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 Welcome aboard! Two new staff members have joined the Michigan Humanities Council as program officers. Carla M. Ingrando, from Oregon, and Judith Moses Dworkin, from Okemos, started in their new positions on June 4.
 In January, the Michigan Humanities Council teamed up with the RCAH Center for Poetry at Michigan State University to put poetry in public transportation. Poetry in Motion, a national program, features student-written poetry inside buses for the Capital Area Transportation Authority. The initial launch was well-received and you can expect to see more voices on your next CATA ride. Learn more about Poetry in Motion through this great YouTube clip.
 Novelist and poet Jeff Vande Zande, of Midland, has received the Saginaw Valley State University Stuart and Vernice Gross Award for Excellence in Writing by a Michigan Author. He received the award for his new novel, American Poet: A Novel, a mostly fiction-novel set in Saginaw featuring a young, struggling poet who connects with Saginaw’s legendary poet Theodore Roethke.
Have you seen the viral Troy Public Library Book Burning video? Faced with shutting its doors, the library scheduled a vote for a small tax increase. When a local political party lobbied against it, the library took a drastic approach to change the community discussion from taxes to literacy. The campaign – spread through Facebook – won the Facebook Integrated Media Award at the Clio Awards in May, and also won a Gold award for Government/Political at the International ANDY Awards 2012. What do you think of the Book Burning campaign – was it a clever idea to keep the library open or would it bother you? Tell us on our Facebook – www.facebook.com/MichiganHumanitiesCouncil.
The Detroit Historical Museum will be closed for the next six months in order to make its first major renovations since the 1960s. The museum will reopen Nov. 23 with expanded exhibits and technology upgrades.
The Museum at Southwestern Michigan College, currently maintained by the college and located on campus, will be moved to a downtown Dowagiac location that doubles the museum's square footage. The museum, which is free to the public and displays artifacts pertinent to Dowagiac and southwest Michigan's history, will move into the Behnke Paint and Floor Covering building on West Railroad Street. The City of Dowagiac and the college have stated they are committed to keeping the museum free of charge.
Congratulations to InsideOut Literary Arts Project, which recently won a 2012 Closing the Gap Award from New Detroit. The award honors organizations and individuals who help to overcome racial and economic inequalities in the region. An awards banquet will be held June 19 at the MGM Grand Detroit Hotel Ballroom.
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