Chief Mashipinashiwish (= Bad Bird) of the Potawatomis in 1821 (Treaty of Chicago) and in 1832 (Treaty with the Potawatomi) ceded the land to the US on which Kekalamazoo, later called Kalamazoo, of course, was to be founded. The town was incorporated in 1838 - just as the Potawatomi were beginning the forced, terrible Trail of Death from northern Indiana to the Far West, which killed so many of them; the Potawatomi of Kalamazoo followed in 1840. The town soon became an important Michigan city. Western Michigan University was established here in 1903 by Dwight Waldo, at first as a 'normal' or Teachers College. It quickly grew into a major institution of higher learning. Annually each May, the University for three days hosts the International Congress of Medieval Studies (since 1962) which today draws around 3000 medieval scholars from all over the world. It sells coffee mugs to convince colleagues that they've been on more than a lark; they bear the motto: "Yes! there really is a Kalamazoo". The campus is a hospitable place with pleasant ponds (and swans), large expanses of lawn and meadow, grasslands and woods in the shade of which grow thousands of trilliums. The flowering shrubs and trees in Spring are a delight to behold - although in some years whitened by a sudden snowstorm even in early May. This year the temperatures were pleasant for lecturing, the crabapples in full blossom, and the sky as blue as can be; and in the distance the red-winged blackbird could be heard, trilling its high song. And yes, I gave a paper, too, on travel to the Orient in the fifteenth century.

Allegedly, coffee gives you wiiiings... and insomnia too! © 2010 Florencia Saluzzo. All rights reserved. My work may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted or uploaded in any way without my permission.