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.

If intergalactic aliens ever demand to hear one of our "musicians" before deciding whether to blow us up, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon could do a lot worse than send Sir James Galway.

Monday, March 25 — If intergalactic aliens ever demand to hear one of our “musicians” before deciding whether to blow us up or not, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon could do a lot worse than send Sir James Galway.

The cavernous MSU Surplus Store is a "Casablanca" for hard drives and file cabinets, a place of last resort for discarded things. From reel-to-reel tape recorders to Spartan-green street signs, a jumble of rejects sleep on the shelves like opium addicts, absorbing a slow rain of dust, waiting for another chance.

In the tug of war between art and architecture, Broad Art Museum curator Alison Gass has been sandbagging until now.

Pull the modest levers within your reach and big things roll your way — with a little luck. That’s how Michigan State University’s Wharton Center pieced together a big-city performing arts series in a middle-sized market for 2011-2012, drawing big names like Tony Bennett, Wynton Marsalis and the Vienna Symphony to the capital area.