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AADL Talks To: Dianne Baker, Songwriter and Co-Author of "This Is The Town That Was," an Original Musical Written for Ann Arbor's Sesquicentennial in 1974
In this episode, AADL Talks To Dianne Baker. Dianne is a prolific songwriter who began writing children’s songs in the 1960s after coming to the University of Michigan to attend nursing school. She has collaborated with teachers, educators, and health professionals and has been recognized nationally for her commitment to the therapeutic effects of music. Baker has performed at Hill Auditorium, the Power Center, the Art Fair, the Ark, and in countless public school classrooms, both solo and in tandem with other notable musicians such as Percy “Mr. Bones” Danforth. She is known for her songs about Michigan history and, in particular, for “This Is The Town That Was,” an original musical written with collaborator Carol Duffy Sheldon for Ann Arbor’s sesquicentennial celebration in 1974. Check out some of Dianne's sheet music and lyrics in the Dianne Baker Collection.
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AADL Talks To: Laurie Blakeney, Founder, Ann Arbor School of Yoga
In this episode AADL Talks To Laurie Blakeney, founder of the Ann Arbor School of Yoga. Laurie came to Ann Arbor in 1971 to study at the University of Michigan. Intent on running her own business, she tuned pianos for 25 years. During that period she also studied and taught the Iyengar method of yoga. She had the good fortune to study with B.K.S. Iyengar and has taught the Iyengar method to thousands of students.
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JCC Conversations | Dr. Richard Solomon and Rebecca Newman
Often called “The fun doctor,” Rick Solomon M.D., Medical Director at Ann Arbor Center for Development and Behavioral Pediatrics, will be one of the guests on Conversations! where he will answer questions and discuss the latest advances in autism. Dr. Solomon is a developmental pedriatician. His widely admired PLAY Project Autism Intervention Model helps young children improve their language, development, and autism severity and his book, “Autism: The Potential Within”, details the intervention. He will be joined by Rebecca Newman who will describe her life as someone with autism.
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JCC Conversations | Ethan Kross – Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It
Chuck Newman interviews Award-Winning Psychologist Ethan Kross who released his First Book, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It
Ethan Kross, psychologist, professor, and author shares his research on how the conversations people have with themselves impacts their health, performance, decisions and relationships and shape their lives and give them the power to change themselves. He describes groundbreaking behavioral and brain research with colorful real-world examples.
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JCC Conversations | Dr. Susan Weiss
Learn everything you should know about coronaviruses, including vaccinations, mutations, antiviral treatments and what we should be doing to protect ourselves from future pandemics.
Dr. Susan Weiss is considered “The Mother of Coronaviruses” and is co-director of Penn’s new Center of Research for Coronaviruses and Other Emerging Pathogens.
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Martin Bandyke Under Covers for June 2022: Martin interviews Scott A. Small, author of Forgetting: The Benefits of Not Remembering.
Dr. Scott Small has dedicated his career to understanding why memory forsakes us. As director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Columbia University, he focuses largely on patients who experience pathological forgetting, and it is in contrast to their suffering that normal forgetting, which we experience every day, appears in sharp relief.
Until recently, most everyone—memory scientists included—believed that forgetting served no purpose. But new research in psychology, neurobiology, medicine, and computer science tells a different story. Forgetting is not a failure of our minds. It’s not even a benign glitch. It is, in fact, good for us—and, alongside memory, it is a required function for our minds to work best.
Forgetting benefits our cognitive and creative abilities, emotional well-being, and even our personal and societal health. As frustrating as a typical lapse can be, it’s precisely what opens up our minds to making better decisions, experiencing joy and relationships, and flourishing artistically.
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Nerd Nite #68 - The Brain "Wants" What The Brain Wants
Over the course of evolution our brains have become excellent at detecting rewards (e.g. food or a potential mate) in our environment and in turn generating motivation to obtain that reward. While this system was originally necessary for survival, it can easily become maladaptive in a world where access to rewards (such as high-calorie food, drugs and alcohol, gambling) are present in abundance. Unfortunately, this reward detection system can become hypersentitive in some individuals, in turn causing excessive desire and craving each time they come across a reward cue in their world. This talk addresses how and why this reward system can become dysregulated in some individuals. Answering these questions will help scientists discover new treatment options for individuals living with addiction or psychiatric disorder.
About Erin Naffziger:
Erin is a PhD Candidate in Biopsychology at the University of Michigan studying how the brain creates the psychological processes: desire and craving. She wants to know how motivation is generated in the brain and how it may become dysregulated in mental illnesses. When she’s not playing with rats or using lasers to activate the brain, she enjoys true crime podcasts and hanging out with her elderly cat.
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Exploring the Mind | 7 Ways Children's Storytelling Skills Impact Literacy Development
Join Assistant Professor Nicole Gardner-Neblett of the University of Michigan for her presentation on the importance of storytelling in the development of literacy skills, and learn some strategies for supporting young children as storytellers.
Did you know that by the time a child is two or three years old they can tell a simple story? These early storytelling skills can help children develop a strong foundation for building later reading and writing skills. Research suggests that opportunities to practice telling stories helps children develop stronger language skills and a better understanding of how stories are structured. This presentation reviews seven ways that young children's storytelling skills can impact their literacy development.
Nicole Gardner-Neblett, Ph.D., is a developmental psychologist whose work focuses on the individual and contextual factors that promote children’s language and literacy development. She adopts a strengths-based approach to understanding children’s development and identifying effective practices to transform the early learning experiences of young children. In particular, Dr. Gardner-Neblett’s work examines the oral narrative, or storytelling, skills of African American children and the implications for literacy development and educational practice.
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Author Event | William D. Lopez: Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid
In Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid, local author William D. Lopez examines the lasting damage done by this daylong act of collaborative immigration enforcement in Washtenaw County, Michigan.
Exploring the chaos of enforcement through the lens of community health, Lopez discusses deportation's rippling negative effects on families, communities, and individuals. Focusing on those left behind, Lopez reveals their efforts to cope with trauma, avoid homelessness, handle worsening health, and keep their families together as they attempt to deal with a deportation machine that is militarized, traumatic and implicitly racist.
This event was part of the 2020 Washtenaw Reads. For more information about Washtenaw Reads and previous years' reads, visit wread.org.
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Legacies Project Oral History: William Hampton
William Hampton was born in 1948 in Tyler, Texas, and his grandmother was the midwife. He remembers attending church revival picnics, the Texas Rose Festival, and the Juneteenth parade in his hometown. While attending college in Arlington, Texas, he was active in the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. He went on to launch a Section 8 subsidized housing program in Arlington and in Ann Arbor, where he worked in the community development office. Mr. Hampton has been president of the Ann Arbor chapter of the NAACP since 2005.
William Hampton was interviewed by students from Skyline High School in Ann Arbor in 2015-16 as part of the Legacies Project.