“O say can you see” takes on a whole new meaning at the Gerald R. Ford Library’s Banner Moments: The National Anthem in American Life.

Part of the presidential libraries system of the National Archives and Records Administration, the Ford Library collects, preserves, and makes accessible a rich body of archival materials focusing on the Ford presidential administration. The Library also hosts a series of temporary exhibits that focus on American history.

This exhibit -- curated and organized by University of Michigan musicologist Mark Clague and Bettina Cousineau, exhibit specialist at the Ford Library and Ford Museum -- traces the 200-year history of America’s national anthem through 10 interpretive panels and four display cases filled with historical documents.

And what a busy 200 years it has been.

In a recent interview, music professor Clague dispelled a number of common myths about the anthem as well as a clarification of the anthem’s place in American history.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #640

Winner of the prestigious Prix Renaudot in 1988 and available for the first time in English (translated from the French by Kaiama L. Glover), Hadriana in All My Dreams * * * by Rene Depestre, combines magic, fantasy, eroticism, and delirious humor to explore universal questions of race and sexuality.

The resistance wears elf ears.

At least, it does in Joseph Zettelmaier’s Renaissance Man, now having its world premiere via Penny Seats Theatre.

A riff on Macbeth and staged outdoors -- at West Park, in front of the band shell -- Renaissance tells the story of behind-the-scenes unrest at a fictional Renaissance festival called Gloriana. Longtime knight Martin Mackabee (Patrick Loos) and art school dropout/face painter Emma Murtz (Kelly Rose Voigt) connect partly through their shared frustration that the fair is not more historically accurate, and bristle against the inclusion of anachronisms like drench-a-wench, elves, leather corset vendors, gypsy fortunetellers, and turkey legs. Gloriana’s benevolent, permissive “king,” Chuck Duncan (Robert Schorr), earns the pair’s scorn, and Emma takes action, entrapping Chuck so that he must resign from Gloriana.

Artists have a long history of transforming pain (communal or personal) into something beautiful -- and right now, no one does that better than celebrated roots musician Rhiannon Giddens, who played an Ann Arbor Summer Festival main stage show at the Power Center on Wednesday night.

Giddens, who first drew mainstream attention as a member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and now appears on the TV drama Nashville, opened Wednesday’s two-hour set with her haunting take on Bob Dylan’s “Spanish Mary,” during which Giddens’ gorgeous vocal storytelling countered the song’s heavy, thumping drumbeat; and “The Love We Almost Had,” a jaunty chronicle of longing and regret that Giddens concluded with some grade-A scatting.

Ann Arbor-based cartoonist Carolyn Nowak may have reached a larger audience with her work in 2015 on the critically acclaimed and award-winning comic series Lumberjanes, but it’s her funny, introspective self-published comics, such as Lazy and Girl Town, where Nowak truly shines.

Last year, one of those works, Radishes, received the Ignatz Award (named for the character in George Herriman’s classic Krazy Kat comic strip) at the Small Press Expo for Outstanding Minicomic, and Nowak herself was nominated for Promising New Talent. Radishes was a shift for Nowak into fantasy comics and tells the story of two teenagers, Kelly and Beth, who play hooky from school to visit a wondrous market filled with mysterious shops and a tiger hairstylist. Nowak’s follow-up from late last year, Diana’s Electric Tongue, is set in a futuristic society where people purchase androids for companionship, is her most mature work to date, and possibly her best.

Nowak will be joining over 50 other comic creators who are displaying, selling, and signing their work on Artist’s Alley at this weekend’s Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival (A2CAF). The A2CAF is a free event starting on Friday, June 17, and running through Sunday, June 19, at the Ann Arbor District Library's downtown branch. Nowak partnered with AADL to create the all-ages comic Chad Agamemnon for the recent Free Comic Book Day, and you'll also be able to get a gratis copy at A2CAF.

Nowak was kind enough to answer a few questions via e-mail for Pulp ahead of the festival.

Like many illustrators, Jarrett J. Krosoczka set course on making his dreams come true at a very young age. His maternal grandparents, who had been raising Krosoczka since he was three, saw a desire in him to create, so they enrolled him in art classes at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. In elementary school he wrote his first books, and as he got older his work began to be influenced by comic books, leading to him writing a comic strip for the school newspaper, and eventually being accepted to the Rhode Island School of Design after graduation.

While still working on his degree at RISD, Krosoczka started submitting picture books to publishers, and after two years of rejection letters, Random House published Good Night, Monkey Boy in 2001. Over the past 16 years, Krosoczka has published numerous picture books, created the Lunch Lady and Platypus Police Squad comic series, and was recently tapped to replace Jeffrey Brown on Star Wars: Jedi Academy with his second book in that series, The Force Oversleeps, set to be released next month.

Krosoczka’s plate always seems to be full, but he still finds time to visit schools to promote literacy and creativity. He has also established the School Lunch Hero Day, which annually asks students to recognize the work done by their school’s nutrition staff, and the Platypus Police Academy, a community read-aloud program for police officers at their local libraries.

As the keynote presenter for this weekend’s Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival (A2CAF) at the Ann Arbor District Library downtown, Krosoczka will continue to be busy. On Saturday, June 17, from 3-4 pm he’ll demonstrate his story-making process, followed by a Lunch Lady event and signing. On Sunday, June 18, he’ll be making an appearance from 12:30-1:30 pm at Vault of Midnight on Main Street, and will have a signing later at 4 pm at the downtown library.

Krosoczka was nice enough to answer some questions via e-mail for Pulp before this weekend’s A2CAF.

Unicorn should be a verb. As a verb, this would be what you do when you project all sorts of magical qualities onto somebody else. But I recently read an essay called “Samantha Irby Needs to Talk About Some Sh*t” and I was hooked. We’re talking immediate Google stalking. That’s how I knew that I could -- despite the title of her new release, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life -- meet her in real life. On Tuesday, June 13, Irby and Buzzfeed culture writer/essayist Scaachi Koul appeared at Literati where they read selections from their books and answered questions to a full house. I really, really tried not to unicorn them.

If you’re at a concert, and during the course of the evening, one of the performers says, “That last song was in Turkish, and this next song is in Armenian,” it’s a pretty sure bet you’re seeing world music super-group Pink Martini. (Lucky you!)

A sold-out crowd packed the Power Center on Tuesday night to see the 11-member, Oregon-based band, which filled the second slot in this year’s Ann Arbor Summer Festival main stage season after Diana Krall kicked things off last week.

In March of this year, University of Michigan’s Stamps School of Art and Design opened the Stamps Gallery on the first floor of the McKinley Towne Centre, 201 S. Division. The new space offers an accessible art-viewing experience in downtown Ann Arbor and features large glass windows, which particularly impacted my viewing of the sculptural works on display by Anne Mondro as part of Reach: A Stamps Faculty Exhibition.

Her hanging sculptures, intricately constructed from tiny copper, silver, and bronze wires, represent various human hearts and anterior organs. Three hearts hang austerely in a row in the front of the gallery, which immediately drew my interest. I visited in the evening, on a sunny day, a perfect time to catch these sculptures illuminated by the setting sun.

Penny Seats Theatre Company's The Renaissance Man is a lot of fun, but that’s to be expected. After all, this is a play about a Renaissance festival, with actors traipsing about Ann Arbor's West Park dressed as pirate knights and gypsy elves. And if you’ve ever seen any Penny Seats show, you know before reading this that you’re in for a good time.

“First and foremost, I want people to walk away having had fun,” said Joseph Zettelmaier, playwright and director of The Renaissance Man, which is a modern comedy based on Macbeth. “I said from the jump that I want people to watch the play, and even if a Renaissance faire isn't their thing, I want them to get why people would want to do it. There are other themes throughout, but I'd rather people see it and decide what they are for themselves.”

What comes as a bit of a surprise, though, is that The Renaissance Man is overtly a play about the importance of fun. It bounces nimbly between wit and philosophy, but that fun is tempered just a touch by something more melancholy and far more beautiful. (Full disclosure: I have worked with the Penny Seats on its past couple of shows, including The Renaissance Man, in minor capacities.)