Are you, or is someone in your family, one of the 140,000-plus lawful permanent residents living in Michigan who are eligible to naturalize today? Did you want to begin the steps to become a citizen? What are your waiting for?

Ruby Robinson, a staff attorney with the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (MIRC), will be providing an informational session on the benefits of and requirements for naturalization, along with the process. There is no better time than right now to learn about or apply for naturalization and begin the steps to become a citizen. Following the presentation, Mr. Robinson will be available to answer your questions!

Ruby Robinson is an attorney with the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (MIRC), a resource center for advocates seeking equal justice for Michigan's immigrants. MIRC works to build a thriving Michigan where immigrant communities are fully integrated and respected.

Want to know more about the Affordable Care Act?

Representatives trained by the Washtenaw Health Initiative discuss how the Affordable Care Act will change insurance coverage options at the local level. The presentation is meant to inform individuals about existing and new insurance coverage options through an educational and interactive session .

Specific topics include coverage and general eligibility requirements for the new Marketplace insurance exchanges as well as Medicaid expansion in the state of Michigan. Questions are highly encouraged and resources will be provided to those who may additional questions after the session ends.

This event will be repeated on Saturday, February 15 from 1 – 3 pm in the Downtown Library Multi-Purpose Room

Want to know more about the Affordable Care Act?

Representatives trained by the Washtenaw Health Initiative discuss how the Affordable Care Act will change insurance coverage options at the local level. The presentation is meant to inform individuals about existing and new insurance coverage options through an educational and interactive session .

Specific topics include coverage and general eligibility requirements for the new Marketplace insurance exchanges as well as Medicaid expansion in the state of Michigan. Questions are highly encouraged and resources will be provided to those who may additional questions after the session ends.

Internationally- known musician Romel Joseph embodies both success and resilience in every aspect of his life. He lost his eyesight as a child, learned to play several musical instruments, graduated from one of the nation's top music institutions, The Juilliard School and founded an elementary and music school in Port-au-Prince Haiti for children that was destroyed twice -- once by fire in 2000 and by earthquake in 2010.

Four years later, his spirit remains persistent on accomplishing his life's mission - creating Haiti's first music conservatory and performing arts center.

Mr. Joseph has served as keynote speaker for the National Industries for the Blind in Cincinnati, and the United Nations Human Rights Day Assembly in Geneva. Both the State of Connecticut and the city of Miami have established Romel Joseph Days in their communities in his honor.

Mr. Joseph wants to share his positive spirits with everyone who struggles with the challenges they face by never giving up -- no matter what! Join us for Romel Johnson's words of inspiration followed by a musical performance and question and answer session.

Over the past 60 years, we, as a society, have gradually turned childhood into a time of resume building rather than a time of joyful play. The consequences of this include a dramatic rise in a wide variety of mental disorders in childhood, a rise in feelings of helplessness, a decline in empathy, and a decline in curiosity.

Nationally-known Childhood Expert Peter Gray, author of Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life will show how children are biologically designed to educate themselves through play. Free play with other children—lots of it—is essential to children’s healthy intellectual, social, and emotional development.

Peter Gray is a research professor of psychology at Boston College who has conducted and published research in neuroendocrinology, animal behavior, developmental psychology, anthropology, and education. His recent research has focused on the role of play in human evolution and how children educate themselves through play. He also authors a regular blog for Psychology Today entitled Freedom to Learn.

This event, co-sponsored by AADL and Acorn Glen Center for Self-Directed Learning, will include a book signing and books will be on sale at the event.

Rob Hess of Ypsilanti’s Go! Ice Cream will share the story of the ingredients behind your favorite ice cream flavors.

From the story of vanilla and its variations around the world to the science of brown butter, learn about delicious flavors and then taste some of Go! Ice Cream’s delectable flavors!

Go! Ice Cream is a small company that crafts artisanal ice creams in small batches using local ingredients, and delivers them right to your door.
Whether it gets to you from the back of their bike or you find it in your favorite grocer’s freezer section, you can be sure you’re eating all-natural products without preservatives, emulsifiers, stabilizers, or other multi-syllabic chemicals.

Go! Ice Cream was founded by Rob Hess on the belief that dessert is a good thing, a sweet enhancement to a life well-lived. His goal is to bring more flavor to life through bold versions of classic ice creams and adventurous new flavor combinations.

Learn to present your best self and use your background to stand out from the crowd when you submit your scholarship application. Get inside information on what reviewers are looking for in an application and the DOs and DON’Ts in writing your essay.

Representatives from Washtenaw Community College and the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation will be here to discuss their scholarship requirements, too. If you’ve started your essay, bring it with you. If not, we’ll help you get started.

This event is co-sponsored by AADL and Washtenaw Community College

Mary Stewart Adams, star lore historian, Fairy Tale Moons creator, and program director for the Headlands International Dark Sky Park (two miles west of Mackinaw City), will weave together contemporary understanding of our celestial environment with the star lore of ages for this engaging journey through the night sky.

Human beings can, on average on clear evenings, see between five and seven thousand objects in the sky. Scientists, using telescopes and satellites, have been able to identify over 900 million. A story is unfolding in this space between the seven thousand objects seen with the naked eye and the 900 million objects identified by scientists - - a story of our understanding of who we are, where we come from, and where this all might be going.

Mary Stewart Adams addresses this subject as a storyteller and sky observer and will discuss the necessity of imagination and inspiration in our developing sense of ourselves in our celestial environment. She will discuss current discoveries such as the comets Pan-STARRS and ISON; the current celestial configuration with Venus as evening star preparing for Winter Solstice; Jupiter's position in our evening skies; the Geminid and Ursid Meteor Showers and much more.

This event is in conjunction with the Fairy Tale Moons exhibit on display at the Downtown Library from December 3 through January 14. For this exhibit, star lore historian Mary Stewart Adams and her sister, artist Patricia DeLisa, researched and explored our best-loved folk and fairy tales in order to reveal, through their art and language, our connection with the stars overhead each month.

Check out some of the books and tales that inspired the artwork of Fairy Tale Moons!

Vocalist, harper and scholar Benjamin Bagby, ensemble leader of Sequentia, an international group of singers and instrumentalists of medieval music, will discuss the life and music of Saint Hildegard von Bingen, a unique mystical voice from 12th-century Germany. The lecture, entitled “A 12th century composer and her world: The visionary music of Saint Hildegard von Bingen” will include demonstrations of her music.

Benjamin Bagby has been an important figure in the field of medieval musical performance for more than 30 years. In addition to his many writings, he has taught courses and workshops around the world including the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Harvard University, the Autunno Musicale (Como, Italy), the New England Conservatory of Music (Boston), Stanford University, the Studio Alte Musik (Berlin), the Royaumont Foundation (Paris) and the Stary Sacz Festival (Poland) among others.

Saint Hildegard is known as a healer and natural scientist, a feminist icon, and a brilliant Latin poet and musician who created over 75 spiritual songs of astonishing originality and beauty as well as the earliest surviving music-drama written by a known composer.

The event is part of the U-M Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments Virginia Martin Howard Lecture Series, and is cosponsored by the Ann Arbor District Library and the Academy of Early Music. The Academy of Early Music will also feature Sequentia in performance on Tuesday, January 28th at St. Andrew's Church in Ann Arbor.

This year’s Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads title, Between Shades Of Gray by Ruta Sepetys, is the story of a 15 year old Lithuanian girl during the time of the genocide of Baltic people, whose family is torn apart when Soviet officers invade her home. Separated from her father and forced onto a crowded train, Lina, her mother, and her young brother are sent to a Siberian work camp, where they must fight for their lives.

Find out more about this disturbing period of history as U-M Professor of History Brian Porter-Szucs gives rich background to the time period of this international award-winning bestseller by providing a broader context for understanding the ways different groups in Eastern Europe remember the traumatic decade of the 1940s.

Tens of millions of people died in Eastern Europe during the Second World War, and Lithuania alone lost approximately 14% of its pre-war population. The region suffered from not one but two occupation regimes, from both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and each brought its own distinctive forms of terror and suffering. During the following decades, the memory of WWII became a battleground of its own, as ethnic, national, religious, and ideological groups competed to claim the status of a collective victim, and to place the blame onto some other collective enemy.

The suffering of actual humans got lost in these squabbles, and empathy was pulled back to the narrow confines of one’s own community. Competitive martyrology continues to cloud the memory of WWII in Eastern Europe.

Brian Porter-Szucs is a professor of history at the University of Michigan, where he specializes in the history of Poland and modern Roman Catholicism. He received his doctorate in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is the author of several notable works.