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“The Dust Bowl” integrates music and storytelling to reflect on “America's Worst Hard Time,” when the dust storms of 1931 to 1939 destroyed farm crops and the livelihoods of many Americans. Accompanied by the famous dust bowl ballads of Woody Guthrie, we will examine the causes and course of this man-made natural disaster, the challenges residents had to overcome, and actions of government to address the impact of this devastating era in American history. The instructors will give two private tours of the earliest cars in the Gilmore Collection in the steam barn as well as those in the the Carriage House. These tours will also include a discussion on Gilmore Museum History, and students will be free to explore the campus on their own following the tour.
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Instructor: Fred Colgren, John Burton, Robin Nott
Capacity Remaining: 49
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Dates: 4/2/2025 - 4/2/2025
Times: 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
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Sessions: 1
Days: W
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Building: Gilmore Car Museum
Room: 6865 W Hickory Rd, Hickory Corners, 48060
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Member Rate: $28, Non-Member Rate: $38 (Includes $18 Museum Entry Fee)
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This class is full. Please use the button below to be added to the waitlist.
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This course provides a comprehensive history of the 1960s, analyzing the social and political impacts of this turbulent decade first through the contextual lens of post-World War II American culture and events between 1945 and 1960 before pivoting our focus to the “Long Sixties” from 1960 to 1974. Setting the stage with the impact of the atomic bomb and the beginning of the Cold War, the 60s saw an intense reevaluation of our country’s ideologies through the birth of the Civil Rights and Antiwar movements; the rise of feminism and environmentalism; and backlash against the murders at Kent State, increased violent crime in urban areas, and overwhelming corporate commercialization. Politically, Kennedy’s New Frontier, Johnson’s Great Society, the emergence of the New Left, and Nixon’s Watergate scandal all introduced new perspectives, challenges, and problem-solving attempts. American society also experienced an incredible cultural shift through the development of a Youth Counterculture, the influence of television, the transformation of the musical landscape by Beatles and rock music, and the optimistic spirit gained from the moon landing.
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Instructor: Ron Kramer
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Dates: 4/2/2025 - 4/16/2025
Times: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
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Sessions: 3
Days: W
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Building: College of Health and Human Services
Room: 1087
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Member Rate: $30, Non-Member Rate: $60
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This class is full. Please use the button below to be added to the waitlist.
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Swedish Death Cleaning is about decluttering our space to simplify our own lives, but also to help make it easier for those who have to clean up once we have passed away. This two-session course focuses on collaging photographs and documents onto 12x16 flat canvasses, so as to preserve the memories, but get rid of frames, boxes, envelopes, or other containers. No experience is needed, and all supplies will be provided, except for your memorabilia.
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Instructor: Susan Caulfield
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Dates: 4/3/2025 - 4/10/2025
Times: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
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Sessions: 2
Days: Th
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Building: College of Health and Human Services
Room: 1284
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Member Rate: $23, Non-Member Rate: $43. Includes $3 Supplies Fee.
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Widely considered to be one of the most fatal pandemics in history, the outbreak of bubonic plague—often referred to as the Black Death—devastated the human population in the 14th century. We’ll analyze the origin, nature, and spread of this deadly illness, and the tragic inability of contemporary medicine to comprehend, let alone treat, the Black Death. We’ll also explore the varied cultural responses to this bewildering disease, such as the discovery and eradication of “the enemies within” accused of spreading the plague and the religion-focused actions of the Flagellants. Additionally, we’ll examine the impact, aftermath, and consequences of the Black Death on a global scale.
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Instructor: James Wright
Capacity Remaining: 19
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Dates: 4/3/2025 - 4/17/2025
Times: 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM
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Sessions: 3
Days: Th
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Building: College of Health and Human Services
Room: 2060
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Member Rate: $30, Non-Member Rate: $60
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This class is full. Please use the button below to be added to the waitlist.
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We have creative brains, able to tap into a lifetime of experience and education that can be used to “think outside the box.” Games are an easy way to activate problem-solving strategies such as brainstorming ideas or a shift in perspective that may lead to grins, groans, giggles, and guffaws. For example, everyone knows the 50 States in the U.S., but can you name the twelve states that begin with the letter "N" in just two minutes? A playful, mind-stimulating experience will be had by all!
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Instructor: Norman Bober
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Dates: 4/7/2025 - 4/7/2025
Times: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
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Sessions: 1
Days: M
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Building: Portage Zhang Senior Center
Room: Meeting Room 2B
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Member Rate: $10, Non-Member Rate: $20
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In 1911, Mary Hadrich made history when she became the first woman to serve as Private Secretary—the historical equivalent for Chief of Staff—to Michigan Governor Chase Osborn. Both Yoopers, Hadrich and Osborn brought a unique perspective to the Capitol throughout their intriguing decades-long partnership. There, prohibition, state spending, and suffrage were hot topics, and Governor Osborn placed remarkable professional and personal trust in Hadrich, who deftly steered his business ventures and political aspirations, all while helping soothe complicated family dynamics.
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Instructor: Valerie Marvin
Capacity Remaining: 19
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Dates: 4/7/2025 - 4/7/2025
Times: 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
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Sessions: 1
Days: M
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Building: College of Health and Human Services
Room: 1057
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Member Rate: $10, Non-Member Rate: $20
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This class is full. Please use the button below to be added to the waitlist.
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Errors, misjudgments, and mayhem were part of the decisions that were made in early American history. Familiar names from our nation’s founding, including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr, and George III were just some of the many people who, at times, were on the wrong side of history. We’ll explore how these mistakes and miscalculations came together to form the foundation of our country as we know it today.
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Instructor: John Geisler
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Dates: 4/7/2025 - 4/14/2025
Times: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
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Sessions: 2
Days: M
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Building: College of Health and Human Services
Room: 1035
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Member Rate: $20, Non-Member Rate: $40
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This course explores the vital role community support plays in helping refugees successfully integrate into the workforce. You’ll gain a foundational understanding of the refugee experience, including the causes that lead to displacement and the challenges they face upon resettlement. Through global and local statistics, we’ll examine the scale of refugee movements and highlight the economic benefits they bring to the communities they join, from filling workforce gaps to driving entrepreneurial activity. We’ll also discuss the many ways we as individuals can make a positive difference, with a focus on volunteer opportunities to mentor, guide, and support refugees as they build skills and search for employment. By the end of this three-session course, you’ll walk away empowered with knowledge and actionable steps to become effective allies, fostering a more inclusive workforce and strengthening community ties. Join us to discover how you can play a meaningful part in welcoming and integrating our new neighbors into a shared economic future.
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Instructor: Rohullah Wahidi
Capacity Remaining: 25
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Dates: 4/8/2025 - 4/22/2025
Times: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
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Sessions: 3
Days: Tu
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Building: College of Health and Human Services
Room: 1057
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Member Rate: $30, Non-Member Rate: $60
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Whether you’re planning to develop a community-based oral history project or hoping to preserve family memories by capturing the stories of individual lives, this course will teach you the basics for creating a plan and implementing it with step-by-step guidance. You’ll learn the importance of doing oral histories and what it means to be an oral historian hands-on by developing an oral history project of your own—including how to choose interview subjects; preparing for, organizing, and conducting interviews; and following up with your subject afterward.
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Instructor: Donna Odom
Capacity Remaining: 13
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Dates: 4/10/2025 - 4/24/2025
Times: 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
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Sessions: 3
Days: Th
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Building: Goodwill Industries of Southwestern Michigan
Room: 420 E Alcott St, Kalmazoo MI
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Member Rate: $30, Non-Member Rate: $60
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This class is full. Please use the button below to be added to the waitlist.
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The joke is two things in life are certain, death and taxes, and we have control over neither. Wouldn’t it be nice to at least get the last word? Obituary writing can be left up to your funeral home, or you can tell your own story. Traditional obituaries include essential information many genealogists are happy to see, but some obituaries do more than give lineage details—they entertain! This class will cover traditional obituary writing and nontraditional forms of sharing your life’s story. We will look at examples, and you’ll receive a template to use for capturing the story of your life. This repeat course has updates and new information.
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Instructor: K. Lynn McFarlen
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Dates: 4/15/2025 - 4/15/2025
Times: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
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Sessions: 1
Days: Tu
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Building: Milestone Senior Services
Room: 918 Jasper St, Kalamazoo MI 49001
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Free to members, registration is required. You must sign in to your account to verify membership before the add to cart button will appear.
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This experience-driven, multi-part course is a collaboration between OLLI and WMU’s Department of Economics, where you’ll attend two free lectures from their 58th Werner Sichel Lecture Series, then join OLLI instructor Dr. Susan Pozo, Professor of Economics at WMU and local migration scholar, for a follow-up discussion. The overarching theme of this year’s Werner Sichel Lecture Series is “Forced Migration, Refugees and The Economy;” the two lectures we will focus on in this three-session learning experience are “Mapping the Journey: A Decade of Refugee Flows to the U.S.” with Dr. Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes from the University of California-Merced, and “The Impacts of Displacement and Refugees on Host Communities” with Dr. Jackline Wabha from the University of Southhampton in the United Kingdom.
First, on March 27, Dr. Amuedo-Dorantes, who has made a name for herself by consistently obtaining access to U.S. administrative data through freedom of information petitions concerning the tracking of immigration inflows at the Southern U.S. border, will inform us about her findings with respect to asylees, a special category of refugee. Refugees are individuals who are outside of their country of origin but cannot return due to a credible fear of persecution. According to the U.S. Office of Homeland Security, asylees meet the conditions of a refugee, but petition for said status either while physically present in the U.S. or at a U.S. port of entry. Second, on April 10, Dr. Wabha will speak about the refugee crisis in Europe, informed by an impressive body of research on immigration, including important studies on return migration, migration selection, migration and entrepreneurship, and the occupational mobility of migrants, among other topics.
To capstone the experience, learners will join together for a roundtable conversation featuring additional background information about the topics presented in both lectures with instructor Dr. Susan Pozo on April 17. Please note: All presentations in the Werner Sichel Lecture Series will be held on-campus in Dunbar Hall, Room 1303 from 4 to 5:15 p.m.; the OLLI course will be held in College of Health and Human Services, Room 1057 from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Parking for the lecture series is free in the Miller parking ramp; a parking permit will be issued to participants for the OLLI course.
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Instructor: Susan Pozo
Capacity Remaining: 14
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Dates: 4/17/2025 - 4/17/2025
Times: 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
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Sessions: 1
Days: Th
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Building: College of Health and Human Services
Room: 1087
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Member Rate: $10, Non-Member Rate: $20
This Registration is only for the Post-Lecture Discussion with Dr. Susan Pozo. The Free Lecture is with WMU's Department of Economics and takes place on March 27th and April 10th from 4 to 5:15 p.m. at Dunbar Hall, Room 1303.
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This class is full. Please use the button below to be added to the waitlist.
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In 2026, the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport (AZO) will celebrate its 100th birthday. As we look ahead to the airport’s centennial, let’s also look back over AZO’s interesting history! We’ll begin in the 1920s with the airport’s first scheduled flights, regular air mail service, and original name. Next, we’ll explore expansions and architectural changes that took off in the 1950s, including discovering how the airport helped to launch a museum! You’ll learn about the airlines that served the airport through the years, see AZO-related archives and artifacts from the Air Zoo’s Collection, and hear (and share your own) stories about those who worked at and traveled in and out of our community’s historic airport.
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Instructor: April Bryan
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Dates: 4/21/2025 - 4/21/2025
Times: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
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Sessions: 1
Days: M
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Building: Air Zoo
Room: 6151 Portage Rd. 49002
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Member Rate: $10, Non-Member Rate: $20
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This class is full. Please use the button below to be added to the waitlist.
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How did Maurice Ravel construct the hypnotic Boléro? What makes Debussy’s Ibéria so vivid? Why are the famous arias of Bizet’s opera Carmen so emotionally powerful? We will explore how Spanish rhythms, folk songs, and dances infused the intriguing and colorful pieces of these three French composers with listening maps, historical information, and musical recordings. Rounding out this two-session course, you’ll have the opportunity to attend a Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra rehearsal as well as their performance the following weekend. Please note that tickets for the concert are sold separately; to purchase, call (269) 387-2300 or online at www.kalamazoosymphony.com.
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Instructor: Jane Rooks Ross
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Dates: 4/23/2025 - 4/30/2025
Times: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
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Sessions: 2
Days: W
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Building: College of Health and Human Services
Room: 1035
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Member Rate: $20, Non-Member Rate: $40
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Come ready to play because playing is the best way to learn this game! Pétanque and bocce are similar in that the goal is to be closer to the target than your opponent, scoring with as many of your team’s boules as possible. Pétanque doesn’t require a strong athlete to toss the baseball-sized boules, which are smaller, lighter, and made of steel. Played outside on a gravel terrain, teams of two or three players work together using six balls per team. You’ll learn the terms, rules, throwing techniques, and strategies hands-on during gameplay.
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Instructor: Martha Beverly, Stanley Sackett
Capacity Remaining: 10
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Dates: 4/28/2025 - 4/28/2025
Times: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
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Sessions: 1
Days: M
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Building: KVCC Main Campus
Room: Parking Lot
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Member Rate: $10, Non-Member Rate: $20
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The “Book of Silence” is a 13th century story about the “knight who was a girl,” an important text in the Western European tradition that focuses on gender identity and explores in an allegorical way whether gender is “nature” or “nurture.” This story, which surprises many people when they learn of its age and its subject, is the center of a new play adaptation crafted and directed by theatre professor Lofty Durham, which will premiere during the 2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies and run through the end of May. This two-session course provides a behind-the-scenes peek at the process leading up to the final performances, including adapting a narrative into a dramatic form; managing the different historical perspectives on gender and identity; and the design and rehearsal processes. Professor Durham will be joined by other members of the artistic team for the sessions.
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Instructor: Lofton Durham
Capacity Remaining: 13
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Dates: 4/30/2025 - 5/21/2025
Times: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
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Sessions: 2
Days: W
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Building: Gilmore Theatre Complex
Room:
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Member Rate: $20, Non-Member Rate: $40
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The past comes alive through music in this unique course that features an old-time string band who will perform songs from the 19th century while explaining the hidden history embedded in these familiar melodies. You’ll hear the stories behind several of the tunes associated with the American Civil War, as well as learn how the cultural currents reflected by this music connected to the rise of racist tropes in the Minstrel Era and Reconstruction Period that followed.
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Instructor: Howard Steiner
Capacity Remaining: 31
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Dates: 5/2/2025 - 5/2/2025
Times: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
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Sessions: 1
Days: F
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Building: Portage Zhang Senior Center
Room: Community Room West
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Member Rate: $10, Non-Member Rate: $20
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