A Message from the Director

Examining Local 'Sense of Place': Who Are We, Where Are We Going?

The millennium may be looked at as a turning point, a measuring stick of progress. Like January, the millennium looks both behind us and in front of us. For if what we celebrate is nothing more than the survival of community culture, it should also be nothing less than how to renew it in the future. But we cannot move on without a deep and abiding sense of where we have come from, so the first step for all of us is to look squarely and soberly at the past.

The answer to how we have survived is likely to be the same reason we celebrate the present and the same reason we'll want to live in a Michigan future. This might be a survival kit for communities that are willing to undertake a rigorous self-examination and to use history and the celebration of local culture and to dare to partner with other communities inside and outside their own to create a future that is rich and vibrant.

History revitalizes the present. Nostalgia alone is insufficient, because it depends on what appears to be "unrevivable." Nostalgia is more meaningful if it forces us to make the past obtainable again, or to discard it and create a different future. Both have virtues, and both can, and should, exist side by side.

How do we know the past is obtainable again? Because history will show us that we are not simply the witnesses of change, we are the agents of it. People, not economic forces, make history.

Every day we wake up, we make decisions that affect our future livelihood. History helps us recognize that we made those decisions, and helps provide the perspective we need to keep doing things as they are or to make changes. Knowing the facts of our history, for example, might help us decide whether to spend an extra dollar to support a local business, order by mail, or shop elsewhere, or, if even that is not our priority, to learn how to integrate national, regional and other non-local endeavors fully into our community way of life. In short, history can help us change our course.

Communities must be aware of their own history to see themselves as part of it. The alternative is powerlessness -- people absorbed in the flow of events rather than in control of them. Communities which do not recognize the trends and the problems revealed by history, and which do not do something about them, are doomed to be the ghost towns of the future. Because we can go from thriving communities to ghost towns in less than a generation, we must be on top of the changes around us now.

Ghost towns make wonderful museums -- but only for the towns that survived them. Are these the relics worth featuring in a millennium celebration? We can begin to think now of the role we might play in creating a history which sustains us over time, a history which informs our present and future -- the where we have been and the who we are becoming.

Let's begin by looking at what has made our own communities vital. A community which uses the past to renew its vision for the future is a community that sustains itself. Such a community can review, develop and feature quality of life as the selling point to its children and to outsiders. Much goes into quality of life, as we know -- a sound economy, good schools and an active social climate, full of giving and sharing, are a start. At the very least, a community ought to give itself a thorough self-examination on these determinants of quality of life.

The following might be a checklist for celebrating a communityıs heritage and its current cultural vitality, as well as providing a blueprint for survival well into the future:

• Are we willing to face our own history? What are the trends associated with our growth or decline over the years? What decisions did we make in the process that contributed or failed to contribute to these trends? How did we, how could we, survive and thrive?
• Are we willing to tackle the challenges of the future, by taking hard looks at the past, at the problems that come with change, and at what may be necessary to stimulate new growth, for example, or to retain our young people or attract outsiders?
• What is the ideal climate for life and growth in our area? According to whom?
• Have we thought about what's beautiful in our community and area? What human-made and natural features are meaningful, and to whom?
• Do we have a forward-looking development council with young leadership and experienced guidance? It takes the wisdom of the elders and the fresh ideas and energy of the young to make anything happen -- or, more importantly, to make anything sustain itself -- and it takes youth development to build the community of the future.
• Do we know outsiders willing to return to, or put out the good word on, their home area, and to invest anything of their life and the capital they earned elsewhere back into the future of their home area?
• Do we have hard-working volunteers, local businesses and individual "agents of wealth" who are willing to seek a common vision and to work together to make things happen?
• How do we place faith in our cultural institutions -- our schools, churches, historical societies, museums, art councils, community theatres, music guilds, genealogical societies, newspapers, cable providers, videographers, preservation groups? Do we believe that the future has its roots in the past, that history is the common thread that defines our culture and defines who we are, and that art gives expression to the soul? What are some examples in our area?
• Do we have vital meeting places and frequent dialogues among our citizens -- our elders, our youth? Do we have public spaces for displaying who we are, the products of our community culture, and do we take care of them?
• How do we make use of and integrate into the fabric of our place our natural features -- our parks, trails, recreational facilities, creeks, streams and lakes, our prairie, wetlands and forests?
• Are we aware of the great historical events that shaped our community and defined its direction? Our immigrants, migration patterns, the history of our institutions in church records, archives, attics, oral histories, the development patterns of our businesses and workplaces and residential areas, the impact of an industry, the railroad or the automobile?
• Is our community large enough to encompass the local and the worldly? Do we recognize the importance, and the vitality, of featuring both the culture of our community and the culture of outsiders? To feature one at the expense of the other is to engage in a false elitism, to leave out too much of the world. The world is neither "we" nor "them"; it is all of us. It is one thing to be fiercely proud of one's local culture. It is another to fear exposure to culture elsewhere. Communities can make room for both in order to grow and to attract outsiders.

-- Rick Knupfer, Ph.D., Executive Director

Barn Again! Celebrating An American Icon

Residents of Michigan have until April, 2000, to explore the state's agricultural heritage through the appearance of a Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) exhibit, "Barn Again! Celebrating an American Icon," at seven locations across the state. Activities at the sites during the coming 10 months -- as well as on the Council's web site -- will celebrate barns as distinctive architectural structures as well as symbols of an agricultural way of life and centers of farm-related cultural traditions.

Similar to the "Produce for Victory: Posters on the American Home Front, 1941-45" exhibit which the Council brought to the state during 1997-98, the tour of the free- standing exhibit and related educational activities are sponsored by the Council, one of three state humanities councils hosting the exhibit this year.

"Barn Again!" has begun its Michigan tour, opening in rural Macomb County at the Wolcott Mill Historic Center in the farming community of Ray. The exhibit will be there through July 14, after which it will move on to Wolcott's "sister" facility, the Kensington Metropark Farm Center at Milford in Oakland County, July 20-Aug. 14.

Other Michigan sites on the traveling exhibit's schedule are:

• Iron County Museum at Caspian in the Upper Peninsula - Aug. 23-Oct. 2.
• North Berrien (County) Historical Museum at Coloma in southwest Michigan - Oct. 11-Nov. 19.
• Courthouse Square at Charlotte in Eaton County - Dec. 1-Jan. 8, 2000.
• Missaukee (County) District Library at Lake City - Jan. 17-Feb. 26, 2000.
• Rawson Memorial Library at Cass City in the Thumb region - March 6-April 15, 2000.

Whether drawing urban visitors from metropolitan Detroit to the two earliest stops on the tour, attracting residents of hard-scrabble farms of the Upper Peninsula or nearby dairy-rich Wisconsin or capturing the attention of diverse agricultural counties such as Osceola and Missaukee, Berrien and Van Buren, Calhoun and Branch or Tuscola and Bay, the host sites have planned a wide range of activities to complement the exhibit's visit. These communities will be offering public programs and events such as barn tours, guest lectures, quilting bees and others that explore local barn and agricultural heritage.

On-line activities for adults and children at the Council's web site (http://mihumanities.h-net.msu.edu) include two virtual tours featuring images of Michigan barns, a scrapbook for users to submit reminiscences of memorable rural/farm/barn experiences, educational materials for youngsters, reading lists on barn and farm topics and themes and an on-line reading and discussion program planned to begin in fall.

Coordinating the "Barn Again!" program for the Council is LuAnn Kern, director of education and programs. Terry Shaffer of the Michigan State University Museum is serving as scholar to the project. Partners in this exhibit tour include the Michigan Barn Preservation Network, which is providing resources and promotional support to the host communities, and the National Endowment for the Humanities and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation which supported the exhibit, along with the Hearst Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution Special Exhibition Fund and the Smithsonian Educational Outreach Fund.

The listing of Barn Again! activities are those scheduled to date. Keep checking the Council's web site for updated information.

Wolcott Mill Metropark, Ray

Kensington Farm Center, Milford

Iron County Museum, Caspian

North Berrien Historical Society & Museum, Coloma

Courthouse Square, Charlotte

Missaukee District Library, Lake City

Rawson Memorial Library, Cass City

Seven Projects Awarded Community Grants

Storytelling and life-story preservation initiatives and African-American and Underground Railroad history documentation projects in Michigan communities are among seven grant applicants awarded Collaborative Projects in Communities funding by the Council in May.

A total of $57,041 in direct funds and $20,000 in matching funds have been authorized for these projects under the Council's current program theme, "Creating Vision for the New Century: The Humanities and the Strengthening of Michigan's Communities." Awardees are:

• Waverly Community Schools of Lansing for "The Storyteller Project: Telling the Stories of Our Lives," a curriculum project for 3rd-5th graders to explore a sense of self and community through oral histories, storytelling and drama.
• Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City for "Memory at the Millennium," which will encourage lifestory writing among northern Michigan senior citizens through extended learning courses and a publication, "Looking Over My Shoulder: Memory at the Millennium."
• International Underground Railroad Monument Committee and Christian Fellowship Nondenominational Church of Detroit for "Midnight," a day-long series of programs on the Underground Railroad in Michigan scheduled for May, 2000, in Detroit's Cultural Center.
• Friends of Historic Idlewild for "A Tradition of Enriching Community and Family Life in Idlewild, MI: African American Migration, 1913-1999." The project will research and develop a traveling photo exhibit and related public programs and resources about Idlewild as the first African-American resort in the U.S. and a center for African- American culture from the 1910s to the 1950s.
• Michigan State University Museum in East Lansing for "1999 Great Lakes Traditions Programming at the National Folk Festival," including a story stage and a demonstration showcase of folklorists' research on traditional ethnic games at the Aug. 13-15 festival.
• Neighborhood House of Saginaw for "Community Spaces of the Industrious: The Oral Histories of African Americans and Latino/as in Saginaw," a community-based examination of the industrial and small business and social and recreational roles and impact of the two ethnic populations in the larger economic, cultural and political fabric of Saginaw.
• Kresge Art Museum of Michigan State University in East Lansing for "Sigmund Freud: His Era and Influence," public programs around two exhibits related to the life and influence of the psychoanalyst's work on artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, occurring from Jan. 12-March 19, 2000.