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Spartan Newsroom (https://news.jrn.msu.edu/category/news/page/2/)
Michigan State’s Abrams Planetarium ensures students can always see a sky full of stars, even on a cloudy day, with magic around every corner. Hosting several events in the first week of February,this planetarium was quite a busy place.
“We have a lot of events that we do, we do birthday parties and we’ve had people’s weddings here and proposals and stuff like that, so it’s great,” said Kylie Hunter, a third-year student studying environmental geography and a cashier at the Planetarium. “We see more and more numbers, after COVID we took a hit so we’re happy to have all these different events and many people coming in.”
The University Activities Board also hosts its annual “Painting at the Planetarium” event, allowing students to take a break and paint their own night sky.
Picture credits: Instagram, @uabatmsu
“This event is essentially just a session to watch a star show and paint,” said Simran Sompore, the outreach and inclusion coordinator at UAB. It’s a great way for people to learn more about the Abrams Planetarium, engage students in astronomy, and bring the culture together.”
The planetarium hosts several different shows. Each lasts approximately 30 minutes and is followed by a 30-minute live presentation of the current evening sky.
“The shows are pretty popular, sometimes we fill out and hit our max [180 seats] and have to stop selling tickets, those are good nights,” Hunter said.
High Caliber Karting and Entertainment has been a leading force in the entertainment business regarding accessibility with the implementation of their ‘Handicapable’ go-kart.
Kensington Metropark in southeast Michigan is home to friendly songbirds attracting wildlife photographers, families and nature lovers. Songbirds at Kensington Metropark have grown accustomed to people and will fly down from the trees to eat out of guests’ hands.
Over the last two years, a concerning pattern has emerged in college towns like East Lansing and across the country: an unrelenting increase in rent prices. Worries about the community’s overall economic well-being have been heightened as price increases have made it difficult for many residents and students to obtain affordable housing.
Among Lansing’s 112,700 residents, it may seem easy for the 515 individuals without a place to stay for the night to go unnoticed, especially when only 90 miles away in metro Detroit about 1,500 people will go without permanent residence on any given night. But recently, local shelters have noted that people have been traveling from outside of the city, and even out of the state, to find shelter in Lansing.
Two new projects have been approved by the City Council that could change traffic patterns for many in the Greater Lansing area. The projects mainly focus on Trowbridge and Hagadorn roads and switching them from four-lane to three-lane roads, with improved crosswalks and biking lanes.
When Beech Woods Golf Course closed in 2019, many ideas were pitched to the city of Southfield during the public input survey on how to repurpose the greenspace. Some ideas included an amphitheater and splash pad, but one common consensus persisted. In November of 2023, a partnership was approved through Oakland County’s Healthy Communities Park and Outdoor Recreation Investment Plan to redevelop the golf course into the latest Oakland County park, to be named Southfield Oaks.
In October 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, 23-year-old Alexa Hecksel officially opened Clean Refillery. Clean Refillery, located in Lansing, is an eco-friendly, “low-waste” personal products store, where people can both refill products such as laundry detergent and shampoo and recycle their frequently purchased bottles and containers.
Throughout history, we’ve seen a number of secret societies that bring people together to strive towards a common goal amongst them. These groups have taken many shapes and many forms, some more maniacal than others, and some just downright comedic. Lansing is home to just one of the comedic groups, a “coven” of film lovers that enjoy getting together and putting on a little horror flick showing called Quality Scary, a monthly live comedy show and film screening series hosted by Lansing and Grand Rapids locals Emily Syrja, who goes by they/them pronouns, (they/them) and Sarah Jean Anderson.