The Digest
What’s Happening at KVCC
What’s below in this edition
New sky shows (Pages 1-3)ArtPrize (Pages 9/10)
‘GENOME’ is coming (Pages 3/4) Ken Colby (Pages 10/11)
Downtown project (Pages 4/5)SSC events (Pages 11/12)
Press freedom (Page 5)Grant info (Page 120
‘About Writing’ (Pages 5/6)‘Sunday Series’ (Pages 12/13)
‘Adults in Transition’ (Pages 6/7)Eagle exhibit (Page 13)
In the news (Page 7)Hospitality training (P-13/14)
Trash team (Pages 7/8) Street lore (Page 14)
In-city animals (Pages 8/9) ‘Chemical Kim’ (Page 15)
Bain follow-ups (Page 9) And Finally (Pages 15/16)
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Free shows part of new planetarium’s debut
None of us has been able to step back in time to when pharaohs ruled Egypt and used the stars to guide them into the afterlife. Until now.
None of us has experienced the stark, barren and not-completely-inert surface of Mars. Until now – well, make that until January 2010.
Welcome to the Digistar 4, the Kalamazoo Valley Museum’s new full-color, 109-seat planetarium technology that debuts to the public on Saturday (Sept. 19) with a slate of free showings from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The billings on opening day are:
- “Stars of the Pharaohs,” which takes viewers back to ancient Egypt where the sky served as a clock and calendar, and the movement of imperishable stars guided the Pharaohs on their journey into the afterlife. Temples and pyramids were aligned with the stars and decorated with images revealing cycles in the sky connected with life on the Nile. These showings are set for 1, 2 and 3 p.m.
- “Secret of the Cardboard Rocket” is a journey through the solar system fueled by imagination. Guided by a talking book, two children visit and discover unique environments found at each planet. This is time for 11 a.m. and noon.
As with its predecessor Digistar II, which was among the attractions when the downtown-Kalamazoo museum opened its doors in February of 1996, the newest $1.3 million version will be among the handful in operation around the world with its first public programs.
“According to my research,” said planetarium coordinator Eric Schreur, “this new Digistar system will be one of a dozen digital planetariums in the world that use a laser beam to cover the full screen with video imagery. It becomes even rarer when considering the interactive features that we have – probably one of six in the world. And we certainly will be among the smallest venues to have a Digistar 4 Laser.”
The museum’s inventory of planetarium offerings has grown to more than 50 shows since the opening 13 years ago. Schreur is upgrading the best of them – about 15 -- to be Digistar 4 ready.
The purchase price includes five programs produced by Digistar 4 manufacturer Evans & Sutherland for the updated planetarium -- “Ice Worlds,” “Invaders of Mars,” “New Horizons,” “Secrets of the Sun,” and “Stars of the Pharaohs.” Two others – “Secret of the Cardboard Rocket” and one featuring the music of U2 – were purchased from another source.
“U2” will premiere on Friday, Oct. 2, as part of the monthly edition of downtown-Kalamazoo’s Art Hop. That will also launch the new “Friday Night at the Museum” series that will feature concerts, films and special events, and is being underwritten by museum-designated contributions to the Kalamazoo Valley Community College Foundation. U2’s impressive repertoire of rock classics is enhanced by a laser show across the 50-foot planetarium dome. There will be a $3 admission charge for “U2.”
Set to begin in January, “Invaders of Mars” will make it easier to accept that none of us will ever make it to that planet because, thanks to the Digistar 4 technology, we’ve already been there.
The Digistar II was a black-and-white video display projected on the dome through a fish-eye lens. The Digistar 4 Laser is a single projector that will do the work of all of those in the earlier system. It fills the dome with images projected by a colored laser beam.
After a feasibility study by community leaders, Kalamazoo Valley Community College in July of 1991 assumed the governance of the Kalamazoo Public Museum.
Voters in the college's 10 K-12 school districts also approved a charter millage to fund the museum's operations in perpetuity. Part of its annual budgeting process is to build up a capital-improvement fund for such projects as the Digistar 4 Laser.
In response to that mandate from voters, community leaders launched a $20-million capital campaign to build a new museum in downtown Kalamazoo. Since its opening, the museum has attracted 1.5 million visitors.
It was possible with the Digistar II "to fly" the audience to any of the 9,000 stars in its data base and look back to this solar system from their locations in the universe. Schreur reports the new data base is much larger and the “trips” are no longer limited to stars or black-and-white experiences.
“It will be safe to say,” Schreur said, “that people in Southwest Michigan would have to travel great distances to get the same experience that we will be able to offer beginning in September.”
More information is available at the museum’s web site at
‘GENOME’ explores the stuff we are made of
What the naked eye can’t see is proving that all the humans who can be seen are 99 and 44/100ths percent the same, whether they are as white as Ivory Snow or dark as molasses.
And, because of an extra inventory of these units - called genes - humans are different - but not all that different -- from other warm-blooded species of all shapes and sizes that occupy planet Earth.
Southwest Michigan residents will be able to see all of this for themselves when the nationally touring “GENOME: The Secret of How Life Works” opens on Sept. 26 at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum and begins a stay through Jan. 10. Admission is free.
Two of the annual attractions at the downtown-Kalamazoo museum - Chemistry Day on Oct. 17 and Safe Halloween on Oct. 31 - are being themed to complement the intent of the exhibit. Those also are free.
“Genome” is made possible by Pfizer Inc and was produced by Evergreen Exhibitions in collaboration with the National Human Research Institute, a division of the National Institutes of Health, and the Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research.
“Genome” explores how genes affect growth and aging, maps what might be in store for humanity, and offers a look at what your future children might look like.
All this became humanly possible once scientists mapped the human genome - a person’s entire set of genes.
The exhibition, which debuted at the Smithsonian in 2003, investigates the mysteries of the human gene, why the genome is being mapped, and the potential benefits of gene research, such as:
* Preventing and curing diseases
* Living longer
* Solving crimes
Producing better food and drugs
The exhibit looks at the 200-year history of this science and the individuals who shaped it - from Gregor Mendel, the 19th-century monk who discovered the rules of inheritance by cultivating peas in a monastery garden, to Jim Watson and Francis Crick, who in the early 1950s unearthed the form and process of genetic replication, the famous DNA double helix. This Harvard University breakthrough is regarded as the most important biological discovery of the 20th century.
“The understanding of the human genome opens up an entirely new frontier for health-science research,” said Dr. Tom Turi, a genomic scientist with Pfizer Inc, “and it is anticipated that it will lead to new therapies and cures for devastating diseases. However, many people are unaware of the genome or its potential to enhance our lives.”
“Genome” uses interactive displays and family-friendly activities to help visitors understand the genome’s function and its role in daily life.
These include:
•An 8-by-25-foot display of DNA’s double helix structure that is enhanced by a video.
•The opportunity in the Discovery Theater to meet scientists who were instrumental in the discoveries leading up to the sequencing of the human genome. Another “show” discusses the genetic issues of the future.
•A working slot machine that demonstrates the odds that children will inherit genes for certain characteristics.
•Using the metaphor of a “Cookie Factory,” DNA, genes and proteins as the ingredients and recipes for “making” human beings can be understood.
•Gaining access to a cell to discover the workings of its parts and processes.
•Computer simulations to design new gene therapies, replacing disease-causing proteins with healthy new human genes.
Visitors will enter the exhibit through a circular corridor, encountering graphic and mirror images of themselves in the initial stages of life and as a mature human, reflecting who they were and who they are today.
Emanating from a mirror at the end of the tunnel is a swirling ribbon of genetic code, representing the genes that hold the secrets to where they came from, who they are and who they may become.
The exhibit’s “The Secret of Life” section explains what a gene, DNA, protein and cell are, and how genes are involved in reproduction, growth and the maintenance of life.
The role of this revolutionary branch of science and what it holds for the future comes alive by people with genetic conditions telling their stories. How DNA testing is solving some of history’s mysteries and helping to identify people who committed crimes with almost 100-percent certainty are also exhibit attractions.
“Genome” will be the second medical-science related exhibition brought to Kalamazoo under the auspices of Pfizer. “BRAIN: The World Inside Your Head” spent the fall and early winter of 2006 at the Museum.
Think about this the next time you peel a banana - that white fruit behind the yellow skin has 50 percent of the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) that you do.
New neighbors for Center for New Media?
The KVCC Center for New Media may have some company in the coming months.
The four vintage buildings on Michigan Avenue adjacent to the center are the targets of a proposed $10-million, mixed-use redevelopment.
MAVCON Properties LLC wants to convert the structures – which are primarily vacant – into a 30,000-square-foot combination of retail space at street level and reasonably priced housing on the two upper floors.
The latest action came when the Kalamazoo City Commission was asked to vacate the alley between the four buildings and the center, and sell a section of the nearby parking lot.
That would allow the developer to construct an 11-foot addition to the rear of the four buildings and give the consolidated properties, currently owned by the real-estate arm of the Downtown Kalamazoo Inc., some uniformity in appearance and physical dimensions.
Preliminary plans call for the building’s facades to be preserved. Once work is started, the estimated completion date would be between 12 and 14 months. MAVCON has already refurbished one other downtown building located at 232 W. Michigan Ave.
According to news accounts, KVCC, which supports the project, has agreed to waive and relinquish its rights to the portion of the alley the college could acquire if it is vacated by the city.
Freedom of the press is Constitution Day topic
Kalamazoo Gazette editor Rebecca Pierce will speak about the constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press in the United States on Thursday at KVCC.
Her remarks are part of the college’s observance of Constitution Day slated for 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Student Commons Theater. The program is free and open to the public.
Political science instructor Rick Brill will speak about the origins of the document that has guided this nation since its adoption on Sept. 17, 1787, and subsequent ratification the following June.
While it was declared to be in effect on March 4, 1789, congressional action that year submitted to the former colonies amendments to clarify certain individual and states’ rights not addressed in the Constitution. The result was what is now referred to as the Bill of Rights. These amendments went into force in late 1791.
Brill will also address the flexibility of the document over its two centuries of existence.
In addition to Pierce’s comments on the importance of press freedom to a functioning, effective democracy, KVCC students will offer their analysis of a pair of U. S. Supreme Court cases – McCulloch vs. Maryland in 1819 that dealt with the creation of government-implied powers and Near vs. Minnesota, the 1931 ruling on the establishment of a press free from intrusive government involvement.
The students will background the two cases, discuss the reasons for why the justices reached the decisions they did, and discuss their impact on the nation and its citizens.
The day’s program will be concluded by a 15-minute question-and-answer segment among participants and attendees.
At the Kalamazoo Valley Museum on Constitution Day, the Mary Jane Stryker Theater will be hosting a film about the monumental document at 1:30 p.m. It, too, will be free and open to the public.
Circle your calendar for ‘About Writing’ speakers
The poet laureate of Delaware, a KVCC alumnus, an essayist who has written about revolutions and schisms in a major religion, and a funeral director whose wordsmithing has focused on medical ethics and the ethereal meaning of death are booked for KVCC’s “About Writing” series during the 2009-10 academic year.
Opening the series will be Fleda Brown, an award-winning, nationally known poet whose collections have been titled “The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives” and “Fishing with Blood.” The retired professor of English at the University of Delaware was the laureate in her state from 2001 to 2007.
She will be on the Texas Township Campus on Thursday, Oct. 1, to talk about her craft at 10 a.m. in the Student Commons and will read from her works there at 2:15 p.m. All of the sessions are free and open to the public.
Here is the rest of the line-up of presenters:
- Tom Montgomery-Fate, a professor of English at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Ill., who has taught with his wife in the Philippines, attended seminary, and written a collection of essays about the Nicaraguan revolution and the split in the Catholic Church. He’ll be on the Texas Township on Thursday, Nov. 5.
- Tom Springer, author of “Looking for Hickories: The Forgotten Wildness of the Rural Midwest” and a senior editor/program officer for the W. K. Kellogg Foundation . Springer holds a master's degree in environmental journalism from Michigan State University after beginning his writing career at KVCC. He lives near Three Rivers. He’ll return to KVCC on Wednesday, Feb. 17.
- Poet Thomas Lynch, whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, Newsweek, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Times of London, teaches creative writing program at the University of Michigan, lives in Milford, and has been a funeral director for a quarter of a century. His collection of essays, “Bodies in Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Mortality” has been selected to be the common reader for winter-semester English classes at KVCC where he will be making presentations on March 22-23.
KVCC English instructor Rob Haight is the coordinator and organizer of the “About Writing” series.
Seminar, fair booked to help adults in transition
Adults who are facing career changes, downsizing by their employers, and other situations resulting in job layoffs are invited to a 90-minute seminar at Kalamazoo Valley Community College.
“Adults in Transition" is slated to begin at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 8, in the Student Commons on the Texas Township Campus and run to 8:30. It is free and open to the public. It will be preceded by a one-hour Community Resource Fair.
Among the seminar sessions will be the employment outlook for Southwest Michigan, a presentation on job-search strategies, and a discussion about the importance of networking.
Also planned is a follow-up session to the fair titled “Utilizing Community Resources.”
Among the speakers will be George Erickcek, senior regional analyst and senior economist for the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
Speaking about the importance of networking and the impact of unemployment will be Doran Lefaive, who is part of the networking ministry operated by the St. Catherine of Siena Church in Portage for more than five years.
More than 100 people have found employment and remain connected via an e-mail networking group.
Panelists will talk about community resources that are available for this sector of the population and how to tap into what’s available through human-resource personnel. The latter will also talk about what they look for in a resume and interviewing tips
Jointly sponsoring “Adults in Transition” are KVCC’s Office of Prior Learning Assessment, Office of Career Services, and Office of Student Employment. All are under the umbrella of the college’s Student Success Center.