The City of Ann Arbor Fire and Police Service Personnel will hold a Memorial Service on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 on Sunday, September 11, 2011 from 8:30 to 9:15 a.m. on Fifth Ave. in front of Fire Station One and the Justice Center building.

Fire Chief Chuck Hubbard, Police Chief Barnett Jones and Mayor John Hieftje will speak at the service as Ann Arbor pauses to remember and honor those whose lives were lost on 9/11. During the service, Fifth Ave. between Ann St. and Huron St. will be closed to traffic.

A project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Birds of North America Online includes contributions from researchers, citizen scientists, reviewers and editors and image and video galleries showing plumages, behaviors, habitat, nests and eggs, and more. BNA now features recordings of the songs and calls of their species from the extensive collection of Cornell's Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds.

You can access BNA Online 24-hours a day from home through our Database Page. I like putting in keyword terms like "black billed" or "blue throated" and seeing the results. Amazing what great background music bird calls provide to a day indoors.

Our secret is out: the rest of America has discovered what Michiganders have known forever, that Sleeping Bear Dunes is the most beautiful place in America. Good Morning America viewers voted and the Bear beat them all. So you'd better book that cottage for next summer now or you'll be asking Mario Batali if you can bunk with him at his summer place. Of course half of NYC will be asking him for a room now.

The best place to start your SB travels? The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Park headquarters in Empire. Trails, rivers, lakeshores, historical sites, heritage farms, lighthouses. You name it, it's in the National Park. The Sleeping Bear Dunes Visitors Bureau site will lead to lodging, dining and entertainment throughout the region. We've been biking the area for 40+ years and you can't beat the Betsie Valley Trail along Crystal Lake or the M-22 ride from Frankfort to Empire with terrific beaches at both ends.

The adaptation of actor-novelist-screenwriter David Nicholl's One Day hits local theaters this week.

It’s 1988 and Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley have only just met. But after only one day together, they cannot stop thinking about one another. Over twenty years, snapshots of that relationship are revealed on the same day—July 15th—of each year. Dex and Em face squabbles and fights, hopes and missed opportunities, laughter and tears. And as the true meaning of this one crucial day is revealed, they must come to grips with the nature of love and life itself. This summer's best date night movie.

Needing no introduction is the much anticipated star-studded-summer-blockbuster : The Help, a Hollywood adaptation of Kathryn Stockett's debut novel.

In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women--black and white, mothers and daughters--view one another.

All the hoopla aside, if you have thus far resisted reading this bestseller (or gush over it) and couldn't quite articulate why, read Martha Southgate's piece "The Truth about the Civil Rights Era: Martha Southgate on The Help " in the latest Entertainment Weekly.

The darling of this year's Traverse City Film Festival and the World Documentary Jury Award winner, Project Nim is based on Elizabeth Hess's Nim Chimpsky : the chimp who would be human.

Project Nim, the brainchild of a Columbia University psychologist, was designed to refute Noam Chomsky’s claim that language is an exclusively human trait. Nim Chimpsky, the chimpanzee chosen to realize this potentially groundbreaking experiment, was raised like a human child and taught American Sign Language while living with his “adoptive family” in their elegant Manhattan town house.Over the next two decades he was exiled from the people he loved, put in a cage, and moved from one facility to another, including, most ominously, a medical research lab. But wherever he went, Nim’s humanlike qualities and his ability to communicate with humans saved him. A creature of extraordinary charm and charisma, Nim ultimately triumphed over a dramatic series of reversals and obstacles. His story, both moving and entertaining, also raises the most profound questions of what it means to be human—and about what we owe to the animals who enrich our lives. Limited showing at the Michigan Theater, Friday, August 19. Don't miss it.

Back in June, we were contacted by Jael McHenry, author of The Kitchen Daughter. She liked our blog and agreed to come visit. On Thursday, August 18th, Ms. McHenry will be at the Downtown Library at 7 pm. She will talk about her debut novel and sign copies (Don't worry if you don't have yours yet. Copies will be available for purchase).

Jael is also an enthusiastic amateur cook. Her food blog SIMMER is very popular with foodies. Bring questions about food, cooking and writing for an evening of great discussion and fun.

AND she is bringing us FOOD! We were sure that the TSA won't let her bring them on the plane but her mom is going to step in and BAKE! So come and taste one of the fabulous recipes in The Kitchen Daughter. Are we in for a treat!

BTW, if you don't already know... since our blog was published in April, The Kitchen Daughter was named "Pick of the Week" in the Boston Globe's Word on the Street, and in June Oprah picked it as one of this summer's "Tantalizing Beach Reads."

Nancy Wake, a highly decorated special agent for Winston Churchill during World War II, died two days ago.

The Nazis fast-tracked White Mouse, as they named Wake, to the top of their most-wanted list. She was a fearless resistance fighter in France and a deadly agent who reportedly once killed an SS guard with her bare hands. In another famous incident, she bicycled 500 km (310 miles) in 3 days (remember, this was pre-multi-speed race-quality cycles) to deliver crucial codes to a wireless operator responsible for coordinating supplies and weapons drops.

Sebastian Faulks based his 1999 novel Charlotte Gray on Wake's heroic actions. Two years later, Cate Blanchett starred in a movie by the same name.

Ms. Wake died 23 days short of her 99th birthday.

On Tuesday, August 2, 2011 Primary Elections will be held in the City of Ann Arbor to determine the Democratic candidate nominations for City Council in Wards two, three and five only. Primary elections are not necessary in the first or fourth Wards so those polling locations will not be open. Remember to bring along your photo identification to receive a ballot. Need more info? Call the City Clerk’s Office at 734.794.6140.

NPR's Three Critics Pick The Best Books For Summer (listen to the podcast) has some fabulous titles. And no one was surprised that The Hypnotist * * featured prominently on it. Now NPR just unmasked the identity of the author(s), known until now, as Lars Kepler.

Stockholm. A gruesome triple murder. 15 year-old, the only witness/survivor, sustained 100 knife-wounds and is in shock. Detective Inspector Joona Linna's only option - to enlist the help of Dr. Erik Maria Bark, the hypnotist.

The battle-worn Linna and the reluctant and scarred Bark unwittingly set off a chain of violent events that climax at a remote cabin north of the Arctic Circle.

An international bestseller and already being adapted for film, The Hypnotist is an adrenaline- and action-packed thriller, "smart and unpredictable", atmospheric as it is cinematic. A nordic crime mystery debut to rival some of the best in the genre.

* * = Starred reviews

Happy Campers Alert: More fun than a backpack of S'mores on Saturday, August 6, at the Family Campout at Rolling Hills Park. Activities will include:
• Fishing •
• Stargazing •
• Campfire Stories with Debra Christian •
(Award-winning Storyteller)
• S'mores •
• Nature Walks •
• Crafts •
• Free Dinner for Campers •

You can start setting up your tent at 2 p.m. and activities will begin at 5 p.m. Complete information is on the Registration Form.

Betty Ford, widow of the late President Gerald R. Ford, died yesterday at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Palm Springs, CA.

Mrs. Ford was known not only for her grace and devotion to her husband, but for her refreshingly frank support of women's issues -- she was pro choice and strongly in favor of the equal rights amendment. She was also much admired for her public courage in facing private struggles. One month after her husband was sworn in as President following Nixon's August 1974 resignation, Mrs. Ford underwent surgery for breast cancer. By taking her disease public, Mrs. Ford encouraged tens of thousands of women to have mammograms. The push for early detection continues today and the number of lives saved has increased dramatically.

Four years later, Mrs. Ford's family did an intervention with her when her addiction to prescription medicine and alcohol became unmanageable. Again, Mrs. Ford rose to the challenge and became the face and voice that created the Betty Ford Center which opened in late 1982. To date, more than 97,000 patients and their families have been healed here.

Mrs. Ford wrote movingly of these experiences in one of her books, Betty: A Glad Awakening (1987).

The former First Lady was 93 years old.