Are you applying to college or are you a parent assisting your child with developing education priorities? Tony Tsai of the U-M Medical School will discuss how to develop a personalized learning agenda for college. Find out how you can navigate your learning in a self-directed way to get the most out of your college experience.

Join us for a presentation given by Tom Hayden on the eve of the opening of the United Nations treaty talks. Hayden, a U-M graduate and California environmental leader will discuss how Michigan and the Great Lakes region can move the US towards the protections of a clean energy economy. He believes the problems of economic recession and climate crisis must be addressed in a Global Green New Deal.

This event will include a book signing and copies of several of Tom Hayden’s books will be for sale.

After over 50 years of activism, politics and writing, Tom Hayden is still a leading voice for ending the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, for erasing sweatshops, saving the environment, and reforming politics through a more participatory democracy. He was a leader of the student, civil rights, peace and environmental movements of the 1960s, and went on to serve 18 years in the California legislature, where he chaired labor, higher education and natural resources committees.

Interweaving past and present, private anecdote and public record, Ann Arbor author Leslie Stainton's new book Staging Ground: An American Theater and Its Ghosts captures the history of one of America’s oldest and most ghosted theaters—the Fulton Theatre in Lancaster, Pennsylvania—and recounts the story of a nation’s tumultuous struggle to invent itself.

This event features a short reading from the book by Stainton followed by a conversation with Jim Leija (UMS), Martin Walsh (actor and U-M instructor) and Leigh Woods (actor and U-M theater professor). The event includes a book signing and books will be for sale.

Built in 1852 and in use ever since, the Fulton Theatre in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is uniquely ghosted. Its foundations were once the walls of a colonial jail that in 1763 witnessed the massacre of the last surviving Conestoga Indians. Those same walls later served to incarcerate fugitive slaves.

"Staging Ground" explores these tragic events and their enduring resonance in a building that later became a town hall, theater, and movie house--the site of minstrel shows, productions of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," oratory by the likes of Thaddeus Stevens and Mark Twain, performances by Buffalo Bill and his troupe of "Wild Indians," Hollywood Westerns, and twenty-first-century musicals. Interweaving past and present, private anecdote and public record, Stainton unfolds the story of this emblematic space, where for more than 250 years Americans scripted and re-scripted their history.

This event is co-sponsored by the U-M Institute for the Humanities, and the Ann Arbor Book Festival, and the U-M Library in collaboration with UMS and AADL

Medieval Breviaries, Psalters and Books of Hours featuring images of animals playing the organ and pumping bellows ushered medieval readers into a world of sound, fantasy, and play.

Why do these curious animals make music in sacred text margins?

Join organist and medievalist Marijim Thoene for a musical and visually stimulating evening of medieval music. Marijim will play organ music from the Robertsbridge Codex, (c. 1360), the Faenza Codex (c. 1425) and the Buxheimer Orgelbuch, (1460s) illustrating late Medieval and early Renaissance music, and will also display images from medieval manuscripts (dated c. 1250-1500). of cats, donkeys, monkeys, rabbits, and even a double-headed dragon.

Marijim Thoene is an organist and medievalist. She received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Michigan in Church Music and Organ Performance and has been on the faculty at the University of New Orleans and Our Lady of the Holy Cross College in New Orleans. She is currently Director of Music at the First United Methodist Church in Garden City, has played at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NY, and internationally in England, Germany, France, Poland and Venezuela. Her two CDs, “Mystics and Spirits” and “Wind Song” have met with critical acclaim and are available through Raven Recordings.

This event is cosponsored by AADL and the American Guild of Organists, Ann Arbor Chapter.

Applying to college? This event is for you: AADL's 8th annual College Night with the co-authors of "Solving the College Admissions Puzzle: A Guide for Students and Families About College Selection, Essay Writing, and High-Stakes Testing." Learn how to reduce your stress and increase your chances for success from the three experts of collegeadmissionsadvisors.com.

Community High's college prep counselor John Boshoven, M.A., M.S.W. will help you understand how to find the college that fits; Essay Coaching founder Debbie Merion, M.S.W, M.F.A. explains how to write a winning college application essay, and Managing Your Mind principal Geri Markel Ph.D. will provide tips about how to score your highest on tests such as the ACT and SAT, all to be followed by Q and A. Books will be for sale.

This event was originally scheduled for the Downtown Library Multi-Purpose Room and has been relocated to the 4th floor of the Downtown Library.

Nationally-known food historian and author Peter Rose explores the foodways brought to America by the Dutch more than three centuries ago, and how these foods were changed and adapted under new circumstances. Using slides of some 40 paintings of famous works of the Dutch masters, this presentation will demonstrate how these art works give an insight into 17th century food practices and shed new light on the colonial diet.

Peter will also discuss her new book, just released this summer, Delicious December: How the Dutch Brought Us Santa, Presents, and Treats (A Holiday Cookbook).

This event is cosponsored by AADL and the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor.

The event includes a book signing and books will be for sale.

Some level of stress is a part of everyone’s life, but almost 40 percent of parents say their high-school student is experiencing a great deal of stress from school, according to an NPR poll conducted with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health. In most cases, that stress is from academics, not social issues or bullying, the poll found. Teenagers say they're suffering, too. A study by the American Psychological Association found that nearly half of all teens — 45 percent — said they were stressed by school pressures.

“Everyday stress” is a normal reaction to a variety of situations that we encounter in the real world, and can even be beneficial, motivating us to accomplish a task, or to avoid a situation that might be harmful. However chronic stress can lead to long-term health issues, affecting both physical and mental health – and can also negatively impact school performance, extracurricular activities, and relationships with family and friends. While it’s not possible to completely remove all of the stress from our lives, the good news is that there are strategies that students (and their parents!) can use to help manage their stress and improve academic performance.

To learn more about the impact of academic stress on student mental health, including strategies to prevent and manage stress, the University of Michigan Depression Center and the Ann Arbor District Library will present a Bright Nights community forum entitled, “The Impact of Academic Stress on Student Mental Health” on Tuesday, September 30, from 7:00-8:30 p.m. in the 4th Floor Meeting Room of the downtown Ann Arbor District Library (corner of S. Fifth Ave. and William).

Elizabeth Koschmann, PhD, Research Investigator in the U-M Department of Psychiatry and a member of the U-M Depression Center, will give a brief overview presentation outlining the connections between stress, anxiety and depression, and providing useful strategies to help relieve stress. This will be followed by questions and discussion with a panel of experts including Kate Fitzgerald, MD, Assistant Professor, U-M Department of Psychiatry; Amy McLoughlin, EdM, Counselor at Skyline High School; and Tom Atkins, MD, a private practice clinician in Ann Arbor.

Bright Nights is open to the public and there is no charge for attendance. For more information, please visit the Depression Center website at www.depressioncenter.org, or contact Trish Meyer, 763-7495, or meyerpa@umich.edu

Step back in musical time as the internationally-known duo Les Voix Humaines provides a lecture/demonstration of the music, dance and song of 17th-century England.

Les Voix Humaines (Susie Napper and Margaret Little) have been thrilling audiences worldwide with dashing performances of early and contemporary music for viols since 1985. Renowned for their spectacular arrangements of a wide variety of music for two viols, they have become a world reference for the music of Sainte-Colombe.

The duo has toured in North America, Mexico, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, China and Japan, performing is prestigious festivals such as Early Music Vancouver, the Festival Internacional Cervantino, the Brighton International Music Festival, the Festival Oude Musiek, Holland, the Boston Early Music Festival, the Summer Festivities of Early Music in Prague and the Israel Festival.

This event is cosponsored by the U-M Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments and AADL.

Join us for a fascinating discussion with music as members of the early music ensemble REBEL provide a delightful introduction to Baroque music. One of the richest and most diverse periods in music history the Baroque music era followed the Renaissance and is a style of Western art music composed from approximately 1600 to 1750. Vivaldi, Handel and Bach were composers from this period. The Baroque era was followed in turn by the Classical era.

REBEL was formed in the Netherlands in 1991 and has since earned an impressive international reputation through their virtuosic, provocative approach to the Baroque and Classical repertoire.

This event is cosponsored by AADL and the UM Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments, in partnership with The Academy for Early Music.

AADL is proud to welcome two members of African Royalty who will offer their perspectives on the music and culture of their country in this special lecture, cosponsored by AADL, the U-M Center for World Performance Studies and the U-M Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments.
Nana Kwadwo Nyantakyi III (Sanaahene or Chief of the Treasury in the Asante Kingdom) and Nana Afia Adoma II (Queen of Antoa-Krobo in the Asante Kingdom) will discuss African Akan and Asante music and culture.

This lecture is part of a month-long artist residency sponsored by the Center for World Performance Studies. Part of their residency is to assist U-M faculty on a weekly basis with the "Music of Africa" and "Visual Cultures of Africa" classes. This lecture will open these classroom discussions to the public.