Wednesday, September 7,2011

Still looking for the fire escape

Reflections and repercussions, 10 years after 9/11

by Lawrence Cosentino

The approach of Sept. 11, 2011, has set off a plume of words and images reliving the horrors and heroes of Sept. 11, 2001, but the anniversary has also opened a quiet back door to reflection. David Hollister, mayor of Lansing 10 years ago, has a sobering take on the past decade.

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Wednesday, September 7,2011

New face, for a new museum

Andrew Kuo paintings are Broad Museum’s first art purchases

by Lawrence Cosentino

The diptych is dominated by two vivid sets of telescoping rectangles ' Kuo’s homage to the famous “Homage to the Square” series of paintings and prints by American artist and teacher Josef Albers.

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Wednesday, August 24,2011

Greater Lansing Housing Coalition, house thyself

The venerable organization has found a new home in Old Town, and it’s celebrating with an art exhibit

by Lawrence Cosentino

It makes sense that Katherine Draper is into steel drapes. The executive director of the Greater Lansing Housing Coalition cultivates a steel drape image: inviting, creative, transparent, tough.

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Wednesday, August 10,2011

With this Skype, I thee wed

MSU profs unveil e-marriage proposal for states

by Lawrence Cosentino

While the upstairs battle over substan tive law rages, Michigan State University College of Law professors Mae Kuykendall and Adam Candeub have been quietly tinkering in the basement of procedural law.

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Wednesday, August 10,2011

War and peace at the Marshall Street Armory

by Lawrence Cosentino

Hundreds of heavy guns and thousands of soldiers trundled across the drill floor at Lansing’s Marshall Street Armory from 1924 to 2005. Shouldering heavy military and civilian duty, the big brick blockhouse stoically endured the pounding of horses, Howitzers, wild weddings and circus elephants.

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Wednesday, August 3,2011

New sounds at Jazz Fest

by Lawrence Cosentino

The Ice Crystal Quartet is the perfect foil for Mitchell’s long-lived Black Earth Ensemble, a meaty Chicago music machine with singers, guitar and horns. Mitchell also heads the Black Earth Strings, with violin and cello, and plays in the free-jazz Indigo Trio and Frequency, an ethereal avant-garde project using electronics.

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Wednesday, July 27,2011

'Moments that are coming'

Look inside MSU’s Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum

by Lawrence Cosentino

Two second-floor balconies, at right angles to each other, overlook the vast west gallery. We climbed the stairs to the second floor and stopped at the rails to gape. Overhead, the roof zoomed on without us to the northwest, framing a stunning view of Grand River and East Lansing.

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Wednesday, July 27,2011

Rough times, smooth jazz

Bob Baldwin digs a straight groove in a zig-zag biz

by Lawrence Cosentino

In February 2008, jazz pianist and composer Bob Baldwin was driving through the countryside of Westchester County, N.Y., soaking in musical inspiration, when he got a depressing text message. New York’s WQCD was shutting off the smooth jazz spigot after 15 years.

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Thursday, July 21,2011

Friendly invasion

Touring German youth orchestra smuggles big guns into the Midwest

by Lawrence Cosentino

“It blasts you out of your seat,” Klaue said. The Ahresnburg Youth Orchestra was formed in 1968, and Klaue has been the conductor since 1993. The musicans are drawn from a school in the Ahrensburg area, north of Hamburg. Only half the students at the school, selected by audition, get to go on the American tour.

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Wednesday, July 20,2011

Secrets of the Old Town sisterhood

How women are remaking Lansing’s oldest district

by Lawrence Cosentino

Antiques and boutiques, yoga and flowers, hair and more hair. Stores with names like Love, Betti, October Moon, Grace and Polka Dots Bead-A-Full Boutique. Attorneys, non-profits and design firms bring a pinch of rough and tumble to the picture, but it’s pretty much official by now: Old Town has turned into a woman cave.

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