Encore Summer 2013

southwest michigan’s magazine

a wine Region on the Rise taKe a tasteFuL touR cRaFting BooKs BY hanD

t r u e s t o ry

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Greenleaf Trust got the call and our hands-on approach took hold. Employee participation increased, contributions rose and morale steadily improved. The only thing that went down, all the way to zero, was the number of employee complaints.

We’re the first to say not every 401(k) plan has such a storybook ending. But with client satisfaction rates approaching 100%, and our unwavering focus on integrity and trust, it is safe to say that grateful employees appear to work happily ever after. If you’d like to learn more about how we help clients achieve financial security from generation to generation, call us. It’s not just a pipe dream.

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southwest michigan’s magazine

a wine Region on the Rise taKe a tasteFuL touR cRaFting BooKs BY hanD

publisher encore publications, inc. editor

marie lee designer

maria majeski photographer

erik holladay copy editor/poetry editor

margaret deritter

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contributors

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kit almy, margaret deritter, tiffany fitzgerald, linda foster, richard jordan, marie lee, robert m. weir contributing poets

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Encore Magazine is published 9 times yearly, September through May. Copyright 2013, Encore Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Editorial, circulation and advertising correspondence should be sent to: www.encorekalamazoo.com 350 S. Burdick, Suite 214, Kalamazoo, MI 49007 Telephone: (269) 383-4433 Fax number: (269) 383-9767 E-mail: Publisher@encorekalamazoo.com

Serving our community since 1981 www.hospiceswmi.org 4 | EncorE summer 2013

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 printready copy is 21 days prior to publication date.

s u m m e r 2013

features A Full-Bodied Region With more than 20 wineries, Southwest Michigan’s wine country is growing in stature.

24

A Tasteful Tour Follow our map’s wine-ding route to sample some of the best vino around.

26

Pressing Matters From papermaking to printing, the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center promotes the art of crafting handmade books.

18

Songs in Her Heart Relocated Russian Svetlana Stone uses her vocal talents to bring a little of her homeland here.

34

up Front

6

Hidden Away Out-of-sight architectural treasures in downtown Kalamazoo are brought to light for a June tour.

8

50th Birthday Bash The city of Portage is 50 years young and ready to party.

10

Update At 87, sculptor Kirk Newman is still creating beauty in bronze.

12

Good Works Women’s small circle of giving is making a big difference.

14

Savor Specialty store Beer & Skittles aims to make food shopping fun.

Arts

38

Natural Poet Robert Haight’s new book reflects his walks on the wild side.

39

Healing Music After tragedy, singer-songwriter Elisabeth Pixley-Fink's music helps her mend.

40 41

Poetry Events of Note

Departments

17 50 On the cover: Tabor Hill’s vineyards are captured on a stormy summer day by Chicago photographer Eric Hausman.

48

First Glance An inspiring image from a local photographer.

The Last Word A car is all that’s left of a long-held secret and untold love story.

Photo Challenge Winner

up front encore

Tucked-away places such as areas of the State Theatre, above and at far left, will be on the Hidden Kalamazoo tour June 15 and 16.

Out of hiding

Handful of downtown’s untouched historic sites part of June tour

T

he 15th floor of the Fifth Third Bank building at 136 E. Michigan Ave. looks like a scene out of Mad Men, with its 1960s-era furniture and panoramic view of downtown. Down the hall from the empty bank offices is the former Room at the Top barbershop, which still has the antique barber chairs and equipment left behind when the business shut its doors 48 years ago. And little would you guess that down the street, a flight of stairs or two above Bimbo’s Pizza, is a grand ballroom from the days when the building was the Arlington Hotel.

These hidden gems and others exist above and beneath downtown Kalamazoo shops and restaurants, and on June 15 and 16 the Kalamazoo Historic Preservation Commission will offer the public a special tour to bring a handful of them to light.

“This is possibly the first and last tour of these undeveloped spaces in Kalamazoo,” says Lynn Stevens, chairperson of the commission’s Sustainability Committee and one of the event organizers. “These spaces are being redeveloped at such a fast rate that we knew it was now or never.”

The commission anticipates having eight sites on the Hidden Kalamazoo tour, including the15th floor, lobby and unused vaults of the Fifth Third Bank; the State Theatre’s auditorium and backstage prop, costume and dressing-room areas; former residences in the building that houses A-1 Printing, the oldest commercial building in Kalamazoo; and the ballroom above Bimbo’s Pizza and the brick cellar below.

Tour participants will be able to visit the sites between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. June 15 and noon and 5 p.m. June 16. At each site, tour

6 | EncorE summer 2013

groups will be guided by docents who will explain the history of the sites. Participants should be prepared to do a bit of walking, including climbing stairs. The tour encompasses an eight-block area, and most of the sites are on the second or third floors of buildings that do not have elevators.

“In the 19th century these spaces were residences and professional offices,,” says Stevens, “and they expected people to walk up the stairs, which were very narrow. There’s a lot of physicality involved in this tour.”

To that point, families that bring strollers will have to leave them on the ground floor and carry their children up the stairs to tour the sites.

Stevens says the commission struggled with the decision to have an event that might prevent people with physical impairments from participating, but felt an urgency to showcase these sites before they disappear. Already, several of the sites are either under construction or scheduled for redevelopment in the very near future.

Tour tickets go on sale May 1 and are $15 each, or $12 each for groups of 10 or more, and allow access to all of the sites. They can be purchased at Michigan News Agency, 308 W. Michigan Ave.; D&W Fresh Market locations at 2103 Parkview Ave. and 525 Romence Road; the Kalamazoo City Treasurer’s office, 241 W. South St.; and the City of Kalamazoo Community Planning & Development Department, 415 Stockbridge Ave. For additional ticket locations and more information, visit the Facebook events page www.facebook.com/hiddenkalamazoo.

encore up front

www.encorekalamazoo.com | 7

up front encore

Portage’s bikeway and trailway system, including the Milham Street pedestrian bridge, at left, is key in the city’s identity as it celebrates its 50th anniversary.

Nifty, Nifty, Look Who’s 50!

Portage celebration marks city’s half-century

There’s something about turning 50.

After those fast-growing teenage years and the identity crises of your 20s and 30s, turning 50 makes you look back, celebrate and think about the future.

Portage Mayor Pete Strazdas, who was only 5 years old when Portage Township opted to become a city back in 1963, uses this human analogy when discussing the yearlong celebration his city is having in honor of its 50th anniversary.

“Turning 50 is kind of special. We’ve reached a significant milestone in our history,” he says. “Being 50 only happens once in your lifetime.”

The city has found a number of ways to observe this auspicious anniversary, including some events highlighting the city’s role in encouraging healthy, active lifestyles. The city hosted a half-marathon/5k event in February that attracted nearly 700 participants, will break ground in July on a new 123-acre nature reserve on Shaver Road, and revamped the city’s logo, adopting a new motto — “A Natural Place to Move” — to replace the old one, “ A Place for Opportunities to Grow.”

Strazdas says the new motto reflects efforts that began in 1989 to build an expansive trailway and bikeway system within Portage. That system now encompasses more than 55 miles and connects users with natural landscapes within the city.

“As Portage has grown, it’s had a number of identities, including being the shopping mecca of Southwest Michigan, but we’ve always had a much bigger identity in mind with the development of our bikeway and trailway system,” says Strazdas. “It’s been a model for communities all over the Midwest, and one of the crown jewels of

8 | EncorE summer 2013

Portage. But it happened over a long period of time. It was an effort that continued through several city managers and is now a central focus of our city.”

An addition to Portage’s treasures will be the 123-acre Eliason Nature Preserve, for which the city will break ground in July. The land for this preserve, next to Bishop’s Bog Preserve on Shaver Road, was donated by Linda Eliason, widow of David Eliason, a former president of commercial door company Eliason Corp.

But what’s a celebration without a party? To that end, the city’s annual Summer Entertainment Series will include a 50th Anniversary Concert in July. A live, multimedia performance of a show called Your Generation in Concert, featuring Fifty Amp Fuse, will offer six decades of American and British pop-rock hits. The show starts at 7:30 p.m.

July 13 at the Overlander Bandshell, 7810 Shaver Road.

“We are celebrating a birthday during a very difficult financial time,” say Strazdas, “so we are not spending a lot of money to celebrate but coming up with ways to observe the occasion that are meaningful.”

A commemorative edition of The Portager newsletter, highlighting the city’s milestones over the past half-century, was published in February. Other anniversary events include a yearlong display of historical photos, documents and memorabilia in city hall, a spring flower display in the City Centre area and a recycled art contest for the city’s parks, with prizes to be given May 11 at Celery Flats Historical Area with a special category for sculptures related to the 50th anniversary.

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updatE up front

Erik Holladay

Sculptor Kirk Newman stands before three of the 12 bronze sculptures he is creating for a large display at the Sherman Lake YMCA, near Augusta.

sculptor Kirk Newman still has ‘big ideas’ by

Tiffany fiTzgerald

In celebration of its 40th year, Encore is taking a second look at some of those who have been featured in past issues of the magazine. The last story in our series is about iconic sculptor Kirk Newman, whom we last wrote about in September 1991.

10 | EncorE summer 2013

T

he world’s not the same as it was 50 years ago, and neither is Kirk Newman’s art, since the Kalamazoo sculptor is greatly influenced by his surroundings.

From his abstract expressionism in the 1950s to the more-realistic figurative pieces of his mid-career period to the slender, stretched figures of his recent work, Newman has been focused on finding ways to meld the ancient art form of bronze sculpture with the motion of modernity.

“I’m trying to make my art a more pertinent form to the times we live in,” the now-87-yearold Newman explains. “My figurative sculptures reflected the history of sculpture but didn’t represent the speed of the time. My more recent work does, and getting to that point has been important to me — it’s been the whole point of my work, going from traditional to today.”

In the more than 20 years since Encore last talked to Newman, he’s done a multitude of projects and installations. But a few that figure prominently in Newman’s narrative are his 1987 installation in Detroit’s Michigan Avenue People Mover station, a 2001 installation in front of Toronto’s Manulife Financial building, a 2011 installation in front of the Greenleaf Trust building in Birmingham, his retrospective show at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts in 2006, and his newest project, a large public work at the Sherman Lake YMCA camp, near Augusta.

up front updatE Each project embodies Newman’s focus on wasn’t photographing people directly and fluidity, motion and speed. The installation in they weren’t paying attention,” he explains.

Toronto presents more-realistic figures, em- “Then I based the sculptures on those people, phasizing body parts slightly, as a caricature so those figures are real people in Toronto.”

Newman also used observation to become might, but the figures in the installations at the Detroit People Mover and at the Green- inspired for his 12-figure installation outleaf Trust building are elongated, distorted, side the Sherman Lake YMCA's Kellogg Hall. thin — representations to Newman of the In- Watching the children and counselors play and interact at the summer camp was imformation Age. “We’re essentially one entity because of portant for Newman and moved him to start the computer,” he says. “With the Internet, the project in the first place.

“I was so bowled over when I saw the we have a very pertinent thing, but with very little tangible material presence. And environment at Sherman Lake and how beautiful it is,” that’s what I was going for with says Newman. my work — how to use as little material as possible, how to cre- Newman, who has developed “There were kids an allergy to the plaster he from all over ate movement, and how to make uses and must work with the world, bethe figures very thin, to represent a mask on, says this is the cause Sherman the movement and speed of our Lake has a very times.” last piece of large public international While Newman’s current work art he’ll do. program. I had may be more representative of society’s forward momentum, Newman’s a conversation with a little girl from Russia, figures maintain the emotion and haunting and she and the camp impressed me so much interconnectedness that sculpture has his- I really wanted to go ahead and do this whole torically embodied. Newman connects to his project right away.”

Now that the project is almost complete subjects by first observing them, he says.

“For the big project in Toronto, for Manu- — it will be unveiled in early summer — it’s life’s 100-year anniversary, I would go to obvious that Newman is still bridging the where there was a square with cross-sections past and the future. The main piece exempliand photograph people from an angle so I fies one of the oldest sculptural forms in the

world, a stele, which is an upright stone or slab that has an inscribed or sculpted surface and serves as a monument. But Newman has shaped his stele to do something unique: The monolithic three-sided bronze statue will have raised words of humanity, such as "honesty" and "caring," going up its length.

“The YMCA at Sherman Lake focuses their program on learning to build character,” he says. “Character is a big word. I decided, because people, especially kids, like to put their hands on sculptures, this stele would have words that capture the idea of character, like “honor,” “truth,” “love” — all the things a person who wants to grow to be a decent human being would encompass — and those words would stick out so the kids can actually hold the word. Then they can discuss what those words really mean.”

Newman, who has developed an allergy to the plaster he uses and must work with a mask on, says this is the last piece of large public art he’ll do. But he doesn’t plan to hang up his hat just yet.

“Art has always been a big part of my life,” he says. “It’s natural to me. I’ve always wanted to make things. And you don’t have to do big projects, just have big ideas. It sounds arrogant to say that, to think you can come up with a big idea, but you can try.”

www.encorekalamazoo.com | 11

Good WorKS up front

Karika Phillips, right, and Jeanne Grubb, donor relations officer for the Kalamazoo Community Foundation, worked to create a giving circle to help women and girls in need.

Giving Circle created to help women in need by

MargareT deriTTer

12 | EncorE summer 2013

Erik Holladay

K

arika Phillips grew up on Kalamazoo’s Northside, in a housing complex that was “drug-riddled and filled with poverty and pain.”

But she had parents who valued learning and teachers who saw her potential and nurtured it, not only in the classroom but by inviting her to formal social events.

“I learned early that just because I was poor, there were no boundaries to hold me back,” says Phillips. As a result, she’s now on her way to earning a Ph.D. in educational leadership, heads up Kalamazoo County’s Center for Health Equity and is a fellow of Kalamazoo College’s Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership.

The help Phillips received from mentors not only led her to academic and professional success but inspired her to reach out to other women and girls in need.

One way she does that is through the Kalamazoo Giving Circle, a social investment group. The donors pool their money to support nonprofit groups that help struggling girls and women reach their full potential.

Phillips got the idea for forming the group after years of helping young women on her own. “In my own private life I supported a lot of young women as kind of a private thing,” she says. “I’d direct them to resources or give of my own resources.”

But her husband’s reaction one night to yet another call for assistance prompted Phillips to draw others into a circle of giving. “One night at midnight I got a call from a young lady who needed groceries,” she says. “I told my husband I was going out because this lady needed a ride too. He said, ‘Karika, we can’t keep doing this. This is starting to wear on our own finances.’ I told him, ‘I work to help other people because I’ve been helped.’ And my husband said, ‘You know so many people. Why don’t you get together with them so you all can help?’”

It just so happened that Kalamazoo Community Foundation staff members were brewing a similar idea, but Phillips didn’t know that.

Her job with the county, though, brought her into contact with Sharon Anderson, who was then a community investment officer at the foundation, so Phillips shared her idea of “setting up a formal way of giving back to girls that are underrepresented.”

“Sharon just jumped out of her seat,” says Phillips. “She said, ‘You have to talk to Jeanne Grubb.’” Grubb, a donor relations officer at the foundation, had been working with the Council of Michigan Foundations on raising the level of diversity in philanthropy and was looking for a way to reach out to women of color.

“It was serendipitous,” says Phillips, who is African-American. Phillips had the passion to start a giving circle, and the foundation had the expertise to help her. And so the Kalamazoo Giving Circle was born about a year and a half ago.

Giving circles are something of a new trend, allowing small donors to pool their resources to support charities or community projects.

Kalamazoo has several of them, and they can be set up in various ways, says Grubb. In the case of the Kalamazoo Giving Circle, the suggested donation for members is $200. “But because we wanted it to be open and equitable, we said, ‘Let’s just say whatever you

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can give you give and that will make you a member and give you a voice,” says Grubb, who, with Phillips, chairs the circle’s sevenmember steering committee.

The multiracial Giving Circle has about 30 members and gave out its first set of grants in the fall, after the members heard presentations from potential recipients. “We had to write down our thoughts, and then we decided as a group,” says Phillips. “We were able to support all of them and still had money left over.” The amounts of the six grants varied but averaged about $500, says Grubb.

One grant gave local African-American girls the opportunity to attend a Black Girls Code workshop in Detroit to learn about computer programming and technology.

Another grant went to Your Turn, a group that aims to raise the self-esteem and health of women who are poor, overweight and unhealthy.

A third grant went to a program of the Humane Society and YWCA that helps women who want to leave an abusive situation by taking care of their pets while they are in transition.

The other three grants went to Ministry With Community, Housing Resources Inc. and Loy Norrix High School, all for the purchase of feminine-hygiene products.

“It’s not the most flashy project,” says Loy Norrix teacher Sveri Stromsta May, “but if you’re very poor, it’s a basic need. And many of our young ladies don’t have what they need to take care of their once-a-month needs.” Girls would sometimes go home when they began menstruating and not come back to school for several days. Now they don’t have to, says May. “Our school was so thankful for the generosity (of the Giving Circle). They came up with cases of these things for us, and the kids were so grateful. ... These women are some of the most generous women I’ve ever come in touch with. They have big hearts, and they’re very socially minded.”

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www.encorekalamazoo.com | 13

Savor up front

Erik Holladay

Beer and Skittles owner Christine Horton poses with urns of different types of olive oil available for sampling at her store.

Beer and skittles is for the fun of food by

A

KiT alMy

s the saying goes, life’s not all beer and skittles, but neither is the merchandise in the Kalamazoo store that goes by that name.

Beer and Skittles’ name translates roughly into “fun and games,” as “skittles” in this context refers to the British bowling game. Christine Horton, who owns the specialty food, beer and wine store at 1912 Whites Road, aims to put a little fun into daily life. “I think it’s really important to celebrate life every single day,” she says.

Horton grew up in a food-loving family and, before opening her store, worked for many years in food businesses, including 12 years at Water Street Coffee Joint.

A few years ago she was in a period of transition. “I had a really great job (at Water Street) but just wanted something different,” she says. Not sure what that might be, she started trying to identify her passion. “I really like grocery shopping, and I really like cooking,” she says, but her initial thought was, “That’s stupid. That’s not a passion.”

But she kept coming back to those interests and realized that, when traveling, she liked going into food shops and discovering new products and brands. “Eventually I just thought, ‘You could do this in Kalamazoo.’”

Horton had never planned to open her own business, but she took a class for entrepreneurs through the Michigan Small Business and Technology Development Center, creating a business plan in the process. With the support of her husband, David Mitchell, who co-owns the business, she opened Beer and Skittles in early 2012. The store now has four employees.

14 | EncorE summer 2013

Located behind the Oakwood Plaza, which is home to Sawall Health Foods and Pacific Rim Foods, and with D&W Fresh Market and Bacchus Wine and Spirits also nearby, Beer and Skittles is in a “food neighborhood.” This is a good thing, Horton says, because “people are coming here for the food already.”

She believes the various food stores complement each other by offering different things. “It’s important to not get too caught up in being competitive and to really know yourself … and to focus on what you do well and keep your focus there.”

Beer and Skittles’ niche is summed up in three words: “Food is fun.”

Horton explains that the slogan “means a lot of different things to me. (Food is) both a part of every celebration, but it’s also a way to make any ordinary day special.” Her philosophy is also about accessibility: “Food is not intimidating, food is not scary, food is not stressful — food is fun!”

Horton wants Beer and Skittles to be welcoming to people who are not as well versed in gourmet food as she is, so she tries to make it an enjoyable and easy place to shop.

She chooses products based on what she loves, tries to stock brands that aren’t offered elsewhere in the area and carries only the best examples in any category. “Instead of having 20 brands of the same type of product (like chips), I’m going to have the two best chips there are,” she says.

Similarly, Horton carries a small selection of what she calls “easy, awesome wines.” “It’s what I want in a wine store,” she says. “I’m not

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a huge wine drinker, but I have a lot of friends who are, so I wanted a store where I could blindly grab anything off the shelf and take it to my wine-snob friend and they would totally drink it.”

Of course, Beer and Skittles sells a lot of beer. Always in stock are a few mass-produced American lagers, including “retro” beers like Stroh’s, and some imported beers.

The store also stocks “a comparatively large selection of ciders.”

With the main attraction — Michigan beers — the selection is even bigger, and Horton keeps it fresh, in both senses of the word. “I like to have all my beers in the cooler,” she says, “but I also try to keep the selection changing all the time.”

Horton carries many Michigan foods, although she didn’t set out to do so. That part of her business has evolved as she has sought out new products, often hearing about them from customers and others. “I love working with these small vendors who are just like me and have had a vision to do something and now are doing it, and usually it’s something super-delicious,” she says.

Her customers are demanding made-inMichigan products, too, often to take as gifts when traveling.

Horton wants Beer and Skittles to be a place people go when they need to buy an interesting and affordable gift. “I wanted to have things that people could buy for under 25 bucks, and it would be a nice gift for someone,” she says. “It would be something different; it would be something they would like.”

Serving customers goes beyond helping them find the right products. Horton takes pride in running a store that families enjoy and like to show to out-of-town visitors. The store has a dedicated playroom for kids as well as a tabletop skittles game.

“My long-term vision for the store was that I wanted people who came in here as kids to also come as adults and remember how fun it was to come as a kid. I really prize that we have established some regular family customers,” Horton says.

And, yes, if you’re wondering, she also sells Skittles candy.

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See page 43 to learn more about this photo and its photographer.

18 | EncorE summer 2013

Erik Holladay

Kalamazoo Book Arts Center Director Jeff Abshear runs a piece of handmade paper through one of the two Vandercook presses at the center.

Opposite page, artist and KBAC staff member Katie Platte set the letters for the story’s title.

artS encore

from papermaking to printing and binding, kalamazoo book arts center keeps the art alive by

KiT alMy

D

espite this being the age of e-readers, we are all still familiar with printed material. Even now, you may be holding the printed edition of this magazine with its paper, printed words and images, and staples binding the pages together.

But there was a time when such mass-produced glossy magazines were the future, when books had to be completely crafted by hand, from making the paper and ink to painstakingly creating letter or block printing and sewing the binding. Handcrafting a book was an art.

It’s an art that the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center is determined to keep from becoming just a memory in our digital age.

With classes in printmaking, papermaking and binding, the KBAC teaches and promotes the crafts of creating books.

In the middle of the last century, the crafts involved in making books became arts as printing technology began moving away from what was then the 500-year-old letterpress process. “Suddenly everything started to migrate to photo processes and then computer processes,” explains Jeff Abshear, director of the KBAC, which is located in the Park Trades Center, in downtown Kalamazoo. “So there was all this letterpress equipment that was being junked, and, as a result, a lot of artists started collecting it and building centers like this.”

www.encorekalamazoo.com | 19

Book arts centers started appearing in major cities in the 1970s and ’80s because, Abshear says, their founders “believe in the value of all of this technology not being just discarded, but instead put to use by people who want to make things by hand.”

The KBAC didn’t crop up until 2005, but the seeds of its creation were planted before Abshear was even out of high school. Abshear, a California native, studied printmaking in high school and majored in art and literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He made his first books while working in a community college print lab.

He moved to Kalamazoo in the early 1990s to attend the art program at Western Michigan University, “particularly because they had just recently acquired letterpress equipment,” he says. As a graduate student, he printed two more books. One he printed on his own handmade paper for the first time, working with the late professor Paul Robbert and beginning a relationship that would be key to the formation of the KBAC. After earning his Master of Fine Arts degree, Abshear worked as a museum exhibit designer for Jeff Bernstein Exhibition Design in Kalamazoo for six years, until he was laid off because of Michigan’s declining economy.

“I tried to figure out what to do next and came up with this idea for creating a book arts center,” he says. “I knew that there was a lot of potential here in Kalamazoo because of all the resources. There’s a great creative-writing program and a strong printmaking program at Western.”

Abshear also drew on his connections with WMU’s Frostic School of Art, where he has taught as an adjunct professor since 1996. “I knew the art department was moving into the new building and there was extra equipment that would become available. Also, the library at Western had a letterpress, bookbinding equipment and other things, and some other companies here in town had letterpress equipment that they wanted to get rid of.”

In 2005, Abshear called a meeting “with anybody I knew that might be interested in this: poets, papermakers, printmakers, book artists.” This group became the KBAC’s first board of directors. It included Robbert, who had retired and opened a papermaking studio in the Park Trades Center. Abshear had his own painting studio in the building, so these two spaces became the book arts center’s first home.

“Beyond (Robbert’s papermaking equipment) we didn’t have anything. We didn’t have presses,” Abshear says. The

20 | EncorE summer 2013

center started offering classes and gradually accumulated more equipment — and students.

In 2007, the KBAC moved to a new facility on the ground floor of the Park Trades Center. The large, empty space needed electricity, plumbing and walls. “It took us several years to do all the construction, move all the equipment in,” Abshear says. The center now includes papermaking equipment, printing presses (including six letterpresses of various sizes), a store, a library and gallery space. “We’ve got basically everything to make any kind of book from scratch,” Abshear says.

Local paper artist Lorrie Grainger Abdo, president of the Handmade Paper Guild of Southwest Michigan, notes that while common in larger cities, book arts centers in smaller communities are rare. “How many cities have a book arts center? New York, Minneapolis, Chicago, Kalamazoo? It’s quite amazing that we have this resource.”

For the first several years of its existence, the KBAC focused on education. “But now that the studio is together, all the equipment is functional and we have staff and interns that can help with production work, we are starting to make handmade books,” Abshear says.

The KBAC has several manuscripts in various stages of production. One edition can take months to complete, even though a limited number of copies are produced.

“It’s all done by hand — making paper, setting type, printing, sewing and gluing,” Abshear says. “It’s a lot of tedious, repetitive work.”

On the other hand, such books are works of art. One of the KBAC’s current projects is a collection of poems by retired Kalamazoo College English professor Conrad Hilberry. The poems are based on Chinese scroll paintings, digital images of which have been mounted on the handmade pages of the book, which is put together like an accordion. “The beauty of an accordion book is that you can open it up and it stands, so you can display it,” Abshear explains.

Abshear believes that the development of digital reading devices will make these painstakingly produced books all the more revered. “Handmade books become more cherished and valuable because they are more personal and unique,” he says.

Education is still a major part of the KBAC’s mission.

KBAC staff and local artists teach adults and children to make books and related creations in the studio. Abdo has been teaching papermaking and related classes at the KBAC since it was established. She loves the tactile na-

Erik Holladay

ture of papermaking as well as the wide range of what can be made with paper.

“I love that you can have 20 different paper artists in the same room … and every single person would create something different from that same sheet of paper that they’ve made,” she says.

Classes also cover creating books shaped like accordions, stars or tunnels; making greeting cards; and producing such un-book-like things as lamps made from metal and paper.

“The concept of this place has always been anything that fits under the umbrella of the book,” Abshear says, “so papermaking is intricately involved in the history of books, but that doesn’t mean we have to do papermaking that’s just for books. Anything that involves papermaking is part of what we consider to be under our umbrella.”

The KBAC’s education efforts have also gone beyond its Park Trades studio.

Abshear and KBAC studio coordinator Katie Platte bring portable equipment into public schools to teach children to make handmade books, and they teach a six-week summer course through the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Kalamazoo and the Kalamazoo Parks and Recreation Department. Kids learn to write poems, make paper, make simple relief-print images and sew the books together.

Handmade books and paper are among the many things for sale in the KBAC’s store.

Abshear, who studied book arts in Venice, Italy, also travels each summer to Sardinia, an island in the Mediterranean, to teach similar bookmaking classes to Italian children.

In addition to books as physical objects, the KBAC explores “the ideas within them,” holding a series of poetry readings with a book-arts twist: For each poet who reads, printmakers create a broadside, or printed poster, of one of their poems.

“I discovered the ‘Poets in Print’ reading series (of the KBAC) when I moved to Kalamazoo in 2010,” says Traci Brimhall, a doctoral candidate in WMU’s creative writing program. “It was being curated by the poet Adam Clay at the time, and it never disappointed.” Brimhall now coordinates the series, often inviting writers with some connection to Kalamazoo. “However, I also look to bring in poets in their early writing lives who often only have a book or two. Poets from as far away as California, New York and Texas have flown in to share their work with Kalamazooans and get a beautiful broadside made of their work by the KBAC.” Another popular event is the Edible Book Festival, held around April Fools’ Day each year. “We invite the public to create books made out of food,” Abshear says. “We never know what we’re going to get.” Entries have included cakes decorated to resemble book covers as well as a variety of edible creations that illustrate plots or puns on book titles (think The Grapes of Wrath). A guest judge chooses the winning entry, and there is also a People’s Choice Award. “We give out the two awards and then everybody eats the books,” Abshear says. “They just disappear.”

Monthly exhibits at the KBAC Gallery similarly “don’t really stick to rules,” often displaying painting, drawing, photography and other art forms, Abshear says. “We kind of view the gallery as a place to be able to feature artists for the community, usually related to book arts, but sometimes it’s something else.”

Besides bringing artists and writers to Kalamazoo from around the country, the KBAC has made books that have traveled well beyond Southwest Michigan, since it takes commissions to create books for individuals and organizations. One notable example was when the Kalamazoobased Fetzer Institute commissioned personalized blank journals to be presented to the first recipients of its Fetzer Prize for Love and Forgiveness — Bishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama. Abshear still marvels at the results of that 2009 project: “We have photos of the Dalai Lama holding a book that we made here!”

www.encorekalamazoo.com | 21

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A•

W ineRegion

on the

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Southwest Michigan wineries see increases in quality and customers by

M

Brian laM

aking a great wine is a lengthy experiment.

Wine has been produced in Southwest Michigan since the late 1800s, and it seems, according to the region’s winemakers, that a century of experiments is paying off, as this corner of Michigan is finding its identity as a wine-producing region.

Once planted, a vine can take as long as half a dozen years before it’s mature enough to start producing grapes capable of being used for a palatable wine, and even longer before producing a wine of some quality. Once harvested and pressed, the grapes need time to ferment and — as is often the case with most reds and many whites — months or even years of aging in oak casks.

Minute details, like the time of day the grapes are harvested or the type of oak a wine is aged in, can significantly affect the end product. When sipping on the fruits of his or her labors, a winemaker might theorize about what worked or didn’t work in the winemaking process and commit to making certain changes. It could be three more years before the winemaker would even be able to test whether or not those assumptions were correct and whether or not the tweaks to the process worked.

24 | EncorE summer 2013

When you taste the wines of Bordeaux, France, you are tasting the fruits of an ongoing experiment that started in the first century A.D. There are vineyards in Bordeaux that have been in the same families for almost 500 years. The result, in this region and many others in France, Italy and Spain, is that the winemakers have established a sense of regionality. These Old World grape growers and winemakers know what works, and they’ve honed their methods so precisely that they don’t even list the names of the grapes on their bottles, just the region, village or in some cases estate. They’ve even limited their grape growth to the few varietals that have been tried and true for centuries. When you drink a red wine from Bordeaux, you are almost assuredly drinking a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot. As far as the percentages: not important. It’s the regional taste they’re going for.

Southwest Michigan wineries are developing their own regional taste. More than 20 wineries sit in what is an exponentially growing wine market recognized as the Lake Michigan Shore appellation. Winery owners and winemakers of this appellation say they’re more collaborative than they’ve ever been, working together to elevate the region as a whole, but also to help each other understand, cultivate and promote the region.

That’s good news for wine-tour enthusiasts. Visiting the region's wineries and tasting shops leads one on a winding route that weaves southwest of Kalamazoo to the lakeshore and then north to South Haven and east to Fennville. It would be a lengthy feat to describe all that can be seen on the route, but here’s a taste of what a number of those wineries offer and what their winemakers have to say about their history, products and the future of Michigan’s wine industry.

Linda Foster

Lawton Ridge

Heading west out of Kalamazoo toward wine country, the first winery one encounters is Lawton Ridge, at 8456 Stadium Drive. While the tasting room sits on the west side of Kalamazoo, the grapes are grown southeast of Kalamazoo, in Lawton, the area that put Michigan grape growing on the map in 1919 with the opening of the Welch’s plant.

The Lawton Ridge vineyards were planted in 1974 by a group of mostly Western Michigan University professors. The only non-professor in the bunch was a chiropractor named Dean Bender, who passionately studied (continued on page 28)

www.encorekalamazoo.com | 25

26 | EncorE summer 2013

8. lehman’s orchard Winery 2280 Portage Road, Niles 269-683-9078 www.lehmansorchard.com Mon-Sat 9-5, Sun 12-5

7. contessa Wine cellars 3235 Friday Road, Coloma 269-468-5534 www.contessawinecellars.com Open daily year ‘round 12-5

10. old Shore vineyards 264 Browntown Road, Buchanan 269-422-1967 www.oldshorevineyards.com Tasting by appt. only

9. Wyncroft Winery 716-B E. Front St., Buchanan www.wyncroftwine.com Tasting by appt. only

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6. Karma vista vineyards and Winery 6991 Ryno Road, Coloma 269-468-9463 www.karmavista.com First Friday in March-Dec 23: Mon 11-5, Wed-Sat 11-5, Sun 12-5, closed Tuesdays

5. Warner vineyards Wine Haus & tasting room 706 S. Kalamazoo St., Paw Paw 800-756-5357 www.warnerwines.com May 12-Dec 31: Mon-Thu 10-6, Fri-Sat 10-8, Sun 12-5; Winter Hours: Mon-Fri 12-6, Sat 10-6, Sun 12-5

4. St. Julian Winery 716 S. Kalamazoo St., Paw Paw 269-657-5568 www.stjulian.com May-Nov: Mon-Sat 9-6, Sun 11-6; Dec-April: Mon-Fri 9-5, Sat 9-6, Sun 11-5

3. cody Kresta vineyard & Winery 45727 27th St., Mattawan 269-668-3800 www.codykrestawinery.com May-Oct: Thu-Sat 12-6, Sun 12-5; Nov-April: Sat 12-6, Sun 12-5

2. lawton ridge Winery 8456 Stadium Drive, Kalamazoo 269-372-9463 www.lawtonridgewinery.com Mon-Sat 12-6; Sun 12-5

1. peterson and Sons Winery 9375 East P Ave., Kalamazoo 269-626-9755 www.naturalwine.net By appt. only; min. 6-bottle purchase

A list of regional wineries, including the cities they’re located in or nearest to. Please note that some wineries have tasting rooms in multiple locations; those are listed separately here.

A Tasteful Tour

Ferron has found a day job: The wellknown Canadian folk singer now works as a peer recovery specialist for those with mental health and substance abuse issues. She is seen here in the woods of the Fen Sanctuary, a retreat center she founded near Three Rivers.

19. Gravity 10220 Lauer Road, Baroda 269-471-9463 www.gravitywine.com April 1-Thanksgiving: Fri-Sat 12-8, Sun-Thu 12-6; Thanksgiving-March 30: Fri-Sun 12–6

18. round Barn Winery, Brewery & distillery 10983 Hills Road, Baroda 800-716-9463 www.roundbarnwinery.com Check website or call for hours

17. tabor Hill Winery & restaurant 185 Mount Tabor Road, Buchanan 800-283-3363 www.taborhill.com Open daily; call for hours

16. Hickory creek Winery 750 Browntown Road, Buchanan 269-422-1100 www.hickorycreekwinery.com Open year ’round; call for hours

43 Red Arrow Highway

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15. tabor Hill champagne cellar 10243 Red Arrow Highway, Bridgman 269-465-6566 www.taborhill.com Call (800) 283-3363 for hours

14. St. Julian Winery tasting room 9145 union pier road, union pier 269-469-3150 www.stjulian.com Memorial Day-Labor Day: Mon-Sat 10-7, Sun 11-7; non-summer hours: Mon-Sat 10-6, Sun 11-6

13. Warner vineyards tasting room 19 N. Whitaker St., New Buffalo 269-469-9463 www.warnerwines.com Call for hours

12. free run cellars tasting room 9185 Union Pier Road, Union Pier 269-469-6885 www.freeruncellars.com Check website or call for hours

11. round Barn Winery & distillery tasting room 9185 Union Pier Road, Union Pier 269-469-6885 www.roundbarnwinery.com Jan-March: Mon-Thu 12-6, Fri-Sat: 11-6, Sun: 12-6; April-May: Mon-Sat 11-6, Sun 12-6

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33. fenn valley vineyards & Wine cellar 6130 122nd Ave., Fennville 269-561-2396 www.fennvalley.com July-Aug: Mon-Sat 11-6, Sun 1-5; Sept-Oct: Mon-Thu 11-5, Fri-Sat 11-6, Sun 1-5; Nov-May: Sat 11-5, Sun 1-5

32. tabor Hill Wine port 214 Butler St., Saugatuck 269-857-4859 www.taborhill.com Call (800) 283-3363 for hours

31. fenn valley vineyards tasting room 310 Butler St., Saugatuck 269-857-5170 www.fennvalley.com May to Dec: Mon-Sat 11-5, Sun 12-5; Jan-April: Fri-Sat 11-5, Sun 12-5

30. Warner vineyards tasting room 515 Williams St., South Haven 269-637-6900 www.warnerwines.com Call for hours

29. Mcintosh apple orchards & Wine cellars 6431 107th Ave., South Haven 269-637-7922 www.mcintoshorchards.com April-May: Fri 12-5, Sat 11-6, Sun 12-5; June-Oct: Mon-Sat 10-6, Sun 12-5, Fri in Oct 10-8; Nov-Dec: Thu-Fri 12-5, Sat 11-5, Sun 12-5; Jan-March: Sat 12–5, Sun 12–4

28. 12 corners vineyards tasting room 511 Phoenix St., South Haven 269-637-1211 www.12Corners.com Call for hours

27. St. Julian Winery tasting room 515 Williams St., Units 5 & 6, South Haven 269-767-7096 www.stjulian.com Memorial Day-Labor Day: Sat-Sun 12-5

26. 12 corners vineyards Winery & tasting room 1201 Benton Center Road, Benton Harbor 269-927-1512 www.12Corners.com Opening June 2013; call for hours

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This map is not to scale. While every attempt was made to be as accurate as possible, it is an artistic representation of the area. Encore makes no guaranty as to the accuracy or completeness of the data provided on this map.

8

25. tabor Hill Wine & art Gallery 80 W. Main St., Benton Harbor 269-925-6402 www.taborhill.com Call (800) 283-3363 for hours

24. White pine Winery 317 State St., St. Joseph 269-281-0098 www.whitepinewinery.com March-May & Sept-Dec: Sat-Thu 12-5, Fri 12-6; Jun-Aug: Sun 12-5, Mon-Thu 11-6, Fri-Sat 11-7; Jan-Feb: call for hours

23. Baroda founders Wine cellar 8963 Hills Road, Baroda 269-426-5222 www.founderswinecellar.com Daily 12–6

22. domaine Berrien cellars 398 E. Lemon Creek Road, Berrien Springs 269-473-9463 www.domaineberrien.com April-Dec: Daily 12–5; Jan-March: Fri-Sun 12–5

21. lemon creek Winery 533 E. Lemon Creek Road, Berrien Springs 269-471-1321 www.lemoncreekwinery.com May-Nov: Mon-Sat 10-6, Sun 12-6; Dec-March: Daily 12–5; April: Mon-Sat 12-6, Sun 10-6

20. free run cellars vineyard & tasting room 10062 Burgoyne Road, Berrien Springs 269-471-1737 www.freeruncellars.com Check website or call for hours

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Richard Jordan

Cody Kresta

“Traminette is big!” says David Butkovich, owner of Cody Kresta, a small winery nestled in farmland between Mattawan and Paw Paw. Butkovich has been working with grapes as long as he can remember, helping his grandparents at harvest times when the grape trucks would line up for miles along the farm.

“They had me driving the tractor at 10 years old. It was all hands on deck,” he recalls. “After a long, hard day, my grandparents and their friends would drink wine, eat Limburger cheese and play the violin into the night.”

Butkovich says Traminette is one of the varietals meant for Southwest Michigan. He notes that it was the success of Traminette that showed farmers the kind of good fortune they could have with Riesling and Gewurtztraminer, because of their similarities.

28 | EncorE summer 2013

Linda Foster

WINE REGION (continued from page 25)

the art of grape growing and then eventually winemaking. In 2008, he teamed up with Crick Haltom and opened the Lawton Ridge Winery.

“It takes time to really understand what’s possible in this region,” says Haltom. “A great winemaker from Napa (California) couldn’t just come to Michigan and start making great wine. It’s a whole different environment.”

Part of the learning curve is understanding the challenges of growing Vitis vinifera in Southwest Michigan.

Vinifera are the grapevines commonly associated with traditional European varietals, like Chardonnay, Merlot or Sauvignon Blanc. These don’t grow as easily as the American vines of Concord grapes used for jelly. Since most people aren’t looking for a wine that tastes like grape jelly, Americans had to create hybrids of Vitis vinifera (European vines) and Vitis labrusca (American vines).

Hybrid varietals are easier to grow and are still capable of producing table wines that taste much more like their European counterparts than the fruit spread.

Bender cut his teeth on these hybrid varietals until 1992, when he took the plunge into Vitis vinifera. “I started with Pinot Gris and then slowly started growing more and more vinifera. Our vineyards are now more than 65 percent vinifera, and they’re all flourishing. It was just a matter of trial and error and finally figuring out, ‘Wow, I can grow this here.’”

While hybrid varietals are generally less known by the general public, their quality can be just as impressive as a more traditional varietal. Indeed, Traminette — a hybrid varietal related to Gewurtztraminer or Riesling — may be the white grape that helps Michigan define its identity.

Interestingly, while it’s a hybrid that’s flourishing for the white varietals, Butkovich and many other growers in the region are seeing the Vitis vinifera varietal Cabernet Franc as the emerging star of the reds. “Cab Franc has been killing in the competitions,” he says. “It doesn’t have to have a good, long growing season. It can thrive in colder climates.”

Cabernet Franc makes for a wine with bright, red fruit notes, like cherry or strawberry. While not as light as a Pinot Noir, it comes closer to this varietal than to the one it is most often confused with, Cabernet Sauvignon.

What makes Cab Franc truly interesting in Southwest Michigan is that the regional taste seems to be most prominent in this varietal. Indeed, even the mighty Cabernet Sauvignon, which would have strong tobacco notes in Bordeaux or currant and dark fruit notes in California, tends to skew toward the brighter red fruits from Michigan vineyards. Tasting a Michigan Cab Franc, one could get the sense that the soil is saying, “Here, this is what I taste like.”

Hickory Creek

The Cabernet Franc at Hickory Creek — northwest of Buchanan and the southwesternmost of Michigan’s wineries — exhibits many of the classic notes one expects from its European counterparts, especially those from the Loire Valley in France. The green-pepper notes creep in at the tail end of a bright, quaffable redfruit-driven wine.

Owner Eric Wagner, who purchased the winery just a year ago, says its focus is on Vitis vinifera grapes and the traditional characteristics one can expect from them. Cabernet Franc is one of just four red varietals the winery offers on its tasting menu, the others being Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and Merlot.

Hickory Creek’s previous owner, Mike de Shaaf, has stayed on as the winemaker.

According to the local wine community, de Shaaf has been instrumental in bringing national recognition to wineries all over Michigan. In 2008, de Shaaf reached out to a handful of Master Sommeliers from around the country and invited them to do a blind tasting of Michigan wines. The rules were simple: The wines the sommeliers sampled would be anonymous to all but the person submitting the wine, and the criticism would be brutally honest.

(continued on page 30)

J ust a taste reveals fun wine finds by

Brian laM

While exploring the wineries of Southwest Michigan, I had the opportunity to taste hundreds of great wines. I came across a number of fun finds that would be of interest to wine tourists. They are wines that I found to be delicious but that also have an element of fun, surprise, intrigue or what I call a “Michigan uniqueness.”

2011 Traminette, Fenn Valley, $12/bottle This Traminette is 2.5 percent residual sugar and captures the essence of this Michigan-friendly varietal. This wine has great minerality, bright pear and melon notes and finishes with an acidity that balances its semi-sweetness.

2011 Traminette, Lawton Ridge, $12.95/bottle My goodness, Michigan is doing Traminette right!

The Lawton Ridge Traminette has a touch of sweetness with a subtle, gentle mouth-feel. It has great melon notes, with a playful white grapefruit finish that hits you about three seconds after swallowing. This Traminette won gold in the Indy International Wine Competition.

2010 Pinot Noir Reserve, Round Barn, $19.99/bottle All the reds at Round Barn jumped out at me with big, bold red fruit. But this Pinot Noir has a little feistiness. It is fruit-forward with a big mouth-feel and will satisfy both Pinot purists and people who saw the movie Sideways.

2011 Cetiri, Cody Kresta, $35/bottle A Bordeaux-style blend with a touch of Chambourcin, it exhibits the bright raspberry notes of Michigan reds, but the Cab Sauv anchors it with the darker fruits of black cherry and blackberry. There’s a touch of spice that lingers at the end, and the Hungarian oak gives it enough structure to keep the fruit from taking over.

2011 Moon Shadow Cabernet Sauvignon Ice Wine, Lemon Creek, $55/bottle Lemon Creek has the only Cab ice wine made in the United States. The grapes for ice wine are harvested at temperatures below freezing, allowing the sugars to be pressed out without as much of the juice. It is shocking how smooth this 17 percent residual sugar dessert wine is. It has a soft, creamy mouth-feel that allows the sweetness and the fruit to shine.

First Kiss, Baroda Founders, $14/bottle Leave your pretentiousness at the door for this Merlot-based chocolate and raspberry wine. It would be tough to drink more than a glass of this in one sitting, but that one glass ... oh, my! It’s like drinking a chocolate-covered cherry, but the Merlot base allows it to go down like wine instead of syrup. Ideal for drinking as dessert instead of with dessert.

2008 Cabernet Franc, Hickory Creek, $24/bottle As a Cab Franc fan, I was pleased and surprised by this one’s green-pepper notes and minerality that are reminiscent of French Cab Francs from the Loire Valley.

Those qualities are just strong enough to stand up to the bright red-cherry notes and create a well-rounded delicious wine. Only 264 cases produced, so don’t miss out.

Dulce Vita from Contessa, $9.99/bottle If you’re going to sample the wines of Michigan, you’ve got to try at least one made from the grape that put Michigan grape-growing on the map: Concord.

Dulce Vita is a sweet wine made predominantly of this jelly grape, but it’s blended and crafted to allow it to still taste like wine, not liquid jelly. A great gift for out-of-state friends or something to slurp with a peanut butter sandwich.

Brian Lam has a passion for great wine. He spent three years as a wine buyer and three years as a wine salesman and moonlightedas a sommelier at Dish Aspen Restaurant and the prestigious Cache Cache Bistro, both in Aspen, Colo. He received his Level 1 certificate through the Court of Master Sommeliers program in 2004.

See more great finds at www.encorekalamazoo.com/great-wine-finds

1 Vineyard 5 Years

12 Award Winning Wines

Come Visit 8456 Stadium drive - Kalamazoo — 3 miles west of uS 131 — 269.372.9463 www.lawtonridgewinery.com

www.encorekalamazoo.com | 29

This allowed winemakers the opportunity to have their wines receive direct but unpublished criticism. Lawton Ridge’s Haltom says this was extremely helpful. “It really got people to think about what they were making and how it could be improved. The feedback has reinforced what the winemakers in the region have been saying: ‘We’re making some great wine in Michigan.’”

Since that first year, de Shaaf has brought in sommeliers every year to repeat the event.

Haltom says he talked to one of the sommeliers at the most recent blind tasting who told him, “Five years ago I was looking for nice things to say. Now I’m looking for the flaws.”

While the winemakers in the region recognize that the drier, European varietals are what will most likely allow them to achieve national acceptance, many of the winemakers agree that it would be foolish to turn their backs completely on the sweet wines that dominate wine sales at most of the tasting desks in Michigan.

Saint Julian

“We have so many different varietals and products that we’re going to try in order to keep things fresh, but we’ll always have the Blue Heron,” says Nancie Oxley, winemaker at Michigan’s oldest winery, St. Julian, in Paw Paw.

Linda Foster

WINE REGION (continued from page 28)

The Heron series at St. Julian, which also includes White Heron and Red Heron, is composed of mostly hybrid and American varietals and has very high residual sugar content compared to traditional dry table wines.

But Oxley and virtually every other winemaker in the region agree that sweet wines pay the bills.

With few exceptions, the No. 1 seller at the tasting desk is a sweet wine. Sweet wines are the reality shows of wines. Snobs love to trash them, but they’re insanely popular, and

some of them are really good.

Sweet wines can come from a traditionally sweet varietal — like Riesling — but often they result from a deliberate winemaking method, like stopping fermentation before all the sugar has been consumed. In other cases, brandy or juice is reintroduced back into wine before bottling. A wine with a little residual sugar content can tame a spicy dish or make a pleasant after-dinner treat and is an almost undeservedly perfect pairing with Thanksgiving turkey.

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The sales of sweet wines at Michigan wineries give winemakers a little breathing room to take risks with other varietals.

Oxley, Michigan’s first female winemaker, revels in the fact that Michigan still has so much room for experimentation. She recently brought in the Spanish varietal Albarino and just released a new nine-grape red blend called Cock of the Walk, which features an Austrian hybrid varietal called Zweigelt.

Oxley isn’t completely sold on Traminette and Cab Franc as the champions of Michigan varietals, but she admits that they grow well here, especially the Traminette. “Hybrids aren’t as labor-intensive. The trellising system allows hybrids to grow along the top wires, and they aren’t as finicky.” Oxley’s namesake wine, the Sweet Nancie, is a sparkling wine made with none other than Traminette.

Round Barn and Free Run Cellars

It’s safe to say that Chicago has caught on to its neighboring wine country. With Berrien Springs just an hour and a half from the Windy City, tasting-room sippers have evolved from summer beach-goers and casual day-trippers to weekly tour bus riders. In response, Round Barn Winery and its sister winery, the nearby Free Run Cellars, have turned stop-in wine tasting into a weekly party.

“We have over 100,000 people a year visit Round Barn,” says Justin Young, the beer barn manager and cousin of winery proprietor Rich Moersch. Round Barn is the only winery/brewery/distillery in Michigan and has a tasting room and bar area for each of its three offerings.

Young says they’re packed on weekends, as Living Social buses deliver Chicagoans by the hundreds. Round Barn has started bringing in live music on weekends during the summer and has events planned all summer and fall. Food is served on patios adjacent to the spirits tasting room, and the winery doubles up on the tasting desks on weekends to accommodate the influx of tasters.

Young has been working at the winery for four years and says the growth each year has been exponential. “It’s not just the number of people per day, but the season is getting longer too,” he says. “We’re staying busy into November and December.” He suggests visiting on Saturdays for more of a party feel but notes that midweek is a better time for a more traditional tasting experience.

Free Run Cellars is the Berrien Springs area’s easternmost winery. It opened in 2006 and features a selection of the smaller-batch products of the wineries. It also offers events, though they are smaller in scale and more casual than those at Round Barn. Among them are its Wine & Wags afternoon, when guests can bring their dogs for some frolicking in the vineyards.

Lemon Creek

“I think we’ve seen a third of Chicago,” jokes Jeff Lemon, winemaker at Lemon Creek, also in the Berrien Springs area. He co-owns the winery with his brothers Tim and Bob. The vineyards at Lemon Creek have been in the Lemon family since 1855. The winery opened in 1984, but Jeff admits the spikes in both quality and consumption have been fairly recent.

“The quality of fruit in the whole region has improved. A lot of it comes from years of trial and error, but there’s been great collaboration recently, and we’re getting a lot of outside help, including programs from universities and the Michigan Grape & Wine Growing Council.”

Lemon says that in addition to using better growing techniques, local winemakers are making improvements in barrel regimens and trellising systems. He now feels it’s a matter of getting the word out. “This region is ready to put our wines up against anyone.

In the past we’ve done a poor job of promoting ourselves.”

The region’s new promotional efforts are paying off as area wineries, including Lemon Creek, are getting overrun on weekends.

Lemon Creek now has a designated room for large groups and strongly encourages reservations for groups of eight or more.

Lemon Creek trades primarily in Vitis vinifera, bypassing even the bountiful Traminette.

All the grapes at Lemon Creek are grown in

www.encorekalamazoo.com | 31

their own vineyards, and Lemon says it was the first winery in the state to sell Cabernet Sauvignon commercially. Despite several award-winning vinifera dry wines, Lemon Creek’s biggest seller is, naturally, a sweet wine made from the hybrid varietal Grand Lancs Blanc, a late-harvest Vignoles.

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Recognizing the consumer’s love of sweet wines and taking it to the nth degree is Baroda Founders Wine Cellar, which sits in the heart of Berrien County’s Baroda Township.

Founders winemaker Leonard Olsen was the original winemaker at Tabor Hill and the first person to plant commercial European vines in Michigan.

Founders feels like a winery that was built specifically for the rapid growth and experimental palate of the area's wine industry.

Unlike the small tasting rooms of other wineries that were built at a time when there was much less traffic, Founders’ tasting room is the size of a banquet hall, with a tasting desk that extends the length of the room. On a four-column tasting sheet, two of the columns are devoted to sweet wines, including fruit wines and dessert wines that feature a chocolate wine series. One of Founders’ red wines, the Oh Hell Yeah! Red, started as a dry red wine and had juice added back into it to give it extra sweetness. The recipe sheet handed out at tastings shows how to make cocktails with Founders’ specialty wines.

Baroda Founders seems to echo the sentiment of Round Barn and much of the region: Wine drinking doesn’t have to be snooty or inaccessible. It’s OK to have fun with it.

Fenn Valley

Brian Lesperance, marketing/government relations director at Fenn Valley Vineyards & Wine Cellar, says events are a huge part of its business. The winery sits on a 70-acre farm near Fennvile, almost an hour north of the next-nearest winery and a ways off the “wine trail” that so many Chicagoans travel.

Yet, Lesperance says Fenn Valley sees its fair share of Illinois residents. Many have summer homes on Lake Michigan, and Fennville is just a few miles from the shores of

South Haven and Saugatuck. Fenn Valley’s monthly winemaker dinners and food pairings lure plenty of wine connoisseurs to make the commute from Chicago as well as from various parts of Southwest Michigan.

The winery was founded in 1973 by the father-son team of Bill and Doug Welsch, with Doug still acting as head of winemaking.

Many of its grapes are harvested from the vineyards right outside the winery, but plenty are purchased from the Berrien Springs area as well. Lesperance notes that most wines have a blend of both regions, but the ones that read “Estate Bottled” are made exclusively with grapes from the property.

Lesperance says Fenn Valley’s recent growth is a result of the growth of the whole wine region and the “buy local” movement.

Not only has the number of wine dinners and events increased, but retail sales have spiked as well, both at the winery and at its satellite tasting room in downtown Saugatuck.

Despite being off the beaten trail, Fenn Valley feels completely included in the collaboration taking place among the wineries in Southwest Michigan, Lesperance says. “All the winemakers share knowledge,” he says.

“Everyone is friendly and compares notes.”

Lesperance, who’s been with Fenn Valley for just over a year, is part of the third generation at Fenn Valley. His wife, Gwen, who also got involved with the winery in 2012, is the daughter of Doug Welsch.

Karma Vista

In addition to collaboration, the passing of information from generation to generation has been an important factor in the continued success of the region. In 2009, Karma Vista Winery owner Joe Herman passed the winemaking reins to his son Keith, the seventh generation to be a part of the farming tradition on land that’s been in the family since 1847.

Joe Herman considers himself a farmer first before a wine producer. In addition to wine grapes, he grows peaches and juice grapes. The hot spring last year decimated most of his crops, but due to the late bud break of wine grapes, Karma Vista’s 2012 vintage was saved and Herman believes it will be a good one. (continued on page 47)

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artS encore

Singing Praises T

he van is filled with laughter and conversation — all in Russian.

At the helm of this gaiety is Kalamazoo’s Svetlana Stone, the guide and translator for visitors from Kalamazoo’s sister city Pushkin, Russia. In fluent Russian, Stone describes the scenery, characteristics and history of the Kalamazoo area as the van hurtles down M-43 toward Lake Michigan.

Listening to her enthusiasm, it’s hard to believe Stone isn’t a Southwest Michigan native.

Though she was born and raised in Latvia and spent her early adult life there, Stone has emphatically embraced the region she’s been a part of since 2007. But she also has found ways to bring a little Russia to Southwest Michigan, not only as a program officer for Colleagues International, where she works to link international visitors, leaders and exchange students with the Kalamazoo community, but also as a singer.

Stone grew up in Liepaja, a scenic town on the Baltic coast, in the part of Russia that would later become Latvia. She and her five siblings were raised by their single mother, Luidmila Strogonova, who received two medals from the government and was the subject of a newspaper article for being an exceptional single mom who kept her children “well-fed and well-dressed” while working as a bookkeeper.

When Strogonova learned that Svetlana and her younger sister Ilona displayed great singing talents, she used some inheritance money to buy a piano and enroll the girls in singing classes. “Before that, we would pretend that our kitchen sink was our piano,” Stone says with a laugh.

34 | EncorE summer 2013

www.encorekalamazoo.com | 35

Erik Holladay

Svetlana Stone calls upon the classical vocal training she received as a young girl in Russia for her performances in her adopted community of Kalamazoo and elsewhere.

artS encore

Svetlana Stone traveled to New York City in December to perform on a show broadcast on TBN Russia.

36 | EncorE summer 2013

This penchant for laughter later caused the two sisters to lose a competition when they attended Emils Melngailis Music College of Liepaja. “It was an open exam with everyone listening,” Stone says. “Our teacher gave my sister and me the same piece, and I sat in the first row and mouthed the words while she sang. We thought that would help, but she started laughing and couldn’t stop. When our teacher asked, ‘What happened?’ we told her and she laughed too.”

The girls, who looked like twins then and wore identical dresses and hairstyles, auditioned to study at the famous Gnesins Russian Academy of Music, in Moscow. They sang a duet as well as solos and read a poem and a literary passage. Both were accepted but opted to turn down the offers.

Stone, who was 17 at the time, admits, “Coming to Moscow was a big experience. I got scared by the huge buildings, so many people.”

Instead, Stone attended the Music College of Liepaja, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in vocal music, with a minor in choral instruction, in 1996. She went on to the Liepaja Academy of Pedagogy, where she earned a Bachelor of Science in Education degree, with minors in elementary education, mathematics and foreign languages, in 2001.

During that time, Stone was establishing herself musically. She directed and conducted a church choir and continued to perform with her sister, who became the director of a kindergarten. Stone took first place in the Latvian National Vocal Duets Competition, performed in a jubilee concert at her alma mater and sang the lead role in a Liepaja Children’s Opera production. She also sang professionally the classical operas of Brahms, Mozart, Dvorak, Rachmaninov, Bach and others.

But an opportunity to pursue Christian missionary work through affiliations in the U.S. led Stone to leave Latvia for Fort Wayne, Ind., in 2002. It was there she recorded her first CD and performed in concerts and dramatic musicals, primarily for church audiences of various faiths. Already fluent in Latvian, Russian and German, she taught herself English by watching movies with subtitles and studying grammar books.

“When I came to the United States, I couldn’t speak English at all, but I knew I must,” she recalls. “The first word I learned was ‘congratulations’ because I had been invited to a wedding and I wanted to be polite to the bride and groom.”

Stone moved to Kalamazoo in 2007 to further her studies, setting aside public performances. She earned a Master of Arts in Educational Leadership from Western Michigan University, with emphasis on student affairs and higher education leadership.

“I already had two degrees from Latvia, one in music and one in education. To further my English skills and knowledge of American culture, I decided to pursue another degree in education, an area I was already familiar with, so the language barrier would not be insurmountable,” she explains.

At the same time, Stone was a single mom to her teenage daughter, Izabella, and did volunteer work for Colleagues International. But the calling to continue singing was still there – and came from others. ”Friends told me, ‘You have to continue performing. Don’t stop. You have a beautiful voice. Don’t wait until it’s too late,’” she recalls.

encore artS

Svetlana Stone, right, with her daughter Izabella, a student at Kalamazoo Valley Community College.

Stone, who had volunteered to help organize the KalamazooPushkin Partnership’s Russian Festival, found that her singing talents also were wanted for the festival, which is held each fall at the Fetzer Center on WMU’s campus. She sang for a reception at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts for the 2010 festival, at the Russian Festival itself that year and for the 2011 festival’s farewell dinner at the Park Club.

These solo performances led to the formation of a group called An American Taste of Russia, composed of Stone, violinist Paul Franklin and pianist/jazz singer Janice Lakers, all from Kalamazoo. The group performs at various events, both local and international in nature.

Stone also has sung on her own with the Kalamazoo Mandolin & Guitar Orchestra and at the Kalamazoo Fretboard Festival, the Latvian Spring Festival and the International Festival in Battle Creek as well as at various churches locally and in Chicago. Although primarily a classical vocalist, she also plays alto saxophone and piano.

It didn’t take long for Stone’s talents to get noticed outside of Southwest Michigan. Stone travels “about every month” to visit the Christian Worship Center in Downers Grove, Ill. Her musical endeavors for Christmas and Easter celebrations there drew the attention of someone connected to the Trinity Broadcasting Network, the world’s largest Christian television network, reaching 3.2 billion households worldwide. In December, she traveled to New York City to sing for a program that appeared on TBN Russia.

“Bishop Michael Petrow is a partner in the TBN-Russia international programs in Israel and the Ukraine. He invited me to New York,” Stone explains.

This time, traveling to a large city to perform was a good thing, since Stone has overcome her teenage fear of big cities.

“I was staying at a friend’s house 30 minutes from the TBN station,” she says. “There was a lot of traffic, and we were sitting still for a long time. Six o’clock was the beginning of the show. The producers didn’t know what I was going to sing. I didn’t know where I was to stand. I had no time to pick a dress. I just fixed my hair and got in.”

She says she received much positive feedback and encouragement from the production staff and other performers. ”It was a wonderful opportunity to serve God,” she says. “It was a great experience. I was blessed. It gave me a chance to show that everything I have came from God.” The future is bright for Stone in many ways. This month Stone will marry Allen Zobian, a singer/songwriter with knowledge of the music recording business. The couple are already teaming up to bring their songs and talents to the world in new ways. Stone has several performances scheduled for this summer. She will perform in Battle Creek at the Cereal City Festival June 8 and the International SummerFest and Black Arts Festival Aug. 10. She also will perform at Kalamazoo’s Russian Festival on Nov.16.

Stone is working full time as a program officer for Colleagues International, where she continues to help international visitors, leaders and exchange students benefit from and enrich the Kalamazoo community. Her daughter finished high school early and is now taking classes in business administration and international studies at Kalamazoo Valley Community College.

“Every day I say, ‘Thank you, God, for everything I have,’” she says.

“I want to be a missionary who sings. I want to bring people together through music. People of this world have no reason to fight, but we have a lot to share — our culture, our experiences, love, friendship, relationships, community.” To that end, Stone continues to sing in churches and at festivals with lyrics in English, Russian, Latvian, Hebrew and Ukrainian. Her styles include classical, jazz, blues, folk, pop, rock, gospel and swing.

Yet, she wants to do more. “Music is a universal language that everyone can understand,” Stone says. “As children of the Cold War, my husband and I both want to spread a message of peace and God's love to all humanity through our music.”

As far as pursuing that goal in Kalamazoo, she adds, “Other countries are not as open or culturally diverse as America. I am very thankful to be here.”

You can find online music videos featuring Svetlana Stone at www.youtube.com/user/SvetlanaIzabel.

www.encorekalamazoo.com | 37

artS encore

What comes naturally Nature awakens a poet’s spirit

by

MargareT deriTTer

A

Author Robert Haight

nyone who knows Robert Haight won’t be surprised to find that the poems in his new collection, Feeding Wild Birds, are filled with images from nature: a heron as still as driftwood, crickets rubbing their itchy legs, songbird claws scratching branches into leaf.

After all, Haight lives on Hemlock Lake, near Marcellus, and walks his dogs every day through the woods and fields of the Cass County countryside. And his previous book, Emergences and Spinner Falls, was teeming with rivers, mayflies and steelhead.

Haight is clearly a man who loves the outdoors. “I’m awakened by nature,” he says. “I just find when I’m outside, when I’m out in the woods or out on the river, all of my senses become heightened and my thinking becomes slower and clearer. That’s where I love to be.”

In his new book, images from the natural world often illuminate the world of the spirit, and Haight is pleased when a reader takes note of it. (continued on page 44)

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encore artS

Notes on healing

Elisabeth Pixley-Fink sings during a March appearance at The Old Dog Tavern.

Songwriting helps musician MargareT deriTTer mend after tragic death by

What does the love know that I don’t know?

Erik Holladay

That’s a question Elisabeth Pixley-Fink asks on her new album, Bloodroot, which arose in the wake of a friend and lover’s sudden death.

The question exemplifies the poignancy and poetry of the Kalamazoo singer-songwriter’s lyrics, and her comments on the question reveal a young woman intent on spiritual awareness: “I really like that line too,” she says. “It means there’s obviously something I’m missing, and love is guiding me toward it, but I don’t understand it.”

Pixley-Fink, who is 27, grew up studying classical piano, but it was just six or seven years ago that she started writing her own songs, inspired by a concert by Seth and May, a folk duo from northern Michigan.

“Seeing them play made me feel like I could start writing music and singing on stage,” says Pixley-Fink, whose album and a music video were funded by a grant from the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo.

She began working on Bloodroot soon after she lost Andrew Wolf to a bicycle accident, in September 2010. The title refers to a perennial that grows tall quickly and has underground rhizomes that connect individual plants. “I just knew I had to call the album that,” says Pixley-Fink. “It wasn’t a rational thing, but it’s fitting becase of ... the idea that he and I were connected underground.” (continued on page 45)

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poEtry encore

Michigan SuMMerS are MeaSured By The Tornado Machine You can make her dance again.

Turn the knob, she’ll rise from nothing into her old spin, her pirouette en pointe. Turn it back, she’ll sink into air. Harmless.

These days she dances to your tune.

But she recalls a day she made you hop. Remembers lurching into town from the west, slinging her hips, zagging down the main drag, a roaring tarantella, straightening her shoulders, unholy flamenco over the cemetery, drilling the dead from their sleep, jack-hammering their stones.

May’s maniac, snapping grandfather oaks, upending grandmother maples, kicking in the cars, sucking out the windows, slicing buildings like cake. God’s hip-hopper cut a new groove that afternoon.

Five souls it took to bate that hunger, send her on her way. Spun out somewhere east of town, she dwindled. They caught her near Galesburg, locked her in this crystal chamber so the children could learn to explain her, to know her comings and goings.

And when they turn the knob she gathers herself and spirals upside down, silvery, doing her silent hula, letting them think they can.

— Gail Griffin Griffin taught literature, writing and women’s studies for 35 years at Kalamazoo College and lived here when a tornado hit downtown Kalamazoo on May 13, 1980. She will officially retire in August after a transitional sabbatical. She has published memoir, creative nonfiction and poetry, winning the Lois Cranston Poetry Prize in 2006.

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.

40 | EncorE summer 2013

the length of helium balloon strings escaping from used car dealerships the number of black sweet cherry stands on old 131 as vacationers head north the intensity on the Scoville scale of road kill skunk on a humid night seconds between thunder and the power outage, days before returning to the grid pilgrimages to the big lake with feet big as flippers and spare tires, built-in flotation devices, measured by dog’s barks per minute times lots times time divided by patience by sirens on the weekend, the fire trucks and meat wagons, same thing at the small town parades with vintage tractors, the mayor, gentle horses and a clown the kids try to ignore as they measure the ’fro of cotton candy spun around a horn and the distance from ball’s release to the duck it never knocks over, how many extra turns if the girls smile at the carnie, measured in 4H ribbons of many colors, bags of just shorn sheep’s wool, jars of quince jam, and smiles.

It’s the length of two mittens tossed on a puddle.

It’s measured almost completely by heart.

— Elizabeth Kerlikowske Kerlikowske is an English professor at Kellogg Community College, in Battle Creek, and president of the Kalamazoo group Friends of Poetry. She measured last summer by the harvest from her own garden and a friend’s farm share.

encore EvEntS

PerForMing arTS Plays The Man Who Came to Dinner — The Civic Theatre’s Senior Class Readers’ Theatre presents this comedy about an irascible house guest forced to overstay his welcome, 2 p.m.

May 10 & 12; 7 p.m. May 11, Carver Center Studio, 426 S. Park St. 343-1313.

Robin Hood — The Civic Youth Theatre presents this tale of Sherwood Forest and the merry men who steal from the rich to give to the poor, 7 p.m. May 17 & 24; 1 & 4 p.m. May 18 & 25; 2 p.m. May 19; 9:30 a.m. & noon May 21 & 22; 5 p.m. May 23, Parish Theatre, 426 S. Park St. 343-1313.

The Home Team — Kim Carney’s new comedy about a Lansing family about to watch an MSU football game when a son brings home a girl from Ann Arbor, 8:30 p.m. June 28, 29, July 5, 6, 12, 13, 19, 20, 26, 27, New Vic Theatre, 134 E. Vine St. 381-3328.

Musicals & Opera Wicked — The musical tale of how the two witches of Oz became Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West, 7:30 p.m. May 1 & 2; 2 p.m. May 4; 8 p.m. May 3 & 4; 1 & 6:30 p.m.

May 5, Miller Auditorium, WMU. 387-2300.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying — A satirical musical comedy about big business and all it holds sacred, 8 p.m. May 3, 4, 10, 11, 17, 18; 7:30 p.m. May 9; 2 p.m. May 12 & 19, Civic Auditorium, 329 S. Park St. 343-1313.

I Get a Kick Out of You — A new production of the classic Cole Porter musical, 8:30 p.m.

May 10, 11, 17, 18, 24, 25, 31, June 1, 7, 8, 14, 15, New Vic Theatre, 134 E. Vine St. 381-3328.

Into the Woods — Fairy-tale characters explore what happens the day after they lived happily ever after in this Sondheim musical, 7:30 May 16; 8 p.m. May 17 & 18; 2 p.m. May 19, Balch Playhouse, Kalamazoo College. 337-7000.

Next to Normal — A musical drama about a typical American family beset by issues that threaten to tear it apart, 8 p.m. June 7, 8, 13–15, 20–22; 2 p.m. June 9, 16, 23, Farmers Alley Theater, 221 Farmers Alley. 343-2727.

Life Could Be a Dream — The four-man group The Crooning Crabcakes performs favorite doo-wop hits, 8 p.m. July 19, 20, 25–27, Aug. 1–3, 8–10; 2 p.m. July 21, 28, Aug. 4, 11, Farmers Alley Theater, 221 Farmers Alley.

343-2727.

Dance Peter and the Wolf — Ballet Arts Ensemble and the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra present Prokofiev’s classic ballet, 3 p.m. May 5, Chenery Auditorium, 714 S. Westnedge Ave. 387-2300.

Miscellaneous Kalamazoo Improv Festival — Crawlspace Theatre Productions presents a two-day festival featuring comedians from across the Midwest, 6, 8, & 10 p.m. May 10; 8 & 10 p.m. May 11, Farmers Alley Theatre, 221 Farmers Alley. 343-2727.

Symphony Of Gods and Men — The Kalamazoo Philharmonia Orchestra performs with the Bach Festival Chorus of Kalamazoo, 8 p.m. June 1, Chenery Auditorium, 714 S. Westnedge Ave. 337-7407.

Jerry Seinfeld — America's premier stand-up comic comes to Kalamazoo, 7 p.m. June 20, Miller Auditorium, WMU, 387-2300.

Chamber, Jazz, Orchestra & Bands Symphonic and Jazz Band Concert — Kalamazoo College ensembles perform under the direction of Tom Evans, 8 p.m. May 10, Dalton Theatre, Kalamazoo College, 337-7070.

Stulberg Competition — The annual competition features gifted string instrument performers under the age of 20. Semifinalist performances on the half hour, 9 a.m.–noon and 1–4 p.m. May 18, free; finals, 8 p.m. May 19, ticketed; master classes, 12:30–3:30 p.m. May 19, free, Dalton Center Recital Hall, WMU. 323-2776 or 387-2300.

Concerts in the Park — The Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo presents Sunday afternoon concerts in Bronson Park, 4 p.m. June 9, 16, 23, 30, July 7, 14, 21, Aug. 4, 11, 18. www.kalamazooarts.org.

Mixers on the Mall — Live music, refreshments and socializing every Wednesday at 5 p.m., with proceeds going to DKA Charities, June 19–Aug. 21, northern end of Kalamazoo Mall, except June 26, July 17 and Aug. 7 at Arcadia Creek Festival Place.

Vocal, Opera & Radio Bayreuth to Broadway — The Kalamazoo Singers’ spring concert celebrates grand choruses, arias and songs from opera and musical theater, 3 p.m.

May 5, Dalton Center Recital Hall, WMU. Anonymous 4 — This vocal ensemble, presented

by Fontana Chamber Arts and WMU’s Medieval Institute, performs a new work by David Lang retelling the love story of Tristan and Isolde, 8 p.m.

May 10, Stetson Chapel, Kalamazoo College.

382-7774.

All Ears Theatre — Free live radio performances for later airing on 102.1 WMUK-FM: Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Speckled Band, 6 p.m. May 4; The Parade, 6 p.m. May 18; The Bickersons, 6 p.m. June 1, First Baptist Church, 315 W. Michigan Ave.

Summer Festivals — Live music, food and fun at downtown Kalamazoo’s Arcadia Creek Festival Place: Dionysus Greek Festival, June 6–8; Kalamazoo Pride, June 14 & 15; Island Festival, June 20–22; Irish Festival, June 28 & 29; Kalamazoo Blues Festival, July 11–13; R&B/Funk Music Festival, July 19 & 20; Taste of Kalamazoo, July 25–27; Community Advocates Ribfest, Aug. 1–3; Wright for Kids Arcadia Rock Fest, Aug. 16 & 17; For the Love of Gospel & Christian Music Festival, Aug. 30 & 31.

ViSuaL arTS Richmond Center for Visual Arts, WMU John Kollig — An exhibition of paintings and drawings by this Kalamazoo artist, through June 28, Rose Netzorg & James Wilfred Kerr Gallery.

Sarah Lindley & Norwood Viviano — An exhibition of works by two Plainwell sculptors, through May 23, Albertine Monroe-Brown Gallery.

Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, 349-7775 Young Artists of Kalamazoo County — Art by kids from kindergarten through eighth grade, through May 8.

Sight and Feeling: Photographs by Ansel Adams — More than 20 of Adams’ photographs from the KIA collection, through May 19.

Reflections: African-American Life from the Myrna Colley-Lee Collection — Works of various media from the collection of this costume designer and arts patron, through May 26.

The Art of China and Japan: Selections from the Collection — Works on paper, ceramics and sculpture, through June 9.

High School Area Show — An exhibition of works by artists in grades 9–12 from nine counties, May 18–June 9.

West Michigan Area Show — A juried exhibition of art from a 14-county region of West Michigan, June 8–Aug. 31.

www.encorekalamazoo.com | 41

Summer Concert Series Sundays at 6:30pm Kindleberger Park, Parchment

“SHOUT!”-Beatles Tribute Flying Dragon Drummers “Whispers of the North”-Gordon Lightfoot Tribute Keith Scott Blues Old Friends-Simon & Garfunkel Allen as McGraw-Tim McGraw Tribute 33rd St Band

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A Captivating Musical Classic, a return to the 1950’s!

Festival Closing Concert Matt King, ELVIS Tribute, Mon, July 15, 6:30pm!

Stories From 1001 Arabian Nights!

ARTbreak — The Fifth Chakra: Art and Music by Brook LaRuche, May 7; Randy Bronkema: The American Landscape, May 14; Joshua Haas: Adding Artistic Flair to Bird and Wildlife Photography, May 21; The Legend of Burning Man, presented by Steve Curl, May 28. Guests may bring a lunch to these noon sessions.

Art & All That Jazz — Food and beverages served with art and music by Steve Kamerling and Barry Ross, 5:30–7:30 p.m. May 24.

Kalamazoo Institute of Arts Fair — 200 artists, music, activities and refreshments, 1–8 p.m.

June 7; 9 a.m.–5 p.m. June 8, Bronson Park.

Miscellaneous Midtown Gallery — The May exhibit, Humans, features works by James Deeb, Nolan Flynn, Katy Kick, John Kollig, Mary Hatch and Dora Natella; the June exhibits will be Twisted Trees and Other Things by Randy Walker and Draw the Line curated by Paul Sizer, with works by Sizer, Kenji and Eason, 356 S. Kalamazoo Mall. 372-0134.

Art Hop — Works by local artists at various venues and galleries in downtown Kalamazoo, 5–9 p.m. May 3, June 7, July 5, Aug. 2.

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Recycled Art in the Park — A sculpture event featuring 20 pieces using 100% recycled materials, with the public voting for a winner. Opening day events, noon–4 p.m. May 4; park open for viewing entries 8 a.m.–8 p.m. May 4–11; award ceremony, May 11; Celery Flats Historical Park, Portage. 352-4583.

Art on the Mall — Artists display their wares on the Kalamazoo Mall, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. June 7 & 8, downtown Kalamazoo.

Do-Dah Parade — A wacky welcome to summer winds its way through downtown Kalamazoo, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. June 8.

LiBrary and LiTerary eVenTS Kalamazoo Public Library, 553-7879 or 342-9837 Music at the Library — Grand Rapids band The Crane Wives brings its three-part harmonies and eclectic instrumentation, 7–8:30 p.m. May 15, Central Library.

Classics Revisited — A discussion of Jane Eyre, 7 p.m. May 16, Central Library.

June Jubilee — An afternoon of family-friendly fun, with games, rides, obstacle courses and more, 1–4 p.m. June 8, Central Library.

Portage District Library, 329-4544 Sundays Live — Live music with the Desert Squirrel String Band, 2–3:30 p.m. May 5; Jennie Miller & Ginny Parnaby, 2–3:30 p.m. May 19.

Classic Film — Private Buckaroo, 2 p.m. May 25.

Open for Discussion — A discussion of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce, 10:30–11:30 a.m. May 21.

Miscellaneous The Illustrated Accordion — The Kalamazoo Book Arts Center presents accordion-style books from around the world, May 3–31; opening reception with music by Whiskey Before Breakfast during Art Hop, 5–9 p.m. May 3; Suite 103A, Park Trades Center, 326 W. Kalamazoo Ave. Poems That Ate Our Ears — Poetry reading and awards ceremony for winners of this Friends of Poetry contest for K–12 writers, 2 p.m. June 1, Van Deusen Room, Kalamazoo Public Library.

MuSeuMS Kalamazoo Valley Museum, 373-7990 From Here to Timbuktu — Journey through West Africa to Timbuktu in this hands-on exhibit, through June 9.

Decades of Dazzling Dresses — Pieces from the museum’s costume collection, May 4–Jan. 19.

Music at the Museum — Mi Hiryu Daiko (Japanese drummers), 6–8 p.m. May 3; K’zoo Folklife Organization Acoustic Jam, 2–4:30 p.m. May 5; Carrie McFerrin, 7 p.m. May 10; Gunship Radio, 7 p.m. May 24; The Boogie Woogie Kid, 7 p.m.

May 31.

The Big Summer Reveal — A weekend-long celebration including a concert by Marci Linn Band, 6–8 p.m. June 7; opening of the new permanent exhibit The Moon Revealed, June 8; free planetarium shows, June 8 & 9.

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naTure Kalamazoo Nature Center, 381-1574 Birding the Kleinstuck Preserve — Learn to identify by sight and sound the birds migrating through Kleinstuck Preserve, 8–9:30 a.m. May 1, 8 & 15.

Meet at the Preserve’s Chevy Chase Boulevard entrance, west of Oakland Drive.

Birding with the Stars — Expert birders teach the skills of finding and identifying migrating birds, 8–9:30 a.m. May 7, 14 & 21. Meet at the KNC Interpretive Center parking lot. Bring binoculars and field guides if you have them.

Spring Wildflower Walk — Learn to identify wildflowers during a mile-long hike on one of the least-traveled KNC trails, 2 p.m. May 12.

Meet at the DeLano Homestead parking lot, 555 West E Ave. Boomers and Beyond — A program for adults over 50; this month John and Roxanne Nigg discuss Native Gardening for Wildlife, 11 a.m.–1 p.m. May 28.

Kalamazoo River Valley Trail, 373-5073 Spring Wildflower Golf Cart Tours — Free 1.5-hour tour of the trail for senior citizens, 10 a.m. & noon May 1, starting at 10th Street parking lot; 10 a.m. & 12 p.m. May 2, Markin Glen County Park. Registration required.

Birding and Biking — A guided bike trip on the trail to spot migratory birds, 2–3 p.m. May 11, Mayors’ Riverfront Park. Registration required.

Walking Clubs — Join other walkers, hear speakers and receive monthly giveaways.

Walking Club West, 9 a.m, meet at the 10th Street parking lot near the caboose; Walking Club East, 6 p.m., begins May 8, meet at South Wenke Park, King Highway (M-96), Comstock Township. Registration required.

Bicycle Club — Bike with a group along the trail at a casual pace, 9 a.m. May 6, starting at Verburg Park, Paterson Street, just west of Riverview Drive; 9 a.m. May 13 & 20, starting at South Wenke Park, King Highway (M-96), Comstock Township. Registration required.

W.K. Kellogg Biological Station, 671-5117 Birds and Coffee — A short hike to search for birds followed by coffee and a discussion, 9–10:30 a.m. May 8. Kellogg Bird Sanctuary, 12685 E. C Ave. near Gull Lake. 671-2510.

Garden Tea — Sip spiced tea while enjoying a garden-themed presentation and menu at the W.K. Kellogg Manor House, 3–5 p.m. May 21.

Reservations required. 3700 E. Gull Lake Dr. 671-2400.

First Glance Artist SaM ZoMEr gives us a reason not to

feel blue with his beautiful close-up of a dew-covered morning glory featured on page 17. Zomer has been a photographer since the late 1970s, working as a freelancer for the Kalamazoo Gazette. Currently he is a contributor to Bridge Magazine, and his images are used by the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo, Bronson Athletic Club, Discover Kalamazoo, Lambrix Design and Rogers Printing. A collection of his work can be found on display at Big Joe's Deli, 210 S Kalamazoo Mall. 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 work for consideration as a First Glance photo. Send your photos and contact information to editor@encorekalamazoo.com.

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www.encorekalamazoo.com | 43

ROBERT HAIGHT (continued from page 38)

“Both of the books are highly informed by the natural world,” says Haight, an English teacher at Kalamazoo Valley Community College. “Emergences and Spinner Falls was filled with river imagery. Rivers served as a symbol for the movement of time and the changes that occur as a person goes through the phases of life, but I don’t think that book is nearly as spiritual as Feeding Wild Birds. For this book, I was more inclined to write poems that were more openly spiritual.”

Sometimes a sense of the sacred comes through in a poem about a coyote lying by the side of the road or an ice storm that turns branches into tinkling chandeliers. How are we to hold this fragile world? the poet asks.

Other times it is felt in a simple task like washing dishes or in a mother’s changes after a stroke.

Two of the poems in Wild Birds take their titles from Buddhist concepts about meditation and the sacredness of all things. “I started seriously practicing Zen in the mid-’90s,” says Haight. “I started a daily meditation practice and decided I was going to make that practice part of my daily life. It can’t help but filter into your poems.”

He says he tries to live “a reflective life based on compassion for people and other animals.” “Our contemporary lifestyle is bordering on insanity,” he says. “People are speeding toward something, but they’re not sure of what it is or what’s controlling it.”

Haight prefers a quiet walk in the woods or sitting down to write a poem. He began writing poetry as an undergraduate at Western Michigan University in the mid-‘70s but became more serious about it after graduation, when he taught high school and lived

on Bear Creek in Manistee County. “That was where my poetry life began,” he says.

On a visit to WMU’s campus with his wife during the 1983-84 school year, he noticed a flier announcing that the English department would offer a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing. “I said to myself, ‘I should do this. I could come back and study under John Woods again.’ The next year, there I was.”

He received his M.F.A. from Western in 1986, began teaching at KVCC in 1989 and had his first full-length poetry collection,

Emergences, published by WMU’s New Issues Poetry & Prose in 2002. His new book is being released this month by Mayapple Press.

Feeding Wild Birds is clearly the work of a man at midlife. Haight, 57, writes about a relapse into the “bad habits” of youth, wonders what it would be like if all the words left unsaid came snowing down one day and describes an October afternoon “that made me think wherever / this season is heading it must be beautiful / as evening ... .”

He spent about a decade writing the 54 poems in the collection. “They really are records of experience and trying to find language that will communicate to other people some of the thoughts and feelings that lie so deeply within a person that everyone shares,” he says.

Here’s an excerpt from his poem “Walking.”

Take a deep breath, clear your mind of distractions and go walking with him: I love the mornings and the evenings, the edges of light and shadow, how the trees become charcoal drawings on the pale paper of the sky, the bee balm and lavender bloom of clouds behind them.

How the silence pools at the base of trees, exhales the suggestion of night into the air where six geese etch a line across the empty sky.

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PIXLEY-FINK (continued from page 39)

Wolf, 23, was riding his bicycle in Canada with a group of environmental activists when he was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer.

He and Pixley-Fink had met each other four

“After someone dies you can still have a relationship with them. This album is me trying to figure out how I could still have a relationship with (Wolf).”

— Elisabeth Pixley-Fink years earlier when they worked as interns at Public Citizen, a consumer-advocacy group in Washington, D.C. “We just became friends the first day we met,” says Pixley-Fink. “We were making phone calls for this ridiculous campaign against a U.S./Oman trade agreement. We’d call up people and have to spell it out, O-MA-N. We just really bonded.”

She was a student at Smith College, in Northhampton, Mass.; he at American University, in D.C. “The only summer we lived together was that summer in D.C.,” Pixley-Fink says.

Although they remained close, they never again lived in the same city. “There are a lot of unsaid things,” she says. “My song Love Still Learning is about that.” The quiet, haunting song asks: Can I trust the words you speak in the haze of my dreams?

Can I trust you in the colors of the sky in the evening?

Can I trust the way you pull at the heart still in my chest?

Can I trust that love is strong, that love lives on, that love in death is love still learning, endless love still learning?

“After someone dies,” says Pixley-Fink, “you can still have a relationship with them. This album is me trying to figure out how I could still have a relationship with him.”

Perhaps surprisingly, for an album grappling with loss, Bloodroot also has many buoyant melodies. Pixley-Fink, who plays pia-

no and other instruments on the album, says she felt Wolf’s “lively, playful energy” coming to her and wanted to capture that energy in song.

“I wanted to put something positive and energetic and healing into the world. ... I wanted to create a space where someone who wants to process death can go to. I didn’t want it to be just devastating and heartbreaking.”

She also wanted to “bring in the healing power of nature.” She is part of a Plainwell sweat lodge group (an “Earth-based Lakota tradition”), has done garden education with special-needs kids through Fair Food Matters and has felt nature’s healing power.

After Wolf died, she says, she was always looking for signs of his presence. “Butterflies always seemed to come to me when I was upset,” she says, pointing to an image of a swallowtail butterfly on the cover of her CD. And one day when she was working on the album and took a break to walk in the woods, “this owl looked at me for 45 minutes,” she says. “I just told the owl the whole thing.”

Now she’s sharing her story and the music it inspired with others too. She did an albumrelease tour of Mexico in January with fellow musician Graham Parsons and began giving Michigan concerts in March. When she and a five-piece band performed at Kalamazoo’s Old Dog Tavern in March, the capacity crowd gave her a standing ovation.

Pixley-Fink’s shows are really powerful experiences not just for her and her audiences, she says, but for her brother and bandmate Joel, who lost two friends in a car accident while they were making the album. “Every time it’s like a prayer,” she says. “Someone in the audience cries or my brother cries. It’s really powerful. I’ve felt Andrew’s presence with me.”

She hopes others feel it too. And perhaps they’ll wonder, as she does: What does the love know that I don’t know?

To hear Pixley-Fink’s music, go online to elisabethpixleyfink.bandcamp.com. Watch a video of her song “Red Clover,” online at www.youtube.comwatch?v=WpP1Z7AJXsc.

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WINE REGION (continued from page 33)

Located near Coloma, Karma Vista is about half an hour from the majority of Lake Michigan shore wineries, but Herman has noticed the recent growth in wine interest. Karma Vista is aided by a nearby highway exit and cross-marketing efforts of fellow Coloma winery Contessa and the Chocolate Garden sweets shop, all with prominent billboards along I-94.

Herman sides with St. Julian’s Oxley in the belief that the region won’t necessarily end up being dominated by Cab Franc and Traminette. While some winemakers in the region say that Syrah can be a struggle, both Herman and Oxley have doubled down on the Rhone varietal. Karma Vista offers two Syrahs and uses the grape in other blends. “Syrah is not well grown, but it’s worth it,” Herman says. In fact, his Reserve Syrah took a bronze award in a San Francisco Chronicle competition and was the only non-California wine to place.

The next Napa?

While this narrative is hardly all-encompassing of the vast number of wineries and tasting rooms that dot the area, it is representative of the region’s growing sophistication when it comes to wine producing.

Wine is produced in all 50 states, with such winemaking regions as California’s Napa Valley and Oregon’s Willamette Valley becoming meccas for wine lovers and winemakers. Is Michigan the next state poised for national and international success? Most local winemakers say, “Maybe, but not yet.”

Crick Haltom, of Lawton Ridge, says so much of the area is planted for juice grapes that it couldn’t meet the demands of landslide growth.

David Butkovich, of Cody Kresta, says there are logistical issues with storage and bottling. “It would be great to get a mobile bottling truck to help everyone bottle more cost-effectively and allow our wines to be priced competitively. But I don’t know if there’s a demand for it yet. No one’s going to take that risk until all wineries have signed on.”

For now, winemakers and winery owners seem content to enjoy their recent growth and to continue their shared experiment of making great wine in Southwest Michigan.

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encore the last word (continued from page 50)

Thunderbird sat in my brother’s garage for a while until it was sold to a neighbor.

In 2011, a year after my mom died, Dad decided he wanted the Super Coupe back.

Unfortunately, it had been totaled on a red dirt road in Alabama. He searched until he found another one that was the same year, same color, still running and for sale. He set about restoring it, pouring thousands of dollars into upholstery and a paint job. And, oh, what a paint job!

First, he had facsimiles of the ’57 Corvette’s iconic side indentations painted on the Thunderbird’s doors. It took a couple of tries to get them right. Then came the large, red heart outlined in gold on the roof. When Dad started talking about painting his and Mom’s names on the doors, there was no doubt that the car had become a mobile memorial.

My youngest brother dubbed the car “The Love Bird,” but somehow it became known to all of us as “Thundervette.” I am sure our reactions to the car made my father feel derided and misunderstood by his own children.

He refused to discuss the finances or debate his decisions with us.

Then he arranged to have a $4,000 highperformance engine installed in Thundervette. We all groaned about that, and I asked him if he would to have enough money left over to pay for the inevitable speeding tickets.

One Sunday night last June, I called my dad and asked what was new.

“I pick up my little car with its new engine on Tuesday,” he said giddily.

The next night, my father died of a heart attack while sitting in his recliner watching the Boston Red Sox on television.

A few days after his death, we remembered the car. My brother called the mechanic and learned the engine work wasn’t done. We asked him to stop the work because our dad had died. There was silence on the other end.

Then, in a choked voice, Danny, the mechanic, whispered, “But he didn’t even get to drive it.”

The next day, Danny brought Thundervette to the family home on the back of a tow truck for my dad’s wake. Silently, almost reverently, he lowered the car onto the driveway. At last, we could see the car Dad talked so much about. We all sat in it, ran our hands over the red leather seats, touched the red heart on the roof. In the glove box, tucked into the owner’s manual, was a typed version of my parents’ love story.

We told Danny to finish the engine work.

Later that summer we began the hard, sad process of dismantling our parents’ lives.

There was an estate sale, and we sold the house. We all drove Thundervette once or twice.

My husband balked when I said I wanted the car. “That car is a $500 repair bill every time it gets driven,” he lamented. Never mind the logistics of getting it from Idaho to Michigan.

So Thundervette had a “for sale” sign put in its windshield and was listed on Craigslist.

But no one wanted to buy Thundervette.

When my brother tried to use it as a tradein for a new car, he was offered $500. He couldn’t do it. My mother’s shrine had to be worth more than that. The engine alone was worth more than that.

Thundervette still sits in my brother’s garage. A year will have gone by, my brother is getting married and Thundervette has to find a new home. When my dad died, a friend told me, “Your parents’ stuff will become unbearably important to you. It’s your last link to the people you loved.”

Perhaps that’s why we can’t seem to make an all-out effort to get rid of Thundervette.

Its emotional pull is just too strong. What price do you put on your parents’ love story?

Marie Lee is the editor of Encore and shares her dad’s love for fast cars.

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THE lasT word encore

W

Thundervette

hen my mother died, my father started talking.

During the long months when she battled lung cancer, he was with her, driving her to doctors and treatments and then to the casino, or wherever she wanted to go. It was no different than how it had been for most of their married life. Mom said “Go,” and Dad asked “Where?” I saw Mom as the boss, Dad as the submissive minion.

And while his children didn’t expect that after 50 years of marriage my father would not grieve his wife, we did think he would enjoy a kind of freedom after her passing. The freedom he felt, however, was not the one we were anticipating. Suddenly our quiet, passive father found his voice, becoming disconcertingly outspoken. He had a lot to say, and for the first time in 50 years he got to say it.

He found solace in gin the first few months after Mom died, and the combination of martinis, a computer and time resulted in much writing. There were prolific letters to the newspaper, including one in which my dad chided the police for busting a prostitute for providing “friendship services” (as my dad called her work) instead of pursuing speeding drivers who made his favorite jogging road particularly treacherous.

Perhaps most unnerving for his five children were the letters and documents he sent to my mother’s family and friends when he “outed” her, revealing a 50-year secret that none of us knew until we heard it from him.

When my parents met in 1959, my mom was three months pregnant. She had been an independent 23-year-old, working as a radiologist in Boston. But she suddenly quit her job and moved back into her parents’ Vermont home, claiming she would be leaving in a few months for a new job in Arizona.

A week later my father cruised up to my grandparents’ house in his 1957 Corvette convertible roadster. He was coming to visit my uncle, but my mother answered the door. They dated for several months, and it was my dad who drove my mom to the Burlington, Vt., bus sta-

by

Marie Lee

tion for her “trip” to Arizona. The friend with whom she was traveling wasn’t there, but Mom wouldn’t let Dad wait. She told him to leave.

Ever submissive to my mother’s whims, he did.

She didn’t go to Arizona. She went to a “wage home” in the Vermont countryside, where she worked for a farmer and his wife until the baby was born. It was quite the ruse. She told everyone that she wouldn’t have a phone in Arizona so she couldn’t be called. She had arranged with a friend in Arizona to have her mail sent there.

Amazingly, nobody asked questions. Except my dad.

He wrote to her. She didn’t write back. He sent her several certified letters, which were returned unsigned for. Tipped off by the friend in Arizona, my mom called my dad at work. She told him where she was and why she was there. She begged him not to tell her father.

The next weekend my dad raced up the highway from Windsor, Conn., to Burlington. When she saw his roadster zipping down the gravel road to the farm, she ran out of the house and into his arms.

He visited her every weekend until two weeks before she gave birth to the boy she gave up for adoption.

A week after the birth, my dad picked her up and drove her back to her parents’ home. They were shocked, but Mom played up that she missed my father and that Arizona wasn’t really working out. My parents were married a month and a half later. No one was the wiser.

Until three years ago. After 50 years of not being able to tell anyone this remarkable love story, my dad wanted everyone to know. He told her brothers and sisters, he told family friends, he told complete strangers. We were appalled, seeing this as the ultimate betrayal of our mom’s deepest wishes, and asked him to stop.

That’s when his telling of his love story became showing.

Back in 1994, my parents bought a shiny, black Ford Thunderbird Super Coupe. They had a great time traipsing all over the country visiting family and friends. After too many speeding tickets and a need for more room, they got a Chevrolet Tahoe instead for traveling. The (continued on page 49)

50 | EncorE summer 2013

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