The Digest
What’s Happening at KVCC
What’s below in this edition
Rod tour coming (Pages 1/2)‘Challenge’ events (Pages 12-14)
School elections (Pages 2/3)‘Blazing Saddles’ (Pages 14-16)
Retirees (Pages 3/4)Magic at museum (Page 16)
Kidjo concert (Pages 4-6)Keyboard ducats (Page 17)
Art Hop stops (Page 6)Area collectors (Page 17)
‘An Inconvenient Truth’ (Pages 6/7)Black History (Pages 17/18)
KAFI speakers (Pages 7-10)Feed the hungry (Page 18)
KAFI ‘vols’ (Page 10)‘Exec’ training (Pages 18/19)
Job expo (Pages 10/11)Dead batteries (Page 19)
Camera basics (Page 11)‘Moneyville’ (Pages 19-21)
Poems about ‘facts’ (Pages 11/12) Reading Together (Pages 21-24)
Today’s China (Page 12)And finally (Page 24)
☻☻☻☻☻☻
Hot Rod Heaven in campus’ future
Careers in various aspects of the automotive industry will be in the spotlight when the publisher of Hot Rod Magazine visits Kalamazoo Valley Community College as part of his publication’s promotion of this summer’s 12th annual Hot Rod Magazine Power Tour that will include a stop in Kalamazoo.
Jerry Pitt will speak on Tuesday, March 20, at 3:30 p.m. in the Student Commons Theater about careers in automotive technology as well as the spinoff employment possibilities in manufacturing, sales, distribution, customizing, education, publishing and marketing.
Billed as the largest traveling car show in the world, the Hot Rod Magazine Power Tour will be launched on Saturday, June 2, in Cleveland, Ohio, with the second stop being the KVCC campus on that Sunday. Other destinations are: Racine, Wis.; Springfield, Ill.; Evansville, Ind.; Memphis, Tenn.; and the wrapup on Friday, June 8, in Little Rock, Ark.
More than 3,500 hot rods, street machines and two-wheel-drive trucks take part in the yearly 1,500-mile trek. The caravan includes some of the nation’s most unique classic cars and late-model performance vehicles.
“It is easily considered one of the best automotive tours in the world and is a rolling testament to what Hot Rod Magazine is all about,” Pitt said. “Those who take part take pleasure in the joys of the open road, camaraderie, and organized stops in each community on the tour. Many, who we call ‘long haulers,’ travel the entire route.”
Hosting the March 20 presentation and the tour stop in June is the KVCC program in automotive technology. For more information, contact Doug Martin at extension 4322 or .
KVCC part of May 8 elections
In addition to an incumbent and a member of the Kalamazoo Valley Museum Advisory Committee seeking the two six-year terms on the Kalamazoo Valley Community College Board of Trustees, the May 8 school elections will contain other candidates with college connections.
Veteran trustee Mary Gustas is running for her fourth term on the KVCC governing board, while Derl Oberlin filed nominating petitions to fill the seat that had been held by Robert Kent for 24 years until his resignation last July 31. Gustas, who joined the KVCC board in 1989, is executive director of the Comstock Community Center while Oberlin is a 20-year-plus employee of Pfizer Inc.
The board appointed Dr. Stephen Dallas to fill out the remainder of Kent’s term, which expires this May. However, when Dr. Dallas filed his nominating petitions as a trustee candidate, it was learned that he did not qualify as an “eligible elector” under the Michigan Community College Act since he still retains citizenship in his homeland of Trinidad & Tobago in the Caribbean.
In the Kalamazoo Public Schools Board of Education election, Liz Henderson and fellow incumbent Eric Breisach are seeking new four-year terms. They are being challenged by Carl Myles, who will be retiring as principal of Kalamazoo Central High School at the end of the school year. Henderson is the spouse of KVCC photography instructor Dave Posther.
Sheila Baiers, a member of the business faculty, is one of a trio of candidates seeking three four-year terms on the Paw Paw Library Board. She’s been a major of the board for the best part of a decade. One of the board’s current issues is building a new library for the village.
Former instructor Mary Anne Sydlik is again a candidate for a four-year term on the Kalamazoo Public Library Board. Six are running for four seats.
In one of the 2002 editions of the Kalamazoo Valley Museum’s thrice-a-year publication, “Museography,” Oberlin was featured in the following article as a member of the advisory committee:
Six years after its opening, Derl Oberlin says he still gets excited and his heart races each time he walks into the Kalamazoo Valley Museum.
But that shouldn’t be too surprising for a fellow who admits to having tears in his eyes on that February evening in 1996 when it arrived on the downtown-Kalamazoo scene.
“I guess it is because I was involved so early,” said the member of the museum’s Community Advisory Committee who played an active role in the $20-million capital campaign that added it to the region’s educational arsenal.
“We all had a big dream,” said Oberlin, a nearly 16-year Pharmacia Corp. employee, “and it came true. Big hopes became brick-and-mortar reality.”
Raised in Logan, Ohio, a 7,000-ish community halfway between Columbus and Athens in the southeast sector of the state, Oberlin spent his share of childhood days in the Columbus Center of Science and Industry. “I’ve always been fascinated by museums,” he said. “They make education fun. When the opportunity came to improve and expand the Kalamazoo museum, I jumped at the chance.”
Oberlin, 45, did not have to look beyond his own corporate headquarters to find a campaign contact because Pharmacia’s own Dr. Mark Novitch was heading up the fund-raising effort. Oberlin and his wife, Heidi, who is the health officer for the Calhoun County Department of Public Health, made supporting the new museum a family affair.
The two Oberlin sons, now 20 and 22, accompanied dad and mom on “road trips” to Plainwell and other surrounding communities to build regional support for what became the Kalamazoo Valley Museum. The Portage Northern High School graduates are both attending Michigan State University.
Oberlin, whose first name is a family tradition that spans three generations, did not attend the Ohio college that shares his last name. Instead, the 1975 Logan High School alumnus went to Ohio State University where he majored in finance while complementing his education with all kinds of science courses because “I really liked biology.” That helps at a place like Pharmacia.
His first job out of college in 1979 was as a management trainee with a bank in Newark in his home state. Oberlin joined the former First of America in 1983, a career move that brought him to Kalamazoo. The opportunity to join a supervisor training program prompted his switch to what was then The Upjohn Co. in 1987.
These days, Oberlin serves as the supervisor of production in Pharmacia’s multi-million-dollar Center for Advanced Sterile Technology, which he began doing about 10 months ago and calls as “fascinating” as a trip to a museum for him because it connects him to “brand new technology.”
“The Kalamazoo Valley Museum,” he said, “is a wonderful educational resource. Learning is a hands-on activity, and that’s what I’ve always liked about museums. Yet, our museum also offers a chance to step back into our region’s history and a chance to step into the future aboard the Challenger and at planetarium shows.
“You just can’t beat it,” he said.”
208 years!
Those are the cumulative number of years that retiring administrators, faculty members and staff have dedicated to helping the college pursue its community-oriented missions and serving students to the best of their abilities.
While the total might not reflect the years that part-time positions were held, it also can’t take into account some post-retirement service that some of the folks are contemplating.
Here’s the latest list:
Bill Lay, 38 years as an English instructor, director of the KVCC Honors Program, dean, and vice president for academic services.
Ron Miazga, 26 years as an English instructor, program chair, and KVCC Faculty Association officer.
Judy Esman, 26 years as a nursing instructor.
Dick Kabat, 37 years as a counselor, director of financial aid, director of community services, director of continuing education, and director of counseling and student development.
Judy Sullivan, 30 years as a counselor and assistant director of admissions and counseling.
Karen Thorngate, 21 years as an executive secretary at the college’s downtown locations and office manager at Anna Whitten Hall.
Pete Patel. 30 years as a staff member in the college’s Personnel Office, bookstore manager, and director of college auxiliaries.
Beginning with Sullivan’s last day on Feb. 28, the retirements will be effective at various dates, ranging from April 1 through Aug. 1.
Angelique Kidjo Kalamazoo-bound
Her music can be filed under “African,” under “Caribbean,” and under “global.”
Beyond that, singer Angelique Kidjo can be filed under “superb,” and a Kalamazoo audience will be able to discover that personally when she performs at Kalamazoo Valley Community Collegeas part of the college’s Artists Forum series.
Her once-postponed concert begins at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, March 23, in the Dale Lake Auditorium. Tickets are $20 for general admission; $10 for students.
Born in the West African republic of Benin (formerly Dahomey) and formerly based in Paris, the 46-year-old Kidjo is comfortable in a variety of musical genres – Afro-funk, makossa (urban music of the Cameroons), reggae, zouk (associated with Guadeloupe and Martinique), samba, rumba, gospel, jazz and salsa.
Since her arrival as a force on the international scene in 1988, Kidjo has matched the explosive growth in the popularity of world music during the past several decades with earning the reputation of being an African diva.
As the wired world has connected the vast cultural wealth and diversity on the planet, so has the music of the African-born songstress demonstrated subtle lines of interconnection spanning the globe, uniting its people.
Nominated for three Grammys, Kidjo has cross-pollinated the traditions of her childhood in Benin with elements of American rhythm and blues, funk and jazz, as well as influences from Europe and Latin America. She has collaborated with a diverse group of international artists such as Santana and Gilberto Gil, Branford Marsalis, Buddy Guy, Dave Matthews, and Carlos Santana.
With her French husband, bass guitarist Jean Hebrail, Kidjo penned 13 songs in a variety of indigenous Caribbean styles, including salsa, calypso, meringue and ska. Kidjo sings in English, French and several African languages. The couple now reside in Brooklyn, N. Y., and have a 13-year-old daughter.
Kidjo is the daughter of an actress, dancer and theatrical producer, which is how she made her entertainment debut in childhood. Among the musicians who inspired her stylings and approaches are Santana, Jimi Hendrix, Miriam Makeba, James Brown and Aretha Franklin. Because of what she regarded as an oppressive political environment in her homeland, she relocated to Paris in 1982.
Another source of inspiration that impacted her music and a particular album was her experiences in Cuba.
“I went to Cuba several years ago and met some old musicians there,” Kidjo says. “It gave me strength and inspiration because you realize that music is really the thread of the memory of humankind. You saw old people that, once they picked up their instruments and started singing, were transformed into something else.
“You have the example of the Buena Vista Social Club,” she told an interviewer, “but actually going to Cuba, you understand why the Buena Vista Social Club worked. It’s not something fake. It’s their life.”
She believes music has the ability to cross borders, transcend boundaries and unite people. “My soul is searching for joy and laughter,” Kidjo said.
Many of her renditions fuse ancient and modern sounds, such as pairing a contemporary organ with a traditional xylophone-like instrument from Guinea. She likes to explore the evolution of the music brought to the Caribbean by African slaves that has transitioned into forms that are universally popular today.
Kidjo reflects on the need to accept life as it is. “The lines on our hands—can we change them? No. We are born with them, and that’s the way it is. There are certain things in this lifetime of ours that we just have to accept, and we shouldn’t be judgmental.”
Kidjo’s songs have been featured on the soundtracks of such films as “My Favorite Season,” “Street Fighter,” and “Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.”
While she always pays tribute to the music of her roots, she refuses to be limited by it. “I won’t do my music different to please some people,” she said in a 1998 interview. “I’m not going to play traditional drums and dress like bush people. I don’t tell Americans how to play country music.” She prefers the global approach.
Serving as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, she was inspired to write a song about the children of Tanzania and their conditions. “HIV and AIDS are devastating their villages,” she said. “They have nothing except for the help that UNICEF is bringing to their villages.” Yet she used the style of a Jamaican ska tune to express her feelings.
A song she sings in the language of Togo has a simple message about not telling the truth. “You are the only one who knows if you are telling a lie or the truth, knowing that lies never give you joy and peace.”
Another, which is akin to gospel music, is a close encounter of a musical kind with the headlines of today. “I don’t believe in anyone who tells me, ‘You’ve got to kill yourself in the name of God,’” Kidjo said. “Every time you take a life, you’re taking God’s life.
“There’s only one humankind and I believe that to my gut,” Kidjo said. “The reason I believe this so strongly is because I was raised in Africa, and if you are raised in nature, you understand and respect every life. That’s something that some people try to keep away from one another, because once you understand that, there’s no need to hate anybody anymore. There’s no need to say ‘they’ and ‘we’…we are all one.”
The Artists Forum series is co-sponsored by the Irving Gilmore Foundation and KVCC. Tickets for the Kidjo convert are on sale at the KVCC Bookstore on the Texas Township Campus and the Kalamazoo Valley Museum.
KVCC faces in Art Hop places
Jay Gavan, special-events coordinator at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum, and the artistic creations of KVCC faculty members will be among the features at the next Art Hop installment in downtown Kalamazoo.
Gavan and some of his musical colleagues will give a pair of free performances in the museum’s Mary Jane Stryker Theater at 6:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Friday (March 2) And from 6 to 8 p.m., visitors to the Arcus Gallery in the KVCC Center for New Media can examine the latest artistic work of faculty members at the opening reception for their annual show.
Gavan’s performances coincide with a new CD he has produced, “Take a Flying Leap.” That evening, he will be joined by musical buddies Nathan Durham, Mike Fuerst, Jeff Moehle, Ian Gorman and Rachel Flanagan.
Gavan’s next musical sets will be on Thursday, March 8, at the Kraftbrau Brewery in downtown Kalamazoo. Early that evening, he will be joined by the same folks who will be sharing notes at the museum. By 9 p.m., he’ll be changing musical hats, don a klezmer fedora, and become a member of the Red Sea Pedestrians. While the Art Hop events are free, there is a $5 cover charge for the fun and games at the brewery that begin at 9.
Exhibition hours for the Arcus showing are Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. through April 25.
The show features the original works by full- and part-time instructors in art, animation, ceramics and graphic-design courses. A wide variety of media is represented – watercolors, acrylic and oil paintings, jewelry, digitally produced paintings, graphic arts, photographs, stoneware, and 3-D animation displayed on six large plasma screens.
Among the exhibitors are Dee Fitzsimmons, Linda Rzoska, Joseph Smigiel, Justin Bernhardt, Teri Williams, Thomas Mills, Francis Granzotto, Brenda Terburg-Fawley, Amelia Falk, and Kerry Mulson.
Gore’s ‘Truth’ has two more showings
Two free showings of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the Academy Award-nominated documentary about global warming featuring former Vice President Al Gore, remain at Kalamazoo Valley Community College this week.
Part of the college’s ongoing series, “Eye on Ethics and Civility,” the showings come on the heels of a new report by the 113-nation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that concludes it is “very likely” global warming, as dramatically evidenced by the growing shrinkage of glaciers and polar ice caps, is primarily caused by human activity.