http://www.aadl.org/video/feed/texthttp://media.aadl.org/logo.jpg2013-06-06T10:12:16-04:00This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States Licensehttp://www.aadl.org/video/view/17299Ann Arbor District Library2013-06-06T10:12:16-04:00Tilian is a local business incubator, where the businesses are four-season farms! It has helped launch five new successful farms in its first two years of operation. Learn how Tilian, a 44-acre campus for new farms on Pontiac Trail (just north of the City of Ann Arbor) was formed, about their mission to assist new farmers in starting and establishing farm business during the critical first years, and their "farmer residency" training programs. Bring your questions and hear how this new initiative helps strengthen the local farming and food movements. This event is for adults and teens (grade 6 and up)http://www.aadl.org/video/view/17602Ann Arbor District Library2013-06-06T10:09:07-04:00Join us as leaders from different religious, racial, and ethnic groups reflect on the high and low points of how their traditions have dealt with issues of race, racial justice, and racial healing. This event is inspired by this year's Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads which focused both on the theme Understanding Race as well as the award-winning book "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness" by Michelle Alexander. Speakers for this event include: Rev. Deborah Dean-Ware, Church of the Good Shepherd; Pastor Victoria James, Ekklesia Fellowship Ministries; Rabbi Bob Levy, Temple Beth Emeth; Margaret Noori / Giiwedinoodin (Anishinaabe heritage, waabzheshiinh doodem), Director of the U-M Comprehensive Studies Program; Ahmad Rahman, Dept. of History, U-M Dearborn; Mohammed Tayssir Safi, U-M Muslim Chaplain. This event is co-sponsored by the Interfaith Council For Peace And Justice.http://www.aadl.org/video/view/17549Ann Arbor District Library2013-06-06T10:07:34-04:00AADL joins with The Performance Network Theatre for a delightful evening of Boston lore and cooking tips with the return of Boston television stars and heirloom cooking experts Marilynn and Sheila Brass. This event is designed to give colorful insight into the food and lore of Boston - the setting for the Performance Network's March production of David Lindsay-Abaire's award-winning play "Good People." Boston's Brass Sisters are cookbook authors, television personalities, culinary historians, and home cooks with more than 120 years of combined home baking and cooking experience. They have hosted their own Holiday Special on the Cooking Channel, were recently selected to appear in the book, "Boston's Inspirational Women" and have won a Throwdown on the Food Network with Bobby Flay (with their heirloom recipe for Pineapple Upside-Down Cake). They have appeared on television and radio throughout the country sharing recipes and stories from their two cookbooks, "Heirloom Baking With The Brass Sisters" and "Heirloom Cooking With The Brass Sisters." Food & Wine Magazine chose both cookbooks for their Best of the Best 25 Cookbooks of the Year. "Heirloom Baking" also received a James Beard nomination in the Dessert and Baking Category. This event will include a booksigning and books will be for sale. Experts on heirloom cookery, the famous sisters have compiled a research library of more than 6,500 cookbooks, including dozens of manuscript cookbooks, as well as 1,500 books and periodicals on antiques and culinary history. Their collection of more than 2,000 antique food molds, kitchenware, culinary prints and menus is considered one of the finest in the United States. Performance Network staff will also be on hand to provide an introduction to "Good People." This 2011 Tony nominee centers on Margie Walsh, a Dollar Store worker from Boston's "Southie" district, who is fired from her job and facing eviction. In desperation, she reaches out to a former high school summer fling who has made it out of South Boston, inviting herself to a chic cocktail party in his home. The play is a touching and funny look at America's great economic divide. Performances of "Good People" will occur at the Performance Network through March 31. Visit the Performance Network website at performancenetwork.org for more information on this award-winning play. Join us for an insider's look at Boston (the setting of "Good People") with the delightful Brass Sisters!http://www.aadl.org/video/view/17668Ann Arbor District Library2013-06-06T09:47:02-04:00This fourth and final session in a series of monthly discussions centers on transportation options, including the transition to more fuel-efficient modes of transit, such as electric vehicles, and non-motorized planning efforts in the community. Building on the public forums from last year, the 2013 forums will focus on planning for change in the community. A think tank of local stakeholders, including University of Michigan faculty, representatives from community organizations, and city commissioners, join City of Ann Arbor staff and the public to discuss local sustainability concepts and efforts--past, present and future. The presentations will discuss conditions that are changing in the community and past and potential actions to adapt to change. Each program will also include tips for individual actions that residents may take. Speakers include: John Hieftje, Mayor, City of Ann Arbor; Erica Briggs, Project Manager, Clean Energy Coalition; Nathan Voght, Economic Development Specialist, Washtenaw County Office of Community and Economic Development; Eli Cooper, Transportation Programs Manager, City of Ann Arbor; Michael Benham, Strategic Planner, AATAhttp://www.aadl.org/video/view/17606Ann Arbor District Library2013-06-06T09:45:31-04:00This third in a series of four discussions (held monthly and ending in April) centers on Diverse Housing, including how to meet the current and future needs of the community with changing housing demographics, such as older residents, a high rental population, and affordability. Building on the public forums from last year, the 2013 forums focus on planning for change in the community. A think tank of local stakeholders, including University of Michigan faculty, representatives from community organizations, and city commissioners, join City of Ann Arbor staff and the public to discuss local sustainability concepts and efforts--past, present and future. The presentations discuss conditions that are changing in the community and past and potential actions to adapt to change. Each program will also include tips for individual actions that residents may take. Speakers include: Steve Bredernitz, Bredernitz Professional Services; Eunice Burns, Ann Arbor resident and former Ann Arbor City Council member; Ryan Cowmeadow, HomeShare Coordinator, Housing Bureau for Seniors; Karen Kafantaris, Associate State Director, AARP; and Wendy Rampson, Planning Manager, City of Ann Arbor.http://www.aadl.org/video/view/17372Ann Arbor District Library2013-06-06T09:44:02-04:00This second in a series of four discussions (held monthly and ending in April) centers on Economic Vitality, including opportunities to invest in the local economy and to build a strong sense of place in the community. Building on the public forums from last year, the 2013 forums will focus on planning for change in the community. A think tank of local stakeholders, including University of Michigan faculty, representatives from community organizations, and city commissioners, join City of Ann Arbor staff and the public to discuss local sustainability concepts and efforts--past, present and future. Speakers for this forum will include: Ingrid Ault, Executive Director, Think Local First; Mary Jo Callan, Director, Washtenaw County Community and Economic Development; Dan Gilmartin, Executive Director and CEO, Michigan Municipal League; Paul Krutko, President and CEO, Ann Arbor SPARK and Paul Saginaw, Founding Partner, Zingerman's Deli. The presentations will discuss conditions that are changing in the community and past and potential actions to adapt to change. Each program will also include tips for individual actions that residents may take.http://www.aadl.org/video/view/17188Ann Arbor District Library2013-04-11T12:52:42-04:00This 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. Doors for this event will open at 6 pm to offer the opportunity to connect with local community agencies and representatives who will be staffing resource tables in the lobby. There will also be time following the event to interact with these local organizations. Copies of "The New Jim Crow" as well as Connie's book "Power Concedes Nothing: One Woman's Quest for Social Justice in America, from the Courtroom to the Kill Zones" will be for sale and the event will include a book signing This is a key event for the 2013 Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads program, which this year focuses on the theme of "Understanding Race."http://www.aadl.org/video/view/16376Ann Arbor District Library2013-04-11T12:35:14-04:00Jordan 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.'http://www.aadl.org/video/view/16715Ann Arbor District Library2013-04-11T12:30:48-04:00In conjunction with this year's Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads which focuses on Michelle Alexander's book "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness" - Professor David Moran, Co-directer of the Michigan Innocence Clinic, and student lawyers Shannon Leitner, Susan Shutts, and Klara Stephens, discuss their work identifying and rectifying wrongful convictions and their commitment to exonerating innocent individuals and combating injustice. At the Michigan Innocence Clinic at Michigan Law, clinic students investigate and litigate cases on behalf of prisoners who have new evidence that may establish that they are actually innocent of the crimes for which they have been convicted. Unlike many other innocence clinics, which specialize in DNA exonerations, the Michigan Innocence Clinic focuses on innocence cases where there is no biological evidence to be tested. Innocence Clinic students work on all aspects of the cases, including investigating new evidence, preparing state post-conviction motions, conducting hearings and arguing motions in conjunction with these motions, and filing appeals to the state and federal courts. The Clinic has already exonerated several of its clients since its inception in 2009. For more information about Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads, check out the website at aaypsireads.org. This event is for adults and teens (grade 9 and up).http://www.aadl.org/video/view/16868Ann Arbor District Library2013-04-10T12:12:39-04:00Nationally-known sewing expert Gretchen "Gertie" Hirsch is a passionate home seamstress, a sought-after sewing teacher, and the creator of one of the most popular sewing blogs on the web - Gertie's New Blog For Better Sewing - a place to share tutorials and lively posts about sewing as it relates to fashion history, pop culture, body image, and gender. A sewing enthusiast from Beacon, New York, Gertie has a love of all things retro. Now - meet Gertie in person, right here at AADL!! Hear about her blog, her craft and her book "Gertie's New Book for Better Sewing: A Modern Guide to Couture-Style Sewing Using Basic Vintage Techniques." An extension of her blog, this brand-new book is packed with lessons on couture techniques, customization and Gertie's spirited, modern style. The event includes a book signing and books will be for sale. This event is for adults and teens (grade 6 and up).