Community Calendar

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of America, how is your family’s story a part of that history? Join us at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library to find out how one author answered that question!

Jean Alicia Elster gathered stories from her Michigan family, also named the Fords, to write her books. Her presentation will focus on learning and sharing family history through oral histories. She will share portions of the oral histories she obtained from family members and then read select passages from her Ford family historical fiction trilogy--WHO'S JIM HINES?, THE COLORED CAR and HOW IT HAPPENS--to show how she used those oral histories to create the narratives in the books.

She will also offer tips on obtaining oral histories from family members during family gatherings such as reunions, holidays and other celebrations. There will be time for Q & A at the end of the presentation, and if you bring your copies of her books, she will be available to sign them.

Storytime with Programs Director, Janice Wilks! Every Wednesday from 10:30am – 11:30am Storytime will be followed by activities designed for children with developmental differences. We will never tell your child to hush or stop wiggling. Physically-distanced with stringent health and safety protocols being followed. Takes place at our office: 2505 Ardmore St SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49506. Every family leaves with a free book and a snack! If you plan on attending, please RSVP with the form below so we can make sure there’s enough goodies to go around.

Join author Demarra West on April 04, 2026, from 3:00 to 4:30 pm at Pages Bookshop in Detroit, Michigan, for a book reading and signing of her newly released book Love Will Liberate, hosted by Pages Bookshop. In addition to the reading and signing, the event includes an author Q and A and time to connect and celebrate the book release.

Love Will Liberate explores the science behind why we're hard wired for connection and how relationships, more than anything affect our wellbeing. The book introduces the Love Liberation Framework, a nine part model based on West’s extensive research, along with plethora of practical resources to help you gain greater self awareness, strengthen boundaries, work through conflict, and love with clarity and intention.

RSVP for free to save your spot since space is limited. If you want a copy before the event, you can order at www.demarrawest.com/love-will-liberate or through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, IngramSpark, and other online book retailers.

See you there!

Storytime with Programs Director, Janice Wilks! Every Wednesday from 10:30am – 11:30am Storytime will be followed by activities designed for children with developmental differences. We will never tell your child to hush or stop wiggling. Physically-distanced with stringent health and safety protocols being followed. Takes place at our office: 2505 Ardmore St SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49506. Every family leaves with a free book and a snack! If you plan on attending, please RSVP with the form below so we can make sure there’s enough goodies to go around.

Storytime with Programs Director, Janice Wilks! Every Wednesday from 10:30am – 11:30am Storytime will be followed by activities designed for children with developmental differences. We will never tell your child to hush or stop wiggling. Physically-distanced with stringent health and safety protocols being followed. Takes place at our office: 2505 Ardmore St SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49506. Every family leaves with a free book and a snack! If you plan on attending, please RSVP with the form below so we can make sure there’s enough goodies to go around.

Panelists and featured guests discuss history topics with Clements staff in this webinar series. In this conversation, author Don James McLaughlin explores how phobia — first tied to diseases like hydrophobia (rabies) — became a flexible suffix attached to various fears and social concerns, shaping political, medical, and aesthetic thought from the colonial period through the early 20th century.

McLaughlin traces the emergence and evolution of phobia as a concept in American culture long before it became established in modern psychology. McLaughlin challenges the idea that phobia only gained prominence with late-19th-century psychiatry, showing instead that the term’s roots extend back to early American literary and medical discourses.

Storytime with Programs Director, Janice Wilks! Every Wednesday from 10:30am – 11:30am Storytime will be followed by activities designed for children with developmental differences. We will never tell your child to hush or stop wiggling. Physically-distanced with stringent health and safety protocols being followed. Takes place at our office: 2505 Ardmore St SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49506. Every family leaves with a free book and a snack! If you plan on attending, please RSVP with the form below so we can make sure there’s enough goodies to go around.

Storytime with Programs Director, Janice Wilks! Every Wednesday from 10:30am – 11:30am Storytime will be followed by activities designed for children with developmental differences. We will never tell your child to hush or stop wiggling. Physically-distanced with stringent health and safety protocols being followed. Takes place at our office: 2505 Ardmore St SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49506. Every family leaves with a free book and a snack! If you plan on attending, please RSVP with the form below so we can make sure there’s enough goodies to go around.

Storytime with Programs Director, Janice Wilks! Every Wednesday from 10:30am – 11:30am Storytime will be followed by activities designed for children with developmental differences. We will never tell your child to hush or stop wiggling. Physically-distanced with stringent health and safety protocols being followed. Takes place at our office: 2505 Ardmore St SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49506. Every family leaves with a free book and a snack! If you plan on attending, please RSVP with the form below so we can make sure there’s enough goodies to go around.

Angela Oonk hosts a webinar series featuring topics in American history. This month, Clements Curator of Manuscripts joins in a discussion with Derek Kane O'Leary about creation of the first archives in the new United States.

Archives, the foundational resource for historical research, do not emerge from a vacuum. What materials are included in the archive, and why? Whose voices are preserved for posterity, and whose are silenced? In his book, Archival Communities: Constructing the Past in the Early United States, O’Leary takes up this crucial task for the era of the early United States, arguing that key components of America’s archives emerged from within an Atlantic world of circulating scholars, evidence, practices, and ideas. Sponsored by Doug Johnson.