This week is Bike to Work Week, and this Friday May 17th is Bike to Work Day!

Celebrate with Ann Arbor by riding your bike to work and logging it in the commuter challenge. On your way home from work, stop in the library and check out a book about bicycle repair, building your own bicycle, staying safe while bicycling, the joy of bicycling, or a story about bikes to read to a child!

Ann Arbor's Get Downtown program also has a lot of helpful resources for the local biker, such as tips for commuting, maps of bicycle trails and places to park your bike.

For those of you who prefer to celebrate Bike to Work Week outside of downtown Ann Arbor, the library has plenty of books featuring maps of bike trails throughout southeast Michigan and Washtenaw county.

This program, part of the Dawn Farm Education Series, will explore the differences in neurochemistry between the addicted brain and the normal brain, the progression of physiological changes that occur in chemically dependent individuals, the mechanisms of physiologic tolerance and withdrawal, and the effects of treatment on the addicted brain. Presented by Dr. Carl Christensen, MD, this program will be held at the SJMH Education Center on Tuesday, May 21st from 7:30-9:00 PM. For another interesting take on the topic, this book may be of interest to you titled, simply, Clean.

Employees of the Ann Arbor District Library are signing up to participate in the 2013 Commuter Challenge. Have you signed up yet?? The Commuter Challenge is a fun, free commuting competition where you can win prizes for trying alternative commuting -- walking, biking, busing, carpooling, vanpooling, using the Park & Ride, telecommuting, or moped/motorcycling. For starters, every person who logs just one commute on the Commuter Challenge website during May will receive a coupon for free ice cream from Washtenaw Dairy! There are also lots of great ways for you to win additional prizes by logging commutes, submitting photos, and more. Interested? Get yourself to letsmakeamove.org and join in the fun.

teens using drugs

The "Teens Using Drugs: What To Know and What To Do" series will be presented again on Tuesday, May 7th (part 1, "What To Know") and the following Tuesday, May 14th (part 2, "What To Do"). This on-going & free series will be presented by Brian Spitsbergen, Director, Community Intervention and Treatment (CITx,) Growth Works, Inc. This two-part of series of Dawn Farm takes place at SJMH's Education Center. The series is co-sponsored by Dawn Farm, the Livingston/Washtenaw Safe & Drug Free Schools & Communities Act Consortium and SJMH Greenbrook Recovery Center.

Calling all runners, joggers and walkers: form a Run for Literacy Team to run or walk in the Ann Arbor Marathon on behalf of Washtenaw Literacy!

Race day is on June 9, 2013 and includes: a Marathon, Half Marathon, 5K & a 1.2 Mile Kids Marathon. Learn more about the Ann Arbor Marathon. Get inspired and raise funds with friends, family and coworkers for Washtenaw Literacy!

AADL continues to grow its collection of films that have a Descriptive Video Service or DVS feature. More films are being produced for children and adults that are Described Video Recordings for L Card users to borrow. There are comedies, action, animation and science fiction films available. Many can be sent by mail to our WLBPD patrons as Free Matter for the Blind. If your vision isn't what it used to be, you may want to try watching a film with described narration. That way you don't have to ask other folks what's happening on the screen and can concentrate on the film.

Mike Derhammer's class at Ann Arbor Open spent the winter interviewing family members and thinking about funny and interesting stories from their own lives. Along the way they discovered that storytelling is so much a part of who we are. Sometimes it's fun and enlightening to just stop and listen to each other's tales. We hope you enjoy listening to these stories as much as we did!

I was walking down Liberty St. yesterday, and as I passed the alley next to Kilwin’s Chocolate Shoppe, I stopped dead in my tracks. There was a painting on the alley wall. I took a closer look and read that it was ‘Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes,’ by Artemisia Gentileschi. It was put there by the Detroit Institute of Arts.

The DIA placed this painting and six others in places around Ann Arbor as part of their Inside|Out program. Now in its fourth year, the Inside|Out program brings reproductions of masterpieces in DIA’s collection to more than a dozen cities in the metro Detroit area. You can find maps of all these impromptu outdoor galleries at the Inside|Out program’s web page.

If seeing these paintings inspires you to learn more about art and artists, take a look at AADL’s art print collection. You can take home a fully framed painting and make your own home a gallery. Also, check out AADL’s collection of huge, beautiful art books. You can take home the entire collected works of your favorite artist!

It’s been said that the doctor’s office is a dangerous place for people in recovery from addiction. It’s also been said that recovering people are terrible patients. This program will discuss whether these statements are fair and why doctors and other healthcare providers are essential allies for long term recovery. They will describe in detail how recovering people can take responsibility for their physical health and how to recruit health care providers as allies. This Dawn Farm Education Series will be presented by Mark A. Weiner, MD; specialist in Internal Medicine and Addiction Medicine and Matthew Statman, LMSW, CAADC; University of Michigan Collegiate Recovery Program Manager on Tuesday April 16 from 7:30-9:00 PM.