The Michigan 4-H Children’s Garden will sponsor “Wizards Day” from 10 a.m. to noon Tuesday at the gardens. The day will uncover the magic of the gardens, discovering flora and creating willow wands and herbal potions.
Harris Nature Center, 3998 Van Atta Road, in Okemos, will sponsor a guided tour through the woods from 9-10 p.m. Friday. The hike, called Howl at the Moon, takes place each month in the summer on the Friday nearest the full moon. Hikers are invited to bring dogs, as long as they are kept on non-retractable leashes.
The Juneteenth holiday is an annual, weekend-long celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the U.S. hundreds of years ago. The festivities in Lansing are a small representation of what Juneteenth really means, where it is the community’s job to more thoroughly educate the public about the holiday.
About 160 children and parents gathered for the annual tea party from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., which marked the first of five summer family events. Guests wore fairy and elf costumes for the three-course tea party and did a variety of crafts in the garden, such as making pixie-dust necklaces, constructing crowns out of vines and building small fairy houses.
Collectors gathered pinups, posters and pulps for the semi-annual Classicon 37 on Saturday at the Quality Inn University, 3121 E. Grand River Ave., in Lansing. Classicon 37 was hosted by the Curious Book Shop, 307 E. Grand River Ave., and collectors from East Lansing, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Lansing, Toledo and Grand Rapids gathered to sell and purchase material, including original movie posters, advertisements, pulps, paperbacks and artwork used for paperback covers.
The Abrams Planetarium, combined with the MSU Physics and Astronomy Department and Capital Area Astronomy Association, invited the public to come and look at the stars, moon and planets through a variety of telescopes Saturday, including one measuring about 24 inches. The 24-inch telescope was built by MSU in 1970 and cost about $125,000, said Horace Smith, a professor of physics and astronomy who said he had the biggest responsibility of the night.
Similar communities and common problems are why five city managers from Big Ten university towns got together Thursday and Friday for their semi-regular meeting. East Lansing hosted this year’s meeting of city managers and economic development experts from State College, Pa.; Evanston, Ill.; Champaign, Ill. and Ann Arbor. East Lansing City Manager Ted Staton led a tour of East Lansing and MSU, including a stop at the Cyclotron, and listened to several speakers about projects the city has coming in the future, including the integration of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum.
MSU’s College of Human Medicine, or CHM, is one of the top medical schools in the country when it comes to social mission, or producing graduates who work in underserved areas with physician shortages. The list of 141 colleges, released Tuesday and the first of its kind, was created to provide colleges with an idea of how well they performed in various areas.
The annual Eric ‘RicStar’ Winter Music Therapy Summer Camp is a three-day long program that features several age groups, from young children to adults. It began Thursday at the MSU Community Music School. The program caters to special needs children and adults, but it is not a requirement to be part of the camp.
The Verdehr Trio performed Wednesday evening for a crowd of professors, students and members of the community. After becoming the first violinist ever to receive a doctorate from Juilliard School in New York, Walter Verdehr pursued a career with the MSU College of Music in 1968 and has been with the university ever since. A few years later, in 1972, Verdehr and his wife, Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr, created The Verdehr Trio. Adding a third musician who was changed periodically, then trio traveled all over the world to Europe, Asia and Australia and have performed in every state in the United States. 38 years later, the trio perform annually in Great Cobb Hall at Wharton Center for the MSU and the greater Lansing community.
Students looking for more variety in food soon will have an additional option this fall with Brody Square in Brody Hall, which is MSU’s next restaurant-inspired experience, similar to The Gallery in Snyder and Phillips halls. MSU’s newest residential cafeteria will feature nine different venues, including a high-tech demonstration kitchen for students to watch and participate in from 7 a.m. to midnight each day.
After months of lobbying, a new hot dog restaurant is likely to be serving beer in the near future in downtown East Lansing. After an hour and a half long discussion about the hot dog restaurant, East Lansing City Council passed a special use permit for a liquor license Tuesday for What’s Up Dawg?, 301 M.A.C. Ave. The council went through a series of conditions and amendments the restaurant must follow with the approval.
Incoming freshmen living in MSU’s east neighborhood of Akers, Hubbard and Holmes Halls will have expanded means of communication with each other and their mentors with a new, online network provided by the university. The service, called SpartanConnect, is an online social network space that officials hope complements face-to-face conversation while in a living, learning environment, said Jacob McCarthy, a spokesman for MSU Residential and Hospitality Services.
White Memorial Park featured a dedication Wednesday night at its newly made pavilion. The improvements and new constructions to the park include constructing a pavilion at its entrance, revamping the fencing at the softball field, paving of the area’s parking lots, a new interpretive nature trail that features handicap accessibility and a viewing platform that presents the park’s pond.
An MSU professor is leading a research study to combat childhood obesity, furthering the advancement of treatment for children struggling to maintain healthy lifestyles. Joe Eisenmann, an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Human Development, has been analyzing how genetics and environmental factors affect childhood obesity at the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital Healthy Weight Center, 100 Michigan St., in Grand Rapids, which opened in April.
MSU faculty members will receive $2 million from a National Institutes of Health grant in July to research why part of the immune systems of older mice are more susceptible to the flu, which could have implications for the elderly, one of the highest-risk groups for contracting the influenza virus. Elizabeth Gardner, an associate professor of food science and human nutrition, is co-leading the study with Sungjin Kim, an assistant professor of microbiology and molecular genetics.
A correlation between the growth of a nation’s economy and the performance of microfinance institutions, or MFIs, has been found in a study lead by an MSU researcher. MFIs are banks that offer small loans to small businesses usually with no collateral required. Christian Ahlin, an associate professor of economics at MSU, said the process begins with microcredit, which is extending small loans used to start and upgrade small business. Microfinance expands on microcredit and acts much more similarly to a bank, he said.
Several city managers from cities with Big Ten universities will meet Thursday and Friday in East Lansing. City managers from Ann Arbor, Evanston, Ill., Champagne, Ill., Iowa City, Ia. and State College, Penn., will join East Lansing City Manager Ted Staton in discussing common threads in city governments of Big Ten universities.
MSU’s Michigan 4-H Children’s Garden is hosting the Fairy and Elves Tea Party 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Thursday. Participants are asked to wear their fanciest fairy and elf attire for tea in the garden.
To celebrate Adopt-A-Shelter-Cat Month, the Capital Area Humane Society will be holding a Cat Adoption Event 12-7 p.m. on June 18. The event will be held at the Capital Area Humane Society, 7095 W. Grand River Ave., in Lansing.