My friends: So much is happening! We have been wanting to tell you all about it, but you know that kind of “so much is happening” where, well…so much is happening that you don’t have time to check in as much as you’d like? That’s where we’re at. And to conserve our time as much as yours, we’ll get right into it. It being This Weekend, Sure to be Something Else.
1. GRAND OPENING OF THE LIBERTY STREET ROBOT SUPPLY & REPAIR.
If you have happened by 826michigan lately, you may have noticed that we have had people working on our robot store seven days a week, all hours of the day and night. Robots are being built, products are being assembled, things are happening. We have blinking/rotating robots, the Is Your Little Sister a Robot Test Kit, the full line of Better Bot’s Brand Robot Parts, t-shirts, and more, as well as an under-construction Memory Extractor (Finally! You can put your fondest childhood memories onto a Nostalgia Chip and implant it in your robot!).
Saturday, May 17, we’ll have people all around Ann Arbor in robot costumes (Anyone can do it! Make your own costume, hit the streets: you will not, for once, be the ONLY person in a robot suit!). At 7pm, the robots will converge at the Liberty Street Robot Supply & Repair for a Robot Dance Off and our student will perform a puppet show. We’ll turn on the caps-lock for this: THIS EVENT IS NOT TO BE MISSED.
2. ANN ARBOR BOOK FESTIVAL!
The festival will be packed with robots, for sure, so that reason alone should bring you out. While you are there, please stop by the Hussey Stage in the Michigan League at 5pm. As many of you know, we have been working with theater students from Community High to adapt Hemingway’s short stories into plays. Anne Heinz and Anne-Marie Roberts have been working tirelessly with this team of brilliant thespians, and this one-time-only performance is not to be missed! Hope to see you there (preferably in a robot costume)!
Many thanks to the Michigan Humanities Council for making this workshop possible!
And, of course, stop by our booth and say hello. We’ll also have the chapbooks from the other part of our Great Michigan Reads project. Ryan Howard spend three Saturdays with eight amazing high school students discussing Hemingway’s life and work, hiking, and canoeing as they worked through The Nick Adams Stories. A sample of the writing that came out of that workshop will be available at our booth!
SEE YOU SATURDAY (HOPEFULLY IN A ROBOT COSTUME). ONWARD ROBOTS!
Tuesday, May 6, 2008 – Feature of the Month: Hemingway's Michigan
Former Volunteer of the Month Ryan Howard taught a three-week literature workshop on Hemingway at Argo Park. In it, students discussed The Nick Adams Stories, Hemingway, sexism, machismo, and also went hiking, canoeing, and had a picnic. Michigan Radio’s Jennifer Guerra featured the workshop in a piece that aired on NPR. Hear it here!
Thursday, May 1, 2008 – If You Happen to Happen by...
If you happen to happen by 826michigan today, just through the window you can see some amazing things:
1. The now-famous Mustache-O-Meter, one of the most beloved and gawked-at displays in all of Ann Arbor, is fully colored in. That’s right, all those little mustaches are multicolored, beaming happiness, and signifying that we’ve MET OUR GOAL OF TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. Holla! Many thanks to the hundreds (that’s right, hundreds!) of people who donated their money. Many thanks to Fifth Third Bank for their sizable donation, and to Arbor Brewing Company for hosting a month and a half of scratchy madness. And thanks, above everyone else, to our heroic and mustachioed farmers who battled through itchiness, ostracization, and at least two other kinds of public humiliation.
2. The Liberty Street Robot Supply & Repair: stop by and peer in now, so when it’s super famous, you can be all, “I totally saw that place when it was just shelves and a stage,” and your friends will think you’re too, too cool.
On Saturday, May 17, if you happen to be in Ann Arbor, you will see many, many people walking around in homemade robot costumes. (Say, do YOU want to walk around in a homemade robot costume? We can help! We can also help with your costume! Email Amy!) Then, if you happen by our space a little bit after seven, you’ll see a bunch of (a gaggle? a school? a murder? a pride? a pack?) robots dancing in the alley next to 826michigan in what we can only imagine as the first of many robot dance-offs. To be followed by a puppet show by our students, and the grand opening of the Liberty Street Robot Supply & Repair.
Today, however, there are shelves, a whole lot of them, soon to be bedecked with everything from positronic brains to robot toupees! There is a stage, and it’s stained (thanks Gregg and Cat!)! There is some other weird wooden contraption! There are boxes everywhere! And trash everywhere! OMG this place is a mess, and we open in two weeks! What I am doing writing a blog?
Thursday, May 1, 2008 – Volunteer of the Month for May 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008 – Mustaches: The Razor is on the Horizon
For those of you who have walked by 826michigan lately, you may have noticed that there are many mustaches colored in on our now-famous Mustache-O-Meter (honestly, you would not believe the number of people that thing stops in the sidewalk). We are currently hovering right around eight thousand dollars, thanks in no small part to a very generous donation from Fifth Third Bank.
We know what you’re thinking: But wait! I wanted to participate in 826michigan’s Second Annual Mustache-a-Thon: Son of ’Stache! Is it too late?
No, dear reader, it is not too late. Our goal is ten thousand dollars, and we’re not there yet. Help us reach our goal in these last few days where the stache reigns supreme. Come Monday night, after our shave-off, 826michigan will be baby-face central.
Donate to the Mustache-a-Thon by supporting a grower on our STACHEBLOG!
Friday, April 18, 2008 – Why NOT Art?
On our Winter Workshop Schedule, the now-infamous teaching duo of HD and Alison taught their final Why Art? workshop. While we are sad to lose the two of them (and HD has been around pretty much since the beginning), we are excited for the new adventures they’re embarking on.
At any rate, last night we celebrated the opening of our Why Art? Exhibit, which runs through the end of the month. Cookies were consumed, juice was guzzled, art was appreciated. Photos were taken; for example, this one:
and Maddie mug in front of the exhibit.
The exhibit centers around a workshop which was centered around UMMA/Offsite’s Arthur Miller & Inge Morath: China exhibit. Still with us? We know: it’s like a snake eating its own tail. Over three sessions, workshop participants studied the reaction of two artists to a society in transition, embarked on whirlwind tour of Ann Arbor (on St. Patrick’s Day, no less) with cameras, and wrote. Stop by and check it out!
Interested in our workshops? The new schedule is up here!
Wednesday, April 16, 2008 – The 826michigan Gazette!
Last night, we celebrated the release of the first-ever 826michigan Gazette. Okay, first of all, let me say: it looks AWESOME. I mean, it really does. Erik Gable, who works for the Adrian Telegram and taught the workshop, did a wonderful job with the design and layout. And the content, of course, is stellar. With articles on everything from the new high school in Ann Arbor to volunteering at the Humane Society to the health hazard caused by high heels, let’s just call it a good read.
At the wrap party, cookies were consumed, newspapers were autographed, robots were discussed, and Lillie and Stina got really, really excited about googly eyes.
the birth of their obsession with googly eyes.
Long-time 826er Sam Groh — who’s been twelve, in his own words, “like, forever” — said something memorable: “Ann Arbor without 826 would be like ice cream without those little peanut things that they have in Moose Tracks. I don’t usually eat ice cream unless it has those things in it.” I liked that so much I wrote it down, so that I could share it with you, here, today.
You can check out the 826michigan Gazette here, where it currently resides as our Feature of the Month.
Many thanks to Erik Gable, who will be, thankfully, teaching this workshop again for us in the spring. Thanks also to his facilitators: Kat Carney, Chris Miller, and Adrienne Young. Kudos to all our young journalists. Thanks to the Ann Arbor News for printing the papers, which can be picked up in our store, or around town. And thanks to Lillie’s little brother Jacob, who is eight, and told me last night, after remembering parts of an 826 experience from two years ago, “I remember a lot of irrelevant details.” And then followed it up with, “I have an impressive vocabulary.”
Wednesday, April 16, 2008 – Feature of the Month: The 826michigan Gazette
Journalist Erik Gable heads up the crew of the 826michigan Gazette. The culminating project of a workshop we’d like to offer every semester, you can check out the first issue here (686KB PDF).
Thursday, April 3, 2008 – Congratulations!
It is with pride and excitement that we announce the winners of the Lloyd Hall Scholars Program contest. Chosen from scores of entries, the following young writers will be published this spring in the LHSP literary journal. Pretty sweet!
In no particular order, the winners are:
- “Reality-Impossible Truths” by Madeleine Bradford
- “A Rabbit and the Poor Farmer” by Sophia Cho
- “A Day as a Bird” by Katheryne Johnston
We can’t wait to see your work in print!
Tuesday, April 1, 2008 – It's HERE.
It’s up! It’s up! The Spring Workshop Schedule is posted! It’s AWESOME.
Click here to see the schedule. Registration opens tomorrow night at 8pm. Amy and Lauren are accepting, as ever, massage gift certificates, coffees, flowers, lattes, trinkets, espressos, and any other caffeinated beverages you can think of. We are also accepting emails of encouragement, emails about how wonderful the schedule looks, and emails about how great 826michigan is.
Enjoy!
Tuesday, April 1, 2008 – Volunteer of the Month for April 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008 – Strange Mysteries, Indeed; A Dark Day, Indeed
For the last few weeks, we’ve been working with a number of bright fifth graders from University Prep in Detroit. Our mission? To teach them how to write mysteries.
So we’re sure you’re wondering…did we accomplish our mission?
Yesterday we celebrated the release of our newest chapbook, Strange Mysteries. Strange Mysteries is composed of fourteen whodunits certain to befuddle and astound you, involving a missing brother, a mysterious baby, zombies, some murders, some robberies, and a detective named Nacho Cheese.
shows the students how to dust for fingerprints.
Many thanks to the wonderful students at University Prep, who exceeded all of our expectations with this project and were truly joys to work with, and their wonderful teacher, Mr. Curran. Thanks also to D’Real Graham, Keith Hood, Jessica Krivan, and Sydney Smith for all their help!
Finally, it is with a heavy heart that we bid adieu to our education director, Erin Bennett. Today is her last day. In an effort to keep herself from breaking down in tears about the whole matter (again), this writer is gonna keep it brief, and just say: Erin, there would be no 826michigan without you. We love you, we will miss you, and we wish you the best of luck.
Saturday, March 22, 2008 – Big News x 2
Sometimes our new tutors get nervous about tutoring. What if the student has a question I can’t answer, they say, or: I’m not good at math. To the question, we say: We don’t expect you to know everything, and it often makes students feel better to know that even their tutors have to ask for help from time to time; and to the statement, we say: You can probably do fourth grade math, and if you can’t, the student or his or her textbook can explain it to you.
Which is all a convoluted, roundabout way of saying: The title of this blog is Big News x 2. Do you know what that equals? BIG NEWS and BIG NEWS. (Sometimes these things come together organically, and sometimes it’s a bit more of a stretch.)
Big News #1: Our second annual Mustache-a-Thon: Son of Stache.
We enjoyed it so much last year that we had to do it again. How it works, for those of you new to us: we get twenty or so men (and maybe even a couple of women) to grow mustaches and collect donations to support said staches. All the mustache donations go to 826michigan, to support our free student programming. It’s fun, funny, and lucrative. Who knew that mustaches could support literacy? (Answer: WE did!)
How can you help? Support a stache, thereby supporting free tutoring, writing workshops, field trips, in-school projects, and publishing opportunities for youth all over southeastern Michigan. The kick off is this Monday night, so by Tuesday afternoon, our STACHEBLOG should be up and running. Just click on the Mustache-a-Thon banner at the top of this page, it will take you right to the STACHEBLOG, and then you can donate money to your favorite stache! Easy!
Big News #2: The Spring Workshop Schedule will be posted on this very website at noon on Tuesday, April 1, and registration will open at 8pm on Wednesday, April 2.
We’ve got lots of sweet new workshops this semester, ranging from puppetry to the poetic lives of colors to studying Hemingway’s short stories (a workshop complete with a canoe trip!) to princess rescue to two, yes, that’s right, two different fantasy workshops (we figured you’d been asking for them long enough).
Registration, as always, will be online only. And, of course, each student can still only sign up for two workshops per semester.
That’s it for us today. Enjoy the spring snow!
Tuesday, March 18, 2008 – Spring Cleaning!
Don’t you love win-wins? How about this one: Help us raise money for our free student programming by cleaning out your attic! Participate in our first ever online auction! You’ve come to expect creative fundraising from us: from our Mustache-A-Thon to Mittenfest, well, we’ll do whatever it takes to keep our programs for area students free.
How does it work? It’s easy. Deliver your auction items to iSold It on ebay’s Ann Arbor location (869 B W. Eisenhower Pkwy) from now until May 20. Any person or business can donate by delivering their items to the iSold It location. All donors will be recognized at an auction closing party to be held at 826michigan Wednesday, May 28 from 7pm-9pm.
Artwork, computer equipment, antiques and other items are expected to be part of a wide range of auction lots. For more specifics on what exactly we are (and an idea of what we are not) taking, click here! For more information, call us at 734-761-3463 or email Amanda.
Friday, March 14, 2008 – The Catch-all Blog
Well, hello! Have you looked outside today? It’s GORGEOUS. We are excitedly anticipating our first crocus sighting, how about you? We have several things to bring to your attention, so let’s go!
First, we’d like to thank the Ann Arbor Community Foundation, once again, for supporting our free student programming. They’ve been loyal supporters of ours practically since we opened, so we are pleased to announce that they are continuing to show us love, this time in the way of $6000 to maintain our drop-in tutoring program. Thanks Ann Arbor Community Foundation!
Second, in case you haven’t yet heard, 826 National has partnered this year with GOOD Magazine as part of their Choose GOOD Campaign. When you subscribe to GOOD, an engaging, thoughtful magazine that highlights key people, ideas, and institutions that are driving change in the world, you can elect to have ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of your subscription payment go straight to 826. We’ve already raised $8,100 of our $60,000 goal—help us to achieve the rest! To subscribe, please click here.
And finally, mark your calendars: Thursday, May 15. The Ann Arbor Book Festival presents: Being the Village, Opportunities for Community Partnerships in Literacy Education: A Language & Literacy Symposium. This event, which takes place at the Ann Arbor PreSchool and Family Center from 4:30-8pm, features a presentation called “How to Put the Fun Back in Writing” led by our very own education director, Erin Bennett! Our good friend Chuck Hatt will be there as well. For more information, visit www.aabookfestival.org.
Beware the Ides of March tomorrow, friends, but enjoy the lovely spring weather!
Sunday, March 2, 2008 – Feature of the Month: Willow Run Radio Play!
This past fall/winter, stellar volunteer Chris Greene spent eight weeks working with third, fourth, and fifth graders from Willow Run Community Schools. Twelve students participated in this afterschool program in which Peter Pan was adapted for the radio. This program was part of the Bright Futures grant through Eastern Michigan University, and we were terribly excited to help the students write, record, and produce the final play.
We’ll be honest: we had high hopes for this program, but even we didn’t expect the finished product to be so good, so clever, so funny, and so well put together. Many thanks, pats on the back, and high fives to our one and only Chris Greene!
Press play above to listen to the play (7:56)
Or click here to download the mp3 (7.3 MB)
Saturday, March 1, 2008 – Volunteer of the Month for March 2008
Friday, February 29, 2008 – They're Coming!
Who's coming? Here's a hint:
Some of you know what this cryptic message is all about. For those of you who don't:
- No, that does not mean Tom Selleck is coming to 826michigan. At least, not that we know of.
- Click here for details.
It's not too late to participate in our Second Annual Mustache-a-Thon: Son of Stache. Email Amy for more details or to sign up!
Monday, February 25, 2008 – Another Workshop!
Sure, our Winter Workshop Schedule is "done," but when the fine people from UM's Mortar Board approached us about this workshop, it sounded so fun we couldn't say no! As you know, we don't usually make these sorts of exceptions, but as this is a late addition, you can still sign up for this workshop even if you're already taking two workshops this semester!
Another Storymaking Workshop!
Taught by UM's Mortar Board
Ages 8-12, 15 students
Fridays: March 14, 21, 28, and April 4 (four sessions); 6-7:30pm
Ever written a story that was good enough to be published? In this workshop you can write a story, have it published in a homemade book, and decorate and illustrate it yourself! We will spend time developing your creative ideas and turning them into stories. After your books have been created, you will have the chance to decorate the cover and pages to make your story come alive! We'll also have a reading of our stories for our friends and family on the final session.
This workshop is led by fourth-year students from the University of Michigan. Their names are Yoshi, Hilary, Gabi, Allison, Rahul, Lauren, Anna, Kerri, JoJo, Naomi, Kelly, Raina, Dana, Kristen and Korie. These young adults are members of an honors society called Mortar Board (a fancy name for the flat hat you wear at graduation!). They are leaders on campus in Dance Marathon, a cappella groups, pre-professional groups and community service organizations.
Click here to sign up for this workshop!
Friday, February 22, 2008 – Protesting Nothing!
Last Wednesday was the culminating event for our six-session Fictions of Self workshop, in which students learned to reinvent themselves, think outside the box, and just generally mess with people. Taught by the effervescent Jessi Holler and her slightly-more-serious cohort Josh Blanchard, workshop participants looked at everything from the internet to Bob Dylan as a way of shaking things up.
What was the culminating event? I’m glad you asked! The students staged a protest! What were they protesting? Nothing! But, you know, in a really intelligent, thoughtful way. Carrying signs all around Ann Arbor that touted things like: “Down With This Sort of Thing,” the League of Prevention and Discouragement (occasionally going by the acronym AP) handed out pamphlets urging people to stop, think, and protest. It was all very well thought out, while at the same time all very vague, which is, I’m sure you can imagine, hard to pull off.
My favorite part? I was on the phone with someone working at Shaman Drum, an awesome independent bookstore on State Street, when the protesters went by the store. “Oh, weird,” my friend Annie said, and paused. “There’s another small protest going down State Street, which is not weird, but it’s, like, kids. And I can’t really tell what they’re protesting.” Well done, my friends. Well done.
Many thanks to the amazing Jessi and Josh, whom we hope to talk into doing “this sort of thing” again. And many thanks to the workshop participants, who, as usual, wowed and amazed us with their creativity, ingeniousness, and passion.
| « Previous News & Announcements |
