bookkeeping.

After Encore was sold to Rick and Penny Briscoe, the Schuberts continued to serve as travel editors for a time. Evidence of their travels hangs on a living-room wall: three banana-leaf wildlife paintings from Kenya.

In recent years they haven’t done as much international travel, but they enjoy spending time with family and, in the summer, tending the 39 acres they own here. A sign at the start of their long, forest-flanked driveway says, “Schuberts’ Finished Symphony.”

Encore, too, might be thought of as a Schubert symphony, with Phil as founding manager and maestro. And his creation, which is celebrating its 40th year, is still a source of great pride for him. “Yes, it’s my legacy,” he says.

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UP FRONT PHOTO CHALLENGE

Where is this?

Tell us for a chance to win a $25 gift certificate to Victorian Bakery!

Correctly identify the Southwest Michigan location featured in the photo below and 1) Go to www.encorekalamazoo.com, and click on the Photo Challenge tab at the top.

Fill out the form and submit your answer; or 2) E-mail your answer to editor@encorekalamazoo.com. Type “Where is this” in the subject line. Include your name, address and telephone number; or 3) Mail your answer to Encore, 350 S. Burdick St. Ste. 214, Kalamazoo, MI 49007; include your contact information.

One entry per person. The winner will be chosen in a random drawing of correct entries.

Entries must be received by Sept 15. 2012. The correct answer will be printed in our October issue and on Encore’s website beginning Oct. 1.

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SAVOR UP FRONT

BRIAN LAM

Brian Lam

BY

T

his summer’s heat could have spelled disaster for Michigan’s winemakers. And it almost did. But, according to one grape grower, weather combinations create a fine line between success and ruin.

“A few more days, and all of our wine grapes could have been lost,” says Joe Herman, owner of Karma Vista Vineyards and Winery, in Coloma, referring to the frost that set in this past spring after one of the warmest Marches in Michigan’s history.

With nine days reaching 80-plus degrees in March, farmers across Michigan saw buds break on some of their grapes a full month earlier than typically expected. In and of itself this would not have been too much of a problem, but a mid-April frost decimated the young, unstable buds.

Local juice grapes were hit hard. Herman says that the one-two punch of early heat and April frost ruined 90 percent of his juice grapes, 97 percent of his cherries and 100 percent of his peaches. It’s been a rough year for Herman, but an exciting wine grape harvest may be his saving grace.

14 | ENCORE SEPTEMBER 2012

“This is going to be a good year for our wine,” Herman says, pointing at the ripening pinot noir grapes in his vineyard. Grapes typically used for wine, like cabernet or pinot noir, don’t bud at the same rate as grapes indigenous to Michigan, such as concord or Niagara. The indigenous grapes, typically used for juice and jams, were the ones that budded early and were destroyed by frost.

Most wine grapes are of European ancestry, having been brought to America years ago for the purpose of making wine. Because American soil contains a bacteria that is lethal to non-native grapes, the European vines, known as Vitis vinifera, had to be grafted onto native rootstock. These hybrids typically bud later than native grapes. Had the March heat continued even a few days, though, growers like Herman feared that the vinifera vines would quickly have followed native vines in early bud-break. The early frost kept them dormant, however, until the weather warmed back up.

It was a near miss that will ultimately benefit the wine.

“This is going to be some of the best wine we’ll make,” says Rick Inacio, hospitality manager at St. Julian Winery, of Paw Paw, which buys its grapes from Karma Vista Vineyards. “Sun is a good thing, and it’s been a dry summer.”

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SEPTEMBER 2012 ENCORE | 15

SAVOR UP FRONT Little rain, lots of sun and record temperatures in June and July meant quality ripening time on the vine for Michigan’s wine grapes.

Long, hot days produce riper fruit, and riper fruit means more sugar, richer flavor and — oh, yes — more alcohol.

“You’d much rather have drought than a summer of torrential downpours,” Herman says. “The saying goes, ‘In a dry year, you lose sleep; in a wet year, you lose money.’”

Tony Peterson, owner of Contessa Wine Cellars, in Coloma, is equally optimistic about the 2012 vintage of Michigan wines.

“The wines from this year will be bigger, bolder and have good fruit content,” he says. Peterson grows merlot and pinot grigio, both European varietals, and, like Herman, he says he’d rather have to bring in a little water than wish for rain to stop. ”Basically, we’re fooling our vines into thinking they’re in California, and that’s fine by me,” says Herman.

Those of us who experienced brown lawns and withering gardens this summer may wonder how drought conditions could be a good thing for growing grapes. Crick Haltom, of Kalamazoo’s Lawton Ridge Winery, explains how it comes down to the age of the vine. “Older vines have deep roots,” he points out. “They’re deep enough to find water in some of the driest conditions.”

Vines typically aren’t capable of producing quality fruit in their first few years. By the time they are, their roots touch down into the water sources deep beneath the soil.

That’s not to say that these vines don’t struggle, but, surprisingly, many grape growers want their vines to struggle. Limited water makes roots dig deep into the nutrient-rich soil, desperately searching for water. It also means lower yields. In an act of self-preservation, the vines concentrate those nutrients and the little water they get to fewer grapes, instead of spreading it thinly to all grapes.

Because of this, says St. Julian’s Inacio, smaller yields usually result in more intensity of flavor. “I believe the fruit and sugars will be at their best with this vintage,” he says.

Herman, Peterson, Haltom and Inacio all note that 2010 was another hot year that resulted in great wine grapes. “2010 is some of the best you’re going to find,” says Peterson, “and 2012 could be even better.”

But the spring’s quick devastation of juice grapes, cherries and peaches serves as a reminder to Michigan growers that nothing is ever assured. “Mother Nature can play a lot of tricks on you,” Peterson says. “This should be a good year, but we won’t know for sure until the grapes are off the vines.”

And that should be any day now. Herman says his harvest will begin early this year and every grape will be off the vine by mid-October.

It will likely be a year or two before Michigan residents can sample wines produced from the harvest of this punishingly hot summer, especially the red varietals. But the 2012 vintage looks to be one of the few salvations for Michigan growers this year. Amazing, considering that this crop was just days away from obliteration.

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ENCORE FIRST GLANCE

See page 37 to learn more about this image and the photgrapher.

SEPTEMBER 2012 ENCORE | 17

Mike Lanka

UP FRONT ENCORE

18 | ENCORE SEPTEMBER 2012

ENCORE TRANSFORMATION CENTER

Transformations Spirituality Center provides many paths to the divine BY

T

ransformation. The word means “change.” Not like the instant poof! of a frog turning into a prince, but more like the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. That sort of gradual change is what Transformations Spirituality Center hopes to bring about in guests who come there seeking a deeper connection to the spiritual world.

“At the center of all of us is what’s been described as a holy longing,” says Transformations Director Michele Gossman. “It’s that need to be connected with something that’s beyond ourselves, and this is a place to come and explore that holy longing.”

The center is a ministry of the Congregation of St. Joseph and is a transformation in itself.

Its location on Gull Road was the campus of the former Nazareth College and is still home to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Nazareth.

After Nazareth College closed in the early 1990s, says Sister Gertrude Maurer, CSJ, many people didn’t realize the Sisters of St. Joseph were still there, so the sisters began looking for another way to serve the community. “We looked at what would be needed in Kalamazoo, and we thought a spirituality center would be very good,” she says. Several of the sisters were already providing relevant services, including counseling, liturgical work and spiritual direction, but they decided to team up and offer a collection of services under a single umbrella and utilize some unused space on the Nazareth campus.

The result was the Transformations Spirituality Center, which offers a wide variety of programs and facilities for focusing on different paths to spirituality. Since it opened in 1994, Transformations has helped thousands on their spiritual journeys, hosting visitors of all faiths from the region, across the country, and as far away as Australia.

To make spiritual exploration possible, Transformations provides an atmosphere that’s removed from the demands of daily life.

“I think we live in really chaotic times in many ways,” Gossman says. “The pace of change keeps accelerating, demands on us to think and act and move and do all those things is accelerating, and I don’t think people have much of a sense of spaciousness in their lives. People are hard-wired to be in relationship, to be in community, to be heard, and when we’re not, we suffer for it.

So this is a place where people can come, feel safe, and feel like they’re being heard.”

KIT ALMY

The former Nazareth College campus on Gull Road now houses the Transformations Spirituality Center, which offers walking trails and inspiring facilities on its 57 acres.

Dr. James Carow, a physician at Bronson Lakeview Family Care in Paw Paw, is a wholehearted proponent of Transformations, having participated in several events there since attending his first centering prayer retreat about four years ago. “It’s for anyone who wants to engage in the inner movement in life, in connecting with one’s deeper creative self, connecting with one’s own more genuine and compassionate self,” he says. “In my mind it’s sorely needed across the board in our culture, which has gotten to be so pressured and hectic and material in its orientation. We really need to renew and deepen the connection to the inner, the spiritual, the creative, in whatever ways we can.”

Carow found healing through silent contemplation in his first retreat, but he had a similarly powerful experience through a very different program that was anything but quiet. “Living From Within,” a series of four weekend retreats over the course of a year, involved much talking and sharing among participants. “It helped in understanding myself better and also deepening my awareness of the struggles other people have and their own sense of engagement in life. And so, as I worked through my own struggles at the time, it was very helpful and a healing process.”

www.encorekalamazoo.com | 19

TRANSFORMATION CENTER ENCORE

Mike Lanka

Transformations’ programs range from a few hours to retreats lasting several days and vary widely in subject matter and form.

Some are led by staff members and local spiritual facilitators, others by well-known speakers, including poet Mark Nepo, Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ (of Dead Man Walking fame), Jesuit peace activist John Dear, and leadership consultants like Peter Block and Meg Wheatley.

Sister Gertrude Maurer, CSJ, left, and Director Michele Gossman oversee the center’s wide variety of programs that highlight different paths to spirituality.

While many presentations use scripture reading or other Christian spiritual practices, Transformations’ programming is not limited to those practices, Gossman says. “Because people find the divine in many different ways, we try to offer programming that will appeal to folks in different ways,” Gossman says. The arts are one such way, with offerings including watercolor, photography,

20 | ENCORE SEPTEMBER 2012

poetry, storytelling, knitting and music. Other activities incorporate movement and exercise, while eco-spirituality explores relationships between the natural world, humanity and the divine.

Carow has attended spiritual literacy book discussions, men’s spirituality sessions and a retreat combining yoga with prayer and says the variety is a key aspect of Transformations. “There is a real diversity of programs and workshops retreats, all of which for me have been very positive and helpful in (my) spiritual life.”

But for some, receiving spiritual direction is a more purposeful approach toward spiritual growth. Trained spiritual directors, including laypeople and members of the Congregation of St. Joseph, offer this service both one-on-one and in groups.

Sister Gertrude explains that spiritual direction is not counseling or problem solving but listening and asking questions. “I was a teacher once, and I learned far more as a teacher than I ever did as a student, because when you have to put into words for someone else, you can’t just think your thoughts, you’ve got to find a language someone else might understand.”

She tells participants, “You are the teacher. You are trying to teach me who God is for you and what your experience of God is.” In the process, she says, “they get in touch with more who God is and where God is active in their day-by-day living. They notice it more, and they’re going to become more responsive to that.”

More and more people who are “non-churched” (not from a particular religious tradition) are seeking spiritual direction. “I think (it’s) because of that spiritual quest that people are recognizing, they’re saying, ‘There’s got to be more to life than this,’” says Sister Gertrude. Spiritual direction helps them discover what that is and to get in touch with the “transcendent reality beyond what our normal senses can touch.”

Spiritual directors also facilitate at-home retreats based on the exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, a collection of meditations, prayers and contemplative practices traditionally done in a 30-day silent retreat but adapted to the realities of modern life. Over many months, participants meet regularly with the retreat leader to explore ways to deepen their relationship with God. “Part of the gift of that kind of retreat is that integration of their prayer and their daily life,” says Sister Gertrude.

ENCORE TRANSFORMATION CENTER

As a conference center, Transformations hosts a range of groups and private events, many of which are not overtly spiritual, such as quilting retreats and writing workshops. At times, however, the reverence of the retreat center is rocked by less conventional programs such as jazz concerts. “There’s a lot of joyful activity, and some of it is kind of loud sometimes,” Gossman says.

The diversity of activities and guests is a point of pride for Transformations staff. On the same day, the center hosted a group of women from various churches on the north side of Kalamazoo, a group from an ashram and a rabbi teaching a class in Shabbat, Gossman says.

“A place like this brings people together, and when people come together in an atmosphere that’s less highly charged and less … judgmental, it opens (their) hearts to know people in a different way. And it builds bridges,” she says.

Hospitality is an important aspect of how the center achieves its mission to promote unity, reconciliation and harmony. Gossman quotes renowned priest and writer Henri Nouwen, who defined hospitality as “… the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter

and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people but to offer them space where change can take place … .”

At Transformations such space takes many forms, from chapels and large meeting rooms to small prayer or study rooms, as well as overnight guest rooms. In addition to activities for groups, the facilities are available for private retreats, where individuals can reflect, read, commune with nature or do whatever else they choose. With 57 acres of forests and wetlands managed by the Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy, the center offers retreatants and day visitors the opportunity to wander nature trails or walk a “reconciliation” labyrinth.

“A labyrinth is not a maze,” Gossman says. “It has one path in and one path out, but it winds, and in that way it’s kind of a metaphor for the spiritual journey because you’re never on a straight path. And when you’re farthest away, sometimes you’re closer than you think. And when you think you’re really close, sometimes you may not quite be there.” Because it is based on the concept of walking in someone else’s shoes, the reconciliation labyrinth has two entry points to choose from, so that when you get to the center, “you can decide to retrace your own footsteps or go back in the other person’s,” Gossman explains.

For many, the spiritual journey, or transformation, begins on arrival at the retreat center. One visitor put it this way: “When I walk into Transformations, my whole being just goes ‘whoosh,’ and I feel held, relaxed, knowing I’m entering a very safe, holy place.”

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BY

BRIAN LAM

Roots

RunDeep NFL Star keeps close to home

A

month after his team won Super Bowl XLV last year, Green Bay Packers wide receiver Greg Jennings stood outside the doors of Western Michigan University’s University Arena wearing his championship ring. On the other side of the double doors were lines of cheerleaders, a marching band, thousands of Kalamazoo residents wearing WMU Bronco and Green Bay Packer jerseys and a giant stage, on which stood many of Kalamazoo’s most prominent leaders.

It is a situation that is becoming more and more common for Jennings, but not one he naturally relishes. “I’m more reserved. I don’t like the spotlight,” he admits. “Don’t even throw me a birthday party.”

But when Jennings, a Kalamazoo native, initially voiced his reservations about a Super Bowl homecoming party to be held in his honor, family, friends and community members responded the same way: “This isn’t just about you.” And the man who wholeheartedly embraces the saying “To whom much is given much is required” knew they were right.

So the arena doors swung open, the band fired up, pom-poms shook, fans stood and cheered, and Jennings ran in waving and smiling to the thousands there to say, “Welcome home.”

“It was very humbling,” he says. “It was one of those moments where you felt so appreciated. Mayor (Bobby) Hopewell did a great job putting it all together, and it was truly a great experience.”

While being the guest of honor at a homecoming celebration may

22 | ENCORE SEPTEMBER 2012

not seem like much of an effort, it is just a part of a more concerted undertaking that Jennings and his wife, Nicole, make to stay connected and give back to the community in which they were both raised. During football’s off-season, it’s not uncommon to spot Jennings around Kalamazoo doing something community-oriented, whether building a Habitat for Humanity house, singing onstage at Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra’s Motown performance, raising money for Kalamazoo youth through his Greg Jennings Foundation or running a football camp for hundreds of local young athletes.

Growing up just one mile from University Arena, on Kalamazoo’s Northside, did a young Greg Jennings ever imagine he would one day attend a Super Bowl homecoming celebration thrown in his honor in that very arena? Probably not.

“Football wasn’t even my sport,” Jennings admits. When Jennings was 11 years old, his parents, Greg Sr. and Gwen, moved their family from Harding Place to a house next to the Douglass Community Center, on West Paterson.

“I was playing basketball at the Douglass [Center] every day,” he recalls. “At that time, I definitely saw basketball as my stronger sport. My love for basketball was a lot

stronger and deeper than I could have ever imagined football being and becoming.”

It wasn’t all basketball at the Douglass Center, however. The community center became one of Jennings’ character-defining influences. Its after-school programs and activities and directors kept him and his three siblings away from the negative distractions Jennings saw others get caught up in. “I got my first real job as a result of the Douglass,” the NFL Pro-Bowler remembers.

“I was painting houses on the Northside.”

Those positive influences were also found at home; the best role models for the person he would become were his parents. “To this day, my siblings and I have never once heard them argue. Not once,” he says. “They set a great example on a day-to-day basis on how to live a happy life. They dedicated themselves both to their faith and their family.”

Seven years into his own marriage and the father of three, Jennings draws heavily on Greg Sr.’s example of working hard to be a good father and husband.

The elder Jennings, a pastor at Progressive Deliverance Ministries, has been in the ministry for 25 years, something his son is now grateful for but at one time rebelled against. “I was born and raised in the church. When I was younger, I thought I would detach myself from what my dad did, as kids tend to do, but that didn’t really work out.”

Jennings laughs about how much he desired to be his own man, only to come full circle later in life and want to be like his dad, both in terms of values and vocation.

“There’s no question that my post-NFL career will involve the ministry,” he says.

The second of four children, Jennings maintains that older sister Valyncia and younger sister and brother Ebony and Cortney were his first real team. “We’ve always stuck together, and we’ve always got each other’s back,” he says. “Whatever our different pursuits may be, we’re all in harmony as far as support of the individual.”

Mike Lanka

“I definitely saw basketball as my stronger sport. My love for basketball was a lot stronger and deeper than I could have ever imagined football being and becoming.” — Greg Jennings

SEPTEMBER 2012 ENCORE | 23

Even as youths, Jennings says, the siblings were as much friends as family. “I remember when I first started playing basketball, my older sister would spend a lot of time helping me get better. She was much better than me back then. I don’t think I was able to beat her until about seventh grade.”

And that’s saying something, because it became apparent at a young age that Jennings had a gift. “From my first year in organized basketball, I was always the guy on the court,” he remembers. In fifth grade, he was placed in the sixth-grade league and established himself as one of that league’s stronger players.

Despite putting on his first football pads around the same time, Jennings’ love for basketball continued to grow. Between school and recreational leagues, he found himself constantly on the court until an injury in junior high sidelined him for a season.

After some forced time away from athletics, Jennings entered Kalamazoo Central High School at full strength.

Both his football and basketball coaches instantly recognized his talent. While it was obvious to both that post-high-school athletic opportunities would be available to Jennings, they never quite got on the same page about which collegiate career Jennings should be groomed for.

“Neither my basketball nor football coaches really had a fine understanding of which sport I wanted to play.

That probably hurt me a little as far as being recruited for college,” he says.

As his high school career was wrapping up, Jennings himself was still torn on which sport to pursue. Despite setting the school scoring record in basketball with 50 points against then No. 1 Benton Harbor, Jennings’ gridiron successes had him thinking seriously about a football career. Jennings reached out to his cousin Ian Gold, who had also been a multi-sport athlete in high school.

Gold chose football, parlaying his years as a linebacker for the University of Michigan into a successful NFL career with the Denver Broncos and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

“He didn’t try to discourage me from basketball,” Jennings recalls. “But he put it pretty simply: If I was going to have a chance to go pro in a sport, I’d have to compete for a 12-man roster in basketball versus a 53man roster in football. And there’s never exactly been a high demand for 6-foot point guards in the NBA.” Jennings attracted the attention of many top-notch football programs, initially committing verbally to U of M. Just before high school graduation, however, there was some confusion about the availability of a scholarship at U of M. WMU did promise a scholarship so Jennings became a Bronco.

“I grew up in a family that was rooted and grounded by someone who demonstrated love for her community.”— Nicole Jennings “At first, I hated the thought of being home. I wanted ed to be my own person. I was worried it was just going ng to be like extended high school,” he says. “But that hat turned out not to be the case at all. Campus wass a city within a city. I felt like I could still really find out who Greg Jennings was.”

A broken bone in his ankle red-shirted Jennings ngs his freshman year, but it gave him a chancee to mature. He focused on his studies and on rehabilitating ating his ankle, while learning a lot about independence ence and responsibility.

Jennings was back in action his sophomore year.

“Playing in my hometown ended up being the best thing for me,” he says. “It relaxed me. I felt like I was playing a backyard game, and I always had friends and family at my games.”

There was one friend Jennings always looked for in the stands: Nicole Lindsey. Lindsey had been a part of Jennings’ life since they were children, but the two officially became an item after high school. “We were crazy for each other long before that,” he admits with a big smile. “She She had a boyfriend and I had a girlfriend, but it didn’t matter. Throughout school, it was always ‘Greg and Nicole.’ We had been writing each other little love notes since eighth grade. There was always something special there.”

After a year at Michigan State University, Lindsey sey transferred to WMU to be closer to her grandmother, whom she affectionately calls “Granny” — and to Jennings. As Jennings’ athletic accolades began to mount at WMU, life ife for the Kalamazoo couple became a whirlwind. “We gott married in 2005, graduated in 2006, moved in 2006 and had our first child in 2006. I instantly became a very responsible adult,”” she says.

The Green Bay Packers drafted Jennings in 2006, 06, which he describes as an ideal situation. “I’m a small-city guy,” y,” he says. “It was an easy transition for us because we came from om a similarly sized city. There are a lot of parallels you can draw from om both cities.”

Jennings says his family loves Green Bay but is glad ad to get away in the off-season. Green Bay has a population of just st over 100,000, and having a storied NFL franchise in a town about out the size of Kalamazoo has a significant impact. The team is intrinsically rinsically tied to the community’s identity.

“The whole town is eenthralled and engulfed in what the Packers are doing,” Jenn Jennings says. “The Packers’ ‘G’ is everywhere. Every time my ddaughters see the ‘G,’ they yell, ‘Daddy, touchdown!’ Green Bay is great, but you have to get away from that for a lilittle while. That, and the cold. Green Bay winters are cold ... bitter cold.”

Despite the ability to live anywhere in the off-season, Greg and Nicole chose to take up residence in Kalamazoo.

Greg’s siblings and hi his parents are here, and it’s imperative that Nicole be ne near her “Granny” Anna Whitten.

For Nicole, Granny is more than a grandmother; she’s a “guardian angel.” Nicole’s N mother gave birth to her as a teen, and the two ooften found themselves in homeless shelters. Through hher earliest years, Nicole knew the Kalamazoo Gospel Mission M as home. When Nicole was 4, Granny took her an and her mother in, assuming the job of being a role model aand guardian for her granddaughter.

Nicole says Granny exemp exemplified love and strong values Chuck Comer as w well as a commitment to comm community. Whitten, known in the ccommunity for charitable works works, is a Kalamazoo Valley Comm Community College board trustee and tthe namesake of a KVCC Arcadia Commons campus building.

“I grew up in a family that was rooted and grounded by someone who ddemonstrated love for her comm community,” Nicole says. “Following her exa example, I make it my responsibility to directly impact not just those cclosest losest to me, but also those in my co community.”

As a child growing up on the Northside (large photo), Jennings learned the importance of family, a lesson which he has carried into his career and his family life as a father of three daughters.

www.encorekalamazoo.com | 25

Mike Lanka

Jennings speaks to attendees at one of the sports camps his foundation hosts each summer in Kalamazoo.

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26 | ENCORE SEPTEMBER 2012

Nicole and Greg often discussed ways to give back to their hometown. With the financial freedom that came with Jennings’ NFL contract, it became a matter of determining how to have the most impact.

In 2008, they started the Greg Jennings Foundation, with the motto “To whom much is given much is required,” a variation of a verse from the Bible, Luke 12:48.

“I honestly can’t take credit for the idea of the Jennings Foundation,” Greg admits.

“My wife was the driving force behind it.

She envisioned being very involved in the community here.”

The foundation’s initial focus was underprivileged youth, but the Kalamazoo Promise allowed the organization to include an educational focus. Among the foundation’s initiatives are homes built through Habitat for Humanity and an annual football camp and a charity golf fundraiser, which bring NFL stars to town to raise money for youth programs around Southwest Michigan.

“We listen to what the needs are in the community, and then we partner with existing organizations to help them get from point A to point B,” Greg explains.

Mayor Hopewell says that Jennings’ commitment to Kalamazoo will deďŹ nitely affect future generations of Kalamazoo youth. “Greg’s involvement goes beyond being a professional athlete,â€? Hopewell says. “His story connects to young people that are trying to ďŹ nd their way, not just those with aspirations of being a football player, but those who see him as a leader and positive role model..â€?

Greg and Nicole seek ways to be visible in the community. This past summer, Nicole told attendees at a Southwest Michigan First Catalyst event what being part of the Kalamazoo community means to her. Greg was the keynote speaker at the Big Brothers/ Big Sisters annual fundraiser in 2010. “It’s one thing to give, but I think it’s important to be active in the community as well,� Jennings says. “It makes us feel more connected, and I think our efforts have more impact when we’re connected.�

In their private time, Nicole and Greg try to keep up with their daughters: Amya, 5, Alea, 3, and Ayva, 20 months. They are expecting a fourth child next month. With their children, the foundation and Greg’s NFL career, the couple ďŹ nds date night an important part of their lives. “We always make sure that neither of us gets bored with one another and that we always are doing things to pique the each other’s interest,â€? Jennings says.

Between the family ties and the community involvement, the pastor’s son says Southwest Michigan will always be home. He admits, however, there might be a few pit stops along the way. “I may engage in a little bit of acting,� says the greatest wide receiver ever to appear on Criminal Minds. “A limited acting career,� he adds, chuckling about his cameo on the CBS drama.

For the kid who spent his days shooting hoops down at the Douglass Center, life has been a wild ride — a ride that his hometown has enthusiastically shared. And despite his natural aversion to the limelight, Jennings knows that sharing his success with Kalamazoo is important.

But still, don’t throw him a birthday party.

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ARTS ENCORE

‘A Michigan treasure’ O BY

MARGARET DERITTER

Acclaimed poet Philip Levine returns to Kalamazoo and WMU for reading

n the heels of a year as U.S. poet laureate, Philip Levine is coming home to his native state to give a reading this month at Western Michigan University and New Issues Press editor Bill Olsen, for one, is thrilled.

“He’s always been a Michigan treasure,” says Olsen, a poet and WMU professor.

Levine, now 84, grew up in Detroit and formed his industrial, working-class sensibilities there. His 1972 poetry book They Feed They Lion (1972) was set almost entirely in Detroit after the riots of 1967.

With more than 20 books of poetry and both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize, Levine has become a national treasure, too. So much so, that he was named U.S. poet laureate in 2011, a one-year post that seeks to elevate everyday Americans’ awareness of poetry.

“He is maybe more influential than any poet in his generation,” says Olsen.

Yet, during his time as poet laureate, when Levine received an invitation to read at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., he predicted to his wife, “I’ll have 12 former secretaries come to hear me, and they’ll have the reading in a room the size of a closet.”

Levine got a great surprise that day. The reading was held in a packed auditorium, and he was introduced by the union president. “He’s this powerful-looking guy,” says Levine, “and he gets up there and introduces me and reads poems of mine that struck him. ... Afterwards, I signed books people had brought from home. ... They’d been reading me for years.”

Levine says he could hardly imagine this level of interest in his poetry. Yet, the subject matter of many of his poems — work — was a natural for this group. One of Olsen’s favorite Levine poems, “You Can Have It,” describes Levine and his twin brother working opposite factory shifts in 1948. The poem begins:

“My brother comes home from work and climbs the stairs to our room.

I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop one by one.

You can have it, he says.”

“It’s an astonishing poem,” says Olsen. “It takes something like rage and even exhaustion and animates and makes shape out of it and gives it an affirmative feel.”

The emphasis on work in Levine’s poetry also appealed to the staff of OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), for whom Levine also read as poet laureate.

“They were happy to see poetry dealing with their world,” he says.

But the laureate experience that made perhaps the deepest impression on Levine was meeting about 15 young poets from a writing group in Harlem. “It’s a real rainbow coalition — Hispanic kids, black kids, Asian kids, white kids — (and they) proceed to ask me these really difficult questions. They’ve read my work, and they really understand it. ... One boy asked, ‘Why did you move in time from here to here in this poem? There’s no transition, but I knew it moved from one time to another. How did you do that?’ These kids had pored over these poems. ... It was just a knockout of an experience.”

Although as laureate Levine loved talking with poetry lovers across the U.S., he is happy to be writing again since the post ended in May. “The poet laureateship stopped me cold. (Former U.S. poet laureate) Charlie Simic told me the same thing happened to him. Suddenly I had this busy schedule. But for June, July, August, I’ve had nothing on my schedule. I’ve been writing both poetry and essays.” [continued on page 4]

28 | ENCORE SEPTEMBER 2012

© Matt Valentine

ENCORE UP FRONT

SEPTEMBER 2012 ENCORE | 29

ARTS ENCORE down. I carried them in my head. I had a twin brother, and if There’s a danger in getting away from writing for too he’d ever seen them I would have been tortured.” long, says Levine, the same danger that comes with age: By the time Levine was 17, he knew it was poetry he was the impulse to imitate one’s earlier work. So how does trying to create. He often wrote about nature, in keeping he avoid it? “The problem is I don’t. Too often I don’t. with poets he read in school. But then a teacher introduced ... When I went back to writing in June, I went back to him to the poems of Wilfred Owen, who wrote about the familiar territory. I wrote a couple of imitations of my realities of war. “Suddenly to turn your attention to someone earlier work. Now I’m not doing that. I threw those away.” like Wilfred Owen, and you’re facing the draft and World War Levine isn’t the only one who notices when he repeats II is on — my writing completely changed.” himself. “My wife is very candid. She’ll say, ‘I think when Levine’s next big discovery was the poetry of T.S. Eliot, you did this the first time it was better.’ But she has to be with its urban settings. Levine then started reading everything very tactful because she lives with me,” he says, laughing. he could get his hands on and “stopped using that high Levine has been married to his second wife Frances rhetorical language,” realizing he could use “the language for 58 years and credits her with nurturing his creative of daily living.” life. “I found someone who respected that I really While attending Wayne University (now Wayne State wanted to be a poet, ... and she hung with me. I look at University), Levine met other aspiring poets. the mistakes my friends have made Most were fellow students; three were World and I see how I was blessed.”

When Levine was invited to War II veterans.

The two spend part of the year in Michigan State in his early In his final appearance as U.S. poet laureate New York City, where their three sons 40s, a woman mentioned on May 3 at the Library of Congress, Levine live, and the rest in Fresno, Calif., gave a speech about these long-ago writers where Levine taught at California his poem “The Losers” and who encouraged him with their intelligence, State, Fresno, for more than 30 years. asked why he described Levine says he has had a lot of himself that way. “I laughed. dedication and soulfulness. It was titled “My Lost Poets.” “It was about their vanishing as happiness and a lot of luck, with I no longer looked at myself poets,” he says, “about how easy it is to be both poetry and his personal life. But that way. ... But any writer defeated in a country that isn’t really looking until about the age of 40, he says, can think of himself that for poetry.” he thought of himself as a loser. way if nobody knows He intends to develop the speech into an Then he got reviews. He won prizes. essay, so when he’s in Detroit this month, before He began to meet famous poets like you’re there.” coming to Kalamazoo, he plans to look for James Wright, Galway Kinnell and works by his old friends. “The only place they Allen Ginsberg. ever published was in the college magazine,” he says.

When he was invited to Michigan State in his early Levine, of course, found a much broader audience for his 40s, a woman mentioned his poem “The Losers” and work. Fifty-nine years after his first book, he’s still writing asked why he described himself that way. “I laughed. I no poems he likes, though he says he did his best work from longer looked at myself that way. ... But any writer can age 45 to 65. “I was more imaginative, more daring, more think of himself that way if nobody knows you’re there.” reckless in my earlier work. But I’m just happy to be writing.

Levine first sensed he wanted to write poetry at age ... Who knows? Maybe I’ll hit some vein of wisdom and power 14, but he didn’t think of it as poetry then. “I don’t know the likes of which I’ve never seen.” where it came from. I discovered within me a voice I Levine takes heart thinking about another writer, Thomas didn’t know existed. It was a way of talking. They didn’t Hardy, who was 87 when he finished his last book and died a sound like any poems I’d ever read.” month before it was published. That book “has been a great But his work did echo radio preachers he heard in inspiration to me for about 30 years. I say to myself, ‘Look his home. “My mother would listen to Father Coughlin, what this old guy did.’” an American Nazi, and I would say, ‘Ma, why you listening to him? He hates us.’ I didn’t pay much attention to his message, but his language was thrilling, and he had a marvelous voice. Then I looked for other preachPhilip Levine Reading ers on the radio. ... They had this rhetorical style. I loved 8 p.m. Sept. 28, Brown Auditorium, Room 2000, their language ... the level of diction. I started composing Schneider Hall, WMU, followed by book signing and reception. these things that imitated that. ... But I never wrote these

30 | ENCORE SEPTEMBER 2012

ENCORE ARTS

Mary Whalen

New Issues Press has longtime link with Levine MARGARET DERITTER

Herb Scott, top left, a student of Philip Levine’s in the ’60s, forged a link between Levine and New Issues Press, which Scott founded. That link still exists between the poet and the press, now run by editor Bill Olsen, at left.

New Issues Press

BY

The local organization bringing Philip Levine to town — New Issues Press — has ties to the acclaimed poet that originated with its founder.

The late Herb Scott, who founded the Western Michigan University press in 1996, was a student of Levine’s in the mid-‘60s at California State University, Fresno. “He was one of my terrific students,” says Levine. “When I first encountered him, he wanted to be a fiction writer, but he was a much better poet.”

The two men became friends, and years later Scott asked Levine to select the winner of the second New Issues Poetry Prize. Levine chose poet Malena Mörling’s Ocean Avenue, and her book was published in 1999. “It’s a really good book, and it continues to be read,” says New Issues’ current editor, Bill Olsen.

Mörling is one of dozens of writers, local and otherwise, whom New Issues has published over the years. It now publishes six books of poetry each year and awards two poetry prizes of $2,000 each: the New Issues Poetry Prize for a first book of poems and the Green Rose Prize for a previously published poet. It also publishes the winner of the annual AWP Prize for the Novel, awarded by the Association of Writers & Writing Programs.

New Issues also sponsors a public reading every spring as part of WMU’s Gwen Frostic Reading Series.

“We’ve worked very hard to be part of the community,” says Olsen, “and in line with that gratitude and to celebrate outstanding poetry we’re bringing in Phil Levine. Phil is obviously a central figure in modern poetry. He’s a smart guy, an unpretentious guy, and he’s written some of the best books in the country.”

The last time Levine was here was about 15 years ago, for WMU’s now-defunct Third Coast Literary Conference. On Sept. 28th, Levine will read and sign books, and there will be a reception for him.

“We’re hoping to pack the house,” says Olsen.

www.encorekalamazoo.com | 31

ARTS ENCORE

Kim Maguire-Gualtieri, left, works on a drawing of a canine friend. Below is an image from the Elliott Erwitt exhibit Dog Dogs at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.

BY

MARGARET DERITTER

>f`e^ kf k_\ [f^j Two artists capture the “somebody” inside canines

K

im Maguire-Gualtieri never thought she’d be a “dog person.”

But then she adopted a greyhound when she was 40 and living in San Francisco, and soon dogs became the primary subject of her art.

“Greyhounds are every sculptor’s dream. You can see all their muscles and ribs, and they’re so graceful,” she says at her Park Trades Center studio, in downtown Kalamazoo.

Maguire-Gualtieri, a native of England who is now 54 and living in Marshall with her husband and three dogs, is best known

32 | ENCORE SEPTEMBER 2012

in West Michigan for her life-size drawings and plaster sculptures of dogs. Her most recent work is featured this month at Midtown Gallery, on the Kalamazoo Mall. An Art Hop reception is planned for opening night, Sept. 7, and a $4,500 grant from the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo is helping to fund the show.

“I think her dogs are fantastic,” says Midtown Gallery owner Terry Nihart. “The sensitivity she has with these creatures is pretty amazing.”

Earlier this year one of her sculptures, Studio Dog Sleeping, took Second Prize and the People’s Choice Award in the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts’ West Michigan Area Show. The same piece has been accepted into this year’s Art Prize exhibition, which begins Sept. 19 in Grand Rapids. Maguire-Gualtieri has shown her work at Art Prize every year since the contest began in 2009.

At her studio, the youngest of her dogs, a yellow Lab named Henry, hangs out with her and serves as a model. “I’m an artist who tends to do what’s in front of my face, what I find visually interesting,” she says. But she also feels a deep connection with animals that drives her work. “All I want is a sense of being (to come through). I don’t want them to be cute. Oh, God, please don’t let my dogs be cute.”

There seems to be no danger of that. The dogs in her work, lying asleep in various positions or staring at the viewer, surrounded by space, are bony and expressive and real. In this quiet, subtle way, Maguire-Gualtieri aims to raise awareness of animal rights. “We have such a hard time as a species thinking anybody else is somebody,” she says. “We’re either killing animals or dressing them up as babies. It’s so hard for us to have a mature view of animals.” (continued on page 38)

ENCORE ARTS

BY

MARGARET DERITTER

:i\Xk`e^ K_\ Hl`\k GcXZ\ New book by Sarah Stewart and David Small explores alienation, magic

A

uthor Sarah Stewart handed her business card to chef Abby Aceves’ sister one day, and now, about 15 years and a string of events later, a children’s book has been born from the ensuing friendship of Stewart and Aceves.

The Quiet Place is the sixth joint effort by the well-known Mendon author and her Caldecottwinning husband, illustrator David Small. The book is dedicated to Aceves and was inspired by her childhood immigration from a beautiful mountain village in central Mexico to the smog-laden city of Gary, Ind., in the 1950s.

It tells the story of a girl named Isabel whose family leaves Mexico in 1957 to start a new life in the U.S. Isabel writes letters to her Aunt Lupita and tells her how she used a refrigerator box to build a quiet place where she could read and feel safe amid all the new words, people and places in her life.

In Aceves’ life, the man who helped her father find a job in the U.S. would often check on the family and always brought boxes of gifts, says Stewart, and Abby and her brother, a year older, would make “these magical places” with these boxes.

“All of my books have a thread that they’ve been inspired by someone I know,” says Stewart. “It’s a moment in their lives. It hits a chord with me.” Stewart takes that moment and weaves a tale all her own.

The Quiet Place is the newest children’s book created by author Sarah Stewart and illustrator David Small.

And when she’s done, she gives it to her husband, the only person she’ll have illustrate her books, to see if it strikes a chord with him.

This one certainly did. Stewart and Small have spent winters in central Mexico for 17 years, so the image of a Mexican mountain village was easy for Small to conjure. And, as his graphic novel Stitches reveals, he is all too familiar with childhood feelings of alienation.

“It’s sometimes difficult to find myself in a story,” says Small, “but with this book I knew the characters and the settings so well, and I could easily relate to a child living a peripheral life.” (continued on page 39)

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POETRY ENCORE

SWEETWATER’S DONUT MILL (SPRINKLE ROAD, KALAMAZOO, MICHIGAN) Remember that coupon you pressed into my hand?

Good for free dozen donut holes! it said.

Almost a year to the day your lost offering fluttered down from the kitchen cabinet, crumpled but still here.

We miss your monthly invitations for lunch.

Ice water in jelly glasses, a tidy side salad, homemade dinner rolls, hearty main course, dessert with coffee.

Don’t clean up, you’d chide.

It will give me something to do once you are gone.

Over donut holes, my coffee, his chocolate milk, my son toasts you.

His chocolate and sugarrimmed lips pronounce: These donuts are sooo good they must grow them here.

I laugh for all of us, at the image unfurling behind Sweetwater’s parking lot — a thick cord of donut holes rising up clinging to swollen stems like glazed Brussels sprouts powdered by God’s own hand.

— Jennifer Clark

Jennifer Clark is director of community relations for Communities In Schools of Kalamazoo. Her first book of poems, Necessary Clearings, will be published by Shabda Press in 2014. Raven Chronicles, Main Street Rag, Structo and failbetter are a few of the journals where her work has appeared. Clark has poetry forthcoming in Thema Literary Journal and you are here: the journal of creative geography of the University of Arizona.

34 | ENCORE SEPTEMBER 2012

EPILOGUE The owl hides high, waiting for an inattentive moment.

The evidence is little piles of bones, sometimes down.

Out of sight, the furthest planet observes the owl.

They are sisters, once removed, circles and private.

These years are the deer I’m tracking through the Lower Peninsula for answers.

From a distance, the countryside is flamboyant with roses and cabbage leaves like the Eden we remember.

Where we come from is no longer on the map, but blindfold the owl, the planet, me: we still know the way.

— Elizabeth Kerlikowske Elizabeth Kerlikowske teaches at Kellogg Community College in Battle Creek and is president of the Kalamazoo group Friends of Poetry. She has eaten all summer from her friend’s farm share (Harvest of Joy) and her own garden.

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, 350 S. Burdick St, Suite 214, Kalamazoo, MI, 49007.

ENCORE EVENTS

P ERFORMING A RTS Plays Fuddy Mears — A comedy about Claire, who suffers from aphasia, an inability to remember the past, 8 p.m. Sept. 27, 28, 29, Oct. 4, 5, 6; 2 p.m. Oct. 7, York Arena Theatre, WMU. 387-6222.

Musicals & Opera Voices from the Civil War — A New Vic original musical retrospective on the writings and songs of the Civil War era, 8:30 p.m.

Sept. 7, 8, 14, 15, 21, 22, New Vic Theater, 134 E. Vine St. 381-3328.

Legally Blonde — Based on the hit movie, this feel-good musical comedy travels from Beverly Hills to Harvard, 8 p.m. Sept. 28, 29, Oct. 5, 6, 12, 13; 7:30 p.m. Oct. 4; 2 p.m.

Oct. 7 & 14, Civic Auditorium, 329 S. Park St. 343-1313.

Symphony Lang Lang — The Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra kicks off its season with a special concert featuring acclaimed pianist Lang Lang, playing two Mozart concertos, 8 p.m. Sept. 19, Miller Auditorium, WMU. 349-7759.

Chamber, Jazz, Orchestra & Bands Gilmore Rising Stars Recital Series — Korean pianist HJ Lim will perform Rachmaninoff and Beethoven, 4 p.m. Sept. 9, Wellspring Theatre, 359 S. Kalamazoo Mall. 342-1166.

Dalton Wed@7:30 — A series of WMU School of Music concerts.

Iktus Percussion Quartet, Sept. 12; Western Jazz Quartet, Sept. 19; Music of COBS, Sept. 26. All concerts at 7:30 p.m., Dalton Center Recital Hall, WMU. 387-2300.

Gilmore Rising Stars Recital Series — Signed to a recording contract at 15, Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki, now 17, will perform pieces by Bach Chopin and more, 4 p.m.

Sept. 23, Wellspring Theatre, 359 S. Kalamazoo Mall. 342-1166.

Ensõ String Quartet + Boston Brass — These two wonderful ensembles join forces to present Notes from the Balcony, a retelling of Romeo and Juliet throughout history. 8 p.m.

Sept. 28, Dalton Center Recital Hall, WMU. 382-7774.

Miscellaneous Harvest Fest — A celebration of local food, farming and sustainable living with keynote speaker Malik Yakini from the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, as well as music, food, demonstrations and family activities, 11:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m. Sept. 16, Tillers International, 10515 East OP Ave., Scotts. www. fairfoodmatters.org/harvestfest.

Extroverted Olive Oil — Crawlspace Eviction, Kalamazoo’s own improv troupe, presents its season-opening show. 8 p.m.

Sept. 14 & 15, Farmers Alley Theatre, 221 Farmers Alley. 343-2727.

V ISUAL A RTS Richmond Center for Visual Arts, WMU Nayda Collazo-Llorens: An Exercise in Numbness and Other Tales — Drawings, prints, video and installation works, Sept. 6-Oct. 5, Albertine Monroe-Brown Gallery.

Paul Nehring: New Works — An exhibition of works by this painter, sculptor, assembly artist and WMU faculty member, Sept. 6-Oct. 5, Rose Netzorg & James Wilfrid Kerr Permanent Collection Gallery.

Kalamazoo Institute of Arts Elliott Erwitt: Dog Dogs — Photos that convey the unconditional love and companionship that dogs share with their human families, through Sept. 23.

Expressions: International Glass Invitational — Contemporary glass from around the world, through Nov. 4.

Asian Art from the Collection of Dr. Paul and Esther Wang — Asian painting, prints and sculpture, through Dec. 9.

ARTbreak — Free presentations on art-related topics. West Michigan Glass Art Center Demonstration, Sept. 11; Dominick Labino: The Man and His Art, Sept. 18; Josh Simpson: Where Earth Meets Sky, Sept. 25.

Bring a lunch to these noon sessions.

Miscellaneous Saniwax Gallery — In Connection With … exhibit, featuring works by Connections Clubhouse from the Earth School Arts members and Park Trades Center artists who have mentored them, through September, with Art Hop opening 5–9 p.m.

Sept. 7. 345-3311.

www.encorekalamazoo.com | 35

EVENTS ENCORE Midtown Gallery — Sculpture and drawings by Kim-Maguire Gualtieri; ceramics by Duane Bastian, Sept. 7-29, with Art Hop opening 5-8 p.m. Sept. 7. 372-0134.

Art Hop — View the works of local artists at venues and galleries in downtown Kalamazoo, 5-9 p.m.

Sept. 7.

Literary Venues Kalamazoo Public Library Brew Your Own Beer — Kalamazoo Libation Organization of Brewers demonstrates the process of home-brewing beer, 6–7 p.m.

Sept. 11, Oshtemo branch.

Urban Fiction — The street lit discussion group will talk about The Supreme Clientele by Ashley and JaQuavis, 6 p.m. Sept. 25, Powell branch.

Portage District Library Memoir Writing with Colleen Peters — Series of eight workshops for adults, 6:30 p.m. Wednesdays, Sept. 5-Oct. 24. No registration required; bring notebooks and pens.

Museums Kalamazoo Valley Museum Uneasy Years: Michigan Jewry During Depression and War — This exhibit explores the dilemmas and successes of Michigan Jews during the 1930s and 1940s, through Sept. 23.

Detroit Breakdown — Reading and book signing by D.E. Johnson, author of The Detroit Electric Scheme, a historical novel published in 2010, 6:30 p.m. Sept. 4.

Elden Kelly — This guitarist, singer and songwriter blends jazz and neo-classicism with Middle Eastern inuences, 7–9 p.m. Sept. 19, Central library.

A Mind Like This — Reading and book signing by Susan Blackwell Ramsey, author of poetry collection A Mind Like This, 6:30 p.m. Sept. 12.

Things of History — A peek at hidden treasures and oddities in the museum’s collection, 1:30 p.m., Sept. 23, Mary Jane Stryker Theater.

Air Zoo The Best Day Ever with the Radio Disney AM 910 Crew — Music, games and prizes associated with the Disney Channel show, Phineas and Ferb., noon-3 p.m. Sept. 8.

Great Glassby: Works by West Michigan Glass Art Center — Works by students and members, through Sept. 30. Live demonstration, 2-4 p.m. Sept. 8.

Classics Revisited — Join other readers for a lively discussion about the favorite classic Middlemarch, by George Eliot, 7 p.m. Sept. 20, Central library.

Labor Day Celebrations in Kalamazoo — The Early Years — The history of Labor Day in Kalamazoo at the turn of the 20th century is examined, 1:30 p.m. Sept. 9, Mary Jane Stryker Theater.

Good Design: Stories from Herman Miller — The problemsolving design process used at the famed West Michigan-based furniture company is showcased, Sept. 9–Jan. 27.

Nature Kalamazoo Nature Center Monarch Tagging — Join biologist Torrey Wenger to catch and tag Monarch butteries while learning about these amazing creatures, 1-2:30 p.m. Sept. 8, 11 and 13.

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ENCORE EVENTS

Green Living Series — Fungus: How Mushrooms Can Save the World — Naturalist Pete Stobie relates the natural history of fungi and their uses, 6:30–8 p.m., Sept. 11.

Hive Happenings — Watch for the bees’ waggle dances and search for the queen at the Observation Hive, noon, Sept. 22.

Boomers and Beyond — A program for adults over 50; this month Pete Stobie explains mushrooms and molds in Fungus Amongus.

11 a.m.–1 p.m. Sept. 25.

Kellogg Biological Station Birds & Coffee — Join a bird walk followed by coffee and discussion, 8:30–10 a.m. May 9 & June 13, 12685 E. C Ave. near Gull Lake.

Dessert with Discussion — Dr. Michael Hamm talks about regional foods, community-based food systems and the future of Michigan agriculture, 7:30 p.m.

Sept. 8, Kellogg Botonical Station, 3700 East Gull Lake Drive, Hickory Corners.

Audubon Society of Kalamazoo Mammals of Michigan — Fred Ignatoski will discuss the mammals of Michigan, 7:30 p.m. Sept. 24, People’s Church, 1758 N. 10th St.

First Glance Artist BILL KRASEAN

Bill Krasean’s photo on page 17 of frost-covered leaves reminds us that, as much as we may mourn summer’s end, something beautiful comes in its stead. A newspaper journalist for more than three decades, including as a longtime reporter for the Kalamazoo Gazette, Krasean dabbled in photography as a hobby. His retirement in 2005 has given him ample time to pursue what has become his passion, capturing images that often reect the beauty of the natural world in Southwest Michigan.

PHOTOS WANTED!

Do you have an image that captures the essence of living in Southwest Michigan? We invite photographers of all ages and abilities to submit their photos to Encore for consideration to be the photo featured on our First Glance photo page. Send photos to editor@encorekalamazoo.com.

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(continued from page 32)

Lately Maguire-Gualtieri has been working with the human animal too, using male models to explore gender and form, so images of both species may end up in her show at Midtown Gallery.

Just a few blocks away, at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Elliott Erwitt’s photographs of dogs are on display through Sept. 23 in an exhibit called Dog Dogs. Like MaguireGualtieri, this New York photographer didn’t anticipate the importance of dogs in his life but eventually made them a centerpiece of his work. “Until recently, I never especially set out to take dog pictures, but somehow dogs appeared in large numbers on my contacts sheets,� Erwitt once said. Dog Dogs reveals what a happy happenstance this was, as Erwitt captures the similarities of dogs to humans with compositional artistry, a clever sense of humor and an eye for that perfect moment. “I love his wit. It doesn’t get stale,� said Kalamazoo summer resident Mary Heneghan while viewing the show soon after it opened in July.

Among the show’s 65 black-and-white images is one from a beach in Brazil. It shows a man in a skimpy bathing suit walking toward the camera as a woman in a thong walks away. Between them two dogs do what two dogs always do upon meeting: sniff each other’s privates. And for added zing, a dog standing in the surf in the background has his nose pointed toward the woman’s derriere.

Compositional humor doesn’t get much better.

But the show is not all laughs. In another shot from Brazil, a skinny canine roams a concrete dam, looking like one of the loneliest creatures on earth.

Sometimes the exhibit blends pathos and humor. In a three-photo series, a woman stands before a gravestone and places owers on it as a Retriever looks on with apparent interest and sympathy. Then, in the third photo, the dog goes belly up to the sky, as if to soak in the sun and say, “Ah, yes, life goes on.â€?

Several viewers laughed out loud at that one.

If there’s one clear visual message in the exhibit, perhaps it’s what Heneghan saw: “The dogs and the humans show the same repository of emotion and expression in their beings.�

There’s that word again: “being.� When it comes to dogs, neither artist would want you to forget it.

ENCORE ARTS

Stewart knew the couple who owned the building, so, with some trepidation, she took Aceves to meet them. “It must have felt like a visit from somebody from the moon. It was just a completely unexpected idea,” says Stewart. Neverthless, the couple sold the building to Aceves, who ran the Bistro Rio there for nearly a decade.

Stewart and Aceves (who now sells antiques and works in social services) became great friends. And thus the woman who likes to cocoon into writing ended up writing of a girl who loved to hide in boxes to read.

(continued from page 33)

When Small begins illustrating one of his wife’s stories, it’s not a collaboration. ”I don’t see the work until he has the dummy up on the wall,” says Stewart. “He has to live with the words, chew on them, stomp on them, and then he finds his way into the story.”

Both Stewart and Small say this lack of collaboration, and the differences in their personalities, contribute to the appeal of their books. “There’s always a contrast of tone between the text and the picture” that makes the books interesting, says Small. “Sarah is basically an optimist. I’m basically a cynic. She’s from Texas. I’m from Detroit.” Small is an extrovert, Stewart an introvert.

“I just write and garden, go to the bookstore and the library and the post office,” says Stewart. “Writing is an act of calming or of steadying myself because I am so high-strung. It takes me away from the world and puts a cocoon around me.”

But it was reaching out, not cocooning, that led to The Quiet Place.

When Aceves’ sister Lucy, owner of the Mi Ranchito restaurant in Oshtemo, told Stewart that Aceves wanted to start a restaurant, Stewart told her, “Mendon would be a great place. It’s right on the St. Joseph River, and there are lots of empty buildings downtown.’”

The next day Stewart was giving Aceves a tour of Main Street. One building in particular called to Aceves, but it wasn’t for sale. Stewart tried to steer her elsewhere, but Aceves had her heart set on that one.

BOOK SIGNINGS Sarah Stewart and David Small will offer presentations and/or book signings at: 6 p.m. Sept. 20, Kalamazoo Public Library 315 S. Rose St. 11 a.m. Oct. 6, Lowry’s Books and More 22 N. Main St. Three Rivers.

2 p.m. Oct. 20, Book Bug, 3019 Oakland Drive in Oakwood Plaza.

2 p.m. Oct. 28, Portage District Library 300 Library Lane.

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www.encorekalamazoo.com | 39

MASSIE’S MICHIGAN ENCORE

BY

Larry B. Massie, recipient of the first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award from the Historical Society of Michigan, is a Michigan product and proud of it. Born in Grand Rapids, he grew up in Allegan and has three degrees in history from Western Michigan University. The author of 20 books about Michigan history, he shares his enthusiasm for and knowledge of Michigan’s heritage statewide at conferences, school assemblies, libraries, community-group meetings and festivals. Larry lives with his wife and workmate Priscilla, daughters Maureen and Autumn, and a 35,000-volume reference library in an 1880 schoolhouse in the Allegan State Forest.

LARRY MASSIE

The Gunnisons

Western explorer leaves behind legacy– and name

of Grand Rapids

T

Capt. John Williams Gunnison, above. Fort Massachusetts as Gunnison saw it was detailed in a picture, opposite page, printed in a 13-volume Pacific Railroad Survey Report published by Congress in 1855.

40 | ENCORE SEPTEMBER 2012

The military explorers rose at dawn on Oct. 26, 1853.

It was a serene morning at their camp near the Sevier River in southwest Utah. The party’s cook began rustling up breakfast while the remainder of the 14man troop busied themselves with rustic ablutions.

Suddenly all hell broke loose — rapid rifle shots, war whoops and shrieks, the neighing of spooked horses, the twang of bows as arrows rained down on soldiers who ran from the massacre half-dressed and screaming in terror. Capt.

John Williams Gunnison, in command of the American detachment, ran unarmed toward the attackers with his palms outstretched, yelling that they were friends. Minutes later he lay on the ground prickly with 13 or more Paiute arrows.

More than a 150 years later, automobile traffic roars and honks along Grand Rapids’ Gunnison Avenue. It’s doubtful that even one of the thousands of motorists who travel this road knows the origin of the street’s name: the intrepid Grand Rapids soldier who lost his life out West, thereby achieving cartographic immortality.

Born near Goshen, N.H., in 1812, of Swedish ancestry, Gunnison learned the harshness of life on his father’s stony farm. When not engaged in agricultural chores, he walked miles to the district school. As a teenager, Gunnison attended nearby Hopkinton Academy for three years and at the age of 19 taught in a one-room log schoolhouse. Two years later he secured an appointment to West Point Military Academy.

A superb student, he wrote his parents in 1835: “The greatest misfortune I have met with is weak eyes ... I have perhaps brought this upon myself. In addition to studies I have averaged nearly 1,000 pages a week of extra reading.” He graduated second in his class of 50 in 1837.

Lt. Gunnison served in the Seminole War in Florida as an Everglades scout under Zachary Taylor and dutifully participated in the disgraceful Cherokee “Trail of Tears” when that tribe was driven from Georgia into Oklahoma. In 1838, he joined the elite Corps of Topographical Engineers, engaging in the improvement of Georgia’s river system.

While in Georgia, he met Martha Delony and they married in 1841.

The newlyweds traveledd to Michigan for Gunnison’s ’s next assignment: a surveyy of the uncharted Michigan-Wisconsin border. Utilizingg Chippewa boat crews, hee and his detachment surveyedd Michigan’s entire westernn wilderness. John H. Forster,r, who served with him in that at endeavor, remembered Gun-nison as: “Tall in stature, slim m and active; he was talented, d, energetic and enterprising. g.

He delighted to act as pioneer,r, to lead the party in his shirtsleeves, leeves, with an ax, cutting down trees and clearing the underbrush. An indefatigable worker, he tired out the rest of his party ... he was brave, generous and considerate in trouble and sickness. He asked no one to go where he would not lead.”

In 1844, Gunnison invested the family’s savings in Kent County land, and soon they and former ship captain William Peaslee, who

had married Gunnison’s sister Sophia, settled near Grand Rapids.

Gunnison purchased 160 acres of muck land in Section 26 of Walker Township, where he established a cranberry plantation. On the higher ground, Gunnison commissioned the construction of a home, Grand Rapids’ first octagon house. A two-story structure of red brick with white brick quoins, it was later described as “a mansion of the antebellum days.” Popularized by Orson Fowler, a traveling phrenological lecturer who arrived in Michigan communities to read the bumps on local heads, octagon-style dwellings became fashionable among avant-garde intellectuals.

Gunnison joined his growG ing family of a son and two daughters as often as furdau loughs permitted. While in loug town, he participated in comtow munity affairs, sometimes mun lecturing at the Grand Rapids lectu Lyceum, the forerunner of the Lyce public museum, and was bappub tized at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in 1846.

Chu In 1849, Gunnison first ventured into the far West when ture he sserved as assistant to Capt.

Howard Stansbury during an How the Great Salt Lake. The two exploratory expedition into the Valley of th wintered among the Mormons in Salt Lake City, where, beginning in 1848, Brigham Young had led his followers to establish a Zion in the wilderness. Based on his experiences and observations, Gunnison published The Mormons or Latter Day Saints in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake in 1852, one of the first contemporary accounts to

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MASSIE’S MICHIGAN ENCORE objectively describe the sect that so fascinated Americans of that era.

In May 1853, Capt. Gunnison received orders to command one of four expeditions ordered

by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis to survey potential routes for the projected transcontinental Pacific Railroad. Sectional politics, North against South, had raged for decades over which route the railroad would take to link the vast area wrested from Mexico in the 1840s.

Now it was hoped that science could determine what bitter anti- and pro-slavery bickering could not. Gunnison’s assignment was to lead a reconnaissance route west between the 38th and 39th parallels. He would cross the Rocky Mountains through Cochetopa Pass between the Kansas and Utah territories and hence to the Great Salt Lake. Of the four routes, his turned out to be the most difficult as well as the most dramatic and interesting.

On June 4, 1853, Gunnison, along with the personnel he had enlisted, arrived in St. Louis for the final outfitting of the expedition. Lt. Edward Beckwith would be second-in-command.

Other specialists included Frederich O. Creuzfelt, a German botanist; Jacob H. Schiel, a Prussian geologist; astronomer Sheppard Homans; and artist Richard H. Kern.

The Gunnison party, consisting of 16 sixmule wagons, an instrument cart and a canvas-covered ambulance, moved west along the Sante Fe Trail on June 22, escorted by a troop of 32 cavalrymen. By Aug. 1, the party had managed with great difficulty to cross the Arkansas River, thanks to their Indian scouts, who swam the strong current with ropes in their teeth. En route to Fort Massachusetts, an army outpost at the base of the Sierra Blanca in the soutern Rockies, the party wandered lost for several days until a Mexican mountain man they chanced upon guided them.

Upon reaching the fort, Gunnison wrote disgustedly of what he learned of life on the new Mexican frontier: “There’s nothing like chastity regarded by man, woman or priest ... Few girls are married until they have been seduced and have a child ... they arrive at puberty at 11 or 12 years and marry from 11 to 14. One beautiful woman was named who was a grandmother at 29 and though, now appear-

42 | ENCORE SEPTEMBER 2012

ing in the flower of her age, her granddaughter is ready to be married.”

Antoine LeRoux, a celebrated mountain man, guided the party from the fort over the Cochetopa Pass. On Sept.

2, they crossed the Continental Divide and descended into the Grand River Valley, later renamed the Gunnison.

Once across the Wasatch Mountains and approaching the Sevier River Valley, the explorers reached Mormon country and comparative civilization. But at Manti, Utah, Gunnison found the townspeople barricaded in their homes against Indian attack. He wrote his wife back in Grand Rapids: “There is a war between the Mormons and the Indians and parties of less than a dozen do not dare to travel.

We did not know what a risk we have lately been running until coming here for I have been riding carelessly in the mountains, hunting roads ahead and other curious capers ...”

That would be the last letter his wife received from him.

Except for some routine tasks, Gunnison’s mission was nearing completion. But he still needed to explore the lower Sevier for a suitable railroad bridge site. On Oct. 25, accompanied by Kern, Creuzfelt, an employee named Bellows, a Mormon guide and an escort of seven cavalrymen, Gunnison left the main party and headed downstream toward Sevier Lake. What he didn’t know was that members of an immigrant wagon train heading for California had recently killed a Paiute chief and wounded two others. The Paiutes, a Shoshonean tribe, thirsted for revenge against any and all white men they might encounter. Gunnison’s party would be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Indians had heard Gunnison’s men shooting at ducks along the river where they had camped for the night on Oct. 25. About a score of young braves from

Capt. Howard Stansbery’s 1852 report on the survey of the Great Salt Lake Valley included this lithograph of a survey party encampment that included Lt. Gunnison.

Chief Kenosh’s band whooped and cavorted in a war dance and, with red, white and yellow paint-daubed faces, stormed from their village at about midnight. In the dark they deployed around three sides of the camp, with the river on the fourth.

At dawn they attacked, sending volleys of bullets and arrows into the camp. Panicked, the soldiers ran. Only four cavalrymen survived, including one who was thrown from his horse into a clump of bushes, where he hid as the Indians searched on both sides.

Despite having been pierced by 13 to 20 arrows (sources vary), Gunnison was still alive when, according to the tribesmen’s later testimony, the Indians began mutilating the dead and dying. One of the Paiutes hacked off his hand as a souvenir. It deeply affected Gunnison’s grieving wife to learn that an Indian wore her husband’s mummified hand as a talisman. Rumors that Mormons disguised as Indians had perpetrated the massacre circulated for decades but were ultimately disproved.

Beckwith, now in command, completed the railroad survey. The route that Gunnison had so arduously mapped out emerged as the best of the four candidates. But sectional politics intervened again, and Jefferson Davis insisted on the most southern route.

Nothing happened until after the Civil War, when the victorious North had full control of Congress. In 1869, officials pounded in the golden spike at Promontory, Utah, and the continent was finally linked from shore to shore.

After her husband’s tragic death, Martha Gunnison moved back to the South, but the family frequently returned to Grand Rapids.

Until his early death in 1884, Gunnison’s son, Delony, was a prominent Grand Rapids real estate agent. Another street on the West Side of Grand Rapids street bears his name.

Gunnison Mountain, Gunnison Valley, the Gunnison River, the Gunnison Tunnel, a Colorado county, towns in Utah, Colorado and Mississippi, a national park, and, of course, Gunnison Avenue commemorate Capt. John Williams Gunnison’s illustrious service to his nation and his tragic demise.

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ENCORE THE LAST WORD (continued from page 46)

I reached up, careful to stay centered.

Transferring both oars to one hand, I reached up with the other to my ball cap. I lowered the hat to the water, turning it over.

He looked at the outstretched hat and, as deliberately as he had been keeping his eye on that single spot on the shore, swam to it. He climbed into the hat, out of it into my hand and up my arm.

I dared not move, and may have been holding my breath.

His tiny claws felt scratchy but were not painful. The most unpleasant sensation was that of his wet tail dragging up my skin. He reached my shoulder and sat down, facing east. Then, like a captain on a ship, he waited for his crew to get moving.

I was keenly aware that his razor-sharp teeth were inches away from my jugular vein.

I felt terribly vulnerable, naked in my halter top, feeling his wet tail cold against my skin, his nails gripping my shoulder.

Yet, I knew he, too, must feel vulnerable, having so boldly crossed that demarcation between the animal world and the human world. He, too, must feel naked with his waterlogged tail now rat-like, his body with its fur plastered down so diminished.

Then, a little stiffly, as I dared not throw my little passenger off-balance, I took short strokes to turn the boat eastward. I rowed,

at once nervous and strangely calm, perhaps because I was so intent on not making any extra moves. He made no extra moves either, but kept his eyes fixed on that spot, a speechless navigator directing me with his sheer presence.

When the stern of the boat was about 40 feet from shore, he climbed down my back, as if it were a bus stop he disembarked from every day. He walked down the rear length of the shell and waited at the tip.

When it touched shore, he jumped off. Then he disappeared. It was as if he knew I were going to deliver him there all along.

I have learned a lot from rowing on Cedar Lake over the years that mimics the lessons I need to live: the necessity and peace of balance; the futility of placing my own whims above the survival of the lake and its creatures.

I have learned that my life flows more smoothly when I take my signals from nature. So when the lake is flat, I put down my tools or log off of my computer and head down to the water. I have even learned to feel the deep calm of the lake as the water passes so close beneath me.

But my time with that sodden squirrel showed me best how to give myself up to the lake and its creatures, to be ready to change course and reach out to them as a fellow traveler.

Barbara Walters was a reporter and columnist for the Kalamazoo Gazette for 25 years, retiring in 2005. Now she enjoys her family, gardens, biking, rowing, swimming, skiing, books, friends, classes at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra and every unexpected encounter with the natural world, which continues to teach and enrich her life. Her post-newsroom writing includes writing family histories.

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.

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THE LAST WORD ENCORE

BY

BARBARA A. WALTERS

TRUST OVERCOMES INSTINCT IN AN UNLIKELY RESCUE

A

s usual, I headed straight out from our dock on Cornish Shores toward the Marcellus cove, rowing south with my back toward that distant wetland that borders the rolling hills of the Shugars farm. Sunbeams played on the water, and no other boats could be seen. All was quiet; my course was set.

In a rowing shell, such calm routine is central to keeping afloat.

At 27 feet long and 18 inches wide without a keel, a shell is highly unstable. Steady, even motion and body alignment are essential to maintaining balance. I sat up straight, my gaze on the diminishing horizon as I glided backward, my legs moving the seat forward and backward, thus swinging the oars.

I was just past the middle of the lake when out of the corner of my eye I saw a small, furry head to the east, moving at an angle to me. It must be a muskrat, I thought.

I shifted my eyes to get a better look. We were both at place in Cedar Lake where balancing motion and movement was especially critical to preventing a plunge toward a bottom nearly 100 feet beneath us.

As I glided nearer I could see that this was no muskrat, but a squirrel.

His bushy tail floated behind him; his front paws paddled furiously.

I had never seen a squirrel swimming. I’ve since read that swimming is very strenuous for squirrels, so they do it only when necessary, using their tail as a rudder. Lewis and Clark recorded seeing groups of squirrels swimming together southward in the Ohio River in 1805, presumably on some late-summer migration.

But this squirrel was alone, his reason for being out in the middle of the lake a mystery to me, as my presence likely was to him. Had a hawk dropped him from its beak? Had some furry predator chased him beyond the shore?

46 | ENCORE SEPTEMBER 2012

As I slowed my pace to get a better look, he slowed his to look at me. Our eyes met.

His seemed a calm gaze, given his plight. Hesitating just a moment as if to size up the risk, he turned off his course and paddled toward me.

At the side of my boat, he clawed futilely at the fiberglass. Soon he turned away and resumed his course.

And I resumed mine.

A few strokes later I glanced back to check his progress.

His tail had now sunk below the surface. His head was craned upward at a desperate angle, his nose barely above the surface. Still, he maintained his focus, showing no sign of panic. He continued to paddle, aimed clearly for a wooded place on the eastern shore.

I stopped rowing. Then, slowly, I began to take small strokes to turn toward him, keeping my movements minimal so as not to alarm him. I paused to let the shell drift closer. Still paddling, he turned to look at me. Again, our eyes locked.

He turned and again began swimming to the boat. I let the boat glide slowly to a stop, holding out my oars.

Looking back now, it seems there was a zone of calmness around us two creatures out there in the middle of the lake. He did not flail, nor did I. Instead, we began what seemed to be a slow-motion dance, choreographed in that wordless place between animals and people where trust and fear, instinct and deliberation, must strike a balance if both are to survive. (continued on page 45)

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