Did you know Michigan had its own “forgotten Woodstock” — a rock fest held less than an hour from Ann Arbor in 1970? Have you ever wished you could tell what a tree was just by looking at it? Or do you want to learn a little more about the most effective world revolutionary of all time? We are teaming up with Ann Arbor District Library this month to bring us all this with absolutely no cover!
When: March 27th, 2013, doors at 630pm, talks at 7pm!
Where: LIVE, 102 S First St, Ann Arbor
Moola: FREE! Thank you, Ann Arbor District Library!
Mark Deming – Michigan’s Woodstock: The 1970 Goose Lake International Music Festival: The Greatest Show You’ve Never Heard of
In the summer of 1970, over 200,000 rock ‘n’ roll fans made their way to Goose Lake just outside Jackson, Michigan for the biggest rock festival ever held in the Midwest. It featured nearly all the major Michigan acts of the day, including the Stooges, the MC5, SRC, the Up, Brownsville Station, and Mitch Ryder and Detroit, as well as Rod Stewart and the Faces, Joe Cocker, the James Gang, Mountain, Chicago, Jethro Tull, and the Flying Burrito Brothers. The festival made headlines, angered the governor, and had local homeowners up in arms. So how come you’ve never heard of it? Music writer Mark Deming discusses the strange but true story of the biggest weekend in Michigan’s musical history.
About Mark Deming:
Mark Deming is a writer who has been covering music, film, and various aspects of popular culture since the 1980s. He’s been a regular contributor to All Music Guide and All Movie Guide since 1999, and has also written for Ugly Things, Resonance, Detroit Metro Times, Chicago New Times, Phoenix New Times, Ann Arbor Current, American Garage, and many others. His vocal stylings have appeared on recordings by the Clutters, Mark Lansing and his Board of Water and Light, the End Times, and the Seger Liberation Army, and he once met Captain Kangaroo and Leonard Cohen on the same day.
Ben Connor Barrie – Barking Up the Wrong Tree: A Crash Course in Tree Identification
This lecture will be a crash course in tree identification. Attendees will learn how to start developing their tree ID skills, not just memorize a few trees. Beginners will focus on accurate genus level identification. More advanced participants will work on species level identification. By the end of the lecture, everyone should be able to confidently identify some of the most common trees in the region.
About Ben Connor Barrie:
Ben is a Ph.D. student studying forest ecology at the School of Natural Resources and the Environment. In his spare time, he runs the local website Damn Arbor. He knows all the trees.
Michael Leonard – Thomas Paine: How the First World Revolutionary Fell from Fame and Became the Forgotten Founding Father (of both America and France!)
At 37, a simple girdle maker and tax collector named Thomas Paine came to the American colonies and became known as Tom Paine. There, instead of making girdles or collecting taxes, he would leave women’s figures alone and instead inspire tax payers to not only stop paying their taxes to the king, but “begin the world over again” with their very own nation – run by them! Rich land owning colonists would welcome his powerful words of inspiration to rouse the rabble to their cause, but then abandon him at their first opportunity, when he proved himself to be a bit too dedicated to democratic participation for all – everywhere – from the country he named “The United States of America” to the other republic he directly helped to found, France’s First Republic… and beyond. Tom Paine may have been a late bloomer, but he sure had a way with words that would make him not only the bestselling author of his day, but would also make him – while seen only as an expendable propagandist to those who would take advantage of him to take power – the most effective world revolutionary of all time… Eat your heart out Che.
About Michael Leonard:
Trained as an applied socio-cultural anthropologist who indeed teaches cultural anthropology by day, Michael has decided to take on an alter ego by night – that of an intrepid historian of an obscure, yet important forgotten person of the past, and the “crimes” he perpetrated to earn his obscurity. In this role, Michael hopes to make people think, even if this also may make them a bit uncomfortable – as thinking often does to people. Thomas Paine is Michael’s target to help rescue from obscurity – in comparison with a far more famous Thomas of his ideological ilk, if not style – who are the subject of a book he’s working on entitled, Doubting Thomases.