1999: Busy Year on Way to Millennium

While much attention is being focused on the impending arrival of the new century, the immediate 12 months that precede it will be a busy year of projects, events and activities. What lies ahead in 1999 is creating nearly equal anticipation and promises that, when the year 2000 arrives, a high level of public humanities programming will already be underway. It will be an exciting year, as the Michigan Humanities Council News reports in this issue:

• seven Michigan sites will host a national "Barn Again!" traveling exhibit from the Smithsonian Institution...
• mid-Michigan will welcome the National Folk Festival for a three-year celebration of traditional arts...
• new faces at the Council are bringing a wealth of additional ideas and energy to public programs...
• Council-funded projects are reaching out to new audiences and Council-conducted initiatives like the ROADS Culture Kits and Michigan's Great Outdoors Culture Tour are being strengthened with new sponsors and resources while anticipating new directions...
• the public-private partnership between the Council and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs makes continued strides in improving statewide access to arts and humanities programs and resources through such initiatives as the Michigan Arts and Humanities Touring Program and Arts and Humanities features on Michigan Radio...
• ...and many more developments. See for yourself inside.

The "Millennium"... the "Gateway"... the "Bridge" to the 21st Century... "Y2K"...

There is a kind of magic moment impending before us, the kind of symbolic moment that of itself has the power to define breaks in human history as old endings and new beginnings, the power to define progress's endpoint and also mark its new evolution -- a bellwether, a marker, if you will.

Whether the millennium is seen as the end of an age, the dawning of a new age, or the culmination of an era (what historians call the "Zeitgeist" approach to time, just as the "Fifties" are somehow seen as defining an era), or merely another defining moment in a continuum of various clusters of cultural meanings, there can be no doubt that something huge looms in all the hype, the summations, the future fantasies and predictions.

The Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 was a similar moment in the "evolution" of America's cultural and nation-state. It was the yardstick of its time -- showcasing American machinery and industrialism to the world for the first time. Similarly, the Columbian Exposition of the Chicago World's Fair of 1892 and the "Armory" Arts Exposition of 1914 were hallmarks of an America coming of age, coming into the world.

Yet neither such comparatively recent Zeitgeist moments as the American Bicentennial nor the Columbian Quincentenary carried the kind of "cultural cache," the kind of epochal weight, that this millennial moment is about to convey.

The western world is alive with events of significance and celebration, of portent and doom-saying -- from the local to the vastly apocalyptic. What will be celebrated? What imagined? What remembered? What will crash and burn?

It is not simple irony that the reigning dominions of the rational -- science and technology themselves -- seem headed for their own Armageddon, their Y2K collision, where Luddites, technophobes and other naysayers of scientific progress wait with almost giddy fascination to see whether modern civilization will finally get its comeuppance. It is at the dawn of such moments that the utopians and the dystopians find their champions and their nemeses in the worlds of the rational and the conventional or the non-rational, the mysterious, the ambiguous.

These are the kinds of defining moments that signal the settlings and unsettlings of peoples -- one people's westward, frontier quest for the promised land and a community of their own ideals and beliefs is another people's trek into the void and the wilderness.

As is our wont, we search deeply for millennial meanings. This is a complex and perplexing search. America's origins as a nation-state are a mere blink back in millennial space, and our modern identity assumes and resumes by eclipsing and building-over the past -- and thus the meanings of time -- in moment and place. So much is new! and fresh! We move on constantly, remaking the present and defining new futures, our cross-continental identities, our dwellings and landscapes assumed and subsumed in perennial migrations.

The deep past of our history is one of migrations, settlements, and ties that go back "vertically" across generations of time and place -- a family genealogy connecting places and cultures, or local and village chronicles, oral histories of remembrance, or books and journals of perspectives and ideas. These "cultures of lineage" -- among seasons, travels, and cultural memory -- contrast sharply with the "horizontal" linkages of our contemporary present and its new and renewing images of home, family and community along the face of landscape and television.

As the records of our human successes and failings "morph" (to use an appropriately "new" euphemism) in their transmission from paper to plastic to the evanescent ephemerality of electronic moments, what will culture's stories and histories look like? Will the deep future, unlike the deep past, contain, in web-like configurations, shallow space-hopping netlinks of manipulable, electronic, digitized, fragmentary moments of people and their attachments?

How close will the past and the future become -- connected by new trends and all the fantasies of momentary, present-time stories, or connected in new ways by the consensus of stories and traditions that people hand on in whatever way they can -- by touch, memory, in rooms or in front of computers, linked one person at a time to others? How will the cultures of the local, the identities of a region, past, present and future relate to the increasingly rich mosaic of the global village? What will be documented, and what fantasized? What will be authentic, and what merely titillating?

In short, what are the ways our human stories will become told, believed, documented, and connected? Time will tell us many things. And what we do with those things will, as it always has, matter.
-- Rick Knupfer, Ph.D., Executive Director

Celebrate the Millennium With Special Programs

Millennium arts and humanities programs can feature the local or the worldly. Such programs can examine the meanings of the Millennium among other places, cultures and traditions. Or they could take the form of community-wide or regional festivals and programs exploring an area's past, present and future identity, in exhibits and symposiums that celebrate and examine local or regional culture and identity -- its social patterns and demographics; immigration patterns; natural features and issues; economies and patterns of commerce, work, leisure, technology and invention; its customs and traditions of faith; its arts and culture as practiced by writers, musicians, photographers, playwrights and others; its understanding of ethnic populations, youth and the elderly; or other such programs or themes, singly or in combination.

Millennium programming of this kind could be a partnership activity of colleges, museums, media, advertising firms, cultural and ethnic organizations, municipal organizations, schools, businesses, environmental groups and historic sites, among many other possibilities.

Whatever you do for the Millennium, make it special, make it interactive, make it fun as well as educational, and get as many people involved planning and participating as you can! After all, a moment like this comes along only once in a thousand years....
-- R.K.

Speaking of Millennium Projects...

The White House Millennium Council has been sponsoring "Millennium Evenings at the White House" which feature eminent historians, artists, scientists and speakers (watch our web site for notification of upcoming programs!) and has initiated a number of national projects to focus on the transition to the new century under a "Honor the Past - Imagine the Future" theme.

The projects include: "Save America's Treasures," an effort to preserve cultural heritage in cooperation with the National Trust for Historic Preservation; "Millennium Trails," which emphasizes enhancing or completing significant trails, developed by several federal agencies; "America's Treasures On-Line," a project to make federal agencies' rich collections of artifacts, documents and archives more available to the public through the Internet; "My History is America's History," a National Endowment for the Humanities project to encourage family history gathering and preservation, and "The Mars Project," a visioning project involving students and communities in work to imagine what a new planetary community might include.

For more on these and other ideas for celebrating the arrival of the 21st century, contact the White House Millennium Council at 708 Jackson Place, NW, Washington DC 20503; by telephone at 202/395-7200 or electronically at its e-mail address millennium@whitehouse.gov or www.whitehouse.gov/Initiatives/Millennium web site.

Governor's Appointee Joins Council

Lois L. Shaevsky of Bloomfield Hills joins the Council in 1999 as its newest appointee by Gov. John Engler. The governor names six of the 25 members on the Council under the federal legislation governing state humanities councils. Mrs. Shaevsky replaces former gubernatorial appointee Rhonda Runco of Dearborn.

A 1960 graduate of the University of Michigan with a B.A. in political science, Mrs. Shaevsky has been active in community and charitable organizations in metropolitan Detroit for nearly 20 years. Recent civic involvements include service on boards of directors of Detroit's Public Broadcasting Channel 56, the Goodwill Industries of Greater Detroit Foundation where she is currently first vice president, the Child Abuse and Neglect Council of Oakland County where she is now second vice president, and the Goodwill Industries Agency.

Her charitable work began after her college graduation in positions with the Irvington House of New York and the Robert S. Marx Charitable Foundation of Detroit, followed by public relations consulting with corporate clients in metro Detroit. Since then, she has actively worked in support of causes ranging from the Children's Charities Coalition of Oakland County and the Michigan Cancer Foundation to Temple Beth El and the Community House of Birmingham.

She chaired the promotions committee for the Detroit Historical Museum's 1996 "Becoming American Women" exhibit, was a member of the board of directors of the Birmingham-Bloomfield Symphony in 1990, and has served on event committees for the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Meadow Brook Art Gallery.

In October, she received the Circle of Hope Award of the Child Abuse and Neglect Council of Oakland County from Michelle Engler at the organization's anniversary gala.

'Barn Again!' Planning Underway

Community organizations around Michigan who will host a Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) exhibit, "Barn Again! Celebrating An American Icon," during the coming year have begun planning their public programs in conjunction with the visit. The exhibit will tour seven communities in Michigan from June, 1999, through April, 2000, similar to the "Produce for Victory: Posters on the American Home Front, 1941-45" touring exhibit in 1997-98.

The Michigan tour is sponsored by the Council in cooperation with the Smithsonian's SITES office. Project scholar Terry Shaffer of the MSU Museum and Assistant Director LuAnn Kern attended a program planning meeting in Utah last fall to prepare for the exhibit's visit to Michigan.

First on the schedule will be stops at the Wolcott Mill Historic Center in Ray June 20-July 14 and Kensington Metropark Farm Center in Milford July 20-Aug. 14, followed Aug. 23 through Oct. 2 at the Iron County Museum in Caspian.

Iron County's tree celebrated its barns

At Wolcott Mill, organizers see the SITES exhibit as a way to launch plans for a barn museum. The Iron County Museum previewed its role on the tour during the holiday season with a Christmas tree decorated with photographs of barns from its area of the Upper Peninsula. Project coordinator Audrey Ridolphi said the photographs are part of a complementary exhibit, "Barnstorming Iron County," which museum curator Marcia Bernhardt has scheduled for fall to highlight all barn structures in the county.

Other 1999 stops for the "Barn Again!" exhibit include the North Berrien Historical Museum in Coloma Oct. 11-Nov. 19 and at Courthouse Square in Charlotte Nov. 29 through Jan. 8, 2000. Two additional stops in 2000 include the Missaukee District Library in Lake City Jan. 17-Feb. 26, 2000, and the Rawson Memorial Library in Cass City March 6-April 15, 2000.

At North Berrien, plans are in the works for a driving tour of county barns, while exhibit hosts at Courthouse Square are planning a companion display of barn quilts.

Each site will host activities in its community that complement the visiting exhibit's focus on the roles of barns as both working farm structures and cultural icons of an agricultural way of life from the past.

On-line Curriculum Contest Deadline Extended

The deadline for teacher submissions of lesson plans created as part of an interdisciplinary Internet education project, "Developing Arts and Humanities-Based Curricula Through Technology," has been extended to Aug. 31.

Until then, teachers logging on to the Michigan Culture Link web site (http://miculturelink.h-net.msu.edu) have the opportunity to create their own lesson plans using the on-line educational tools, links and art objects from museum collections around Michigan. They may then submit those lesson plans electronically to share with others and be judged as part of a statewide competition, with prizes awarded for top entries.

The project is a partnership effort of the Michigan Humanities Council and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs in cooperation with the H-Net on-line scholar network at Michigan State University and the Michigan Department of Education. Cultural organizations such as the Michigan State University Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts and Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village have supplied on-line images of objects from their collections as the focus for lesson plan development by teachers.

First prize is free admission for the winning teacher's class to Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village; other prizes include free one-month rental of a humanities council Culture Kit, development services for a personalized class web site, and a resource book related to some of the artifacts featured as web site icons.

For more information on the project, contact Ana Cardona in the Department of Education at 517/335-0466 or by e-mail at Cardona@state.mi.us or LuAnn Kern, assistant director, in the Council's Lansing office at 517/372-7770.

10 Projects Awarded Grant Support

Nine collaborative projects exemplifying the cultural diversity of Michigan communities were awarded a total of $115,659 in direct grants and $33,165 in matching funds last fall under the Council's "Collaborative Projects in Communities" grantline. An additional $3,000 was awarded as a planning grant under the Council's Mini Grant program.

Projects awarded grant funds are :

• "The Power of Place" project of the Academia de Espanol, a public Spanish language immersion school in Grand Rapids, to help students in grades K-6 explore diversity within Native American and Aztec cultures through community resources and arts-based activities as a means of developing greater student self-discovery.
• An "Indians of Michigan Yesterday and Today: A Teacher's Guide and Resource" project of the Nokomis Learning Center of Okemos to create a curriculum resource unit on cultural, political, economic and social aspects of Indian life, past and present, to facilitate better teaching of Michigan Indian history.
• At Niles, an archaeological-educational project by Support the Fort, Inc. to locate and interpret Fort St. Joseph, an 18th century French settlement, and nearby Miami and Potawatomi Indian villages.
• The Berrien County Historical Association of Berrien Springs and an Ann Arbor production company's work to tell the story of the House of David religious community in Benton Harbor in a television documentary, "The Seventh Messenger: A Collision of a Religion, the Courts and the Press in the 1920s."
• The Capital Area Literacy Coalition of Lansing for its "Prime Time - Humanities-Based Family Reading Program" to transport low-income families to the community's library for reading and discussion activities for parents with limited education and their children.
• The Marquette Sesquicentennial Committee's planned historical and musical dramatization, "Beacon on the Rock," about the roots of the Upper Peninsula's ethnic diversity and its sense of community to observe Marquette's founding in summer, 1999.
• Exploration of the links of Dearborn's Arab-American community to the labor history of southeast Michigan's automobile industry through a community oral history project of the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS) of Dearborn -- "Arab Americans and the Automobile: Voices from the Factory."
• Planning activities by the Creative Spirit Center, Inc. of Midland for an interactive arts touring program and publication focused on the community's "mosaic house," funded with a Mini Grant.

Grant awards also continued funding for two regional humanities councils' work in Grand Rapids by the Grand Rapids Area Council for the Humanities and in five counties of west-central Lower Michigan by the Humanities Council of West Central Michigan, based in Big Rapids and serving communities in Lake, Mason, Mecosta, Osceola and Newaygo counties.

The next deadline for applications under the Council's "Collaborative Projects in Communities" grantline is April 15.

Workshop, Posters Offered for 'Native Peoples' Kits

The Native Peoples: Indians of the Great Lakes Culture Kits, the Council's newest resources for elementary and secondary school teachers and educational program staff of libraries, museums and other community organizations are now circulating from the Resource Center. A Feb. 20 teacher workshop on the Michigan State University campus will conclude a series of informational programs to acquaint educators with the new resources.

In addition, the Council is offering for sale two related posters -- a "Michigan Indians: Tribes, Trails and Treaties" map and a full-color montage of images depicting the heritage and culture of Michigan's indigenous peoples by Sault Ste. Marie artist Debra-Ann Pine. The map and Native Peoples poster sell for $10, with artist-signed copies $25 (all plus $3 shipping). Discount is offered for orders of 10 or more. Proceeds from the sales go to support the Native Peoples culture kit project.

Like the four previous culture kits in the series, the Native Peoples curriculum units include books, videotapes, maps, posters, artifacts and lesson plans designed to equip educators to teach about the history, family life and cultural expression and traditions of Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomi peoples who call the Great Lakes region their home. Among the varied topics covered in the kits for grades K-5 and 6-adult are "Pow Wow Celebrations," "Anishnaabe Designs and Crafts" and "Treaty Rights and the U.S. Constitution."

The day-long workshop Feb. 20 at the MSU Museum is co-sponsored by the Council, the MSU Native American Faculty and Staff Association (EAGLE), the Native American Institute at MSU and the museum. The workshop fee is $25; contact the Council's Lansing office by Feb. 12 to register. EAGLE and the institute are purchasing a set of the Native Peoples kits for use by MSU affiliates and others, when not in use by them; they will be available for rent through the Resource Center.

Among resources in the new kits are a videotape, "Wiigwaasijiimaan: The Birch Bark Canoe," filmed in Ojibwa with English subtitles and showing traditional methods of creating a birch bark canoe. Twenty copies of the video were contributed to the project by the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe.

Culture kit workshops in November and December reached 120 teachers, librarians, museum curators, curriculum specialists and other interested professionals across the state. Mini-workshops also will take place at two Council for the Social Studies conferences in Detroit and Marquette this winter and spring.

The Native Peoples units were developed by a team of tribal resource people, academic scholars and school teachers. They began circulating as rental packages from the Council's Resource Center in September, complementing similar classroom units in the series on African, African-American, Middle Eastern and Hispanic ethnic cultural groups.

Rental fees for these kits are $50 if shipped and $35 if picked up from the Council's Lansing office, plus a $25 security deposit. Another new kit, German Heritage, is available from the Frankenmuth Historical Association, 613 S. Main St., Frankenmuth MI 48734, or by calling 517/652-9701.

Web Update

Nonprofit organizations interested in applying to the Council for grant funds can now find information about the kinds of projects funded in the past on the Council's web site (http://mihumanities.h-net.msu.edu).

Listed under "Funded Projects," the page offers information on "Recently Funded Projects" from the past year and earlier grant recipients' projects in a "Project Archive." Also included at that location are links to web sites of grantees with more detailed descriptions of the funded projects and the sponsoring organizations. Among the latter are sites for the "Sojourner Truth" and "Scribbling Women" projects which received Council support.