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Storytelling and Music for Adults

Storytellers Josie Barnes Parker and Laura Pershin Raynor are joined by musicians Betsy Beckerman and Sara Melton Keller for an evening of funny and touching tales and tunes.

By sharing stories of personal experiences, Josie and Laura explore universal themes, while Sara and Betsy mix it up with hammer dulcimer, guitar and banjo tunes.

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Annabelle Gurwitch Discusses Her New Book 'I See You Made An Effort: Compliments, Indignities, and Survival Stories from the Edge of 50'

Actress/comedienne/author Annabelle Gurwitch gained a loyal comedic following during her years hosting Dinner & A Movie on TBS. She has been a regular commentator on NPR and contributor to The Nation, More, Glamour, Marie Claire and a number of other national publications. Gurwitch is also the author of You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up which is now a play receiving its third national tour, and which became an acclaimed documentary and Showtime Comedy Special.

Every 7.5 seconds, someone in America turns 50. While some people like to say that “50 is the new 40,” Annabelle Gurwitch believes “50 is still F-ing 50.” In her wickedly funny new collection of essays, I See You Made an Effort, Gurwitch explores the hazards of reaching the half-century mark, aging out of your wardrobe, outsourcing your endocrine system, and falling in lust at the Genius bar. From the woman the Washington Post calls “hilarious,” this new book is the ultimate coming-of-middle-age story.

This event was co-sponsored by the AADL and the Jewish Community Center of Greater Ann Arbor a part of the 2014 Jewish Book Festival.

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Jump Cuts: A Tisket A Tasket

AADL storyteller Miss Laura leads a story time group in a lullaby sing-a-long to help her fuzzy friends Puppy, Kitty, Mouse, and Chick settle down for a cozy nap in their basket.

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Jump Cuts: Teddy Bear

AADL storyteller Miss Laura tells a story about getting a teddy bear. She demonstrates the proper care and feeding one must give a stuffed animal friend, including sharing snacks, playing ball, and of course, giving plenty of snuggles!

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Jump Cuts: Hello, Hello

Listen to AADL storyteller Miss Rachel and story musician Sara M. Keller sing their welcoming Hello, Hello song, and learn how friends greet one another in different languages and cultures all around the world.

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Show & Tell for Grownups

Do you have a special item at home that you would like to share with others? Something that has a particular story that is meaningful to you – or something that reveals a bit about Ann Arbor’s past? We all remember bringing a treasured possession to school and telling our friends why we love it so much. As adults, we have many more treasures today. Consider a photo or letter, a family heirloom, an object from a job or trip, an ancient artifact, a work of art, new or old, that has meaning to you. It’s the story that counts.

Each participant for this event took five minutes to tell the story behind the object. There’s no reading or performing; this is amateur storytelling.

Show & Tell events for adults are sweeping the nation, with recent publicity of the trend in the Wall Street Journal. Described as The Moth Radio Hour meets Antiques Roadshow, these events focus on connecting people through their personal histories.

The local organizers—Janet Ogle-Mater, Chuck Newman, and Stephanie Kadel Taras—are members of the Association of Personal Historians, which promotes Show & Tells in May to celebrate Personal History Awareness Month. Dozens of communities in the U.S., Canada, and Australia hosted Show & Tell events for grown-ups in May.

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The Storytellers of AADL - Amanda

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11th Annual Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads Event: Connie Rice

This 11th annual event focuses on the 2013 Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads book selection "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness" by Michelle Alexander and will also explore this year's theme 'Understanding Race.' The Keynote Speaker will be one of America's most influential civil rights attorneys - Connie Rice, Co-Director for the Advancement Project, Los Angeles, and renowned for her unconventional approaches to tackling problems of inequity and exclusion. California Law Business Journal twice designated Connie Rice as one of the top ten most influential attorneys in California. She is a civil rights lawyer who engineers systemic fixes to entrenched inequality and injustice.Through impact litigation, campaigns and inside bureaucratic maneuvering, Connie Rice has led coalitions and clients to win more than $30 billion in damages, bonds and policy changes. Bus riders, death row inmates, folks abused by police, school kids, whistleblowers, cops and sufferers of every stripe of discrimination, (sex, race, disability, age) have sought her counsel. But so have her opponents, like the Los Angeles Police Department she sued for 15 years but which now reserves a parking space for her at their new headquarters.Connie grew up all over the world in an Air Force family headed by her parents Anna, a biology teacher, and Phillip, a pilot and Colonel. She graduated from Harvard-Radcliffe colleges in 1978, achieved her black belt in Tae Kwon Do in 1981 and entered New York University School of Law on a Root Tilden Scholarship. In law school she worked extensively on capital punishment cases at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and after graduating from law school in 1984, she clerked for the Honorable Damon J. Keith at the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit for two years before winging it west to California where she joined the law firm of Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco. She rejoined the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 1989 as Western Regional Counsel, won several landmark cases and in the words of one magazine, established herself as "the voice of Los Angeles' oppressed." Together with Co-Directors Molly Munger, Penda Hair and Steve English, Connie launched The Advancement Project, a policy action and technology organization in 1998, and in the words of Los Angeles Magazine, "picked up where Clarence Darrow left off." Connie serves on the board of public radio station KPCC and as chief of staff to Sinbad, her jet black cat.This is a key event for the 2013 Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads program, which this year focuses on the theme of "Understanding Race."

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Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads & MLK Day Event: Professor Roy E. Finkenbine: Searching for Jordan Anderson: A Personal Journey Into Race And Slavery In America

Jordan Anderson, an African-American who moved to Ohio when he was freed from slavery in 1864, is famous for his "Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master," addressed in response to a request from his former master that Jordan return to help restore the farm after the Civil War. The letter became an immediate media sensation with reprints in the New York Daily Tribune and other publications and has been described as a rare example of documented "slave humor" of the period - its deadpan style compared to the writing of Mark Twain.In the famous letter, Anderson asks his former master to prove his goodwill by paying the back wages he and his wife are owed for 52 years combined of slave labor and asks if his daughters will be safe and able to have an education, since Jordan would rather die "than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. He concludes with, "Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me."Professor Roy E Finkenbine, Chair of History at Detroit Mercy College, is a specialist on slavery, abolition, and the Underground Railroad, and is writing a biography on Anderson and the famous letter. Join us on MLK Day as Dr. Finkenbine discusses his search for information about Anderson's fascinating life and the history of the famous letter. He will also share his personal experiences involving the heritage of race and slavery in America while on this research journey.Dr. Finkenbine co-edited the five-volume "Black Abolitionist Papers, 1830-1865" and "Witness for Freedom: African American Voices on Race, Slavery, and Emancipation." He recently completed a second edition of "Sources Of The African American Past" and was appointed to the Michigan Freedom Trail Commission. This event is held in conjunction with Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads 2013. This year's Reads' theme is 'Understanding Race.'

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KRC 2012: Neil Kaplan storytime!

Voice actor Neil Kaplan will do a special Winnie the Pooh story! Neil is the voice behind characters from Transformers, Digimon, Power Rangers, StarCraft, and more.