Chadwick “Niles” Phillips is a multi-talented artist and educator hailing from Lansing who made an impression in the music industry after moving to New York City and eventually Minneapolis. Now, he’s returning, albeit virtually, to help educate Lansing youth using lessons he’s learned as a hip-hop musician. more

Gage Cannabis Co. opened on Lansing’s southside in May — right in the middle of what Lansing Facts lovingly refers to as the “world’s premier fast food architectural preserve.” more

The Lansing area is home to a small number of local rock legends, one of those is the late Gordy Garris, who died Feb. 5 at age 71. more

COVID-19 stifled the Michigan State University Theatre Department’s ability to offer live shows, but the pandemic has not muted student creativity. The “Audio Anthology” collection, available at theatre.msu.edu/dei_audio/, demonstrates how the department is continuing to create imaginative projects during restricted times. more

Dissecting a frog, making a potato clock, building baking soda volcanoes. Hands-on learning is key to a memorable education in STEM. In a school year where most kids were stuck in a virtual learning environment, students missed out on valuable educational experiences  more

Tom Springer’s new book, “The Star in the Sycamore,” was 12 years in the making, but it was worth the wait. It’s been a long time in writer years since Springer’s first book, “Looking for Hickories: The Forgotten Wildness of the Rural Midwest,” introduced his views on the natural world. more

Champions Sports Bar & Grill, a local favorite joint operating out of Holt for the past 20 years, is permanently closing its doors. Champions joins a long list of restaurants that have shuttered since 2020.  more

Fat Tuesday is near — that means it’s time to prepare for one of Lansing’s favorite winter traditions: consuming boatloads of paczkis. more

Valentine’s Day might be tricky to celebrate this year thanks to the coronavirus. It will be like we’re all in long-distance relationships. But we can always revisit fond memories that make us either blush, laugh or — if they were awkward — cringe. more

Veterinarian Ron Erskine knows a good story when he hears it. His second book, “Prometheus Scorned,” which features hero Malcolm Cromarty, weaves a complex tale involving greed, an arsonist and the Pennsylvania Amish community. more

At this point, it’s still too early to tell when live music will return and music venues will revive. With that in mind, Turn it Down! will be checking in with local musicians to see what they’re doing to keep active during the pandemic. The first of this series features local folk troubadour Monte Pride. more

After years of dormancy following the closure of its storefront in 2017, the East Lansing Food Co-op is working to finalize plans to return this summer as part of the Allen Neighborhood Center. The project, tentatively titled the Eastside Lansing Food Co-Op, will see the co-op return later this year as a functioning grocery store.  more

The Eastside Lansing Food Co-op, ELFCO, is re-opening in the Allen Neighborhood Center. more

Aside from a small batch of limited-run singles, Plain Brown Wrapper is now cemented deep within Lansing’s murky ’60s and ‘70s rock folklore. more

Nearly 40 years later, Michael Burton, the first African-American to design automobiles for Ford, Chrysler and GM, was star of a high-end Buick Enclave TV spot, at the peak of his power as an artist, industrial designer and suave screen presence. more

James Defrees started 517 Coffee Co. in his basement about seven years ago. He only had six hundred bucks to get from those humble beginnings, and he established himself as a wholesaler — selling his beans at multiple locations across Lansing. more

Michigan State University’s Dr. William G. Anderson lecture series From Slavery to Freedom returns for its 21st year with a lineup of virtual speeches, featuring filmmaker Dr. Monique Morris, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors and Cornel West, associate professor of public philosophy at Harvard Univerity and professor emeritus at Princeton University.  more

Why is there a Black History Month?   One answer is found in a study of Detroit newspapers.   more

When Lansing musician Ozay Moore formed the All of the Above Hip Hop Academy, he wanted to create a learning center for youth to absorb all of the rich cultural teachings hip-hop has to offer. More than a decade later, he’s helped build one of Lansing’s most unique nonprofit youth extracurricular programs, where Lansing students learn to express themselves positively through rhyming, breakdancing and beat production.  more

Just past midnight on Jan. 30, Lansing and beyond lost a theater icon. Rosalyn Carmen Decker, a gifted actress who always deserved a spotlight but never sought one outside the stage, died at Sparrow Hospital from pneumonia. more