Dec. 21, 2009

The DigestWhat’s Happening at KVCC

What’s below in this edition

Diploma Day (Page 1) ‘The Paper City’ (Pages 7-9) Grant deadline (Page 2) 2 wordsmiths (Page 9) Recycle textbooks (Pages 2/3) 4-corners spots (Pages 9/10) ‘8 Crazy Nights’ (Pages 3/4) Paper chase (Pages 10/11) SSC events (Pages 4/5) Life saver (Page 11) Planetarium shows (Pages 5/6) Obama’s rise (Pages 11-13 Intro to tech (Pages 6/7) In the news (Page 13)

And Finally (Pages 13/14)

☻☻☻☻☻☻550 eligible for 64th graduation Sunday

The college’s 64th commencement ceremony is set for Sunday, Dec. 20, in Miller Auditorium on the Western Michigan University campus. Some 550 are eligible to receive diplomas or certificates.

Those who have been assigned specific roles for the event should report to the auditorium by 3 p.m., an hour before the program is to begin.

The faculty speaker will be instructor Deborah Bryant. Brittany Nielsen, an accounting major from Vicksburg, will speak for the graduates. Other faculty members involved include Kristin DeKam, Nancy Vendeville, Charissa Oliphant, and Sandy Barker, who, because of retirement, will be taking part in her last graduation.

The diploma-day celebration will be telecast live on the Public Media Network’s Channel 22 in the Charter lineup, and then rebroadcast three more times. The dates and times will be announced later.

Also scheduled to make remarks is Jeff Patton, chairman of the KVCC Board of Trustees.

Providing the music from 3 to 3:50 p.m. will be the KVCC Campus Band with conductor Chris Garrett and Michelle Bauman’s KVCC Choir.

In addition to Marilyn Schlack and Bruce Kocher, also performing roles as part of the graduation ceremony will be Delynne Andres, Carol Orr and Jaime Rix, along with physical-plant staff members Tony Ide, Mike Olvitt, Bob Stokes, Daryl Irving, Scott Williams, Nancy Conrad, Janice Wilson, Claudia Barbee and Don Chapman.

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Next KVCC Foundation grant deadline is WednesdayFor the 2009-10 academic year, the KVCC Foundation has established funding-

request deadlines for internal grant proposals. Those faculty and/or administrators seeking financial support from the foundation

must make plans in advance and adhere to the established deadlines. Here’s the schedule for the next round:Proposal deadline: Wednesday (Dec. 23); decision by the KVCC Foundation

Board of Trustees, Jan. 29. Deadline: April 23; decision, May 7.For more information, contact Steve Doherty, KVCC director of development and

foundation executive director, at extension 4442 or sdoherty@kvcc.edu.Earlier this semester, the foundation board approved a $2,200 grant, submitted by

Marie Rogers, Helen Palleschi and Daniel Cunningham, on behalf of the Instructional Development Advisory Committee.

It will co-fund a three-hour workshop for faculty on “What the Best College Teachers Do to Promote Inclusion” next Jan. 7 and the purchase 50 copies of Beverly Tatum’s book titled “Can We Talk About Race.”

It will help lay the groundwork for the Kalamazoo Valley Museum hosting a major exhibition on race in the fall of 2010. The exhibit will be the focal point for a communitywide examination of the racial issues that too often tarnish the nation’s democracy and Constitution.

Old textbooks never die, they just. . .Students and faculty have an alternative to paper-recycling the textbooks that they

don’t want to keep or can’t sell, or to sending them on a one-way trip to a landfill. If they are no more than 3 years old, they can be intellectually recycled by

donating them to KVCC’s Alpha Rho Nu chapter of Phi Theta Kappa, the international honor society for two-year colleges.

PTK is again taking part in a social venture called Better World Books that has a mission to promote literacy as the vehicle for changing the world.

Chapter adviser Natalie Patchell reports that boxes will be located outside of the bookstore on the Texas Township Campus and in the faculty-receptionist area through Wednesday (Dec. 23).

"This keeps books out of landfills," she says, "and benefits many other worthy causes so we hope you will support us. It is also a fund-raiser for our student organization.

"We ship most of the books to Better World Books, which is a for-profit, social enterprise that collects used books and sells them online to raise money for literacy initiatives worldwide," Patchell says. "They offer great bargains on used books - over six million used and new titles, with free shipping anywhere in the United States and just $3.97 worldwide.

Since 2002, Better World Books has kept more than eight million pounds of books from landfills through donations at 1,000 colleges and universities and 500 libraries throughout North America.

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That initiative, in turn, has raised funds for organizations that promote literacy and has also provided still-usable books in places in the world where they are few and far between.

"What’s more, we love cheap used books and so does the environment," she says. "When students buy used, they save books from landfill and conserve resources."

Sandler’s ‘8 Crazy Nights’ closes ‘Friday Night’ for ‘09The sometimes-warped world of Adam Sandler – at least an animated version -- is

the next “Friday Night Highlights” billing in the Kalamazoo Valley Museum’s Mary Jane Stryker Theater Tickets on Dec. 18.

The curtain goes up on his animated feature "8 Crazy Nights” at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $3.

The kick-off-the-weekend series of programming continues on Jan. 8 with the Celtic and folk-rock music of Belfast Gin in the Stryker Theater. Tickets for the 6:30 p.m. concert are $5.

Each of the "Friday Night Highlights" billings is actually a doubleheader because also planned for each evening is an 8:30 p.m. showing of the planetarium show featuring the music of U2. That has a $3 admission fee.

With a laser-light show in full color streaming across the planetarium's 50-foot dome, the 35-minute production will feature the classic hits of the Dublin, Ireland, combo that has earned 22 Grammys, sold 146 million albums, and warranted induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in its first year of eligibility.

Sandler’s first animated film has the look and feel of a Christmas special, but beware, as it contains a great deal of scatological jokes and references to mature topics.

The film's title is taken from a line in Sandler's series of songs called "The Chanukah Song" that compares the gift-giving traditions of Christmas and Chanukah: "One day of presents? Hell no, we get eight crazy days.”

Sandler’s animated character, a drunken troublemaker with a long criminal record, is arrested for not paying for his drinks. About to be sentenced to jail time, the character is rescued by a 70-year-old volunteer referee from the fellow’s former basketball league.

Instead of time in the slammer, the sentence is to become a referee-in-training for a youth basketball league. The community-service sentence includes the caveat that if he breaks one more law, it will be 10 years in prison.

The plot continues with Sandler’s character kicking off his shoes and smashing a lighting fixture, mocking an obese child, and taunting parents to toss food on to the court. Along the way, he meets an old flame.

When his mobile home is destroyed by fire, the only thing he rescues is a Hanukkah card from his parents. Living in his rescuer’s home begrudgingly, Sandler’s character begins to turn his life around.

The story unfolds with a revealing of the fellow’s difficult past: his parents, on their way to an important basketball game, were hit by an oncoming truck, which slid on a patch of black ice into traffic. The experience made him the delinquent that everyone has come to know.

But there is regression for a variety of reasons and he returns to his drunken ways. Breaking into a mall, he witnesses the logos and products of various stores coming to life, begging him to let his bottled up grief and pain out by crying. He refuses, until they open

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the Hanukkah card from his parents. In the card, the parents sing to him, telling him to never change and that they love their "12 year-old boy."

After finally letting out his pain, the police arrive, but he manages to escape, planning to relocate to New York City. The plot gets better – or worse – from there, including being reunited with his old flame.

The Kalamazoo-based Belfast Gin has been the opening act at past Kalamazoo Irish Festivals with a repertoire that samples the genres of Celtic music, swing, bluegrass, classic rock and even disco. One of its CDs is titled “Ain’t Been Sober Yet.”

The seven-member combo describes itself as “Twisted Traditional” with a kit drum, electric and acoustic guitars, bass, congas, bones, bagpipes, viola, tin whistle, flute and “searing” vocals. The Belfast Gin-ers have included Laurie Laing, Alisa Dyer, Allen Giese, Rudy Callen, Richard, Karvey and Jennifer Koontz, Matt Doppel, Bill Collins and Geoff Stockton.

Here is the “Friday Night Highlights” schedule of movies, concerts by local combos, and special events through the first third of 2010:

Jan. 15, 22 and 29: The movies "Cutting Edge,” "Miracle," and “Cool Runnings,” respectively.

Feb. 5: Classical guitarist Jeff Dwarshuis. Feb. 12: “An Evening of Chocolate” featuring a chocolate demonstration

and the film, “Chocolat.” Feb. 19: One of the most popular groups ever, To Be Announced. Feb. 26: The 2007 blockbuster, “Transformers.” March 5: Fretboard Festival play-in competition. March 12: “Snow Falling on Cedars,” the film version of the book chosen

to be the 2010 Reading Together selection. March 19: Fretboard Festival kick-off concert. March 26: “Star Trek Generations.” April 2: “Terminator.” April 9: EMBARR in concert. April 16: The pop/rock music of We Know Jackson. April 23: Performer Rob Vischer. April 30: Concert by Waverland (topic/acoustic/alternative).

Student Success Center lines up events for new semesterAfter introducing themselves, taking roll, and detailing what the course is all

about, instructors should alert their winter-semester enrollees about the upcoming events planned by the Student Success Center that are designed to energize academic accomplishments.

The Student Commons will be the site of a welcome-back, let’s-launch-a-new-semester-with-a-little-fun-and-games gathering on Monday, Jan. 11, the first day of classes.

It’s lyceum on Thursday, Jan. 14, will host poetry, readings and other forms of celebration to mark the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

King’s career and leadership in the Civil Rights Movement will be showcased with a showing of “In Remembrance of Martin” on Monday, Jan. 18, in the Kalamazoo Valley Museum’s Mary Jane Stryker Theater. The 2 p.m. presentation is free.

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Among those providing words and memories are his wife Coretta, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Julian Bond, President Jimmy Carter, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, U. S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, Congressman John Lewis, Bishop Desmond Tutu and Andrew Young.

The Student Success Center itself will host a two-day open house on Jan. 19-20 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on both days.

Wednesday, Jan. 20, is also the date for the first “What It Takes to be Successful” presentation in the Student Commons Forum from 1 to 3 p.m. That will also be the location for a goal-setting workshop for students on Thursday, Jan. 21, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Sun setting on Pharaohs’ star show at museumNone 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 is now open to the public and offering these three shows on a regular basis through the end of the year:

“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. Showings are daily at 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. Showings are Monday through Saturday at 11 a.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.

The music of U2 is augmented by a laser show across the planetarium’s dome. Showings are Fridays at 8:30 p.m.

There is a $3 fee for planetarium shows, although admission to the museum and its exhibitions are free.

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 is among the handful in operation around the world.

Set to begin Jan. 9, “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.

“’Invaders of Mars’ will be the featured program through the end of March,” says planetarium coordinator Eric Schreur. “Mars will reach opposition in late January and, while it shines at its brightest, the planetarium show will reveal the discoveries made through telescopes and the space probes that have orbited and landed on the next planet out from the sun.”

“Invaders of Mars” will be shown daily at 3 p.m.Schreur says the planetarium’s family program through the first three months of

2010 will be a converted version of a regular feature, “Sky Legends of the Three Fires.”

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Southwest Michigan Native American storyteller Larry Plamondon explains how a coyote scattered the stars into the sky, how a turtle race resulted in the Milky Way, and how a bear hunt resulted in The Big Dipper.

This feature will be shown weekdays at 11 a.m., on Saturdays at 1 p.m. and on Sundays at 2 p.m.

With the U2 sky concert continuing at 8:30 p.m. on Fridays through the winter months, a program about finding constellations and planets in the winter nights will be shown on Saturdays at 2 p.m. This backyard-stargazing presentation is tentatively titled “Winter Nights.”

More information is available at the museum’s web site at www.kalamazoomuseum.org.

7 sign up for ‘Discovering Technology’ course so far So you think you’d like a career in some kind of technical occupation?Enrollment willing, an overview course that stresses hands-on instructions in a

laboratory environment, “Discovering Technology,” is planned for the 2010 winter semester at Kalamazoo Valley Community College’s Texas Township Campus.

Registration is under way for the semester that begins on Monday, Jan. 11. As of last week, seven students had enrolled.

The three-credit class will meet once a week on Fridays from 8 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. through the end of April.

“This is intended for students who are undecided about their career,” said Deborah Dawson, dean of business and advanced technology, “but ‘think’ they may be interested in the technical fields.”

Enrollees will be introduced to the college’s programs in automotive technology, drafting and design, electrical technology, machine tool, welding, and heating, ventilation and air conditioning.

Class sessions will feature presentations on such topics as machining, welding, robotic numerical control, computer-assisted design and manufacturing, fabrication methods, electrical applications, motor controls, alternative energy and fuels, and hybrid vehicles.

“They will spend a couple of weeks in each area,” Dawson said, “working mostly in our technical labs with hands-on lessons.”

Among the objectives will be learning how to:● identify major automotive systems and components● check key automotive-fluid levels● increase awareness about alternative fuels and evolving technologies that will

impact future modes of transportation ● create sketches of parts and interpret symbols used in technical drawings● identify commonly used building and manufacturing materials● understand common electrical terms● draw a schematic of an electrical circuit● understand the functioning of electrical motors and generators● safely use power tools● select the proper welding machines and equipment to perform various jobs. ● build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, and develop a teamwork

approach to employment.

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The college’s full-time instructors in the technical fields will team-teach the new course.

For more information, contact Sue Hills at (269) 488-4371 or shills@kvcc.edu.

Kalamazoo’s ‘Paper City’ origins explored Jan. 10“The Making of the Paper City” is the Jan. 10 installment of the 2009-10 edition

of “Sunday Series” presentations at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum.Curator Tom Dietz will dig into that part of the community’s past at 1:30 p.m. in

the Mary Jane Stryker Theater. All of the programs are free and open to the public. Remember the kids’ game of "Rock, Paper and Scissors?”On the count of three, each player shows a fist for rock, two outstretched fingers

for scissors, or a flat hand for paper. Paper covers rock. Rock smashes scissors. Scissors cuts paper. You won and lost just about each time.

For decades, “paper” never lost in Kalamazoo. It was always No. 1, and Dietz will be explaining how that all came about, along with the industrialists who led the way.

While its eventual designation as “The Paper City” can be traced to an 1847 newspaper editorial urging local capitalists in search of a profitable enterprise to establish a paper mill in the village, the origins go way beyond that - - to the age of the receding glaciers that shaped the network of waterways and forests in what became the state of Michigan.

The Kalamazoo River and its feeder streams offered what seemed like a limitless water resource for making paper, ample locations for dams to power the machinery, and for disposing of the wastes. Pollution? What was that? Who cared what was downriver? However, it wasn’t until nearly 20 years later, after the nation had slashed its way through the issues of states’ rights, slavery and the Civil War, that the industry began to take shape.

Not that the capitalists didn’t want to heed the journalist’s advice. There was plenty of pre-war “paper fever,” but the firing on Fort Sumter cooled the fervor.

Once business conditions started to improve, visions of profits returned and a core of Kalamazoo investors pooled $30,000 on Oct. 1, 1866, to build what became the Kalamazoo Paper Co. and what today is the Georgia-Pacific Corp.

While there were some setbacks and stumblings along the way, the local mill prospered and others started to spring up “downriver” in Plainwell and Otsego in the 1870s and ‘80s. Kalamazoo, however, did not attract its second mill until 1895 -- Bryant Paper Co. -- which is when paper began moving up the ladder as an economic force.

After rating “second banana” status to Kalamazoo’s manufacture of buggies, carts and carriages, paper started to flex its muscle fiber at the end of the 19th century and the dawning of the 20th. If it wasn’t yet king, it was starting to share regal prestige and marquee billing with celery and Kalamazoo stoves a few years before the community became a powerhouse for pills.

Kalamazoo’s rise to the status of being an important paper center in the United States can be credited to geography (halfway between the burgeoning markets of Chicago and Detroit) and to human resources because some able businessmen and technicians were associated with the industry.

Although the automobile caused a great deal of excitement during the early years of the 20th century and fabricated great changes in the life of the community, it was the

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paper industry during the first two decades that was the primary cause of growth in Kalamazoo. The paper industry was a dominant force in Kalamazoo for 75 years. At one time, there were 10 mills in operation. There were more mills inside the city of Kalamazoo than any community its size in any other part of the world. Known as being a leading manufacturing center for paper around the country, that also resulted in the establishment of all kinds of auxiliary enterprises.

A new thrust began to have a major impact in 1909 when a successful paper salesman, Jacob Kindleberger, recognized a market change and a demand for parchment papers. Local capital helped him establish the KVP (Kalamazoo Vegetable Parchment) Co. One of the offshoots was the development of Southwest Michigan’s version of “a company town” under the watchful eye of Kindleberger, ever the entrepreneur. Today, via a series of mergers with local companies and take-over sales by papermaking giants, Kindleberger’s company today operates under the aegis of Graphic Packaging Corp.

The paper industry, as the backbone of Kalamazoo’s economy, grew lustily in the 1920s. The increase demand for paper in the nation, and especially the adoption of paper cartons and boxes for many types of merchandising, contributed greatly to the growth of the local plants.

The stability of the paper industry was one the factors that brought Kalamazoo through the Depression better than most cities. Relatively few were laid off, and usually at least four days of work per week was provided. Growth of the use of paper for packaging was a stimulus for several of the city’s paper industries.

With economic and workforce changes, Kalamazoo's proliferation of smaller mills began to stumble over each other in the 1950s. Large, integrated mills with faster and updated equipment ate into local profits. More and more mills were located near the source of raw materials, plus companies in the South entered the picture. Southern pine grows much faster, making pulp cheaper. The water-pollution measures there were minimal and manufacturers basically had a free hand in those days.

Another factor was that many of the mills started by local entrepreneurs did not produce second and third generations interested in carrying on. Local control passed to boards based elsewhere. What strings there were, were being yanked in some other city. Profits were never large enough to warrant the latest machinery that technology was developing. It was a self-defeating downward spiral.

Back in the early days when folks thought the word "ecology" was a poor speller's attempt at "economy," nobody voiced environmental concerns. Raw sewage was channeled into streams and creeks. The Kalamazoo River paid the price for the town's reputation as a paper producer. As the 1950s inched toward a new decade, the river often looked like a white milkshake meandering northwesterly through Allegan County on its way to Lake Michigan.

While still a part of the area’s economy, Kalamazoo’s paper industry has changed since its heyday. And so has the Kalamazoo River, still curving its way toward "The Big Lake," and looking much healthier than it did when papermaking was king.

Here are the “Sunday Series” programs through spring: “Welcome to the Hotel Kalamazoo: Kalamazoo’s Early Hospitality Industry”

– Jan. 24.

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“William G. Dewing: From Calcutta to Kalamazoo” – Feb. 14 “Poetry Artifactory VI” – Feb. 28 “Kalamazoo’s Argonauts: The Lure of California Gold in 1850” – March 14 “The Ladies Library Association” – March 28 “Play Ball! – Baseball in Kalamazoo” – April 11 “Kalamazoo’s Musical Heritage” – April 25.For further information, contact Dietz at extension 7984.

Kroll, Haight writing for national publication KVCC English instructors Keith Kroll and Rob Haight are in the process of

contributing to the 2010 publication of “Contemplative Teaching and Learning in the Community College.”

It will be part of Jossey-Bass’ “New Directions for Community College” series.Kroll is both writing and editing a chapter, while his KVCC colleague will

confine his efforts to wordsmithing for the publication. Other contributors hail from two-year and four-year institutions around the country.

Haight’s title is “The Classroom as Sangha: Contemplative Education in the Community College.”

Kroll is writing about “Further Sources and Information on Contemplative Teaching and Learning in the Community College.”

The thesis goes something like this: “Contemplative education can help community college students recover from the disintegration they have suffered as a result of mechanized curriculum and hyperactive assessment systems driving public schools.” Such practices as meditation “can restore wholeness and enhance engagement, imagination and compassion in instructors and students.”

Kroll reports edited manuscripts must be delivered to the publisher in January. It will be printed and ready for distribution in the fall of 2010.County’s 4-corners gathering spots come back to life

A flashback to Kalamazoo County’s crossroads communities is the December installment of the Kalamazoo Valley Museum’s TV show.

Featuring Tom Dietz, the curator of research at the museum, the episode will be aired by the Public Media Network (formerly the Community Access Center) on Channel 22 on the Charter cable system at 7 p.m. on Sundays, 6:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, 6:30 p.m. on Fridays, and 11 a.m. on Saturdays.

His “Four Corners of Kalamazoo County” sheds light on the crossroad settlements that dotted this part of the state in the 19th century and brings back to life the four-corner gathering places for pioneer settlers throughout the county.

“From the earliest years of the settlement of Kalamazoo County and continuing into the early years of the 20th century,” Dietz said, “small settlements developed in almost every township in the county. They were the focus of community life in the immediate region, offering a church, a school, possibly a tavern or hotel, a general store, and perhaps a carpenter or blacksmith shop.

“Frequently located at the intersection of two main roads,” he said, “they came to be known as ‘Four Corners” settlements, often deriving their name from a prominent local family or pioneer. Today, they are often forgotten or have been overtaken by urban growth.”

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Dietz can recount McKain’s Corners in Pavilion Township where early residents danced at Charles Collins’ saloon and dance hall, Gardner’s Corners in Wakeshma Township, and McKee’s Corners in Portage Township, which holiday shoppers will soon hurry past as they drive on Westnedge Avenue.

“All once played a vital role in the life of Kalamazoo County,” said Dietz, who will also remove the dust from other early settlements named for pioneers, such as Howlandsburg in Ross Township, as well as the vanished towns like Williams in Alamo Township and Geloster in Richland Township.

Recycle those paper productsWith thoughts of cleaning out the office as the fall semester comes to a grinding

half, don’t just dump those papers. Keep those recyclable resources in the mainstream.Think about what you are doing and don’t be lazy in doing it.The college’s commitment to recycling the mountains of paper required for daily

operations is still strong. The losers for not maintaining that strength are the landfills of Southwest

Michigan, and the trees that help replenish the planet with the stuff we all breathe.Hammered through all of us in many a science class is that trees eat what we

exhale and what comes out of our vehicles’ exhausts. Each time a tree is saved through the use of recycled paper, so is an oxygen generator.

It’s not that tough to do. All that is required is a little patience and a sense that one is doing the right thing.

The same goes with metal and plastic products that touch our lives and, without any consideration, end up in trash containers. What good is it to down a plastic bottle of that good, clear, clean water, and then relegate the containers to the landfills?

Making it even easier these days are the blue recycling containers located in KVCC buildings, thanks to four student organizations that are living the Green Revolution.

Just about every ilk of paper product that comes our way can be recycled. In one KVCC study, it was concluded that 80 percent of what the college

incinerates doesn’t have to be destroyed that way.Print out this list of “recyclables” and post it just above your blue bin: Newspapers Business cards Hard-cover books Copy paper Index cards Trade journals and magazines Cardboard Fax paper Junk mail Notebook paper Paper bags Envelopes without plastic windows (Think about cutting out the plastic

windows) Business forms Computer printouts

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File folders Maps Post-it notes StationeryIt is not necessary to remove staples or other forms of bindings from the paper

items to be recycled. Obviously, paper clips can be easily salvaged before launching the paper

materials into the blue bin. However, if the above materials are soiled by excessive dirt, food, grease or other

forms of gook, send them to the incinerator. Most of this applies to what we do in our homes, too. By taking the time to

recycle paper, plastic, metal and glass products, the amount of trash, debris and garbage bound for the landfill can be drastically reduced.

If possible, establish a compost pile in your yard. That can accomplish at least three goals – create your own fertilizer, build up a personal supply of worms if you are an angler, and greatly reduce the amount of trash you put out along the roadside for pickup, thus reducing your costs.

Need more convincing? It is estimated that it takes a plastic container 50,000 years to decompose. Think about that the next time you chuck away that empty water bottle that cost you at least a buck.

Police Academy grad credited with saving man’s lifeThe life-saving efforts of a recent graduate of the KVCC Police Academy were

chronicled in a Dec. 5 newspaper account.“Lakeview cop uses Taser to save suicidal man” was published by The Daily

News, which serves Greenville, Belding and other Montcalm County communities/ According to the news story, Officer Sean Parsons had responded to what was

reported as a “volatile” situation in a parking lot. A 27-year-old Lakeview man was yelling, acted desponded and threatened to jump into oncoming traffic.

Not listening to the officer’s request for calm, the man darted into the traffic in the path of a potato truck. When the driver hit the brakes and started to skid, Parsons shot the running man with a Taser gun, which prevented the truck and the man to come in contact with each other.

Parsons took the Tasered man into custody at which time he was very combative. After a few minutes, he calmed down and thanked the officer for his actions. “He’s been a great addition to our department,” said Lakeview Police Chief Darin Dood.

“He was clearly thinking on his feet. I couldn’t be more proud.” The making of a president – Barack Obama

In 1856, Abraham Lincoln, then a relatively unknown former state lawmaker from Illinois, came to Kalamazoo and gave a speech that captured the essence of his philosophies that would catapult him to the American presidency four years later.

Fast-forward to the 2004 convention of the Democratic Party when a little-known candidate for the U.S. Senate from Illinois stepped forward to tell his personal story and to call for a move beyond partisan politics. Four years later, Barack Obama would be president of the United States.

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The meteoric rise of Obama to the No. 1 office in the land was chronicled in a PBS documentary that will be shown free on Saturday, Jan. 9, at 3 p.m. in the Kalamazoo Valley Museum’s Mary Jane Stryker Theater.

In the wake of Obama’s speech that was televised across the nation, as opposed to Lincoln’s words that were heard by about 10,000 people in Bronson Park, Obama’s chief political adviser David Axelrod said: “All around were people with tears in their eyes, and I realized at that moment that his life would never be the same.”

The documentary examines the life experiences that made Obama uniquely suited to launch his successful campaign to become the country’s first African American president -- his community-organizing days in Chicago, his presidency of the Harvard Law Review, and his rise to the top of Illinois politics, in the course of which he learned how to navigate America’s complicated racial and political divides.

“Barack has had to deal with dueling identities all of his life,” adviser Cassandra Butts says. “He was nurtured by a white family, identifying with that family, but at the same time, ... when he goes out he’s identified as something else. And he has had to make sense of that duality his entire life.”

Just out of college, Obama went to Chicago, a city some call the “capital of black America,” to work as a community organizer and try to sort out his dual identities. Colleagues say that after a few years he had found peace with who he was, but had become frustrated by his inability to change the larger structural problems behind the poverty he saw in Chicago’s South Side.

That frustration led him first to the Harvard Law School, where amidst the heated racial disputes of that time he became the middleman -- a conciliator. He then returned to Chicago and quickly found himself in the rough-and-tumble world of Illinois politics.

“I think the sort of icon-like image that Obama has attained in this country sometimes blinds us to the fact that he wasn’t born onstage in 2004, but had to rise through the ranks of machine politics in Chicago to get where he is,” New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza says.

During those early years in Chicago, Obama put down roots in the black community. He joined Trinity Church and was influenced by its minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He took on civil-rights cases, led a voter-registration drive, won a bitter battle for the Illinois Senate; and, perhaps most importantly, he married a young woman from the predominantly black South Side, Michelle Robinson.

“Her roots in Chicago went deeper than his roots in Chicago,” says the Rev. Jesse Jackson. “She went to public school, and she and my daughter were classmates and friends. And so, she would know people he did not know in places he would not know.”

Obama modeled his earliest political efforts after those of Chicago’s first black mayor, Harold Washington. “Washington had to be perceived as somebody who was prepared to be mayor of all of the people of Chicago, not just a mayor for the black community,” Alderman Toni Preckwinkle says.

Obama would follow Washington’s strategy and build his own coalition of progressive whites, African Americans and Latinos -- a coalition that would eventually carry him to the U.S. Senate. “Obama comes along with a message that says: ‘We’re going to look beyond red and blue. I am going to transcend many of these traditional divisions, not only ideological and partisan but also racial,’” says author Ron Brownstein.

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“And he embodies his message in a unique way, and I think that, to me, is the core of his political strength.”

The documentary details how, after his election to the U.S. Senate, Obama and his advisers implemented a carefully crafted two-year plan that built the freshman senator’s reputation and led to his announcement in early 2007 that he would run for president.

KVCC’ers in the newsEnglish instructor Denise Miller’s Fire Historical and Cultural Arts Collaborative

garnered some news coverage in a recent edition of The Kalamazoo Gazette’s “Ticket” publication.

She and co-founder Michelle Johnson stage a trio of fund-raising events to keep the multi-purpose venue on a firm financial footing during 2010.

Fire, located at 1249 Portage St., has hosted artists, poets, musicians, comedians, theatrical productions and other cultural events since its opening because of volunteers, grants and donations, but it needs expanded sources of revenue to maintain.

The last of the three is slated for Friday (Dec. 18) at 8 p.m. and features African dance instructor Kama Mitchell.

Johnson told The Gazette that among Fire’s future projects are “greening” its location and starting a radio station.

More information is available at www.thisisfire.com.The cover story in the December edition of Encore magazine Cathy Mulay and

Denene Mulay Koch, spouse and daughter of retired KVCC communications instructor John Mulay.

The article chronicles how Cathy has carved out a great reputation as the director of locally produced musicals, while daughter Denene does her thing in front of the lights as an actress.

According to the magazine, “The Mulays became a ‘Southwest Michigan story’ when they were attending college in Colorado. They first heard of Kalamazoo when one of their forensics teammates gave an award-winning performance of Carl Sandburg’s poem, ‘The Sins of Kalamazoo.’

“They assumed Kalamazoo was a fictional place until they were searching for jobs after college and John came across a posting for a communications professor at Kalamazoo Valley Community College. They couldn’t believe there really was a Kalamazoo and thought, ‘Well, we have to send an application there.”

They became Kalamazooans in 1970 and the rest, as they say, is theatrical history.In that same edition is a first-person account of 2008 KVCC graduate Anthony

Chase’s summer in Tunisia. With the guidance of his adviser, Theo Sypris, Chase was the recipient of a Critical Language Scholarship from the U. S. State Department to pursue his studies of Arabic.

Now majoring in political science and Arabic at the University of Michigan, Chase and his summer of adventure were featured in articles in The Gazette and in KVCC’s CareerSource.

And finally. . . Don’t you love those concentration analogies – one part per

whatever – that are really hard to visualize, especially when it involves potential toxins and poisons.

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Try these on for size, or visualization:One Part Per Million –

One car in bumper-to-bumper traffic from Cleveland to San Francisco

One pancake is a stack four miles high One inch in 16 miles One minute in two years One ounce in 32 tons One penny in $10,000

One Part Per Billion – One four-inch hamburger in a chain of hamburgers circling

the earth at the equator 2 ½ times One silver dollar in a roll of silver dollars stretching from

Detroit to Salt Lake City One bogie in 3,500 golf tournaments One kernel of corn in a 40-fott tall, 16-foot in diameter silo One sheet in a roll of toilet paper stretching from Ney York

to London One Part Per Trillion

One square foot of floor tile on a kitchen floor the size of Indiana

One drop of detergent in enough dishwater to fill a string of railroad tank cars 10 miles long

One square inch in 250 square miles One mile on a two-month journey at the speed of light

One Part Per Quadrillion One postage stamp on a letter the size of California and

Oregon One human hair out of all the hair on all the heads of all

the people in the world One mile on a journey of 170 light years.

☻☻☻☻☻☻

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