"Our calendar of events just seems to get bigger and bigger and bigger every issue because there's just so much to do in this town," says Encore Kalamazoo editor Marie Lee. She joined Cara Lieurance to walk through the highlights of the magazine's April issue — and offer a preview of what's ahead in May.
The cover story centers on Western Michigan University's Higher Education for the Justice-Involved (HEJI) program, which offers humanities courses leading to a bachelor's degree for incarcerated students at Lakeland Correctional Facility in Coldwater. Writer Katie Housden spent over a year on the piece, following a student named Jason DeMarco Hardin who was paroled early and transitioned from a cell block to WMU's main campus. By the end of his first semester, he had been invited to join the Lee Honors College. Lee says an instructor named McGwire Brown told Housden that students' "desire for self-improvement is, as McGwire described it, otherworldly." The humanities-focused curriculum — philosophy, ethics, critical thinking — thrives in an environment with no technology, where instructors describe a rich "educational exchange of dialogue" with students who, Lee says, "absolutely embrace" the material.
A second story traces the surprisingly local roots of the Upjohn pharmacy that operated on Disneyland's Main Street from 1955 to the 1970s. A new book by author Stephen Hall, A Spoonful of Sugar, reveals that the placement wasn't arranged through Walt Disney's personal friendship with Upjohn president Don Gilmore, but was instead the work of a savvy Upjohn marketing director. "It was just a really really good marketing director," Lee says. Artifacts from the pharmacy are now on display at the Coit Museum of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
The issue also previews the Irving S. Gilmore International Piano Festival, running April 30 through May 10, with a "Five Faves" feature from festival director Pierre van der Westhuizen. Highlights include inaugural Larry J. Bell Jazz Award recipient Sullivan Fortner, current Gilmore Artist Alexander Kantorow performing May 1–2 at Chenery Auditorium, jazz ensemble Artemis on May 8, and a family event pairing short silent films with live original music on May 2. Lee says van der Westhuizen "gets really grumpy when I say he can only choose five" from a festival packed with 75 events.
Looking ahead, Lee says May's cover feature — which she authored herself — goes inside the historic Gilmore House on South Street, a 6,200-square-foot 1908 mansion being meticulously restored by owners Michelle and Peter Eldridge. Encore is available free at roughly 200 locations around Kalamazoo, or by subscription for $3 a month at encorekalamazoo.com.
