Astronomer Mike Brown
Astronomer Mike Brown is the scientist who discovered Eris, the largest object found in our solar system in 150 years. You 'll remember the end result of that discovery: Pluto lost it's status as a planet. Brown says that reclassification begins a new way of looking at the solar system, and now Pluto makes sense.
Brown, from the California Institute of Technology, is author of "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming." He'll speak tomorrow May 7 at 7pm at the Kalamazoo Nature Center. The 75th Anniversary of the Kalamazoo Astronomical Society is also being marked on Saturday from 10am to 4pm at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum.
Mailbox Battles
From the galaxy to rural Michigan, now. Nancy Camden has a story on the lengths people will go to make sure the U.S mail can get through:
[Nancy Camden] The first rural area in Michigan to have mail delivered under the Rural Free Delivery Law was around Climax in 1896. After that, mailboxes on posts planted in the soil began popping up in front of every rural home, setting up a battle of wills. Somewhere along the way, those mailboxes became targets-literally taking a beating from mischievous young males under the cover of darkness. Blaine Mosher in Jackson County has experience.
[Mosher] We're up all night in the springtime at calving season and a car came down the road and I stood beside the road, my hands on my hips, and here come these yahoos, one in the back of a pickup with a ball bat-all ready to nail my mailbox. And, I was just standing there looking at him and he saw me just before he hit that mailbox. He jumped back down in the bottom of his truck and they hit the gas and got out of there. I never seen guys so scared in my life.
When you get to be fifty, you think there ought to be the death penalty for mailbox hammering. But, when you're a kid it's fun stuff. It really is.
[Camden] So, did you do it?
[Mosher] I'll take the fifth on that one. (laughs)
[Camden] Some people get very creative in the battle to preserve their mailboxes. Dean Cartmell lives down the road from the Mosher farm.
Is there a time of year when it's worse?
[Cartmell] 'Bout the time when schools 'bout ready to let out in the spring. Now, I know some people that have put up mailbox made out of heavy steel. My neighbor down here had one that looked like it was made out of plastic. And, I was down there one day talking to him and I said, 'How come they destroy mine and leave yours alone? Yours is plastic.' He said, 'Well, they beat on mine.' He had glued plastic to the outside of it so it looked like plastic. They've broken aluminum bats over his mailbox and they couldn't destroy it. So, they pulled it out of the ground and took it one day. It's just like a competition with the kids. I thought about puttin' up a trail camera and gettin' a picture of 'em; but, I give up on that idea. I like this idea better.
[Camden] What are we looking at here?
[Cartmell] We are lookin' at a mailbox that's kind of indestructible. It's made out of two mailboxes, one inside the other, with 200 pounds of concrete poured around it. It's just sittin' on cement blocks.
[Camden] It's a little bit rusty on the outside.
[Cartmell] Yeah, it gives it character. It kind of blends in. If I go to any extreme to make it look decent, the kids destroy it. They've beat on this several times, but they've never hurt it any. You really can't hurt it.
[Michael Kifer] They just run down the road and hang out the window and you hear something in the middle of the night and you know what it is and you go out 'n pick it up or, um, you know, bend it back out.
[Camden] Michael Kifer in rural Richland.
[Kifer] Lately, I have not screwed it tight to the base. It's just gently pinned in. So, if they hit it, it goes for a fly; but, it doesn't usually take the beating that it used to. I figure it's better to fall off the post than it is to have a solid target. The only solution that I have seen that I thought was practical was a mailbox on a suspended chain, and it was a steel mailbox. It was solid and if you hit it's just like batting practice. You can't really damage it because it just swings back and forth.
[Julie Cielen] I deliver pig semen. I pick up from one farm and deliver to three other farms.
[Camden] Back in Jackson County Julie Cielen noticed something peculiar one day on a post beside the road.
[Cielen] The mailbox had-I call it a bucket. So, I just thought it was really neat and I was wonderin' if it worked.
[Robert Weeks]: My mailbox is a five-gallon gear-oil pail. It does work. I take it out in the morning and bring it back as soon as the mail arrives.
[Camden] Robert Weeks.
[Weeks] When we first moved here, I had a mailbox that my son had bought me. That mailbox took several hits before someone must have decide that they wanted to really destroy it and they took a baseball bat to it. Then, all that was left was the two doors. There was a door on each end of the mailbox. So, I saved the doors. I needed a mailbox this one day. And, I just didn't know what I was going to do to get something out there to collect the mail. So, I had a five-gallon plastic pail and I thought well, maybe I'll cut an opening in the end of the pail and fashion this door, somehow fasten it to the mailbox.
[Camden] Linda Mosher
[Linda Mosher] It's a pailbox-not a mailbox. It is really a pail with a front of a mailbox stuck to it. (laughs)
[Camden] From the country roads of Michigan, for WMUK, I'm Nancy Camden.
[Cartmell] Look at this one. Looks like they put something in and blew it up.
Music from Kara Barnard of Brown County, Indiana is heard in that piece from Nancy Camden.
Author D.E. Johnson
Southwest Michigan novelist D. E. Johnson is the author of the mystery "The Detroit Electric Scheme.". It opens with these lines:
"The first part of the body I saw was half of the left arm. It hung off the side of the hydraulic roof press, hazy in the dim yellow light of the gas lamps. I walked further into the machining room, cutting through shadows of pulleys and concrete pillars. Odd flecks of matter on other machines sparkled as I moved. The factory was silent other than a slow drip, like a leaking faucet."
"The Detroit Electric Scheme," is set against the backdrop of a flourishing Detroit in 1910 when early electric cars were the wave of the future. The fast-paced novel includes great historical detail and is told through the eyes of Will Anderson, a heartbroken drunk who is accused of murder, even as he helps his father's car company set performance records. The author says he's always been drawn to stories of guilt and redemption. His interest in automotive history comes through his grandfather, who was the vice-president of Checker Motors.
"The Detroit Electric Scheme," is published by St. Martin's Press. A sequel titled "Motor City Shakedown" will be out in September. Johnson will be part of an Afternoon of Mystery on May 7 starting at noon at Kazoo Books on Parkview in Kalamazoo.
Other Events
A musical tribute to the Kingston Trio is being staged at the New Vic Theatre in Kalamazoo May 6 through June 11.
The Dogwood Festival is going on from May 6 through May 14 in Dowagiac, MI. Musician Felix Cavaliere and storyteller Bill Harley are among the performers.
Miller Auditorium presents "Vicki Lawrence and Mama: A Two-Woman Show" on May 8 at 3 p.m. The musical "Monty Python's Spamalot" is at Miller May 10 and 11.