SVSU lecture series hosts Castro's daughter, Lincoln author, Oscar-nominated filmmaker, diversified flutist

by janet i. martineau

Guess who is speaking this fall at Saginaw Valley State University’s annual speakers series?

Alina Fernandez

The daughter of former Cuban President Fidel Castro,  of all people.

Also on the docket are an Oscar-nominated international film director, a famous flutist talking about anxiety, and a Lincoln historian taking a look back at that president’s Emancipation Proclamation.

All of the lectures are free.

The line-up is as follows:

-- 7pm Tuesday, Sept. 24, “Castro’s Daughter: An Exile’s Insight Into Cuba,” featuring Alina Fernandez. In the Malcolm Field Theatre for the Performing Arts. 

Fernandez will relive watching daddy on TV overthrowing the Cuban government  by day and at home playing with her until dawn -- of her father leading the 1959 Batista government overthrow, of living as a Cuban elite during the 1960s and 1970s, of her decision to join a dissident movement in the 1980s, and of her ultimate 1993 escape from the isolated island nation just  below Florida.

Basil Clark

-- 4pm Thursday, Oct. 3, “Profiles and Personalities: A Story of Some SVSU People,” featuring Basil A. Clark. In Founders Hall.

In celebration of SVSU’s 50th anniversary, English professor Clark will introduce people who have served the university over the years -- some distinguished, others humble, all of whom he met in his research as he wrote a 1963-1989 volume of SVSU history.

Byungil Ahn

-- 4pm Wednesday, Oct. 9, “Asian History in Your Backyard: The Survival and Success of Chinese Restaurant Owners in Saginaw and the Rise of Korean Nationalism in the 20th Century,” featuring Byungil Ahn. In the Rhea Miller Recital Hall.

A member of SVSU’s history department for five years, Ahn will analyze how and why four Chinese-Koreans left Korea, where their families lived and ran businesses, during the 1970s and 1980s and settled in Saginaw to establish Chinese restaurants.

It is more than just about food, and today these restaurant owners are part of a nationalist movement in Korea that exists here as well as back home. 

Allen Guelzo

-- 7pm Thursday, Oct. 17, “Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America,” featuring Allen Guelzo. In the Malcolm Field Theatre for the Performing Arts.

Guelzo is the author of two award-winning books about America’s 16th President and is, appropriately, a professor of the Civil War era at Gettysburg College.

One of the books is the title of his SVSU lecture, exploring how Lincoln rejected alternatives to emancipation, including treating escaping slaves as war contraband.

Eugenia Zukerman

-- 7pm Tuesday, Oct. 22, and Wednesday, Oct. 23, “Strategies for Coping With the Age of Anxiety,” featuring Eugenia Zukerman (talk on Tuesday; performance Wednesday). In the Rhea Miller Recital Hall. 

Zukerman averages more than 30 international performances a year, but in addition to her flute playing she is also a writer, journalist, TV correspondent, music administrator, Internet entrepreneur and teacher.

At SVSU she will discuss the ups and downs of every career; struggles and achievements on Tuesday and then return the next night to perform a recital.

Mira Nair

-- 7pm Wednesday, Oct. 30, “An Evening With Mira Nair.” In the Malcolm Field Theatre for the Performing Arts.

Nair was raised in India, attended Harvard University and lives in New York City -- her diverse background resulting in films exploring the tug of competing worlds while examining the ways people can bridge gaps dividing culture, race and gender.

Among them are the Amelia Earhart biopic “Amelia,” the 2009 romantic comedy “New York, I Love You,” the coming-of-age drama “The Namesake,” the Oscar-nominated “Salaam Bombay!” and the crossover hit “Monsoon Wedding.”

Laurence C, Smith

-- 7pm Wednesday, Nov. 6, “The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization’s Northern Future,” featuring Laurence C. Smith. In the Rhea Miller Recital Hall.

Smith, one of the world’s most respected climate scientists, explored the ramifications on geology and society due to climate change in a 322-page book by the same name as his SVSU talk.

In it he evaluates how it will impact demographics, globalization and demands on natural resources. 

Smith is a professor and vice chairman of geography and a professor of earth and space sciences at UCLA.

Retired Caro teacher pens book about her 55 Septembers in a classroom

story by janet i. martineau

For 55 of her 63 years, Michele Hile was in a school classroom -- first as a student and then as a teacher.

So no small wonder she ended up penning a self-published book titled “My Journey of 55 Septembers -- A Teacher’s Story.”

Michele Hile

On Tuesday (Aug. 13), the Caro resident will talk about her journey and her book during one of the “In  Poet’s Backyard” picnics taking place this summer at the Theodore Roethke Home Museum, 1805 Gratiot in Saginaw.

Titled “One Person’s Path to Becoming an Author,” her presentation runs from noon to 2:30pm and includes a lunch catered by Crumbs.

The inspiration for the book came from a fellow teacher.

“I retired from teaching at the end of the 2009-2010 school year,” says Hile, “and during the general staff information meeting held at the beginning of that school year a teacher across from me noted that her mentor had retired and asked if I would be her mentor.”

At the time, Hile said, she had not yet planned to retire after teaching 38 years for the Caro schools. 

“I asked if she was serious, and she replied that she was. So for each day of that school year, until Memorial Day, I had in her mailbox at the day's beginning a paragraph to two pages of something that worked for me, what my teachers meant to me, perspectives I believed teachers should have, and various items about my school years. 

“In October, another teacher told me she also wanted what that teacher was getting each day. I complied. By April, both were telling me that I needed to write a book using the ideas given them.”

And so she did.

Its 208 pages contain 141 vignettes in four sections: My Mother's Vision (9); My Early Years (18); Things Learned While Teaching (90); and Odds and Ends (24). It was published in the spring 2013. 

While the book is aimed at educators, Hile says she is receiving favorable reviews from people in all walks of life. 

“I am being told, ‘We all went to school, and we can relate to so much of what your write.’ It is also about achieving and living your dreams.” 

Hile primarily taught seventh and eighth grades, science and reading. For the first six years of her career, she taught various high school science classes. And from 1993-2001, she taught  summer school to elementary students in grades 2-6. 

Her family moved to the farm where she still lives in 1960, when she was 10.

Hile has not retired yet from a  second job which she has held for the past 18 years -- as an interfaith minister. 

“Currently, I am the interim pastor for the Fraser and Cass City First Presbyterian Churches. They are seeking a full time pastor since theirs retired a little over a year ago. In a recent nine-week stretch, I officiated eight weddings and have nine more booked.”

And from 1972 to 1974) she  was the charter secretary of the Watrousville-Caro Area Historical Society.

Hile will have copies of her book, priced at $20, for sale at the Tuesday event. Reservations are required by calling (989) 928-0430 or emailing info@roethkehouse.org. 

Following is an excerpt from her book, a vignette titled “The Rat”:

One mid-winter day, my first-hour science class was working at the counters on an assignment. I looked up from my desk to see a foot-long brown rat ambling down the aisle between the second and third rows. I assumed it had somehow come in from the cold by the poorly insulated, very drafty heat conduits under the windows, finding an opening large enough to allow its wiggling entry. I quietly told my cadet to go get the custodian.

Meanwhile, I calmly (like any good science teacher) told the students that we had a visitor and to remain at their stations. Several gasped, others’ eyes popped open like sewer lids, and all except one remained in place exactly as I had asked. 

This boy was walking toward the rat. I loudly restated that everyone should remain where they were. He, a normally cooperative, nice kid, kept walking toward the rat. I pointed my finger and screamed at him, “Stay where you are!” as I continued to gaze at the rat. He took another step forward. I just could not figure out why this normally congenial boy was being so defiant of my direct order, especially under these unusual circumstances. 

I was about to yell again when I looked at his face. “Oh,” I said, “you two know each other.” He then slinked to the rat noticeably relieved, picked it up, and went to his seat before I sent him to the office. It seems his pet rat had unexpectedly hitched a ride to school in his backpack.

The office secretary later told me that after I had sent him from class to the office that he had stood at her desk opposite her with his hands behind his back. When she questioned him, he told her that Mrs. Hile had “kicked him out” of class. This rather surprised the secretary as I very rarely sent students to the office for discipline, especially one as mild-mannered and nice as this young man. 

When she inquired as to specifically why I had sent him, he plopped the rat on her blotter. Immediately, she understood. I was told that while he waited for his mother to come to retrieve his rat that he sat in the principal’s office with it cozily wrapped around his neck.

There was never a dull moment teaching middle school.

SVSU's "Sylvia" finds a dog outwitted by an actor in three roles

A man and his doting dog (Isaac Wood and Cassidy Morey) in "Sylvia"

review and photos by janet i. martineau

So, the play “Sylvia” is about a dog...one who talks to her owner and he to her in human words,  one who gets really agitated and profane when a cat crosses her path, and one who hates that “roll over” trick command.

And you know what they say about sharing a stage with kids or dogs.

Well, not always.

In the Saginaw Valley State University production of  the A.R. Gurney play, deftly directed by Tommy Wedge and running 7:30pm Wednesday through Friday (Aug. 7-9), watch out for scene-stealer Jordan Stafford in a triple role.

He’s Tom, the streetwise macho man who ain’t gonna neuter his male dog NO WAY....he’s Phyllis, a very pregnant and refined visitor subjected to embarrassing sniffs and mounts via Sylvia...and he’s Leslie, the lisping therapist who takes great pride in making people wonder, male or female?

Stafford NAILS all three personas. Just nails them. In particular playing the he/she? Leslie right down the middle. He has the female walk and talk and sit down pat as Phyllis. And Tom swaggers from one side of the stage to the next, and smiles with cocky pride as his dog and Sylvia get it on (out of view of the audience, but the expressions on Stafford’s face tell the story).

But such praise does not diminish the rest of the cast -- Cassidy Morey as the talking dog, Isaac Wood as Sylvia’s smitten owner Greg, and Lexee Longwell as Greg’s dog-hating wife, Kate.

Greg and Kate have been married 22 years. His career is faltering. Hers on the rise. And when he brings the flea-ridden stray he found in a park home to stay, Kate is not amused (and often refers to Sylvia as saliva). 

Sylvia "rolls over" as Lexee Longwell and Jordan Stafford watch

Morey is wonderfully expressive, and physical, as Sylvia -- her movements just canine enough to convince but not over the top. 

She clings to Greg, pees on the floor, shouts hey hey in place of bark bark, pulls on her leash, rolls over with resignation, defies Kate when it comes to sitting on the couch, snores, and a million other doggie things that will bring smiles to audience members who have dogs.

And let’s face it....we all wonder what our dogs are thinking. Well, in this play Morey answers that question in a myriad of ways with a myriad of voice inflections punctuating Gurney’s words.

Longwell and Wood have the thankless roles as the straight guys to Morey and Stafford.



But they also bring the  “moral of the story” into a sharp and emotional focus.

Gurney’s play is a comedy yes. But it also speaks volumes about relationships, with humans and our canine friends. Greg and Kate evolve as a couple in its two hours, and Longwell and Wood make that totally convincing.

Longwell, Wood and Morey also sing “Everytime We Say Goodbye” as a trio and with the lyrics having different meanings for each. It is one of the emotional highlights.

Added on to that, Gurney has penned a literate play, with references to Shakespeare, Homer and a movie or two that adds to the fun. And it also has much to say about how a pet can help liberate a person.

Great show with great direction and a great cast.

For more pictures from the play: 

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.520391274700242.1073741844.136619663077407&type=1

Workshop writes a collective ode to Theodore Roethke 50 years after his death

Poet Carol Sanford, standing, listens to some of the lines written by a workshop member

Two days before the 50th anniversary of Pulitzer-winning Theodore Roethke's death, an “In a Poet’s Backyard” workshop took place in the back yard of his boyhood home at 1805 Gratiot in Saginaw.

Led by poet Carol Sanford, the 12 participants listened to Sanford read some of Roethke’s nature-driven poems as the child of a greenhouse owner, took in the sights and sounds and smells of the yard and home, and then wrote their own lines evoking him, the atmosphere and their own thoughts.

Sanford took all the writings home and used them to shape the following collective poem.

To Theodore Roethke

by “The Eye Begins to See” Workshop Members

       Roethke Summer Picnic Series/July 30, 2013

1923 – The year your father died

In the foyer of your home you pass boy hands

over stately, polished, dark walnut pillars.

You hide secrets in hallway cupboards

and bend over the stairway railing

to feel the depth and plunge of it.

You lean to touch your forehead on the mirror

above the fireplace mantle.  Whose face?

You read voraciously, randomly

while the family Victrola scratches out music.

Almost fifteen, you take your father’s place

at the table, your mother’s silver and linen before you,

but her soups no longer thick with greenhouse vegetable

gathered from your lost world, your father’s.

You know the dark, dark side of growing things.

1958 – Five years before your death

The high windows of your back porch once looked out

on your father’s glassy fields of flowers.

Even now as you sit writing, their smells linger 

on your pen.  You get up, walk through the house, 

hear the familiar creak of floors.

You think of your boyhood, your Prussian father,

how he did not love you enough. Nor you him.

You still need his impossible praise

for your poems, your prizes, your fame, your life.

2013 – Fifty years after your death

Ted, we understand that you perceived

how the unbeautiful is beautiful: 

White roses hide needles, 

purple orchids thrive in dense, oppressive air.

You studied death while the greenhouse pulsed—

 the dripping panes, the spotted light, 

snow sliding from inclined glass;

saw how weeds entangle and extend us, 

must be pulled today, tomorrow.

We who think of you, who cherish your words,

now feel your quick breath through the backyard fence:

You, the wind that slowly, slowly erodes stone walls.

-- Members of the workshop, and contributors to joint poem: Katelynd Alexander, Mary Ellen Roethke, Maxine Harris, Carol Sanford, Cassidy Johnson, Glenn Sanford, Janet I. Martineau, Nan Spence, Don Nagler, Marion Tincknell, Nancy Nagler, Betty Van Ochten, Annie Ransford.  

For more pictures of the workshop in progress: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.630506343676004.1073741835.319443471448961&type=3

Dow Chemical donates 100 volunteers, funds to upgrade Roethke Home Museum

The boyhood home of Pulitzer-winning poet Theodore Roethke, 1805 Gratiot

story and photos by janet i. martineau

On two days at the end of September, upwards of 100 red-shirted Dow Chemical Company employees will descend on Saginaw’s Theodore Roethke Home Museum to give the property an upgrade inside and out.

Announced today, the DowGives program volunteers will work from 8am to 4:30pm on Thursday and Friday, Sept. 26 and 27, at 1805 Gratiot, where the Pulitzer-winning poet grew up,  and its adjoining property next door at 1759 Gratiot, the home of his Uncle Carl.

Together, Carl and Ted’s father Otto operated a massive greenhouse business in back of the two homes -- glass structures occupying 25 acres and long since torn down but which were featured prominately in Roethke’s nature-rich poetry.

“The Roethke Museum is a National Literary Landmark,” said Dow Chemical spokesman Mike Kolleth, a Saginaw Township resident who is directing his company’s involvement in the DowGives Roethke project. 

 “As such, it is a point of pride for Saginaw and the entire Great Lakes Bay region.  As a member of this community, Dow supports The Friends of Theodore Roethke’s commitment to history, literacy and community outreach. We are pleased that we can play a role to ensure a strong future for this landmark and important community resource.”

The DowGives program, says Kolleth, was established to ensure that Dow’s grant-making and employee volunteer efforts combine to make the greatest possible impact on quality of life for people of the Great Lakes Bay region.

The restoration work, he said, will include significant upgrades to the museum’s electrical system as well as 35 to 40 tasks including interior and exterior painting,  landscaping and general handyman work. And the volunteers will come from all functions within the company.

In addition to organizing the volunteer workers, Kolleth said, the DowGives project includes a grant to help cover materials, supplies and some related upgrade work. 

“Dow’s support is transformational for the museum and the community,” said Annie Ransford, president of the Friends of Theodore Roethke, the non-profit organization which owns and operates the two homes.

Unveiling of an enlargement of the Roethke Forever stamp

“To have Dow and its people involved in the restoration project will enable our group to grow and more effectively fulfill our mission to promote, preserve and protect Roethke’s literary legacy by restoring these family residences for cultural and educational opportunities.”

Literary experts consider Theodore Roethke among the greatest poets of the 20^th Century and his poems are in textbooks and anthologies worldwide.

Former U.S. Poet Laureate James Dickey referred to Roethke as, “The greatest poet our country has ever produced. I don't see anyone else that has the kind of deep, gut vitality that Roethke's got. Whitman was a great poet, but he's no competition for Roethke."

Roethke was born in Saginaw in 1908 and died in 1963, in Seattle where he was teaching at the University of Washington. He was raised in the home that is now the museum, and his sister June Roethke lived there until her death in 1997. 

The Friends of Theodore Roethke obtained the two homes in 1999 and since then have offered summer literacy camps for children, an annual Roethke birthday “party,” a series of “In a Poet’s Backyard” programs featuring workshops, authors and poets, and a variety of special events.

In 2008, the Friends of Theodore Roethke was given an All Area Arts Award by the Saginaw Arts and Enrichment Commission.

Ted Roethke graduated from Arthur Hill High School and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He visited Saginaw frequently throughout his post-graduate years, and sister June typed many of his manuscripts in the family home.

In 1954, Roethke was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for “The Waking,” one of nine books of poetry he penned.  He also won two National Book Awards, in 1959 for “Words for the Wind” and in 1965 for “The Far Field.” 

In 2012, he was one of 10 American poets featured on a United States Postal Service forever stamp sheet, for which a special Saginaw cancellation was created. His poems have been set to music by several award-winning composers, and one his former students penned a play about him, titled  “First Class.” And he was inducted into the Saginaw Hall of Fame several years ago.

Also in 2012, Jeff Vande Zande, a creative writing professor at Delta College, published a novel titled “American Poet.” It takes place in part at the Roethke House and this year was named a Michigan Notable Book -- an annual event during which the Library of Michigan selects and  promotes 20 books celebrating the state’s ethnic, historical, literary and cultural legacy.

The Theodore Roethke Home Museum was awarded National Literary Landmark status in 2004. A Michigan Historic Marker marks its location and the house is included in the National Register of Historic Sites. Earlier this year the City of Saginaw declared May 25^th Theodore Roethke Day to mark the poet’s birth date.

Kolleth, also the Friends of Theodore Roethke vice president, has  issued an invitation for residents of Saginaw to join the DowGives volunteers on Sept. 26-27.

“There is plenty of work to go around those two days. Just let us know what skills you can lend. Call the museum at (989) 928 0430 or email us at RoethkeMuseum@yahoo.com.”

Other recent DowGives projects have included a baseball field in Hemlock, an outdoor activities court at the Midland Salvation Army, a sheltered picnic area at the Bay City State Recreation Area, and multipurpose area at Midland’s ROCK Youth Center.

The Friends web site is  www.RoethkeHouse.org. It is also on Facebook (Friends of Theodore Roethke) and Twitter @RoethkeFriends.

SVSU's "Route 66" musical is one fun, fun, fun road trip

From left, Logan Hahn, Dave Ryan,  Zach Bauer and Blake Mazur in "Route 66"

review and photos by janet i. martineau

Cowboys, cars, cows, cops and crotchety old women -- the four-member male cast of Saginaw Valley State University’s “Route 66” plays ‘em all.

They also, in 90 minutes, take a bus ride, pack in more songs and sight gags per square inch than seems possible, play a guitar, don a BIG hat, serve coffee as a waitress, dance, lick a lollipop, and expend more energy than Consumers Energy on a hot day.

Running  through Sunday (July 21), “Route 66” pays homage to the famed historic highway by serving up 32 road-themed songs from the 1940s to the 1960s as we take a quick trip from Chicago to Los Angeles. 

What writer/creator Roger Bean does not do with the song selections and continuity, director Ric Roberts fills in with everything else. This is a tight, fast-running, detail-driven show that fires on all cylinders -- even adding a graphic tribute to an iconic Saginaw road, a radio dial that plays ads from the era (Chevrolet and the Edsel among them), and a ton of glitter in the Jerry Dennis set with a road divider strip dpwn its middle.

Thankfully, too, the cast is more than up to the demands made of it -- Zach Bauer, Logan Hahn, Blake Mazur and Dave Ryan. Collectively the four blend wonderful harmonies, hit the highest of high notes and some low ones, serve up a cascade of hilarious varying expressions (menacing trucks, cows, women young and old, cops and more), brave an a cappella song, dance smoothly and loik ike they are having “Fun, Fun, Fun.”

No way can we single out one more than the others because this is truely an ensemble piece. And it is expressions on these guys that sell the show more than anything else.

Baby Boomers are gonna LOVE this show too for its parade of “slippery hillbilly” songs of the era. My goodness, the odes sung to cars in those days and the chatter coming out of radio stations.

Stand outs in the show -- numerous ones, among them “Beep Beep,” “Dead Man’s Curve,” “Girl on the Billboard,” “Mother Road.”

Strong support too from the hidden band of Janna Kern on keyboards, Bill Portman on bass, Steve Nyquist on percussion and Joe Balbaugh on guitar.

Nuf said. Go explore it for yourself and savor all the treats it serves up. Perfect summer show. Runs 7:30pm Tuesday through Saturday and 3pm Sunday. Gonna be a sellout.

For more pictures see https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.510762568996446.1073741841.136619663077407&type=3

Midland's Dow Gardens hosting 100 pieces of sculpture from Zimbabwe

story and photos by janet i. martineau

Vivienne Croisette and some of the smaller sculptures

A ballerina in an arabesque pose lies prone on the grass, next to a babbling brook.

An owl cocks its head sideways, as if to wonder who you are invading its thicket home.

And a mother clutches her daughter as they stand on a hill overlooking a forest.

All of them carved out of serpentine stone, in a far away tropical land called Zimbabwe, making their home through Aug. 4 with 100 other pieces in Midland’s 110-acre Dow Gardens, in what is one of the most unusual and must-see sculpture exhibitions to ever visit the Great Lakes Bay Region.

Said a Newsweek article, “Zimbabwean sculpture is perhaps the most important art form to emerge from Africa in this century.” 

And with the show in Dow Gardens are two artists from that nation, demonstrating their craft seven days a week. (Dow Gardens, 1809 Eastman Ave., is open 9am to 8:30pm daily. And if you have mobility problems, check the ending of this story.)

How the sculptures, some weighing up to a ton, and the two men got to Midland is a story 13 years in the making, when a British woman with `an art  promotion background was invited to Zimbabwe “to see if I could help promote their art and introduce it to the world. I was supposed to be there three weeks.”

Now Vivienne Croisette lives in a suburb of that country’s capital city of 1.2 million with her French husband Joseph and son Emile, 4, and devotes her entire life to Zimbabwean sculpture. “I am there for life unless I get kicked out.

“My husband and I  spend six months in Zimbabwe (which translates to great stone house) looking for pieces -- just about every day I go in one direction and he in another -- and then we spend six months touring it,” says Croisette in her British accent, which quickly turns to French when her husband appears on the scene.

A ballerina in serpentine stone

It is she visitors will likely meet in the Dow Gardens gift shop, selling smaller and more affordable pieces than the also-for-sale ones spread throughout the grounds outside with prices that can go past $1,000. 

Midland is one of only two stops in the U.S. this year; the first being the Naples Botanical Garden in Florida.  

From Midland  the show heads to the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, Ont. 

It also has visited the Chelsea Flower Show in London. Plans are in the works for the Shanghai Botanical Garden in China. 

And among the buyers of pieces are places like MOMA in New York and the Rodin in Paris ... .which means Midland is traveling in impressive company.

Croisette says she prefers a garden-like setting for the show, “because the stone is a natural product, and it just looks better in a garden environment with flowers,” so Midland was a natural when she learned about it during their Florida venue. Each stop is a six-week stay, given the massive installation process at  each venue -- a process her husband oversees.

Back home the couple works with 200 artists, some of them now fifth generations of family stone carvers working in a variety of serpentine  mined in that nation with a land mass slightly larger than Montana.

“We buy pieces from carvers  who are 80 and 90 and young ones 14 to 16. Each year we always try to find new artists as well as ones we have worked with for years.”

One of abstract works

She then relates a story of a young man who sought her out and begged her to come see his pieces -- in what turned out a “four-hour drive to the middle of nowhere on a mostly dirt one-track road.”

The more she drove the angrier she got that she was talked into this trip, which would include traveling in darkness. “He kept telling me, ‘You will sell every piece.’”

And she has of his giraffe forms, “some of the most beautiful things I had seen in a long time. I bought the whole lot.”

What is interesting about this traveling show is that it comes at virtually  no cost to Midland. The Croisettes buy the pieces from the artists in Zimbabwe and then live off the sales they make of the pieces at each stop, through the Internet, and to museums and collectors. 

The touring works travel in two 40-foot trucks -- and each of them, no matter how large, is carved from a single piece of stone.

“At the end of the day we can do this because we have no overhead costs and we are not out to make a massive profit. We are in this to make people aware of this art form and the Zimbabwean culture.”

It is, she says, a struggling culture with 80 percent unemployment, with a life expectancy of but the mid-30s due to AIÎS/HIV and poor health care, ruled by a dictator,  but whose 13 million citizens are  kind  and welcoming.

The  country also mines granite, platinum, gold and diamonds in addition to the serpentine artistry and tourism that includes Victoria Falls.

As for the mobility challenged who would like to view the Dow Gardens installation, there are two options. At 12:45pm Monday through Friday, a five-passenger vehicle makes the rounds and the gardens also has three wheelchairs and four Amigos.  Reservations are advised, at a cost of $5, by calling 989-631-2677.

Admission to the gardens  is $5 for adults and $1 for students ages 6-17; free for 5 and under. 

For more pictures of the pieces in Midland: 

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.505226459550057.1073741839.136619663077407&type=3