I’m not alone in this thinking. Race codirector Dick Miles says the route itself is much of what draws runners to the River Run. The half marathon takes in the beauty of Michigan State University, the Lansing River Trail, Scott Woods, Hawk Island Park and Potter Park.

Photos from youth in the Literacy Through Photography program, along with shots from the organization’s Children With Incarcerated Parents program, will be shown at Old Town’s Creole Gallery through Aug. 29; a reception is scheduled from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, for an exhibit called “Cameras in the Capital City.

If anyone wonders whether there’s any young talent left in the state of Michigan, New Citizens Press publisher and former Lansing City Council candidate Rina Risper has an answer: a big, resounding ‘yes.

In 1964, as an answer to street fairs taking place in Ann Arbor, a Michigan State University advertising student began a similar event that allowed art students to exhibit and sell their work.

There’s no question Muslims deal with a fair amount of stigma in the United States. Negative images in the media, combined with the instilled fear of terrorism, have left Americans wondering whom they can direct their anger and panic at. In many cases, the answer has been the nation’s own Muslim American communities. But Farha Abbasi, a resident in Michigan State University’s department of psychiatry, is aiming to change that.

Lansing's Everett High School has become the only school in Michigan’s lower peninsula to perform Jonathan Larson's controversial rock opera, “Rent,” which tackles such topics as sexual orientation, HIV/AIDS and drugs. But theater teacher Jim Allen isn’t worried about a backlash: He has school board approval, permission from parents of the students involved and rights to a school version of the production that is decidedly “toned down,” he says, adding that these are issues that need to be addressed — even if it’s through song.