The culture shock of the ultramodern Eli and Edythe Broad Museum springing up at agricultural-rooted Michigan State University has already been compared to a spaceship landing in a cornfield. Little did we know the infiltration would start from the grass roots.

Unlike the downtown cubicle refugees who steal an hour of sanity in Cooley’s cool pines and flowerbeds, Lansing’s parks and recreation director was still working. In suit and tie, he started pulling weeds, picking up trash and tugging at storm-downed branches.

In the jazz world, it just doesn’t get any better than Rollins, one the most enduring and accomplished musicians America has produced. His career stretches back to historic stints with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk in the 1950s, followed by influential piano-less trio work that opened the tenor sax to wider realms of expression.

Saturday’s concert will reassemble the professors, backed by veteran drummer Randy Gelispie, with new faces Michael Dease on trombone, Perry Hughes on guitar and vocalist Mardra Thomas, all of whom perform on the CD as well.

Kiner, the museum’s project manager, flew to Lansing from architect Zaha Hadid’s London offices for a few days in March to check on the small army of builders that is pulling Hadid’s dynamic design from the drawing board to the physical world.

Each year, on or around April 1, a global network of book nuts takes Bacon literally. Edible Book contests are hosted at schools and literary clubs from France to Russia to Brazil to Australia, with Michigan events at Michigan State University’s Center for Poetry Monday and the Kalamazoo Book Festival April 6.

Lips zipped, jaw clenched, uniform in the attic — that’s still the way many veterans deal with their time in the military. Their stoicism suits civilians who’d rather not think about war.

The opening moments of "Ajax" ring eerily familiar after U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales' alleged murder of 16 civilians in Afghanistan last week. In the age of laser-guided missiles and MRAPs, a 5th-century B.C. play by Sophocles is still helping soldiers, veterans and civilians work through war and its effects.

Kolt, a longtime Lansing public relations man, has worked for some big clients, but now he speaks for the state’s demographic 800-pound gorilla. Last week, Kolt was named president of the Michigan chapter of AARP. Kolt has belonged since he became eligible at 50, when his wife gave him a membership as a birthday present. Now, after just three years, he is state president.

Saturday’s Lansing Symphony concert featured the most highly anticipated orchestra-and-soloist tandem of the 2011-´12 season, French pianist Philippe Bianconi’s energetic go at Johannes Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto. Would the collision of a top pianist and a mighty music make for a memorable night?