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IN-PERSON: The Elderwise classroom, 2275 Platt Road
Many people have thought that the media has treated England’s new king harshly. In this class we will consider Charles III’s upbringing and adult actions. We will take a look at the problems he experienced as the heir to the throne. We will also look into how he occupied his time as he waited for the succession, including his relationship with his mother as she aged. Finally, we will discuss his current interests. Susan suggests that class participants may want to watch the following prior to the class: the series The Crown; an interesting film The Queen, which considers the death of Diana; Spencer, which portrays Diana facing difficulties in accepting her role as an HRH; and finally, a film version of the play King Charles III. Come ready to contribute to the class discussion. Susan Nenadic holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in history and English. She is known for her integration of history and literature in teaching, and is the author of several books and articles, including A Purse of Her Own: Occupations of 19th Century Women, and Legendary Locals of Ann Arbor. Susan currently leads Friends of Amoru, a non-profit organization building a secondary school in Uganda.
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Fee: $20.00
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Instructor(s): Susan Nenadic
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Dates: 10/27/2026 - 10/27/2026
Times: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
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Sessions: 1
Days: Tu
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Building: 2275 Platt Road
Room: Classroom
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IN-PERSON: The Elderwise classroom, 2275 Platt Road
Regarded as one of the first "nuclear monster" movies that rose to prominence in the 1950s, Gordon Douglas' 1954 sci-fi horror film Them! features violent, enormous, irradiated ants who mutate in the New Mexico desert after atomic tests are conducted. Lauded for its spectacular special effects (which also earned it an Oscar nomination), action-packed storyline, and spine-tingling creatures, Them! took the cinema by storm and was a massive critical and commercial success. Join us during Halloween week as we journey back to a time when horror movies crept into our nightmares, sent chills racing down our spines, and made us fear they might actually come true! Mary Miller is a long-time Member of Elderwise Learning and the current Council Chair. She is involved in Friends of Restorative Justice and The Dispute Resolution Center and enjoys spending her free time reading and watching films.
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Fee: $20.00
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Instructor(s): Mary Miller
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Dates: 10/29/2026 - 10/29/2026
Times: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
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Sessions: 1
Days: Th
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Building: 2275 Platt Road
Room: Classroom
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ONLINE: A Zoom invitation link will be sent the Friday before class begins.
His father thought Frank Gehry (1928-2025), a Canadian and American architect and designer, was just a dreamer who would never amount to anything. It took until age 68 for him to rocket to fame with the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. We will trace Gehry’s story, fish and all. Besides Bilbao, his works include the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, and many other structures. Gehry was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Wendy Evans was raised among the museums of London, England, and holds advanced degrees from Oxford University and Wayne State. She taught art history at Wayne State University and is a long-time docent volunteer at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Wendy loves to share her passion for art with groups like Elderwise. More information is available at www.art-talks.org.
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Fee: $20.00
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Instructor(s): Wendy Evans
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Dates: 11/2/2026 - 11/2/2026
Times: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
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Sessions: 1
Days: M
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Building: Online Course
Room: Online via Zoom
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In-Person Pre-Performance Class: Wednesday, November 4, 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Elderwise Learning classroom, 2275 Platt Road
Presenter: Marie Jones
Matinee LIVE Performance: Sunday, November 8, 2:00 p.m.
Riverside Arts Center
76 North Huron Street, Ypsilanti, MI
Written by Erin Osgood
Directed by Marie Jones
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Fees:
Members: $10 for the in-person pre-play class, plus a $17 ticket fee, added at checkout
Nonmembers: $20 for the in-person pre-play class, plus a $17 ticket fee, added at checkout
Extra Tickets are $17 each.
Please contact the Elderwise Learning office to purchase extra tickets. Extra Tickets cannot be purchased online.
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Family Pains, written by Michigan playwright, Erin Osgood, is an empowering story of embracing your true self. Pippa Mathews returns home to share her life-changing news with her eccentric and intractable family. She fantasizes about how she wishes her news will be received, but reality is never the same. Join us as we discuss, and experiment a bit, with the design elements that both support the story that is told in a play, and the emotional and artistic subtext needs as well. Marie Jones began her journey with PTD Productions as an actor (You Can’t Take It With You) in 1996, and as a director (Bent) in 1998. The subsequent decades have provided many more opportunities to act and to direct. The nature of a not-for-profit community theatre lends itself to supporting the company’s productions in many ways, and Marie has been a producer, costumer, set builder, and a member of the PTD Board of Directors. Additional information will be emailed to class registrants a few days before the show.
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Fee: $20.00
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Instructor(s): Marie Jones
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Dates: 11/4/2026 - 11/4/2026
Times: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
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Sessions: 1
Days: W
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Building: 2275 Platt Road
Room: Classroom
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IN-PERSON: The Elderwise classroom, 2275 Platt Road
Alzheimer’s disease was first described by the German neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer in 1906. Today, it is regarded as the most common form of dementia. In this class Dr. Bruno Giordani will provide background information on Alzheimer’s disease and explain what is going on in the brain when someone has this form of dementia. We will learn about the latest findings from this year’s Alzheimer’s Association International Conference and several other recent conferences where new information is being presented, including information on risk factors, early detection, innovative prevention and treatment approaches, and new initiatives to support research. Bruno Giordani is a professor at the University of Michigan in the Departments of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Psychology, and in the School of Nursing. Dr. Giordani currently serves as Associate Director of the Michigan Alzheimer’s Disease Center. His research interests include identification of early signs of cognitive impairment and cross-cultural applications of new assessment and intervention models.
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Fee: $20.00
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Instructor(s): Bruno Giordani
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Dates: 11/5/2026 - 11/5/2026
Times: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
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Sessions: 1
Days: Th
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Building: 2275 Platt Road
Room: Classroom
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IN-PERSON: The Elderwise classroom, 2275 Platt Road
A mountain-climbing expedition to travel to Antarctica was formed by a commercial venture with the goal of making the first recorded summits of two Antarctic peaks. The expedition consisted of two women and sixteen men, including our presenter, Bud Thomas. Join us for this presentation, which highlights the challenges associated with scouting out and climbing the snow-covered peaks, and showcases the beauty of Antarctica and the abundant wildlife near the climbing sites. Bud Thomas is a retired aerospace engineer with over 50 years of experience, including rocket engine design for the Saturn-V Apollo rocket, the Space Shuttle’s main engine, and jet engine design for commercial and military aircraft. Bud has experience in both the Arctic and the Antarctic.
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Fee: $20.00
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Instructor(s): Bud Thomas
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Dates: 11/5/2026 - 11/5/2026
Times: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
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Sessions: 1
Days: Th
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Building: 2275 Platt Road
Room: Classroom
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- This class has reached the enrollment limit. Please click the "Add to Waitlist" button below.
IN-PERSON: The Elderwise classroom, 2275 Platt Road
This class has an enrollment limit of 8. A waitlist will be available.
Please let the Elderwise office know if, after registering, you are unable to attend this class. This gives students on the waitlist an opportunity to join.
Fee: Member $10 Nonmember $20
Plus an additional $15 for materials, added at checkout
Come enjoy a fun filled time creating three holiday cards to give to friends and family or just keep for yourself! Even if you have never done paper crafting before, Sidnie will walk you through the process and provide you with all the supplies and tools you need to create your holiday cards. There will be six card designs to choose from. Use your imagination and surprise yourself with how creative you can be! Sidnie Kubien has been scrapbooking for over 20 years. When she moved out to the country in Jackson County, there was no convenient place to get greeting cards, so she got inspired to create her own greeting cards. She fell in love with the craft and started teaching classes in Hillsdale, MI.
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Fee: $20.00
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Instructor: Sidnie Kubien
Capacity Remaining: -1
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Dates: 11/11/2026 - 11/11/2026
Times: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
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Sessions: 1
Days: W
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Building: 2275 Platt Road
Room: Classroom
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ONLINE: A Zoom invitation link will be sent one day before class begins.
Uncover Ann Arbor’s hidden Black history! A Letter to the West Side is a touching documentary that explores the rich history, challenges, and resilience of Ann Arbor’s historic Black community, the West Side. Through personal stories and historical accounts, this film looks at the vibrant social atmosphere of the West Side, thriving Black local businesses and schools, and the systemic challenges that shaped the community and eventually led to its loss. A Letter to the West Side pays tribute to the trailblazers who laid the foundation for progress, celebrates the community’s remarkable achievements, and sheds light to the injustices once faced by giving a voice to those whose stories have been silenced and forgotten. This film was written and directed by Kameron Donald, a two-time Emmy Award-winning storyteller and driven by a mission to use compelling visual storytelling and strategic communication to bridge communities and institutions. Mary Miller is a long-time Member of Elderwise Learning and the current Council Chair. She is involved in Friends of Restorative Justice and The Dispute Resolution Center and enjoys spending her free time reading and watching films.
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Fee: $20.00
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Instructor(s): Mary Miller
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Dates: 11/12/2026 - 11/12/2026
Times: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
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Sessions: 1
Days: Th
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Building: Online Course
Room: Online via Zoom
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ONLINE: A Zoom invitation link will be sent one day before class begins.
Join us for a step-by-step workout guide on how to move more in your kitchen. Your kitchen gadgets are the only equipment you will need for this low-impact workout. Moving more everyday matters, and since we spend a lot of time in our kitchens waiting for things to warm up, boil, brew, or stew, it is a perfect time to engage in more physical movement. Natural moves such as squats and kitchen sink planks and push-ups, along with Pilates exercises, are the key focus in the effective kitchen workout. Props Needed: kitchen towel, massage or tennis ball, two unopened soup cans. Gwyn Jones has offered personal training sessions, workshops, and classes on Pilates for more than ten years. She is certified in STOTT Pilates and TRX suspension and annually enrolls in continuing Pilates Education.
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Fee: $20.00
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Instructor(s): Gwyn Jones
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Dates: 11/13/2026 - 11/13/2026
Times: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
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Sessions: 1
Days: F
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Building: Online Course
Room: Online via Zoom
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IN-PERSON: The Elderwise classroom, 2275 Platt Road
Songs that make you feel ideas: That is how composer Yip Harberg (“Over the Rainbow,” Finian’s Rainbow) described the marriage of words and music in songs of the American Musical. Nicknamed “the conscience of Broadway,” Harberg echoed the sentiments of many in musical theatre: “Songs are the pulse of a nation’s heart. A fever chart of its health.” This class will chronicle the work of the composers and lyricists who reflected, reinforced, and, at times, raised America’s civic and social conscience. More importantly, we will learn how they did it with optimism, humor, and sentiment. It’s a whirlwind tour of the musical theatre with stops, some surprising, to see and hear the work of artists like Jerry Bock, Stephen Sondheim, Gretchen Cryer, Nancy Ford, Bert Williams, Will Marion Cook, Oscar Hammerstein, Abe Borrows, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Ken Stevens began his theater career in Cincinnati where he co-founded the Showboat Majestic and served as a Rockefeller Fellow at Playhouse in the Park and the University of Cincinnati. In 1972 Ken joined the faculty of Eastern Michigan University (EMU), where he created both the musical theater program and the graduate and undergraduate programs in arts management. He serves on the board of Villa Barr Art Park and Novi and the education program of Michigan Legacy Art Park, a wilderness sculpture park at Crystal Mountain Resort.
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Fee: $20.00
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Instructor(s): Ken Stevens
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Dates: 11/17/2026 - 11/17/2026
Times: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
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Sessions: 1
Days: Tu
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Building: 2275 Platt Road
Room: Classroom
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IN-PERSON: The Elderwise classroom, 2275 Platt Road
What do Sanskrit, English, Pashto, Greek, Welsh, and Yiddish have in common? In this presentation, based on the book Proto by Laura Spinney, we will learn how their precursor, Proto-Indo-European, arose near the Black Sea in the 5th millennium BC, spread around the globe, and fractured into the Indo-European language family. This story is still emerging but depends on studies of linguistics, archeology, and the genetics of ancient humans. Rick Neubig holds a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Michigan and an M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard and MIT. He taught Pharmacology at U of M and Michigan State University. Rick has a passion for nature, especially birding, and recently became entranced with the study of ancient human origins.
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Fee: $20.00
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Instructor(s): Rick Neubig
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Dates: 11/17/2026 - 11/17/2026
Times: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
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Sessions: 1
Days: Tu
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Building: 2275 Platt Road
Room: Classroom
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HYBRID: In the classroom and online. A Zoom link will be sent to all registrants one day before class.
Our inveterate wanderer, George Jabol, returns to Elderwise with more tales of his travels. In the fall of 2014, he took a three-week tour of several of America’s national parks and monuments. In this class George shares some of the majestic sights he discovered in our western backyard, and some of the world’s most beautiful natural scenery. This trip included six different western states, and visits to the Badlands, Chief Crazy Horse Monument, Mount Rushmore, and Devil’s Tower. We will also journey to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, Salt Lake City, Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, and Mesa Verde National Park (including the Anasazi cliff dwellings). George Jabol received his B.A. degree from Muskingum College in Ohio, and a Ph.D. in English language and literature from the University of Michigan. Fully retired now from a career with the federal government, George creates photographic slide shows as a way to remember his travels and share them with others.
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Fee: $20.00
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Instructor(s): George Jabol
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Dates: 11/19/2026 - 11/19/2026
Times: 1:00 PM - 3:30 PM
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Sessions: 1
Days: Th
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Building: Hybrid: In-Person and Online
Room: In the 2275 Platt Road Classroom and on Zoom
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- ONLINE registration for this class is now closed.
If the start date of the first session has not happened yet,
please call or email the Elderwise office to get registered.
Thank you!
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ONLINE: A Zoom invitation link will be sent the Friday before each class session begins.
1st session: Monday, September 28
2nd session: Monday, October 26
3rd session: Monday, November 23
Using prepared questions and our own observations, the discussion each month will explore a book selected by book club members.
Selected books for the Fall 2026 term are:
September Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Published 2021 118 pages Fiction
Small Things Like These is a critically acclaimed novella by Irish author Claire Keegan. Set in 1985 Ireland, the book is about a coal merchant named Bill Furlong, who confronts the Catholic Church's control and a dark secret at a local convent during the Christmas season, forcing him to make a difficult moral choice. Praised for its precise prose and emotional depth, the book won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, exploring themes of courage, love, and complicity. It was also adapted into a film starring Cillian Murphy.
October Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America by Beth Macy
Published 2025 368 pages Nonfiction
Paper Girl is a memoir exploring the decline of Macy’s Ohio hometown, Urbana, due to economic hardship, the opioid crisis, and political polarization, contrasting it with her own escape through education and journalism. The book blends personal narrative with investigative reporting to examine issues like the mental health crisis, misinformation, and the hollowing out of the middle class, questioning if a similar path out is possible for today's youth.
November The Correspondent: A Novel by Virginia Evans
Published in 2025 304 pages Fiction
The Correspondent is a 2025 debut epistolary novel that tells the life story of Sybil Van Antwerp, a retired lawyer in her seventies, through her letters and emails. The book explores themes of aging, forgiveness, and memory as Sybil writes to friends, family, and even strangers, while confronting a painful event from her past. It has been praised as a moving and witty story with a memorable, cantankerous protagonist, and is recommended for fans of literary fiction and epistolary novels.
Please read Small Things Like These before the first class.
The facilitator will send a list of discussion questions for each book to all registrants prior to each Book Club session.
Debie White has been a member of the Elderwise Book Club for 10 plus years. She is an avid reader and welcomes an exchange of ideas, opinions, and interpretations.
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- ONLINE registration for this class is now closed.
If the start date of the first session has not happened yet,
please call or email the Elderwise office to get registered.
Thank you!
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ONLINE: A Zoom invitation link will be sent one day before each class session begins.
1st session: Wednesday, October 21
2nd session: Friday, November 6
It certainly appears that this year’s midterm elections will be more important than the average off-year voting, and also a crucial test of President Trump’s power and ambitions, even though he is not on the ballot. Recent polling indicates that large percentages of likely voters see certain actions as genuinely intended by the White House as efforts to increase presidential authority while limiting aspects of America’s democracy. All three branches of government are unpopular, but so are the major media. Our two classes will evaluate the nation’s tensions and polarization leading up to the midterms, and then the results and outlook three days after the voting. The same battleground states, all of which Trump won in 2024, again will be in play. Watch Georgia and Michigan, which have highly contested and expensive races for all major offices. In our beleaguered two-party system, Independents may determine the outcomes. Al Chambers is a veteran journalist and communicator who continues to focus on the power and speed of news, media and technology in this rapidly changing world.
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- ONLINE registration for this class is now closed.
If the start date of the first session has not happened yet,
please call or email the Elderwise office to get registered.
Thank you!
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IN-PERSON: The Elderwise classroom, 2275 Platt Road
Published in 2001, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse is Louise Erdrich’s eighth novel. Set on a remote Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota and covering several decades, the story brings together three of the author’s most memorable characters: Father Damien Modeste, Sister Leopolda, and Nanapush. Thematically, identity and belonging, belief and faith, and community and isolation are explored in this narrative in richly complex ways. Our two sessions will focus generally on the author’s life and specifically on the novel. Class registrants should read the novel prior to class. Kevin Eyster is a professor emeritus at Madonna University in Livonia where he continues to teach courses in literature. He has been presenting at Elderwise Learning for over 25 years. Along with spending time with family, he enjoys swimming, bike riding, reading, and following one of his alma mater’s sports teams.
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