The quick hustled past the dead at Mile 9 of the 2013 Lansing Marathon early Sunday morning, as hundreds of runners streamed down the slope of northbound Aurelius Road and rounded the hills of Mt. Hope Cemetery, dotted with headstones and mausoleums, for the return loop downtown.

While other jazz festivals shrivel, a three-way alliance among the City of East Lansing, the Wharton Center and the Michigan State University College of Music has led to more depth and breadth than ever for Greater Lansing's early summer jazz fix, June 21-22.

There aren't a lot of classical and jazz dates on the Wharton Center's 2013-14 schedule, but what's there is "cherce," as Tracy once said of Hepburn. Marquee names like Russia's St. Petersburg Philharmonic, star cellist Yo-Yo Ma and top-selling jazz singer Diana Krall head the lineup for 2013-14, announced Monday night.

A tricked-out 1973 Mercedes, hand-detailed with wicked silver worms and refitted to run on restaurant grease, was parked outside the Broad Art Museum last week. In the sculpture garden. Move your limo out of the way, Mr. Broad, the kids are here.

Monday, April 15 — There aren’t a lot of classical and jazz dates on the Wharton Center’s 2013-14 schedule, but what’s there is “cherce,” as Tracy once said of Hepburn.

Apart but not isolated, dignified but not imposing, there's no place in Lansing like the old Michigan School for the Blind campus.

"It is hard to be good in spring," read the fluorescent green card tied to a bush in the park. The woman in the gorilla mask and the man with a box on his head moved on. It was 6 p.m., Thursday, and a massive poetry attack on Harrison Meadows Park in East Lansing was under way.

WASHINGTON — Last Tuesday morning, while the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on California's anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8, a quiet contingent from a South Carolina Baptist church, about 50 strong, made its way to the roiling press area at the center of the steps. A forest of signs went up: "Kids do best with a mom and dad."

Art is supposed to stir deep questions. Here's one that comes to mind the minute you walk into the Neighborhood Empowerment Center in northwest Lansing: "What is this — a gallery or something?"

Michigan's large-scale factory farms belly up to the federal Farm Bill for tens of millions of dollars in environmental funds better spent on sustainable farming, according to a report issued Wednesday by the advocacy group Less = More.