Lansing Online News

new HelloBar(1,9126); Help The Victims of the 8.9 Earthquake in Japan by Spreading Awareness and Aid. Visit http://goo.gl/wjZQz to donate.

[lansingonlinenews]

Breaking Poverty Cycles: Lansing, and America

Breaking Poverty Cycles: Lansing, and America

Rick Snyder’s cuts to jobless benefits are arguably having an effect on cities like Lansing, MI. The percentage of people living below poverty levels is at 37% as of 2013. Recently, we’ve seen a drastic increase in violent crime, as well, which is also arguably related to downward-moving cycle of poverty. This last week, 9 people were shot in various incidents within the City of Lansing. The…

View On WordPress

[lansingonlinenews]

The 2015 Official MSU Drag Show

The 2015 Official MSU Drag Show

Surrounded by lights and screaming, a group of drag entertainers performed at Michigan State University’s International Center on April, 17. They are from Spiral, a drag dance club on 1247 Center St. in Lansing. As one of the most popular events that was holden by the MSU University Activities Broad (UAB), the drag show attracted more than 500 students and lasted for four hours. With host Hershae…

View On WordPress

[lansingonlinenews]

"Bikers for Books" moves into high gear

“Bikers for Books” moves into high gear

As a local farm machinery manager, Badge Velasquez has one more identity — he is a hardcore biker.  Two years ago, after learning that a local educator wanted books for student, Velasquez and his friends started to send books for kids in elementary schools. He eventually named the group “Bikers for Books”. Now, as more and more bikers and their families join his team, they make personal visits to…

View On WordPress

[lansingonlinenews]

Birthday How was it the day my mother entered the world, the third daughter of a mother whose husband drowned a few months earlier?  Was there joy in the room, or some blue note of grief? Did she resemble the lost father, her eyes the blue of the lake that took him? Was it a year when March went out like a lion or a lamb? My mother loved the spring, wearing the tints of the pink dogwood, silken tulip, sal…

View On WordPress

[lansingonlinenews]

All we have left are her stories-Bonnie Bucqueroux leaves a legacy of compassion, creativity and passion

All we have left are her stories-Bonnie Bucqueroux leaves a legacy of compassion, creativity and passion

Car painting by Bucky Before I met Bonnie I had noticed an unusual vehicle parked in the Communication Arts parking lot. It spoke loudly about the free spirit who drove it. Later, when I met the person behind the wheel I understood it’s significance. This was Bonnie personified. I told her it reminded me of Ken Kesey’s Furthur and we were off and running. Together we worked on numerous projects,…

View On WordPress

[lansingonlinenews]

Life & Other Problems: Elementary Education

Life & Other Problems: Elementary Education

Elementary school to me meant many things: being a frog in the first grade play, learning to harmonize when the twice-a week music teacher came to our class, standing on our desks being “trees” while two classmates galloped around, on their way “Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house.”

Before entering kindergarten, I attended Miss Alma Goetsch’s summer art classes for kids…

View On WordPress

[lansingonlinenews]

Day 30: Poem-a-Day: Schools Out by Alice Cooper

Day 30: Poem-a-Day: Schools Out by Alice Cooper

  Schools Out

by Alice Cooper

Songs in the 60s drew heavily on poetry and poetic devices. Some were subtle, but others such as “Poetry in Motion” sung by Bobby Vee in 1961 were less so.

Simon and Garfunkel might have been among the best though. Their song “I am a Rock” pleased us with: “I have my books and poetry to protect me.”

Perhaps my favorite rock song which delved into poetry was sung by…

View On WordPress

[lansingonlinenews]

Day 29: Poem-a-Day: Prelude by Stephanie Glazier

Day 29: Poem-a-Day: Prelude by Stephanie Glazier

Prelude

               Nothing is lost in nature                     Polish Proverb

Chicks in the pipe overhead, April. I deliver This is as bad news. Every spring they come and say what they have to say.

Later, swinging the legs of a friend’s son over my own, his back to my chest Threading my thumb through the throat of a fish— My body put to use.

All month the flowers of the trees felled…

View On WordPress

[lansingonlinenews]

Day 28: Poem-a-Day: Our Day Pistoia by Jack A. Drew

Day 28: Poem-a-Day: Our Day Pistoia by Jack A. Drew

  Feb. 2, 1945

Our Day Pistoia

by Jack A. Drew

We wake at six thirty, At the song of the bong. We can’t see the large clock, And we hope we are wrong.

‘Bout five for dressing though sleep in our eyes. We continue our wrestling, because of dark skies.

After taking our café, there’s a rush for the door., We find a blanket of snow, which is now our new floor.

A great pace is set, for our little walk.

View On WordPress

[lansingonlinenews]

Day 27: Poem-a-Day: Moveen Notebook by Thomas Lynch

Day 27: Poem-a-Day: Moveen Notebook by Thomas Lynch

In loving memory of Nora Lynch, Moveen West, Co. Clare, who died 27 March 1992 in her 90th year. RIP

by Thomas Lynch

“All winter we watch the fire,” Nora said. “All summer we watch the sea.” Then she would sit for hours, hunched over, elbows to knees,… warming the palms of her hands to the fire, smoking the cigarettes from the duty-free shop in Kennedy I would always bring her.

Then rising…

View On WordPress

[lansingonlinenews]

Day 25 and 26: Poem-a-Day: Night Syrup and Dibiki-Ziigwaagaame by Margaret Noodin

Day 25 and 26: Poem-a-Day: Night Syrup and Dibiki-Ziigwaagaame by Margaret Noodin

Night Syrup

I stir sweet maple into coffee And I ask myself, “What is the flavor of night syrup.”

An ancient iron kettle? Northern cedar? A lick of smoke?

or

The wing of a crow? The brown eye of a moose? A new path in the woods? The sound a heartbeat at midnight?

then I understand

The sweet dark liquid tastes like life.

by Margaret Noodin

Noodin is assistant professor in English and American…

View On WordPress

[lansingonlinenews]

Day 24: Poem-a-Day: Hick Orpheus with Harmonic and Train by Dennis Hinrichsen

Day 24: Poem-a-Day: Hick Orpheus with Harmonic and Train by Dennis Hinrichsen

  Hick Orpheus with Harmonica and Trainfor A.L. Van Horn (1910-1991) Even the harmonica in his hands was a beautiful engine: in-take of breath, his mind tonguing “Old Susanna” out of the chambers against the courthouse steps, or packing it hard, muting it, behind the depot, nineteen hundred and twenty-seven, Garwin, Iowa, until the train pulled in like the articulated spine of heaven, itself…

View On WordPress

[lansingonlinenews]

Day 23: Poem-a-Day: Death Poem by John Wilkes Booth and David Herold

Day 23: Poem-a-Day: Death Poem by John Wilkes Booth and David Herold

Nearly 150 years ago the search for John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, and David Herold, a co-conspirator, was coming to an end and when asked for their autographs they instead wrote this joint poem:

Booth wrote:

He put aside the dainty bribe The little proffered hand Albeit he held it in his thought The dearest in the land Not sharply nor with sudden heart But with regretful grace Me…

View On WordPress

[lansingonlinenews]

Day22: Poem-a-Day: Wisconsin,1929 by Cindy Hunter Morgan

Day22: Poem-a-Day: Wisconsin,1929 by Cindy Hunter Morgan

WISCONSIN, 1929 Lake Michigan

What he knew of death was a brood mare in a barn stall heaving quietly in the dark – contraction and silence.

When the canvas on the lifeboats hummed in the wind and lanterns slammed against bulkheads and fire-grate doors swung

on their hinges, he heard music and felt, only, the excitement he remembered

when neighbors came for threshing: thrilling commotion, cessation…

View On WordPress

[lansingonlinenews]

Day 21: Poem-a-Day: folktale by Janet Homer

Day 21: Poem-a-Day: folktale by Janet Homer

           folktalethe enigma of the broken watch: every time she came into a new town she’d bring it to the jewelers one by one each would open the back and point out the broken parts one by one and tell her not me maybe someone else some other shop one jeweler kept it for two months offering hope and increasingly rising estimates but in the end it came back broken the men who repair watches…

View On WordPress

[lansingonlinenews]

Day 20: Poem-a-Day: No More Winter by Len Peterson

Day 20: Poem-a-Day: No More Winter by Len Peterson

No More Winter

by Len Peterson

In March, I live with gray and fields of snow, I long for skies of blue and lawns of green. Oh, spring, please end these days of ice and woe. I pray for days when spring returns and does preen, Sans coats, sans gloves, sans scarves, sans boots. The snows and slick of March, oh, please to thaw. I wish for blooms, for buds, for leaves, for shoots. Fill holes on roads…

View On WordPress

[lansingonlinenews]

Day 19: Poem-a-Day: Teakettle by Bonnie Jo Campbell Teakettle by Bonnie Jo Campbell After the first snow, I burn to death, another teakettle, the second one in as many months,