Camp counselors make sunny memories
September 2014
Greensky Bluegrass
Sip wine to preserve history summer 2014
Southwest Michigan’s Magazine
WMU’s New
Med School What’s in it for you?
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Camp counselors make sunny memories
Greensky Bluegrass
September 2014
Sipping wine to preserve history summer 2014
Southwest Michigan’s Magazine
WMU’s New
Med School What’s in it for you?
Publisher
encore publications, inc.
Editor
marie lee
Designer
alexis stubelt
Staff Writer
tiffany fitzgerald
Photographer erik holladay
Copy Editor/Poetry Editor margaret deritter
Contributors
kit almy, margaret deritter, jef otte, tom vance
Contributing Poets
jennifer clark, susan blackwell ramsey
Advertising Sales krieg lee celeste statler kurt todas
Encore Magazine is published 12 times yearly. Copyright 2014, Encore Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Editorial, circulation and advertising correspondence should be sent to:
www.encorekalamazoo.com 117 W. Cedar St. Suite A Kalamazoo, MI 49007 Telephone: (269) 383-4433 Fax: (269) 383-9767 Email: Publisher@encorekalamazoo.com
The staff at Encore welcomes written comment from readers, and articles and poems for submission with no obligation to print or return them. To learn more about us or to comment, you may visit www.encorekalamazoo. com. Encore subscription rates: one year $36, two years $70. Current single issue and newsstand $4, $10 by mail. Back issues $6, $12 by mail. Advertising rates on request. Closing date for space is 28 days prior to publication date. Final date for print-ready copy is 21 days prior to publication date.
4 | Encore SEPTEMBER 2014
September
CONTENTS 2014
FEATURES Medical School’s Impact
25
Happy Campers
20
It only opened last month, but the WMU Homer Stryker M.D. Medical School has already had a healthy effect on the area.
Counselors create lasting memories for camp goers across the region.
Greensky Bluegrass
With a new album out this fall, Kalamazoo’s own bluegrass band is making waves on a national level.
DEPARTMENTS 6 Contributors
34
8 10
Up Front
Sip Wine for History — Wine-tasting event supports Lawton Heritage Museum. Arts Venue for All — Group seeks to establish all-ages, all-arts Kalamazoo Collective Arts Center.
11 Good Works
Comforting Canine — Merlin and Susan Bandsma bring compassion to vets and disaster victims.
15 Savor
Good Garden Eatin’ — Community gardens are sprouting up everywhere. Here’s how to reap the delicious rewards.
18 Enterprise
Positive Thinking — Entrepreneur Rainbow Weldon’s clothing line reminds wearers to feel good.
46 The Last Word
A lot of us know the name W.E. Upjohn, but do we know the legacies he left all around us?
ARTS
30 MRC Artworks Classroom and gallery help disabled artists build
esteem through creativity.
32 Jennifer Clark Poet’s first published book captures life changes. 38 Poetry 39 Events of Note On the cover: The front of the WMU Homer Stryker M.D. Medical School, in downtown Kalamazoo. Photo by Erik Holladay.
w w w.encorekalamazoo.com | 5
CONTRIBUTORS ENCORE
Kit Almy
Margaret DeRitter
Tiffany Fitzgerald
Kit’s background in arts and nature has allowed her to explore a variety of topics for Encore over the years. This month she introduces readers to MRC Artworks, a classroom and gallery in downtown Kalamazoo that helps disabled people gain self-worth by creating art. In addition to freelancing, Kit works for the Kalamazoo Public Library and volunteers at the Kalamazoo Nature Center’s DeLano Homestead, teaching pioneer programs.
During her two decades at the Kalamazoo Gazette, Margaret edited the health and science sections and covered the coming of the new WMU medical school. Therefore, she was perfectly poised to explore the impact the school will have on the community for our insightful cover feature. Margaret also works her editorial magic on Encore copy and serves as the publication’s poetry editor. A poet herself, she is working pieces for a local art and poetry exhibit.
As Encore’s staff writer, Tiffany writes — a lot. She is responsible for our Upfront, Savor, Enterprise and Good Works features every month, as well as other stories in the arts. If that wasn’t enough, she is also the editor of FYI, our new family magazine that debuted last month. When we aren’t working her to death, she hangs out with her husband and two sons and dreams of having the time to complete Pinterest-worthy projects.
Erik Holladay
Jef Otte
Like many of our contributors, Erik is a storyteller — he just tells his stories through a camera lens. Whether it’s a photo of a building (such as this month’s cover) or portraits of the many people we profile in the pages of Encore, he creates intriguing, beautiful images. A photojournalist who has worked for the Grand Rapids Press, Flint Journal, Jackson Citizen Patriot and Kalamazoo Gazette, he now works as a freelancer, telling amazing stories for commercial, media and wedding clients.
6 | Encore SEPTEMBER 2014
Jef is a writer and journalist whose work has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Copper Nickel, SPIN Magazine, Village Voice and other news outlets, and we are happy to add him an Encore contributor. He specializes in features on music; this month he gives us a glimpse of Greensky Bluegrass, the rootsbluegrass band that is making waves beyond West Michigan. He’s currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing at Western Michigan University and lives in Kalamazoo with his wife and two sons.
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up front encore
Sip Wine, Preserve History
Wine-tasting event supports small-town museum
Fifteen years ago the Best of Michigan Wine Tasting moved from
Kalamazoo to Lawton, and in a way it was coming home. The site of the annual event is the state’s oldest standing winery building, at 646 N. Nursery St., in Lawton. It is now the Heritage Community Center and houses the Lawton Heritage Museum but was once the home of Houppert Winery Complex, the first winery in Michigan. This year’s tasting event is set for Sept. 4. The event’s move from Kalamazoo to the small town of Lawton not only bucks the trend of urbanization, but also reinforces the mission of the museum — to connect residents with the culture and history of Lawton and Michigan small towns like it. Bruce Marks, vice president of the museum’s board of directors, is originally from Decatur, another small town in Van Buren County. “Life in small towns has completely changed,” he says. “Your whole
8 | Encore SEPTEMBER 2014
Bruce Marks, vice president of the Lawton Heritage Museum’s board, stands amid a display at the museum.
life used to revolve around your community, which is not the case anymore. I’m close to 70 years old, and we hardly ever used to go to Kalamazoo when I was younger, even though it was only 30 miles away, because our small town provided everything we needed. That’s kind of the flavor we’re trying to capture in our museum and the type of connection we’re trying to create.” The Best of Michigan Wine Tasting is a fundraiser for the nonprofit museum, which is run by volunteers. The event is scheduled for 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the museum and will feature wines from 12 to 15 wineries, including the host winery, St. Julian Wine Co. This year’s event also offers food from Premier Catering of Paw Paw and music by Hackneyed Quips. At the end of the evening, attendees vote on a People’s Choice Winery award.
The event is sponsored by local businesses, which provide myriad freebies and goodies to be given away throughout the night. “It’s an event for anyone who loves wine, good food and local history,” Marks says. Proceeds from the fundraiser help cover operating costs for the museum. “One of the things we use the funds for is to buy new artifacts,” Marks says. “The latest artifact that we bought for our general store was a push bar for the screen door, just like
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UP FRONT ENCORE
Calling All Ages
Group looks to establish arts venue open to all K
alamazoo is a city committed to art, music and writing, but it seems to be missing an important type of arts space — an all-ages, all-arts venue. Have no fear. A group of eight local artists, musicians and writers is working to change that and put Kalamazoo on a list of cities with these venues that’s almost exclusively filled by urban areas three to six times the size of Kalamazoo. Kacey Chaos, Russ Wagner, Rory Svekric, Chafe Hensley, Steve Walsh, Bridget Dooley, Ike Turner and John Wagner make up the board of the Kalamazoo Collective Arts Center. The KCAC has been in the works for about five years, as these members and previous ones have been working to secure space for
10 | Encore SEPTEMBER 2014
the center. The project lost steam a couple of years ago, although the group by then had acquired nonprofit status and funding. About a year ago, a member of the previous group approached some of the people who now make up the board and asked them to pick up the slack. “Kalamazoo is kind of a transient town and so a lot of the people originally involved moved away or became involved in other projects,” explains member Bridget Dooley. “One thing that we’ve learned with the first life of the KCAC is that if it’s going to work as an organization in Kalamazoo, there has to be a way to pass it down through generations of
board members. We’d love to get the space and get it running and then have younger people who are using it most take over in a way that would make it a place with staying power.” Last May, the board put together a marketing push and an IndieGoGo crowdsourcing campaign, adding to the money already raised to buy or lease a space in the city and cover all of the license, registration, permit, insurance, reconstruction, renovation and inspection fees that come with running a public space. With $5,300 raised, the campaign was a success. Now the members of the center’s
Among the board members of the Kalamazoo Collective Arts Center are, from left, John Wagner, Chafe Hensley, Kasey Chaos, Steve Walsh, Bridget Dooley and Ike Turner.
board are looking for a space, with their sights set on the Vine neighborhood. At 2 p.m. Sept. 13 at the Vine Neighborhood Association (511 Vine St.) they’re hosting a community meeting to decide where the space should be and what it should do. They want anyone interested to attend. Although the KCAC is open to all artists, all-ages venues are especially close to the hearts of musicians because most musicians get their start at a young age, when playing a paying gig or seeing a much-loved band means sneaking into a bar or club. Often these gigs are at venues that people their age can’t attend, and these people are often the very group that helped the musicians gain momentum in the first place. Some musicians, like Atmosphere, Death Cab for Cutie and Radiohead, for example, make it a priority to offer all-ages shows on their tours. And, says KCAC board member Chaos, underage music lovers aren’t the only people getting excluded when the only performance locations are bars, clubs and over-18 venues. “Don’t get me wrong, I love that Kalamazoo is a beer city — that’s great,” she says. “But some people wrestle with addiction and don’t want to, or can’t, be around alcohol. I sympathize with that because you shouldn’t have to be subjected to alcohol to enjoy good, local, live music. One shouldn’t denote the other.”
Chaos and Dooley both remember what it was like to be underage and involved in the music scene, and they say it’s “alienating” to be underage at a venue where most people are drinking. In Kalamazoo, aside from the newly opened Satellite Records and house concerts, there aren’t many options for all-ages music shows. Age restrictions
Community Meeting What: To decide on where to locate the KCAC When: 2 p.m. Sept. 13 Where: Vine Neighborhood Association, 511 Vine St. Who: Anyone interested is invited to attend force teens to look for other outlets for participating in music, and many options, like attending house concerts, can be hard to gauge for parents. “If you’re the parent of a 14-year-old, it’s not always the safest feeling to drop your child off at someone else’s house,” Dooley says. “As much as I enjoy going to a show that’s also a party, I can also see how it can make people feel separated from the music community.” One of the main barriers to running an arts venue is money, and that’s why most large
venues sell alcohol — to make up for the cost of overhead. With community spaces that don’t serve alcohol, that money has to come from the people who want to use the space. For that reason, a lot of all-ages venues have shut their doors, including one of the main influences for the Kalamazoo Collective Arts Center — the Division Avenue Arts Center, in Grand Rapids. The 10-year-old DAAC is now in flux; last summer the building where the center was located was bought and the center was asked to leave. These types of open venues (meaning all types of artists can use the space) for all ages, run by volunteers and paid for by communal funding, are called DIY (do-it-yourself) spaces. KCAC members say the group will always be fundraising to cover overhead costs and to make the space affordable to rent out, on a sliding to scale, for anyone in the community. The mission of the KCAC is not just to be for all ages and all arts, but to be a safe space open to any person, regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender identity, cultural background and physical or mental ability. “I believe in these values strongly,” says Chaos, voicing a sentiment the whole board shares. “If I’m going to work on a project, I have to believe in it. I believe in the KCAC.” For more information or to donate to the KCAC, visit thekcac.wordpress.com.
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good works ENCORE
Compassionate Canine
Merlin and ‘his person’ provide comfort for victims, vets C
omfort therapy is just what it sounds like — emotional and moral support for those in need of comfort, whether after a natural disaster like a tornado, flood or fire, after personal trauma, or even during end-of-life care. Comfort therapy offers love, support, sympathy and sometimes a much-needed distraction. Susan Bandsma and her dog, Merlin, a Borzoi, are a part of the American Red Cross Southwest Michigan-based K9 Action Team, which provides comfort therapy for those in need. The team includes one other dog, a Portuguese Water Dog named Piper, based in Grand Rapids. Together the two dogs and the people who work with them make up one of only two K9 Action Teams in the nation (the other is in Ohio). Bandsma and Merlin provide comfort therapy to victims of disasters, like the Holiday Motel fire in Kalamazoo last year, to those receiving end-of-life care, like residents at Hospice at Home, and to veterans in crisis, like the patients at the Battle Creek VA Medical Center. The American Red Cross business cards that Bandsma passes out are Merlin’s — they include his picture, his name and his position (Comfort Therapy Volunteer), and if you call Bandsma about the K9 Action Team, she’ll tell you she’s “Merlin’s person.” Speaking to Bandsma, it’s easy to get the impression that Merlin is the driving force in the partnership. “I honestly believe he was born to be a comfort therapy dog,” she says. “He’s so good at it. He knows when to stay by somebody Susan Bandsma and Merlin provide comfort therapy for veterans and disaster victims as part of an American Red Cross K9 Action Team.
12 | Encore SEPTEMBER 2014
and when it’s time to move on to the next person who needs him. And he loves the attention. He’ll stand there all day if you keep petting him.” Not every dog can be a therapy dog, explains Bandsma, and it’s not a breed-related quality either — not all Borzois make good therapy dogs, she says. What makes Merlin or Piper or another dog a good therapy dog has to do with the dog’s personality. And to Bandsma, who had never trained a therapy dog before Merlin, he’s the reason they’re a K9 Action Team. To the people who benefit from Merlin’s visits, the story is a little different. Kimberly Ziel, lead recreation therapist at the VA Medical Center in Battle Creek, frequently works with Bandsma and Merlin, who come to the hospital to visit inpatient mental health patients every other weekend. To her, Bandsma is as much a reason the K9 Action Team is so successful at providing comfort therapy as Merlin is. “I’m just really thankful for Susan, as well as for Merlin, because they are such a good pair,” she says. “They’re a natural fit. Sometimes you get an anxious owner and a really nurturing dog or a really
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“I honestly believe he was born to be a comfort therapy dog. He’s so good at it. He knows when to stay by somebody and when it’s time to move on to the next person who needs him.” —Susan Bandsma nurturing owner and an anxious dog. Susan and Merlin are the perfect combination, so they make our veterans feel really comfortable. They offer a lot.” The veterans in the inpatient therapeutic recreation section of the VA Medical Center are in crisis when they first come in, Ziel explains. They’re either a danger to themselves or to others, and sometimes they’re at the medical center voluntarily and other times not. In order to create the trust needed to connect with the veterans so they’ll come back for follow-up care after release, it’s incredibly important for the VA Medical Center to make personal connections with the veterans. Merlin and Susan help to do that, Ziel says.
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Merlin, a Borzoi, has his own business card with his photo, name and position (Comfort Therapy Volunteer).
“There’s a lot of socializing that happens because Merlin brings their guard down,” she says. “So a lot of times Susan will be engaging with the veterans while others are visiting with Merlin.” Bandsma and Merlin aren’t the first Borzoi-and-person pair to visit the medical center, Ziel says. There was another volunteer who would visit the VA every week with her
Borzoi, until the volunteer became too ill. That’s when she reached out to the Borzoi Association and asked if anyone would be willing to take her place. Even though it was an hour from her Red Cross home base in St. Joseph, Bandsma volunteered. “And after Susan visited us at the VA, she would go visit our previous volunteer at hospice too,” Ziel says. “Susan kept visiting
her until she passed away. Susan’s extraspecial because of how she connected with us and her drive to be here.” And even though Ziel helps to put some of the focus back on Bandsma, she agrees that Merlin is a big part of the team too. “Merlin is a really loving dog,” Ziel says. “You don’t want a dog that you have to command — like ‘sit by this person’ or ‘sit by that person’ — because then it feels like the dog doesn’t love you, that he’s just an obedient dog. Merlin gives the unconditional love. He loves you, he leans into you and then he comes back for more.” To contact Susan Bandsma for her and Merlin’s services, call (296) 908-2239. To volunteer your time to the Battle Creek VA Community and Volunteer Services, call (269) 223-5497.
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encore Savor
Garden Fresh
How to eat from a community garden Tabitha Farms Community Garden owner Katie Pearson, with son Idrissa Bodian, holds a bounty harvested from the garden she established on Dixie Avenue, just west of Burdick Street.
Why community gardens?
Community
gardens may be experiencing a renaissance, but they’re certainly not new. Historically people have turned to community gardens for food security during times when money is tight, such as in the late 1800s, during World War I (when they were called “Liberty Gardens”), during the oil crisis of the 1970s and now, during the Great Recession. “When I first started this job eight years ago, I only occasionally got questions about community gardening, but now it’s very popular,” explains Linda Whitlock, consumer horticulture and master gardener program coordinator for the Kalamazoo County MSU extension. Kalamazoo County is a hotspot for community gardens. There are more than 45 community gardens in the greater Kalamazoo area — 10 more than reported in 2013. The idea of community gardening attracts those who want to eat healthier and locally and who want to disconnect from everyday technology and “get back to nature.” But sometimes the idea is easier than the action and it’s definitely not as easy as running to the grocery store.
Support is one of the most obvious advantages, says Whitlock. Gardening in a community garden means sharing the burden of growing with a group of other people. Going on vacation? There’s someone staying who can water your plants. Got slugs? Someone knows the solution. There are also shared resources at many community gardens, like water, tools and mulch. Every community garden works differently. Some grow a crop together and share equally, some support individuals cultivating their own plot, and some operate as you-picks. No Matter how much support a gardener wants or needs, there is a community garden in the greater Kalamazoo area that offers it. Whitlock points a more basic advantage too: “The best-tasting produce is the produce you just picked out of a garden.” And there are educational programs hosted at many gardens that teach the history of horticulture, the intricacies of growing and where food comes from. Getting away from it all and gaining a sense of accomplishment don’t hurt, either. “With gardening, you have to make a conscious choice to do it and sacrifice something else,” says Tabitha Farms Community Garden owner Katie Pearson. “It’ll replace watching TV or even just feeling exhausted. But it’s empowering – there’s something about being in the dirt or being close to nature, and it’s something that’s getting lost.”
How to get started? There are a lot of great resources for anyone looking to start or become a part of a community garden in Southwest Michigan, and the w w w.encorekalamazoo.com | 15
first stop is Common Ground, a collaborative organization made up by the Kalamazoo County Land Bank, Fair Food Matters, the MSU Kalamazoo County Extension and the Kalamazoo Nature Center. Pick a garden that both caters to your needs as a gardener and is close to you by perusing a list of local community gardens at CommonGroundKalamazoo.com (click on “find a garden”). Gardens are listed by area, from Kalamazoo and Portage to Comstock, Schoolcraft and Galesburg; clicking on each garden link provides info about how the garden is run, including how much participation is needed, tools and resources provided and cost of registration (many offer sliding scale or free registration for lowincome families). Contact the garden coordinator to get set up and then get educated. Follow the “classes” button on the Common Grounds site to find a listing of programs, including
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many free “getting started” workshops, hosted by MSU Extension. Deciding what to grow in a community garden depends on a number of factors, including sunlight, what grows well in Southwest Michigan, soil quality, the season and whether or not your community garden operates as independent plots or as a whole.
“When you have fresh foods, unless you’re eating it raw, you have to process it – cooking it, freezing it and canning it,” explains Pearson. Pearson started her garden more conventionally, but since she lives in a lowincome neighborhood where many people work two or three jobs, or are physically or
Find a community garden near you at CommonGroundKalamazoo.com Garden coordinators can help decide what might be best to grow. If you’d like to start your own garden, go to the “start a garden” section of the Common Ground website or visit KalamazooLandBank. org to find gardens to adopt. The Land Bank works to transform blighted and unused land, and community gardens are one of the focuses of the organization. “Community gardens offer a wonderful opportunity to reclaim spaces that were underutilized,” says Kelly Clarke, executive director of the Kalamazoo County Land Bank. “The spaces become much more attractive and become spaces that people appreciate and enjoy rather than avoid or are afraid of.”
You’ve got vegetables. Now what? Growing a successful crop of veggies is incredibly rewarding, but sometimes it’s a challenge to keep the veggies fresh after picking, to decide what to cook with the new produce or to decide what to do with extra produce.
mentally disabled, she grows most of the produce herself and gives it away. It works better for her to do the work and offer up the produce, which she provides for free every Sunday from 1 to 3 p.m. during growing months at the garden (111 Dixie Ave., Kalamazoo). Pearson suggests freezing kale, spinach and other vegetables in bags and using them from frozen in soup, eggs and other dishes. “If you’re going to cook it, you can freeze it,” she explains. Pearson also suggests asking her, at her free farm stand, or any garden organizer how to cook, prep or store particular vegetables. A lot of the time, they’ll have great suggestions. This harvest season on Facebook.com/ EncoreKalamazoo, we’ll share tips and tricks to vegetable storage. Community gardens still not your thing? Check out crop-share programs or local farmers markets. A listing of these resources can be found at FairFoodMatters.org.
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Enterprise ENCORE
From Soul to Sole
Entrepreneur reminds us to think positive with her Affirm-a-Wear
Affirm-a-Wear’s creator, Rainbow Weldon, holds a pile of her positive-affirmation flip-flops. At right, the positive-thinking graphic that she imprints on the clothing and accessories she sells.
Y
ou probably tell the people you love how strong, beautiful, smart or creative they are, but do you tell yourself? Rainbow Weldon, owner of Affirm-aWear, believes in the power of positive “I am” statements and wants people to tell themselves “I am creative” or “I am smart” more often. That’s why she designs, produces and sells positive-affirmation clothing, shoes and accessories. The idea came to Weldon, who is originally from Georgia and moved to Kalamazoo in 2012, when she became inspired to write “I am” affirmations on the insoles of her shoes with a Sharpie marker as a positive-thinking reminder to herself. Almost instantly, she says, she wanted to share the idea with other people. 18 | Encore SEPTEMBER 2014
“Because what you say to yourself matters,” the 35-year-old says. “That’s the tagline for Affirm-a-Wear now, and it’s an idea I was raised with. I see so many youth say to themselves, ‘I’m so dumb.’ It’s kind of natural in our world to be self-effacing or bring ourselves down. I think it’s important to build the practice of having positive selftalk.” Weldon’s mom, Louise Weldon, who influenced Rainbow’s dedication to affirmations and serves as her primary moral support as the business grows, remembers the genesis of Affirm-a-Wear well because Rainbow got the ball rolling on the new venture very quickly. “She called me early one morning and told me she created a new product,” Louise says.
“This was an overnight thing. When I looked it up, she had already worked it out with Café Press, which was her beginning printer, and got the website up and running. She certainly lets no grass grow under her feet.” Belief in the power of affirmations is something Louise shares with Rainbow — Louise is a New Thought minister and a hypnotherapist and explains that Rainbow was raised in a home that practiced affirmations and believed in the power of the mind. Louise says the “I am” statements were influenced in part by a sermon given by televangelist and author Joel Olsteen, who often preaches about the power of affirmations. Affirm-a-Wear incorporates a graphic Rainbow designed that includes statements like “I am strong” and “I am happy.” The design has been printed on shirts, insoles of shoes, tote bags and stickers so wearers are given reminders to strive for positive thinking, particularly when it comes to themselves. That’s what Louise likes about the idea. “It’s not like magic, where if you wear it all over you’re going to have everything work,” Louise says. “But it certainly does help get the mind going in the right direction.” Not long after Rainbow ordered her first small batch of Affirm-a-Wear products from Café Press and started selling items to friends and family, she received a lot of positive feedback and decided to take the project one step further, by creating a Kickstarter crowdsourcing campaign to raise enough money to commission a bulk order of merchandise. At the beginning of 2014, Weldon launched her campaign, asking for help to raise $2,000 for Affirm-a-Wear. Within a
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few months, her Kickstarter goal was met, she received her order and she was able to set up a booth at Kalamazoo Pride this past summer. Now, aside from her online store (AffirmAWearStore.com), she’s looking forward to placing Affirm-a-Wear in yoga studios and spiritual centers, and she’s scouting more special events at which to sell her products. Weldon says crowdsourcing is a great option for very small start-up companies like hers. “What I think is great about the Kickstarter crowdsourcing is that instead of saying, ‘Buy this. I want to sell you something,’ you’re saying, ‘Buy this. I want your support,’ People feel like they’re more a part of the process, so they get more involved and excited. I wouldn’t have had the couple thousand sitting around to start out, but now I have a small stock that starts me out, and I can slowly grow from there.” Weldon also works as a leader of a youth ministry at Bodhi Spiritual Center in Chicago (she commutes from her home in Kalamazoo), is a spiritual counselor and owns and operates Soul Gurgle, a children’s theater based in Kalamazoo. Because she is involved in several types of work at once, having control over the growth of Affirm-a-Wear and being able to let it grow organically is important to her. She says juggling her endeavors can sometimes seem like a balancing act, but she knows Affirm-a-Wear is meant to keep growing — there’s just something about the product that people like. Customer and friend Dara Allen, who lives in Tulsa, Okla., says she’s one of the people who love Affirm-a-Wear. She owns Affirma-Wear T-shirts, sandals, baby hoodies and stickers and says the products fit her fashion style and personal outlook. “I love Affirm-A-Wear because of the message it sends to others and the reminder it serves to myself,” she says. “I am all of those things written on the clothing line, and so is everyone else. It’s just hard for us to remember that in our everyday busy lives. Every time I put on my Affirm-a-Wear shirt or sandals, it’s an awesome, uplifting reminder.”
w w w.encorekalamazoo.com | 19
Happy Campers by
Tiffany Fitzgerald
photography by
20 | Encore SEPTEMBER 2014
ERIK HOLLADAY
Camp counselors are the mentors behind kids’ sunny summer memories
“A
m I holding on to its butt or head?” asks Pretty Lake Vacation Camp camper Hannah P., 10, as she dangles a worm above her. The worm wriggles ferociously, trying to untangle itself from her fingers. “Hmm…” says Mimi McLaurin, 21, a camp counselor at Pretty Lake Vacation Camp as she pulls worms apart and passes the pieces to the other five girls gathered around her. “This feels so gross,” complains camper Shyrena L., 11. “Eeewww, it’s going through my fingers!” A chorus of groans and shrieks follows as the campers grimace, hopping up and down, completely disgusted as they struggle to pin worms to their fish hooks. “What can I say?” says McLaurin, undeterred by the groans and addressing all the girls at once. “We’re going to fish, ladies. Before we leave, we’re going to put worms on these hooks and throw them out into the water.” And they do. In fact, by the end of the session, the six girls in McLaurin’s group don’t want to stop. There aren’t any more groans when they put the worms on the hooks either. “I think I need a really fat one,” says Michelle B., 10, as she approaches the bait box. “I want one that will just stay on this hook.”
Pretty Lake campers Cheryl K. (far left) and Michelle B. look on as counselor Mimi McLaurin untangles a fishing line.
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Thirty miles east of Pretty Lake, Sherman Lake camp counselor Caroline Bissonnette, 20, dons a red cape and a backpack covered in camp “flair.” She and an active walkietalkie connected to her hip greet us at the door. “Let’s go see what some of the campers are up to,” she says. Quickly, she turns to us before leading us out the door. “I’m Captain Caring today,” she explains, pointing to her cape. “Please, don’t give away my secret identity,” she jokes. She stays active all the way up the hill — stopping to redirect a camper, to talk to a fellow counselor about finishing schedules and to figure out a low-fuel golf cart situation. We come to the ga-ga rink, an enclosed hexagonal-shaped area in which seven or eight boys, ages 10 and 11, are playing ga-ga, an Israeli variant of dodgeball. Bissonnette takes off her backpack, puts her cape on a spectating camper and jumps into the rink. “Hey, bud, I think they got you,” she says to a player. He steps out of the rink. “Thanks for your honesty.” Within seconds, she’s immersed in the game and the culture. Except for the fact that she’s taller than the campers and seemingly more willing to
22 | Encore SEPTEMBER 2014
take herself out of the game when the ball touches her, there’s no difference in her level of activity or interest. That’s the magic of camp counselors — they are able to bridge the gap between childhood and adulthood seamlessly because they’re at an age (18 to 23) that cradles the difference. Bissonnette and McLaurin follow a longstanding tradition of mentorship, and their campers adore them. “Mimi is really nice, and she’s a lot of fun,” says Hannah P. “Parents and teachers always tell me what not to do all the time, but Mimi tells me to do stuff. Fun stuff.” Counselors fill the role of nurturer, mentor and protector at camp. It’s easy to see why campers become so connected to their counselors and why they want to become counselors when they get older. “Counselors are the backbone of camp,” says Lorrie Syverson, director of camping at Sherman Lake YMCA Camp. “Campers see their counselors as their best friends and their idols — they look up to this person who is an amazing role model and challenges them.” It’s not just teaching outdoor skills or standing in loco parentis either, explains Syverson. Children tend to be more “insulated”
in modern times, engaging frequently with their smartphones, computers, video games and other forms of technology and screenbased communication, she says, so face-toface conversation is an art that’s taught at camp. “Counselors teach campers how to make friends, which is an important life skill a lot of us tend to take for granted,” she says. “We tend to think these skills come naturally, but smiling when you’re getting to know someone and asking questions about another person are things that camp counselors do naturally, and they help the kids break down communication barriers.”
Anatomy of a counselor With camp counselors having a role that’s so important to the development of campers, not to mention their protection, how do camps choose the perfect young adults to take on these responsibilities? Who’s got the right stuff? “What I remember most about my camp counselors is their spirit,” says McLaurin, thinking back on her experience as a child at Camp Burt Shurly in Gregory, Mich. “They were really positive, had great attitudes and were engaging, entertaining and artistic.”
These are the same attributes McLaurin lists as her own strengths. A good counselor is one who strives to be as good a counselor as she or he had as a kid, it would seem. Even though not every counselor is a former camper, most are, and the camps take advantage of the pool of great kids they have by offering counselorin-training programs. The counselor-in-training programs at Pretty Lake and Sherman Lake act as a bridge between normal resident camp and camp counseling. They allow campers a way to be directly mentored and learn the skills needed to be a great counselor. Taking part in one of the programs doesn’t necessarily mean counselors in training become counselors, or even that they’ll want to. If a young adult chooses to pursue the position, he or she must go through an application and interview process and then attend intensive training that teaches everything a counselor might need to know: how to participate in each camp event, life-saving techniques like CPR, emergency procedures, how to bond with campers and other counselors, how to facilitate groups of kids in engaging activities, camper behavior management and how to spot signs of neglect and abuse. The trainings are offered through each camp before sessions begin.
Counselors at both Pretty Lake and Sherman Lake have to be at least 18, and their ages range to the typical age of a college senior. Most counselors move on after graduation, when they begin to take all-year jobs. When hiring counselors, the staffs at Pretty Lake and Sherman Lake look for a certain set of characteristics. For Syverson, who says Sherman Lake has developed specialized interview techniques to select perfect candidates, character is the most important aspect of a potential counselor — they have to embody the camp’s core values: caring, respect, honesty and responsibility. “Counselors need to be engaging, enthusiastic and empathetic. They need to have compassion,” says Lisa Ruiter, Pretty Lake camp director. “All of our kids are here for a week to play and to just be kids. Sometimes they need help remembering how to just be kids and play. Our counselors learn how to break through emotional barriers and facilitate fun.”
Lifelong connection Read marketing and informational literature from any reputed camp, including Pretty Lake and Sherman Lake, and you’ll inevitably stumble across a phrase like this one, taken from Pretty Lake’s brochure:
At far left, Sherman Lake counselor Caroline Bissonnette looks over camper Noah A. as Blake S. moves in to push the ga-ga ball. Center, Bissonnette crouches down to deflect the ga-ga ball as she plays with a group of campers. Above, Mini McLaurin leads a group yoga and Zumba activity at Pretty Lake.
“You’ll have the time of your life and make friendships that last a lifetime.” Life-changing experiences are arguably what camp is all about, and the staff and counselors are the driving force behind how influential camp is. This “change your life” claim might seem like marketing rhetoric, but it’s not. Even among the small number of adults we talked to from Sherman Lake and Pretty Lake, camp is a lifetime love. After she moved to Michigan from New Jersey at age 5, Bissonnette attended Sherman Lake Camp every summer, along with her three siblings. Her family became a mainstay at Sherman Lake — everyone knew her, her siblings and her parents. Bissonnette’s mom died from breast cancer when she was 12. In the midst of her grief, and long after it, she found support, love and mentorship at Sherman Lake. Being a camp counselor is more than just working a summer job to Bissonnette, it’s returning home. “Coming to camp has always been a very healing place for us — our happy place,” she (continued on page 43)
w w w.encorekalamazoo.com | 23
First-year residents, from left, Hardik Chhatrala, Andrea Landon, Janie Katarsky, Christopher Di Felice and John Fleming participate in a simulation at the WMU Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine.
24 | Encore SEPTEMBER 2014
Healthy Future? Having a positive community impact is part of med school’s plan by
Margaret DeRitter
photography by
ERIK HOLLADAY
I
f you went to the movies at Alamo Drafthouse or bought shoes at Okun Bros. in the past year, you probably noticed the big, round building going up near the corner of South and Portage streets. “A new IMAX theater?” you might wonder. The semi-conical structure is part of the new $68 million Western Michigan University medical school. And now the WMU Homer Stryker M.D. Medical School’s first students — 54 of them — are busy learning to become doctors. But there will be, and already are, many more folks benefitting from the school’s opening than just those doctors-in-training. The school has already created jobs through building construction and the hiring of new faculty and staff, and more hiring is planned. In fact, the school is one of several major new projects downtown and is likely to give a long-term boost to the area’s economy. And a new medical examiner’s office housed at the school is creating savings for local law enforcement and has the potential to improve criminal investigations. Of course, in addition to these gains, some of the most significant benefits for the public will be health-related. The
w w w.encorekalamazoo.com | 25
private, nonprofit medical school has been generously supported by the community and intends to give back by addressing the pressing health needs of Southwest Michigan through research, community partnerships and service-learning projects.
Training doctors Inside the 30,000-square-foot semi-conical addition to the school’s original building is a virtual hospital with eight rooms where students can practice medical procedures and inpatient care. Faculty members can observe from a control room or, if they can’t be present for a given session, watch it later, since all sessions are filmed. Even before the first class arrived on the new W.E. Upjohn Campus Aug. 18, faculty members were using the virtual hospital to train medical residents (new doctors undertaking supervised practice). The patients weren’t real, though. They were dummies. In one room, during a session on trauma and emergency care, six residents learned how to place a tracheal tube down a patient’s windpipe. They each took a turn at the task, and then Dr. Gerald Beltran gave them a chance to try inserting a longer, skinnier tube called a bougie that can help locate the trachea and allow for subsequent placement of the tracheal tube. As the tail end of the bougie whipped around in the air, Beltran warned, “Watch out for eyeballs when you’re doing this.” He also advised the residents about the importance of wearing safety glasses. One time during surgery, he said, a ventilator detached and he got blood and fluid in his eyes. And then there’s “the pus thing,” he added. Laura Eller, the school’s director of communications, who was giving a guest a tour, leaned over and whispered, “You missed the abscesses last week. To simulate abscesses, we take balloons and fill them with pudding.” The school tries to make the simulations as real as possible. “When we’re really going at it full speed, they can make the simulator speak or moan or groan.” Kalamazoo has a long history of training medical residents through the former Michigan State University Kalamazoo 26 | Encore SEPTEMBER 2014
Center for Medical Studies (MSU/KCMS). Now WMU’s med school has taken its place, training about 210 residents in partnership with the two local hospitals — Bronson and Borgess — and the Family Health Center. It continues to run the former KCMS clinic on Oakland Drive, offering family medicine, pediatrics, orthopedics and other services.
A hands-on approach While medical training is not new to Kalamazoo, a medical school is, so a lot of work has been done to get the facility ready and to hire faculty and develop the curriculum. At some med schools, students spend a lot of time in the classroom before they are introduced to clinical work; here students will have hands-on learning right from the start, through simulations and community service. “The first year and the second year they’ll be doing simulations all the time,” says Dr. Constance Worline, the clinical director of the school’s simulation center, which also includes a virtual clinic. “The third year they’ll be working in the hospitals.” The new simulation center has more than 24,000 square feet, compared to a previous simulation space of 1,500 feet. “This is the only facility I’ve seen that looks like this,”
Clockwise from top left: Dr. Cheryl Dickson, the medical school’s associate dean of health equity and community affairs, and Dr. Hal Jenson, dean, are committed to the school’s community outreach; residents John Fleming, Andrea Landon and Hardik Chhatrala work together on a dummy patient; first-year resident Hira Hasnain leads a simulation of heart problems; Steven Lu, left, and Sandeep Patri participate in a simulation during a class; and Dr. Richard Lammers, assistant director for simulation, speaks to first-year residents during a class at the medical school.
Worline says. “Everything we’re getting is state of the art.” The virtual clinic features 12 exam rooms, four procedure rooms and a patient lounge. In some sessions there, the patients will be real people, but their case histories won’t be
their own. “They’ll be temporary hires who’ll be memorizing a case, and they’ll have to stay on script,” Worline says. At these sessions, seven or eight students will simultaneously enter separate exam rooms and have 35 minutes with their patient. The idea is to see how well each student does at taking a case history and developing rapport with the patient. “I’ll watch the patients, and the faculty will watch the students” from the clinic’s control room, Worline says. “It
will be filmed too.” Patients then participate in a 10-minute debriefing session with students. “They might say things like ‘You never looked at me’ or ‘You looked at your watch’ or ‘You did really well,’” Worline says. Empathy and communication skills are important for doctors so the school uses WMU theater students to portray patients in tough situations, Worline says. Med students need to think about “How are you going to talk with someone who has just lost a 2-year-old or how are you going to tell someone they
have cancer?” The theater students portray patients well, she says. “They tear up. They get angry.”
A two-way street Community members simulating patients are one example of how the community has helped or will help the med school. Among the others: • The donation of the 320,000-square-foot former MPI downtown research facility for use by the school. • The $100 million donation to the school by Ronda Stryker and Bill Johnston and other donations that have helped the school get more than halfway toward its endowment goal of $300 million. • The more than 200 community physicians who help train medical residents and now will help train students too. • And even local residents who have willed their bodies to the med school. “I’m amazed at the number of people here doing willed body donations,” Eller says. But school and community leaders say Kalamazoo and the surrounding area also will benefit greatly from having a medical school. Some of those benefits are more apparent to the public than others, and some will take longer to be felt, but Dr. Hal Jenson, dean of the medical school, has no doubt the school will have a transformative effect on Southwest Michigan. “It may not seem significant today because the impact is really not major in the short term. It’s what will it look like in 30 or 40 years” he says. “It will be transformative for the economy and help sustain and grow the region. It will help attract physicians who want to practice in an intellectually stimulating environment. That was true for MSU/KCMS and will be even stronger with the medical school here. It will be a pipeline of physicians, a pipeline that becomes ever more critical as we face a statewide and nationwide shortage of physicians.” One of the school’s goals is to have students from Southwest Michigan — particularly from WMU and Kalamazoo College and students who took advantage of the Kalamazoo Promise — in each class. In the current class of 54 students, 23 are from Michigan, seven of them from Southwest Michigan; three are from WMU and two from K-College; and one is a Kalamazoo Promise grad. “That’s a very good proportion to have,” Jenson says. “I think we have been successful in recruiting students locally, across the state and nationally.” To foster this goal, the school’s WMedStart program allows WMU and K-College juniors to apply to the med school and get an early decision on acceptance. In its inaugural year the program has accepted one student from each school. For would-be doctors, the program increases the attractiveness of attending those schools, Jenson says. And, of course, the med school and community hope w w w.encorekalamazoo.com | 27
those med students will stick around after graduation. Statistics show, Jenson says, that one-third of medical residents are likely to stay on to join practices in the area.
she says, but not all schools are giving their students these kinds of long-term projects. “To make a difference, you need a longer timeframe,” she says.
Service-learning teams The medical school wants to get its students involved in the community right from the start. Dr. Cheryl Dickson, associate dean of health equity and community affairs, is overseeing nine six-student teams that will spend two half-days a month learning the art of medical practice by being out in the community. For these service-learning projects, the school is partnering with Bronson, Communities in Schools, the Family Health Center, the Kalamazoo County health department, the county mental health department, Kalamazoo’s Milwood Magnet School, Loaves & Fishes, Ministry With Community and the YWCA. Rather than telling these organizations what the school can do for them, Dickson says, she is asking, “What do you need that we can help with?” Examples of the public-health goals med students may work on include reducing obesity in children, lessening the impact of trauma on children, and reducing chronic illness among the homeless. The students will do research, come up with a proposal to present to the partner agency and a faculty mentor, then work on the project for two years, Dickson says. This kind of focus on public health is becoming more common at medical schools,
Grand Opening The public is invited to see the new Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. Medical School Date: Sept. 18 Time: Doors open at 4 p.m. Ceremony at 4:30 p.m. Self-guided tours at 5:30 p.m. Location: The school is at 300 Portage St.; the public entrance is off South Street Additional open house: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 20, with self-guided tours
Research plans As part of its community-based research and in cooperation with Bronson and Borgess hospitals and the Family Health Center, the med school is also looking at what it can do to increase access to care, especially for children, Jenson says. The school also will be involved in clinical research and basic science research. “With
both Bronson and Borgess, we’re working very closely on clinical training and clinical research,” Jenson says. Jenson says he expects the research to be funded by both federal and private dollars. The payoff is likely to be not only improvements in health care and community health but economic growth for the Kalamazoo area, say school and economicdevelopment leaders. Ron Kitchens, CEO of the regional economic development organization Southwest Michigan First, predicts that research funding for medical professionals will eventually translate into more startup companies here. “The Southwest Michigan Innovation Center and the medical school will have to be rooted at the hip,” he says.
Economic impact The school has already boosted employment and, like any project that brings new people to town, has had and will have a positive impact on home sales and retail businesses. For more than a year, tradesmen and craftspeople have been employed to do construction and renovations for the school. And, as of late July, 53 faculty and staff had been hired, 75 percent of them new to the area — meaning “new families buying new homes and buying new furniture,” Kitchens says. And then, of course, there are the students. While the first class has 54, the medical school expects that number to grow to 84 per year over the next three to four
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years. “There’s going to be literally hundreds of new people downtown,” Kitchens says, which means increased sales for downtown restaurants, bars and stores. The school is just one of several projects fueling something of a downtown renaissance, he says. The continued growth of animal health company Zoetis and Bronson hospital as well as the planned $42 million Healthy Living Campus by Kalamazoo Valley Community College will bring more people downtown, which could produce urban redevelopment projects that are 75 percent residential and 25 percent retail and office space, Kitchen predicts. “A couple of big downtown projects are kicking around, and in the next six months I think we’ll see announcements of fully funded developments,” Kitchens says. Steve Deisler, president of Downtown Kalamazoo Inc., is also hopeful about downtown development. “With the new students, we hope there’ll be a demand for new housing in the area, not only new homes but renovation of homes near downtown. There’s been a lot of interest by some developers…Everybody’s been checking out potential locations.” The additional people downtown will mean more parking revenue, Kitchens says, but he is not worried about a parking crunch. “We haven’t really saturated the existing business we have. Does that mean you won’t be able to park in front of a business? I certainly hope so.” Deisler says DKI is updating its five-year parking plan. If there are a couple more large projects like the med school and the KVCC campus, “we might need to look at additional parking lots or ramps,” he says. “…We’re even looking at some kind of shuttle system downtown.”
‘Our own Quincy’ A significant byproduct of the med school is the new medical examiner’s office in Kalamazoo, which serves Kalamazoo, Allegan, Calhoun and Muskegon counties. The office conducts autopsies in deaths that are sudden and unexplained, involve criminal violence, suicide or apparent drug overdose, or occur without medical attention.
The examiner’s office is on the third floor of the med school, and the autopsy rooms
“There’s going to be literally hundreds of new people downtown.” – Ron Kitchens,
Southwest Michigan First
and lab are on the seventh floor. Dr. Joyce deJong, who heads up that office, has also
been named the founding chair of the med school’s pathology department. As medical examiner for 12 counties — Allegan County since 1999 and Kalamazoo County since 2011— deJong was based at Lansing’s Sparrow Hospital. She will continue to have some oversight of all 12 counties but now will focus primarily on Southwest Michigan, spending four days a week in Kalamazoo and one in Lansing. Three forensic pathologists who work for (continued on page 42)
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arts encore
Building Esteem Through Art
Gallery helps artists with disabilities gain sense of self-worth by
Kit almy
A
unique art studio on the Kalamazoo Mall shows that creative talent sometimes comes from unexpected sources. MRC ArtWorks is both a classroom and a gallery open to the public, and its artists are adults with mental or emotional disabilities who work with instructors to create art in various media, including drawing, painting, collage and pottery. ArtWorks participants learn social skills as well as artistic techniques, and they make a 75 percent commission on the sale of their works. Along with these benefits to the 30 | Encore SEPTEMBER 2014
individuals, ArtWorks “shows the community that people with disabilities have talents just like anybody else,” says Chris Zeigler, CEO of MRC Industries Inc. ArtWorks is overseen by MRC Industries, which serves individuals with developmental or learning disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, emotional impairments and mental illness through a variety of programs, using funding from Kalamazoo Community Mental Health. MRC’s slogan is “putting abilities to work,” and its oldest and largest program, McKercher
MRC Artworks participant Nick F. works on a drawing, with paintings by other MRC artists in the background.
Services, of which ArtWorks is a part, provides job training and placement services. Some ArtWorks artists, along with other McKercher participants, also learn skills and earn an income through work on contracts with local businesses to provide bulk mailing and other packaging and assembly services. Artists come to ArtWorks with various levels of ability, and some have previous art experience. They work in separate groups,
each led by an instructor. Staff members will sometimes teach a group about a particular technique or medium, but most often they provide one-on-one guidance to individuals working independently in the media and subject matters of their choice. Danielle Fales explains that she and the other teachers provide technical and artistic instruction and encourage artists to pay attention to art trends so they can create “sellable artwork” that will bring them a paycheck. “When something is really trending or really popular, we’ll show them, ‘This is what’s selling right now,’” she says. The artists also practice sales skills, including greeting customers, writing receipts and making change. “We’re not only doing the artwork here, but we’re teaching them the skills they need to eventually get a job of their own,” Fales says. “Social skills increase when artists have an opportunity to interact with our customers,” Ziegler explains. “We have seen so many positive interactions between our artists and community members who stop in the gallery.” Artist Junenette Bradshaw is proud and grateful to be a part of ArtWorks. “I’m glad I’m in this class (because it’s) something to do with my mind. I love to do stuff with my
hands,” she says. “You know, I don’t like to sit around with nothing to do. You can’t stay home and sit by the TV all the time because you won’t make (any) money like that.” ArtWorks is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays as well as during monthly Art Hops so that the public can “see the artwork and also be able to meet our artists, see the work that they’re doing and get to know them a little bit too,” Zeigler says. “Many times the comments I hear are, ‘I had no idea the creative talent that someone with a developmental disability has until I came and saw the artwork that they’re doing, and I just was totally amazed.’” Ziegler says selling a piece of art can mean more than just a paycheck to an artist. “To be to able see somebody else likes this enough that they want to purchase it gives them a sense of self-worth,” she says. In addition to purchasing something from the gallery’s varied offerings — including many practical and decorative items, such as birdhouses, journals, jewelry, keychains, coasters, magnets and notecards — patrons can also commission a piece by an artist whose work they like. Public awareness of ArtWorks — and MRC — increased when the gallery moved from the Park Trades Center to its current location at
330 South Burdick St., more than three years ago. “Even though this is really our smallest program, since it’s so visible and so many people come through for the Art Hops, now it’s become really well known,” Ziegler says. “The downtown area has been so welcoming to our artists and made them feel a part of the whole downtown community.” Artworks artists’ work also has been shown at other venues in Southwest Michigan, including Food Dance Cafe, Portage District Library and the retail stores Sticks and Stones and Bookbug. One MRC artist’s work will be shown at this year’s Grand Rapids ArtPrize. Meghan Matthews won $500 and an exhibition during the three-week citywide art show through the Legacy Trust Award Collection competition for Michigan adult artists with disabilities. Four winners were selected, including two by popular vote. Matthews’ piece Singing Bird (2) was the judges’ choice. “To win the juried award at the Legacy Trust award contest and gain an entry into ArtPrize is quite an honor,” Zeigler says, “and is really symbolic of the multitude of talents that individuals with disabilities possess.” For more information about MRC ArtWorks, call (269) 978-0028.
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arts encore
‘Necessary Clearings’
Writer transforms life changes into poetry by
Margaret DeRitter
J
ennifer Clark can’t remember a time when she wasn’t interested in writing. When she was 11, she wrote a joke book and tried to get it published. When she was in high school at Hackett Catholic Central, she was certain she’d be a published author by 18. She didn’t reach her goal by that age, but now 49, she certainly has been published, prolific and versatile. Her poems, short stories and memoir pieces have appeared in journals, anthologies and newspapers, many in the past five years. One story — “Tendencies,” about a woman who becomes magnetized — won an Editor’s Choice Award from Fiction Fix last year, and she had a poem nominated this year for the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Rhysling Award. Clark also had a play presented at the U.S. National Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect in 1993. And this summer she had her first book published, the poetry collection Necessary Clearings (Shabda Press). She’s excited, but it also “feels a little scary,” she says, “to see the poems all together in one collection and know that people I know will read it.” While Clark’s fiction tends toward magical realism, her poetry speaks more to her own experiences. Clark wrote the poems in Necessary Clearings over the course of six years, starting in 2005. She sees loss as a key theme and says the collection provides “an opportunity to pause and reflect on loss and to unshelter from the myth that everything stays the same, because nothing does.” While loss is a necessary part of life, it’s not without an upside, she adds. “It’s a clearing, this opportunity for something else to be there” — hence the title of her book and the cover art, a spoon turning into a swan.
32 | Encore SEPTEMBER 2014
Jennifer Clark’s poetry collection Necessary Clearings was released in August by Shabda Press and is her first published book.
A key inspiration was becoming a mother, says Clark, who dedicated the collection to her 9-year-old son, Tom. “Parenthood gave me a deeper sense of loss and what loss means. You think you figure things out with your kids, and then they change.” Her poem “Even Heaven Will Not Be Like This” captures a snowy Sunday morning with her son’s small body snuggled into hers. “Will you come to me / when you are grown / and rest upon my lap?” she asks her son. “Yes mamma,” he replies. The poem ends with this: “Upstairs, a bed creaks, your father rises, / soon you will run to him. Coldness will / rush in to claim your spot. / Even this moment / is ending.”
Courtesy
Clark’s poems cover a wide range of subjects — environmental saw a news article about the severe decline of many of America’s bat losses, immigrant deaths, sexual abuse, faith, among others. She species and then found a NASA memo about a bat clinging to the thought about grouping her poems “by family, friends, motherly space shuttle during countdown. stuff, environmental stuff. But I did not like the way that felt,” she Other poems draw their inspiration from issues and places in says. “Life is messy and full of losses, Kalamazoo. “Allied in Spring” and and we don’t have control over them. “Allied in Summer” were prompted A Sampling I wanted it to be more like life and by the fight to prevent PCBs from the how our losses creep up here and Kalamazoo River from being dumped One of Jennifer Clark’s poems appears on page 38, there.” at a site in the middle of the city. and the following fiction and memoir pieces by Not all is weighty or serious in this Clark grew up in the Arcadia and Clark can be found online: collection, though. In one poem, Clark Westnedge Hill neighborhoods and • “Tendencies,” Fiction Fix, Spring 2013 writes of a 17th-century naturalist returned to Kalamazoo in 2001. • “Love in the Obituaries,” Structo, Issue 7 who mistook “the knee end of a thigh In between, she lived for 15 years • “Mango Jesus,” Storm Cellar Quarterly, Fall/ bone of Megalosaurus” for a certain in Pittsburgh, where she earned Winter 2012 (Volume II, No. 2) private portion of a man’s anatomy. a master’s degree in existential In another, she riffs on bumper psychology and worked with sex • “A Nod To Ernest Borgnine,” Spittoon, December stickers and an aggressive driver. offenders and homeless, mentally 2011, Issue Two In evidence throughout the book ill individuals. She now lives back in • “Spinning,” The Kalamazoo Gazette, March 27, are Clark’s keen observation of the Westnedge Hill with her husband 2009 world, her delight in its pleasures, and and son and has a part-time job • “I Will Survive,” The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, her interest in whatever crosses her as director of community relations Sept. 9, 2000 path. She credits her broad-ranging for Communities in Schools of interests to her parents, Nancy and Kalamazoo. Joseph Engemann, who both taught at Western Michigan University. She often writes before the rest of the family awakens. “This “My mother (former dean of women at Ferris State) instilled a love of collection was mostly written between the hours of 3 a.m. and 7 people, and my father (an invertebrate zoologist) instilled a love of a.m.,” she says. “I make myself get up early to set aside writing time. things and the natural world,” she says. Also, Friday is my writing day. I don’t answer the door. I don’t answer Clark says she sometimes gets carried away with research for her the phone. If I don’t keep that day sacred, no one else will.” poems and stories. “I see these pieces of things in the news, and then It’s that dedication to her craft, as well as a decision in 2009 to get I want to know more.” The poem that was nominated for a Rhysling serious about submitting her work, that have helped her reach the Award, “Interim Problem Report 119V-0080,” was written after Clark goal she set decades ago.
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Born in Kalamazoo, Greensky Bluegrass keeps pushing into new territory by
34 | Encore SEPTEMBER 2014
Jef Otte
Paul Citone
G
reensky Bluegrass has a joke. The band members tell it when they’re putting together the set list before a show, and it goes like this: Q. “What should we play tonight?” A. “All the hits.” It’s funny, at least to the members of Greensky — whose name itself is a sort of joke — because they don’t have any hits. Not in the traditional sense, anyway. “We’re not exactly making a splash on triple-A radio,” quips mandolinist and songwriter Paul Hoffman. But Greensky Bluegrass doesn’t hold itself to much in a traditional sense, and that’s not the only reason the joke is funny. Take Greensky Bluegrass’s new record, If Sorrows Swim, laid to tape in East Lansing and due out this month. For that matter, take any one of Greensky’s previous four studio albums. Give it a listen. And enjoy the songs now because they’re liable to change. “As far as the idea of ‘we recorded it, now we’re committed to it’ — not in our band,” Hoffman says. “Songs change after we’ve recorded
Greensky Bluegrass members, from left, Mike Bont (banjo), Paul Hoffman (guitar), Mike Devol (upright bass), Dave Bruzza (guitar) and Anders Beck (dobro), at a performance in Las Vegas.
them, grow into whole new beasts. That’s OK with us. That’s part of making a record for us — that version (of a song) was the one we wanted and the one we loved, but we’re not afraid to make it something new.” Which may explain why Greensky’s sound has made the most waves live; you may miss hearing them on Top-40, but you can see them anywhere from Red Rocks to the Fillmore, sharing bills with everyone from Bela Fleck to the Avett Brothers to original bluegrass grand poobah Ralph Stanley. And their three live records — two of which were recorded in Southwest Michigan — represent the band with its throttle open. The first of the three, 2007’s Live at Bell’s, recorded in Kalamazoo at the namesake brewery, makes fitting tribute to Greensky’s roots: “We’ve been playing Bell’s since 2001,” Hoffman w w w.encorekalamazoo.com | 35
Erik Holladay
Guitarist Paul Hoffman amidst the ivy in Bell’s Beer Garden, the Kalamazoo venue where Greensky Bluegrass has played since 2001. Opposite page, band members Beck, Devol, Bruzza, Bont and Hoffman.
notes. “Larry [Bell] helped fund us early on and gave us support when we needed it.” Roots — and change — are persistent themes in Greensky’s ethos: an urge to take something established and make it new. And in a genre that’s always straddled the line between the novelty of improvisation and the comfort of tradition, Greensky Bluegrass
36 | Encore SEPTEMBER 2014
seems a good measure of where the needle falls. Take it from Rolling Stone: “Greensky are hardly strictly bluegrass,” the magazine wrote in 2011, “yet they’re representing the genre for a whole new generation.” Greensky may not play the hits, but that’s a heavy charge. And it’s a long way to come from two guys learning to play
their instruments at open-mic nights in Kalamazoo under a joke name back in the early 2000s. In fact, the whole thing kind of started as “a joke with an old bandmate that if I ever played guitar, it would be bluegrass guitar, so he gave me a guitar,” says Greensky songwriter and guitarist Dave Bruzza, who now lives in Denver. Bassist Mike Devol has decamped to California, while the other three members remain in Kalamazoo, the band’s home base. The joke, of course, was that Bruzza had never played guitar. He played drums. Even so, the switch to a style of playing that generally excludes drums altogether “was an easy transition,” Bruzza says. “Being in a bluegrass band is kind of like being part of a drummer. The dobro and banjo are fills, symbol lines, the bass is like the kick. The sound of a guitar is, I don’t know, it’s nice and chubby.” (It’s worth noting that Bruzza has obviously given this dynamic some thought: In a separate interview, Hoffman, who joined the band soon after, said, “My job in the band is the snare drum. They were pretty clear about that.”) Newly a guitarist, Bruzza hooked up with two guitar players: Mike Bont and Hoffman, who had just started playing banjo and mandolin, respectively. “We’ve all been playing guitar way longer than our guitar player,” Hoffman says. That was just part of the fun, says Bruzza. “It never started as anything very serious. All of us had only been playing our instruments for a couple of months at that point. We’d go to open mics and drink free beers, try to learn songs together. A few years down the road we’re playing Bonnaroo, Telluride. It’s been pretty gratifying.” Hoffman’s version more or less matches Bruzza’s. “I wasn’t really familiar with the mando at all and decided it would be fun to buy one,” Hoffman says. “After that I met the guys, and I didn’t really know what bluegrass was, and they taught me. It was a frivolous, impulsive decision. I had no idea it would go this far. It just sort of worked out that way.” After playing for a while as a trio and cycling through a few bassists, the group found a permanent one in Mike Devol, who
traditional bluegrass, Beck observes, “you’re allowed to improvise on the melody the second time around” (which could be why the jam-band circuit also claims Greensky as its own). “Learning bluegrass is like Catholic school,” says Beck. “You’re sort of filled with this guilt of what you’re not allowed to do — the Grateful Dead is like porn in Catholic school. That’s a metaphor I just thought of, and I’m not sure if it’s good or not.” Hoffman is perhaps less reticent. “People spend a lot of time analyzing whether we’re bluegrass or not,” he says. “People ask if we feel a responsibility to the genre, like if we have to carry on a tradition. I think my answer is, no, we don’t at all. We honor the tradition because we enjoy it, not because we have to.” Still, there are certain traditions by which Greensky abides — after nearly 15 years, the band still doesn’t have a drummer, after all. And nobody’s ready to start plugging in. It’s that tension, between the push into new territory and the constraint of traditional instrumentation, that drives Greensky’s sound. “Being limited by not having a drum set, we’re always looking for new textures,” says Hoffman. Beck agrees. “Working in the confines of these acoustic instruments, and with the word ‘bluegrass’ attached to our name, a big part of it is creating our own voice within the music,” he says. “Paul and Dave’s songwriting really comes through probably better than ever on the new album. There’s a certain uniqueness to it, I would say, because of the Michigan roots of these guys. Traditionally
bluegrass comes from Appalachia. It’s all blue and lonesome, the traditional music. There’s a different kind of blue and lonesome in Michigan, and it has to do with dark winters and failing economies. It’s not grandpa working in the mine, but it’s not that far off in some ways.” Indeed, If Sorrows Swim comes with its roots still firmly intact, but it also takes on driving rock tempos and reverb-soaked washes of sound that seem more at home with Midwest grime than yonder mountain. The Bruzza-penned “Wings for Wheels” — which, Bruzza says, he “didn’t realize was already a Bruce Springsteen lyric, so that makes me feel kind of awkward” — is nevertheless a fitting tribute: The song’s solemn heartland keen recalls the Boss’ less extravagant arrangements, like those of Nebraska or the underappreciated Devils & Dust. Meanwhile, Hoffman’s “Windshield” employs a driving, bass-fueled, four-onthe-floor hook and a slow-burn build that’s closer to Coldplay or Feist than anything Ralph Stanley ever wrote. “We seem to reinvent ourselves every time we make a record,” Bruzza says. “I think this is a particularly well-rounded record, and not just because records are round. There’s no other band I know of out there that sounds like us. It’s a primal, rhythmic sound.” Even so, Greensky doesn’t seem ready to bust out the synthesizers anytime soon, and ultimately maybe the outward push is actually a push within. “Each record we make,” says Beck, “sounds less traditional and more like ourselves.”
Chris Monaghan
was studying cello at WMU. “We talked him into it,” Hoffman says. After that, the group hit the road and started out on a national tour. Meanwhile, guitarist-turned-dobro-player Anders Beck came across Greensky while touring the country with his own band, Wayword Sons, of Durango, Colo. (Beck has since moved to Kalamazoo). The two bands started seeing a lot of each other, and when Wayword Sons went belly-up, Beck knew where he wanted to go knocking. “Coming from a bluegrass background, there were lots of people I could call to be in a band full of hot pickers,” he recalls, “but to me, that’ll only get you so far. Having listened to the couple of albums Greensky made before me, I was attracted to the songwriting, and I hoped there was more where that came from. Anyone can play instruments, but there aren’t a lot of great songwriters out there, and I believed these guys had the potential to do that. “Looking back,” he adds, “I’m sort of shocked I was right. I can’t say I’ve made a ton of great decisions in my life, but that was one of them.” Like jazz, bluegrass is a genre of standards, and while it’s not unusual for a bluegrass band to write original music, what’s perhaps unique about Greensky is the band’s willingness to push its music beyond the conventions. The band’s 2011 Handguns (which debuted at No. 3 on Billboard’s bluegrass chart) featured a song with a full horn section, for example — a distinctly non-bluegrass arrangement — and in a live setting the band has been known to push jams to the 20-minute mark. In
POETRY encore
Uncle Ernie’s Pancake House, Labor Day The waitress pours a cup of joe, works her way around long-eared men, doused in flannel on this day that dips below 70 degrees; a pair of watery eyes hinges on the one with fleshy lips droning on about where to find used snowplows on sale and how Sweet Belle surprised him by up and dying in ’95—the same year he planned to retire but didn’t because he thought what’s the point now? Yep, yep, yep, one whirrs in response, his last bit of toast stalled like a charred plane hovering over easy clouds.
Kalamazoo Decides She Likes Her Name It’s true she used to cringe when people laughed. She’d wish she had a normal name, like Springfield, but the way Glen Miller savored her name letter by letter helped, it really did. She started to feel special, briefly drew those O’s as double hearts, then razor-trimmed it to an edgy “’Zoo.”
Kalamazoo.
Sun breaks through, bleeds into white.
Conversation sputters, toast quivers
on her tongue, over the pebbles in feeder creeks,
then disappears, yep, yep. In crowded skies, movements of old men cast shadows at alarming rates; elbows touching down on runways strewn with napkins, buttered crumbs brushed from washed-out whiskers; well-traveled crafts nosing in for final descent, formica strips made shiny by those who have come before. Yep, yep. — Jennifer Clark Clark is featured in a story on page 32. This poem from her new book, Necessary Clearings, first appeared in the journal Solo Novo in 2012.
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She says it slowly, rolls it
the a’s flat as Midwestern prairies, the z buzzing in wild lupines, that single l bobbing back and forth between the a’s, meadowlark on a grass stem, the final oo waist deep in that long grass, glad at having tricked your lips into a kiss. — Susan Blackwell Ramsey Ramsey came to Kalamazoo in 1968 to go to college and never really got away. She now teaches creative writing at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. This poem is from her book, A Mind Like This, winner of the 2011 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. It is used with permission of the University of Nebraska Press (copyright 2012, the university’s Board of Regents).
PERFORMING ARTS Plays
WMU School of Music Jazz Mix — Staff and students from WMU’s School of Music 2.5 Minute Ride — Kalamazoo College senior perform, 8-11 p.m. Sept. 4, 11, 18, 25, Union Grace Gilmore performs award-winning Cabaret & Grille, 125 S. Kalamazoo Mall. playwright and K-College alumna Lisa Kron’s 384-6756. one-woman play, 8 p.m. Sept. 20, Balch Bands and Solo Artists Playhouse, K-College. 337-7333. Imaginary Activism — An exploration of intercultural issues by performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña, followed by a talkback, 7:30 p.m. Sept. 27, Dalton Theatre, Kalamazoo College. Tickets at the door.
Jimmy Johnson, the Bar Room Preacher – Chicago guitarist Jimmy Johnson plays everything from Chicago blues to soul blues, 8:30 p.m. Sept. 13, The 411 Club, 411 N. Westnedge Ave. 276-9240.
Musicals
Vega — Alternative rock band from Kalamazoo, mixing lighter shades of My Fair Lady — Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick alternative with heavy undertones, like Foo Loewe’s classic about a cockney flower girl Fighters, Jimmy Eat World and Muse, 9 p.m. turned into a lady, 7:30 p.m. Sept. 26 & 27, to midnight Sept. 2, Union Cabaret & Grille. Civic Auditorium, 329 S. Park St. 343-1313. Shelagh Brown Band — Singer-songwriter Bound for the Promised Land: Women on from Kalamazoo with a one-of-a-kind the Westward Journey — A New Vic original country sound, 9 p.m. to midnight Sept. 6, musical inspired by the women on the Union Cabaret & Grille. wagon trail and their journals, 8 p.m. Sept. Gov’t Mule — Southern rock jam band 12, 13, 19, 20, 26, 27, New Vic Theatre, 134 continuing “20 Years Strong” U.S. tour, 8 E. Vine St. 532-4770. p.m. Sept. 13, State Theatre, 404 S. Burdick The Secret Garden — A musical adaptation St. 345-6500. of the beloved book, 8 p.m. Sept. 19, 20, 26, 27; 2 p.m. Sept. 21 & 28, 7:30 p.m. Sept. 25, Zappa Plays Zappa — An American tribute act led by Dweezil Zappa, oldest son of Farmers Alley Theatre, 221 Farmers Alley. the late Frank Zappa, 8 p.m. Sept. 9, State Concerts Theatre. Hélène Grimaud — Pianist Grimaud’s first appearance in Southwest Michigan, performing a program of works by Berio, Liszt, Ravel, Janacek and more, 8 p.m. Sept. 19, Chenery Auditorium, 714 S. Westnedge Ave. 337-0440. Invitation to Dance — Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra 2014-15 opener, featuring Maestro Raymond Harvey and trumpeter Brandon Ridenour, 8 p.m. Sept. 20, Miller Auditorium. 387-2300. Chamber & Jazz Emerson String Quartet — Performing a program of Haydn, Ravel and Shostakovich, 8 p.m. Sept. 26, Dalton Center Recital Hall, WMU. 382-7774.
Social Distortion — American punk rock band with special guests The Whigs and Johnny Two Bags, 8 p.m. Sept. 9, State Theatre. Iron and Wine — Singer-songwriter Samuel Beam’s acclaimed indie folk music, 7:30 p.m. Sept. 15, State Theatre. Comedy Kalamazoo Improv Festival, featuring improv teams from Chicago, Grand Rapids & Kalamazoo, 6, 8 & 10:30 p.m. Sept. 26; 8 & 10:30 p.m. Sept. 27. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, 180 Portage St.
Vocal Mall City Harmonizers — The barbershop chorus’s annual show, themed “From Sea to Shining Sea,” 7 p.m. Sept. 13, Dalton Center Recital Hall, WMU. VISUAL ARTS Richmond Center for Visual Arts, WMU Kate Teale: The Housed — An exhibition of mixed-media visuals exploring lighting and shape in household silhouettes, Sept. 4-Oct. 10, Monroe-Brown Gallery, WMU. 387-2436. Kalamazoo Institute of Arts The Arts of Japan and China: Selections from the Collection — Historical and contemporary works offering windows into cultures of Japan and China, through Nov. 9. 349-7775. ARTbreak — Free presentations on artrelated topics: Calder: Sculptor of Air, a documentary film on Alexander Calder, Sept. 2 & 14; Rembrandt, presentation by Simon Schama on Rembrandt’s life and art, Sept. 9 & 16; Art Needs a Push: A Short History of the KIA, presentation by Greg Waskowsky, Sept. 23; All About Prints, documentary exploring fine-art printmaking, Sept. 30. All sessions at noon in the KIA Auditorium. Public Tours — The Arts of China and Japan: Selections from the Collection, historical and contemporary works, Sept. 7; Lasting Legacy: A Collection for Kalamazoo, the KIA’s collection with works by Rembrandt, Hiram Powers, William Merritt Chase, Mary Cassatt and more, Sept. 14; Double Take: Artists Respond to the Collection, 30 Kalamazoo artists respond to a selected work, Sept. 21; Favorite Paintings in Lasting Legacy, paintings from the KIA collection, Sept. 28; all tours start at 2 p.m. in lobby. Book Discussion: The Lost Painting — Led by Billie Fischer, professor emerita of art history at Kalamazoo College, 2 p.m. Sept. 17.
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Get the Picture! Gallery Talk: Lorna Simpson’s Odds — Fun talk about Lorna Simpson’s Odds, with Curator of Education Michelle Stempien and other KIA staff, noon Sept. 18. Register by phone, 349-7775. West Michigan Glass Art Center Visiting Artist Petra Kaiser Workshop — A 3-day workshop on ideas and techniques for kiln forming glass, Oct. 3-5. 552-9802. Miscellaneous Art Hop — Local artists and musicians at various venues in downtown Kalamazoo, 5-9 p.m. Sept. 5. Fall Classes Preview — Tour Park Trades Center studios during Art Hop, see live demonstrations and be inspired to sign up for fall classes, 5-9 p.m. Sept. 5, Park Trades Center, 326 W. Kalamazoo Ave. 522-9802. LIBRARY AND LITERARY EVENTS Kalamazoo Public Library First Saturday — Fun free family activities and more, 2-4 p.m. Sept. 6, Central Library, 315 S. Rose St. 553-7800. Urban Fiction Discussion — Popular street lit group discusses May the Best Man Win, by M.T. Pope (pick up copies at Powell branch desk), 6 p.m. Sept. 30, Alma Powell Branch, 1000 W. Paterson St. 533-7960. Portage Public Library Come Forth Into the Past: Demonstrations of Medieval Skill — Learn about life in the
medieval era, featuring music, clothing, food, living conditions, armor and fighting, 12:30-3:30 p.m. Sept. 13, 300 Library Lane. 329-4544.
Gazelle Sports Historic Walks — Lynn Houghton leads historic walking tours around Kalamazoo, 8 a.m. Sept. 19, Vine and Locust streets intersection. 342-5996.
Kazoo Books
MUSEUMS
Author Events — Visiting authors read from their recent works and answer questions: Mimi Lipson, 6:30 p.m. Sept. 11; Jim C. Hines and Tobias Buckell, 2 p.m. Sept. 11; Mara MacKay, noon Sept. 20; 2413 Parkview Ave. KazooBooks.com.
Gilmore Car Museum
Kalamazoo Book Arts Center
Ford Model A Day — Bring your Model A or come as a spectator to this show and swap meet, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sept. 20.
Poets in Print: Katherine Bode-Lang and Laura Donnelly — 7 p.m. Sept. 20, Park Trades Center, Suite 103A. 373-4938. MISCELLANEOUS Sayonara Summer 5k — Say “sayonara” to summer with the running and walking community of Kalamazoo, 1 p.m. Sept. 6, Mayors Riverfront Park, 215 Mills St. 3425996. Movie in the Park: ‘The Hunger Games’ – Grab a chair or blanket after Art Hop, 7:3011 p.m. Sept. 5, Arcadia Creek Festival Place. 337-8295. Tours de Hops – A bike ride on trails and backroads in Southwest Michigan, from downtown Kalamazoo to Kalamazoo River Valley Trail, Sept. 13, starting at Arcadia Ales West, 701 E. Michigan Ave. Lunch and beverage at Paw Paw Brewery, with optional shuttle service back. 784-2000.
West Michigan Muscle Cars PLUS Show and Swap Meet — Area’s largest gathering of muscle cars, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sept. 7, 6865 Hickory Road, Hickory Corners. 345-2202.
Kalamazoo Valley Museum Speed Bump — An exhibit of single-panel cartoons with a local connection, through Sept. 21, 230 N. Rose St. Museum hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday; 1-5 p.m. Sunday. 373-7990. Kalamazoo for the Union! An exhibit of Civil War — History through the eyes of the people of Kalamazoo County, through May 17. Voices for Social Justice — Kalamazoo Valley Museum and Southwest Michigan Black Heritage Society explore race, equity and social justice through oral histories of Kalamazoo residents, through Jan. 19. Air Zoo Tigers: Tracking a Legend — A new exhibit offering an immersive journey into the lives of endangered Bengal tigers, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
Expect More. The technical expertise you need, the personal attention you deserve.
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Monday-Saturday; noon-5 p.m. Sunday, 6151 Portage Road. 382-6555. NATURE Kalamazoo Nature Center Fall Fest and Music in the Woods — Live music performances by Kalamazoo Folklife Organization musicians, 1-5 p.m. Sept. 13, 7000 N. Westnedge Ave. 381-1574. Green Living Series Workshop: Cultivating Mushrooms — Learn to use the shady parts of your yard to grow delicious, healthpromoting mushrooms, 2-4:30 p.m. Sept. 21, Delano Homestead lot, 555 West E Ave. Registration required; call 381-1574. W.K. Kellogg Biological Station Birds and Coffee Walk — Join an experienced guide for a short birding walk and discuss the morning’s sightings over a cup of coffee, 9-10:30 a.m. Sept. 10, Kellogg Bird Sanctuary, 12685 East C Ave. 671-2510. Experience Kalamazoo Biological Station: W.K. Kellogg’s Legacy — Enjoy a day of learning, history and beautiful landscapes, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sept. 28, 3700 E. Gull Lake Drive. 671-2400. Harvest Soups and Stews – Demonstrationstyle class showcasing some of fall’s best comfort foods, 6-8 p.m. Sept. 23, Kellogg Bird Sanctuary, 12685 East C Ave., Augusta. 671-2510.
2014-2015
SEASON CALENDAR
Unplug... and Reconnect!
My Fair Lady
...with Savings!
September 26 – October 12
Shrek, the Musical
November 28 – December 14
Lend Me a Tenor
January 9 – January 24
The Who’s Tommy
Season Subscribers SAVE up to
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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof March 6 – March 22
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Stepping Out
March 20 – April 4
Richard III
April 10 – April 25
and enjoy early reservation privileges.
Crazy for You May 1 – May 16
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The Med School (continued from page 29) her are based here, and she has two forensic anthropologists on staff as well. There will be significant advantages for local law-enforcement officers and the broader community with the medical examiner’s office here. Kalamazoo County Sheriff Richard Fuller says his department deals with about 24 autopsies a year on average. “The average autopsy is two hours,” he says, “plus the
driving time to Lansing. And you can’t predict when those two hours will be. Sometimes it will take the officer all day. So we’re looking at thousands of dollars of savings in officers’ time. That officer can now stay in town and work a normal shift, go to the autopsy and return to work.” Plus, there will be savings on gasoline. “None of these vehicles get more than 20 miles per gallon.”
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Other benefits are more personal. “If your family member dies and they need an autopsy, I personally think it’s more comforting to know the exam is being done locally,” deJong says. “We frequently will meet with families. If they want some things about the death explained, it’s much more convenient to come to a local faciliity.” Fuller and deJong say that closer proximity is likely to lead to improved investigations. Officers can take extra time to ask questions, and a pathologist might be able to help them detect things they otherwise might not have noticed, Fuller says. “Remember the TV show ‘Quincy’?” he says, referring to the 1976-1983 series starring Jack Klugman as a medical examiner. “I picture this as having our own personal Quincy.”
Community spirit The theme of collaboration and cooperation among community organizations comes through over and over again as local leaders and med school officials talk about the new school. Dickson, the med school’s associate dean of health equity and community affairs, says she came to Kalamazoo for a health equity conference in July 2013, three months before she began her job here. “I found people here are really interested in making a difference. There are people here who care so much about Kalamazoo. I felt like I was so embraced, and I hadn’t even started working here yet.” Now she’s helping to harness that spirit to meet the community’s needs. In addition to developing service-learning projects, she has met with Kalamazoo Valley Community College leadership to discuss the planned Healthy Living Campus and how the med school might work with KVCC on community nutrition issues. She’s also active in a local health-equity alliance involving seven community organizations and hopes it can make a dent in the infant mortality rate among African Americans. “As a medical school,” she says, “you have an obligation to serve the community you’re in.”
Happy Campers (continued from page 23) says. “Everybody here knew us as a family, as a unit, and as we were going through that really tough time, we could always come back here and find support.” McLaurin grew up in Detroit and attended Camp Burt Shurly as a child — a cost-free camp catering to children in the Detroit Public Schools. For McLaurin, working at Pretty Lake (another cost-free camp) is a dream job and she says she’s in it for the kids — she wants to pay forward the mentorship she received from her counselors. Even though she was a child struck by homesickness, Syverson couldn’t wait to go to her 4-H camp every summer growing up. She still remembers her counselors’ faces. Later she worked in the kitchen and camp store of a Methodist camp in Minnesota for two summers. Both of her children have attended camp at Sherman Lake, and both have been camp counselors. Syverson is celebrating her 18th year at the camp. Ruiter grew up about eight houses down from the Pretty Lake camp, and her parents were very involved with the camp as board members. Ruiter started volunteering at the camp at 14, and, as she got older, looked for any way she could become a part of Pretty Lake, a camp she believes in because of its mission to provide at-risk and disadvantaged youth a free camp, with everything supplied. Ruiter started working at the camp when she was 16, in laundry, housekeeping and the farm program, before becoming camp director after returning home from college. When she thinks back on her time at Pretty Lake, and her time at a Wildlife Federation
summer camp she attended in North Carolina for two summers, there are a lot of reasons camp and camp counseling are so important to her, not the least of which is to support the children who live in our communities and provide a truly free space for them to develop. “I was a pretty wild kid,” Ruiter says. “I remember dressing up like a pirate every single day at camp, and I was the only kid dressing up like a pirate. All of the counselors
At left, Sherman Lake camper Carter C. dons the cape of Captain Caring (counselor Caroline Bissonnette). Above, Pretty Lake campers (from left ) Ivana W., Cheryl R., Michelle B., Hannah P., Andrea R. and Shyrena L. gather around their counselor, Mimi McLaurin (center).
embraced it. They loved it. Even if I didn’t fit in at school, which I didn’t, and even though I didn’t really feel like I had a place, at camp it didn’t matter. I could truly be an individual. Having adults like those counselors in my life definitely helped me become who I am now.”
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INDEX TO ADVERTISERS
l a c o Try l
American Village Builders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Bell’s Brewery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Borgess Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
WMUK
Bravo! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Brink, Key and Chludzinski, P.C. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
102.1
Bronson Health Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Dave’s Glass Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 DeHaan Remodeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Dement and Marquardt, PLC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 DeNooyer Chevrolet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Farm ‘N’ Garden - The Fence Center . . . . . . . . . . . 4 First National Bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Food Dance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Four Roses Café . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 FYI Magazine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Gilmore Real Estate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Great Lakes Shipping Co. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Greenleaf Hospitality Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Henderson Castle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Horizon Bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
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HRM Innovations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Kalamazoo Civic Theatre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Kalamazoo Community Foundation . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Landscape Arborist Services, LLC . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Lawton Ridge Winery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Mercantile Bank of Michigan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Nutrimost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Parkway Plastic Surgery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
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Portage Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
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Vliestra Bros. Pools and Spas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
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Hospice Care of SW Michigan . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Post Community Credit Union . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Saffron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Varnum Attorneys at Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
WMUK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Woodwork Specialties Co. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Yeta’s Fine Fashions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
The Last Word (continued from page 46) home and recently remodeled buildings downtown, the institute is a private, nonprofit independent research organization devoted to investigating the causes and effects of unemployment. Institute staff identifies feasible methods of ensuring against unemployment and devises ways and means of alleviating the distress and hardship caused by unemployment. There is no other organization like it in the nation. The institute’s boardroom is appointed with an oil painting of W.E. that previously decorated the boardroom of The Upjohn Co.’s headquarters on Portage Road. For its 75th anniversary in 2007, the institute produced a video about its founder, which is posted on its website at upjohninst.org/AboutUs/ HistoryandMission. Lesser known is The W.E. Upjohn Center for the Study of Geographical Change, established at WMU in 2005 by Edwin E. and Mary Upjohn Meader (a granddaughter of W.E.). Housed at Welborn Hall, this center is the only facility of its kind in the world. It digitally preserves and enables the study and analysis of historical maps and aerial photographs by researchers, teachers and students, businesses and government agencies, and interested citizens. Last year the center won awards from the International Map Industry Association for best digital product and best product overall for North America.
And finally, here at the Kalamazoo Community Foundation, we are proud to have two namesakes: the W.E. Upjohn Society, which meets once a year, and the W.E. Upjohn Community Fund. Last year, when StoryCorps visited Kalamazoo to record “Love Where You Live” stories, Martha Parfet talked about how her grandfather helped the Chamber of Commerce committee create a community foundation. A three-minute podcast of her interview is online at kalfound. org/AboutUs/StoryCorpsEveryVoiceMatters/ tabid/364/Default.aspx. In one of his many features written for Encore over the years, Tom Thinnes – whom I have always considered the biographer of notables in Southwest Michigan (our own James Boswell) – wrote, “Somewhere, Dr. William Erastus Upjohn must be smiling,” as he eloquently described the impact of the seed money W.E. donated to begin the Community Foundation. Indeed, I think W.E. is viewing us with a huge smile – that closedlip type of smile we see in his portraits – as our community goes about its daily business of helping one another making life better in a variety of ways, many of them still reflecting his touch. I hope his continued presence in our lives inspires W.E.s from future generations to do more of the same. “Love Where You Live.” I think he would embrace that phrase.
Tom Vance, director of marketing communications at the Kalamazoo Community Foundation, has an M.A. in U.S. history with a concentration in biography from Western Michigan University. He is the author of the biography Elliot Richardson: The Virtue of Politics.
Have The Last Word Have a story to tell? Nonfiction, personal narratives about life in Southwest Michigan are sought for The Last Word. Stories should be no more than 1,000 words. Submit your story and contact information to editor@encorekalamazoo.com.
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w w w.encorekalamazoo.com | 45
THE last word encore
The Legacies of W.E. Upjohn by
Tom Vance
W
hat’s in a name? For the past 128 years, many people here in Kalamazoo County would say “a lot,” especially when the name is W.E. Upjohn. The legacies of Dr. William E. Upjohn, who is often referred to by his initials, W.E., are solidly embedded in the popular culture
Kalamazoo Community Foundation, for which he made the original donation in 1925. A drive through Kalamazoo County from Richland to Portage or a walk downtown illustrates W.E.’s lasting impact on our community. There are places like the Upjohn home in the South Street Historic District,
East Michigan Avenue (Apjohn preceded the family name of Upjohn), a team of business and pharmaceutical professionals who work with innovators to help launch life-science companies. Two unique institutions here not only bear his name, but use the initials W.E. in their
of greater Kalamazoo. His presence at the company he founded in 1886 – as the Upjohn Pill and Granule Co. – remained long after he passed away in 1932. Upjohn retirees still recall his image and famous saying, “Keep the quality up.” That was an important part of the company culture – even more so for those recipients of the prestigious W.E. Upjohn Prize. I was lucky enough to work at The Upjohn Co. for seven years before the merger with Pharmacia, and I continued on with Pharmacia & Upjohn for three years. Like many Upjohn employees, I’d planned to stay there until my retirement. Although job shifts to the East Coast didn’t allow for that, I always thought that if I couldn’t stay at The Upjohn Co., I would work for another one of his legacy organizations. That finally happened two years ago when I joined the
his old office downtown on Henrietta Street (now John St.), and the Upjohn summer home at Brook Lodge in Augusta. There are places named for him: a pond, a street, a park and, most recently, the Western Michigan University medical campus in downtown Kalamazoo. Pedestrians on the Kalamazoo Mall walk past the Michigan historical marker telling his story every day. There are organizations he helped establish that are not named after him, such as the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts and the Kalamazoo Civic Theatre, as well as other buildings and institutions to which the Upjohn family donated, such as the, Kalamazoo College library, Bronson Methodist Hospital and First Congregational Church. And there are organizations that bear his history and inspiration, such as the Apjohn Group, a life-science incubator consulting group on
name, providing another layer of memory beyond legacies featuring the Upjohn name. The first one begins with the closing chapter of W.E.’s amazing 79 years. It was during the early years of the Great Depression when he purchased 1,200 acres in Richland in 1932 to provide work farming that land for 100 people without jobs. W.E. devoted his final year in this effort against unemployment in what he said he hoped would be “the most important thing I ever did.” That led to a gift that year by W.E. and his wife, Carrie Gilmore Upjohn (widow of dry-goods merchant James F. Gilmore), to launch the W.E. Upjohn Unemployment Trustee Corp. In 1945 this corporation established the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, commonly known today as the Upjohn Institute. Located in a historic
46 | Encore SEPTEMBER 2014
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