Between the Lines: Boldly Trekking

by Zinta Aistars
for WMUK 102.1 FM
Southwest Michigan's NPR affiliate



Between the Lines is my weekly radio show about books and writers with a Michigan connection. It airs every Tuesday at 7:50 a.m., 11:55 a.m., and 4:20 p.m. (or listen anytime online), on WMUK 102.1 FM, Southwest Michigan's NPR affiliate. I am the host of Between the Lines.

This week's guest: Rick Chambers

CREDIT CAWLEY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY/RETRO FILM STUDIOS

Rick Chambers has boldly gone on to new frontiers. A communications professional, journalist and novelist in Kalamazoo, he happily adds "Trekkie" to his list of achievements. Memories of watching Star Trek as a four-year-old are still vivid in his mind, drawn to the cast of characters in the show even as he shivered in delicious fear at their grand adventures and a parade of alien creatures.

Since 2011, Chambers has written several scripts for Star Trek: New Voyages, the ongoing Web-based continuation of the TV series that originally aired on NBC-TV from 1966 to 1969. Chambers says it’s a childhood dream come true.

“Star Trek encouraged me to play games in the back yard,” he recalls. “Running around with communicators made out of cardboard and masking tape and in uniforms and such. As I got a little older, I started writing these adventures. So it’s really at the heart of helping to create me as a writer.”

With skills that improved over the years, Chambers jumped at the chance to ...

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Z at WMUK recording Between the Lines

Kalamazoo connections create Principle Food & Drink

by Zinta Aistars
Published in Southwest Michigan's Second Wave Media
July 9, 2015





A team with lots of Kalamazoo connections is betting the success of Salt of the Earth can be repeated by following their principles. That's the theory behind Principle Food & Beverage. 

Matt Pietsch, left, and Jeff  Bailey (Photo by Susan Andress)

They’ve been plotting it for years, eyes on Kalamazoo. 

"The day after Salt of the Earth opened, I was thinking about where we would go next, what happens next," Matthew Pietsch says. "It’s how my brain works."

When Salt of the Earth, a rustic eatery and bakery at 114 East Main Street of small town Fennville opened in 2009, Pietsch was the new executive chef. It happened this way. Walking down Main Street, he slipped his resume into the mail slot of what appeared to be the door of an empty building. But one can dream, and dream he did.

On the other side of the mail slot, a building owner looked over the resume. Pietsch had impressive culinary experience. A graduate of the Grand Rapids Community College culinary arts program, he apprenticed with the U.S. National Pastry Team in 2004 and later worked as an executive pastry chef. In Dearborn, he ran the Opus One kitchen and managed their corporate food service for Ford Advertising. He worked alongside Michael Symon, the well-known chef from the television shows The Chew and Iron Chef, at Symon’s upscale steakhouse, Roast, in Detroit. 

Pietsch soon became one of the owners of Salt of the Earth. The eatery quickly gained attention, drawing in hungry guests from all over West Michigan and beyond. 

Always fresh, minimally handled but expertly prepared, the Salt menu drew in guests with an appreciation for a quality dining experience. Ingredients are, whenever possible, locally sourced and sustainably produced, if not indeed just harvested from the garden outside the back door of the restaurant. 

It wasn’t so much that the owners chose Kalamazoo for a second eatery, Pietsch says. "Kalamazoo chose us. We all have close connections to Kalamazoo, and we were really excited when this space opened up."

The owners, now a group including, along with Pietsch, Robert Nicol, Mark Schrock, and Casey Longton, welcomed new shareholders Nancy and Doug Knobloch, former owners of Garden Gate Cafe, a sandwich and cupcake shop that had occupied 230 South Kalamazoo Mall since 2012. The Knoblochs closed the Garden Gate Cafe in January. Their son is Casey Langton, general manager at Salt of the Earth and one of the owners. 

"It’s exciting to come back to my roots," Longton says. He stops for a moment in what is an almost finished kitchen at the new space. The sign on the doors of 230 South Kalamazoo Mall now reads: Principle Food & Drink. Coming soon.

The long, narrow room smells of freshly cut wood, varnish, paint. Where there was a glass case of cupcakes now stands a ....


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Read about this sign at Second Wave (Photo by Susan Andress)

Between the Lines: Art of Altered Books

by Zinta Aistars
for WMUK 102.1 FM
Southwest Michigan's NPR affiliate



Between the Lines is my weekly radio show about books and writers with a Michigan connection. It airs every Tuesday at 7:50 a.m., 11:55 a.m., and 4:20 p.m. (or listen anytime online), on WMUK 102.1 FM, Southwest Michigan's NPR affiliate. I am the host of Between the Lines.

This week's guest: Katie Platte and Lorrie Grainger Abdo

Lorrie Grainger Abdo, left, and Katie Platte, right, holding altered books

As children, we're taught to treat books with respect. Don’t write in the margins. Don’t fold down the corners of pages. Don’t break the spines. But what about altering a book into another form of art?

Retired books get a new life in an art exhibit called Altered Books—Altered Worlds at the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center, 326 W. Kalamazoo Avenue, in the Park Trades Center building. The exhibit runs concurrently with Adaptation: Transforming Books into Art at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art. Both exhibits are open to the public through July 31.

“The exhibit at KBAC shows more local artists, emerging as well as established,” says Katie Platte, KBAC's studio manager. “Whereas the Kalamazoo Institute of Art is showing the work of internationally known artists.”

Lorrie Grainger Abdo, KBAC's administrative director as well as participating artist, says the term "altered book" refers to an old book recreated by adding mixed media techniques and changing its form. These transformed books burst at the seams with added fabrics, collages, buttons and beads, drawings, and paintings. Ribbons curl from between pages and new pages fold out from their tucked-in places. Pop-ups and pockets might be add, holding treasure. Pages might be singed or cut or drilled or torn. No rules apply.

“Some of the books are the creations of individual artists,” says Grainger Abdo. “Others are round-robin books, and they're passed from one artist to another, with each artist adding to a few pages before passing the book on to the next person.”

Yet others have ...

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