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Meteor Festival is Saturday, July 12, 2008. Tickets can be ordered in advance by sending check or money order to:
Babushka, Inc. -Meteor Festival
118 Barry Street
Union City, MI 49094
Tickets are $10.00 each adult, children 12 and under are free!
For more information, see "Meteor Festival" at this Blog or call me at (517) 741-5019 or my cell at (269) 317-7723.
Horse and carriage rides are free!
Eight weeks in and it's definitely growing! I'm not sure if we can actually eat this thing when it's mature and weighing in at something like 40 pounds, but if we can, we'll have enough cole slaw for the entire neighborhood. Getting Derek excited about vegetables has been a good thing too. Growing in another garden is a row of Roma tomatoes. Thinking ketchup is a vegetable, I told him it would be so much better if we made our own. Stay tuned!
My daughter's cat Lizzy, who is apparently starved for attention, insists that she lay on top of anything I am attempting to work on. It used to be that she would just lay on my paperwork, but in this age of electronics, she is not discriminating. With seven other felines just like her, getting anything done at home is often a challenge!
This little gosling is the baby of the yard right now. Being the first one to hatch, and the only one from this nest, this little guy or gal has the entire flock of 13 looking over him/her. It is very entertaining to watch them as they traverse the farm yard and the baby copies everything the adults do. Get too close and you will feel the wrath of the entire family!
Today we are home to mow and weed, weed, weed. First stop though this morning is the farmer's market up town. Word has it there are beautiful hanging baskets for ten dollars!
We stopped in to the Critchlow Alligator Sanctuary in Athens, MI this afternoon and visited their gift shop. On display were several turtles, a multitude of frogs, a python, bearded lizzard and this Leopard Gecko. The owner, David Critchlow, was on hand to show Derek this little guy up close and personal!
We will go back with Michael and visit the actual Sanctuary and see the alligators too. If you are in the neighborhood and have some reptile inclinations, be sure and stop in for a visit! Called "Critchlow Alligator Sanctuary & Zoological Gardens", they are located at 1698 M-66, Athens, MI 49011. (269) 729-4802. More information can be found at www.alligatorsanctuary.com.
Patricia Polacco Presents…
Meteor Festival!
Union City, MI
Saturday, July 12, 2008
10am-5pm
$10.00 admission
(12 and under free!)
Tour Patricia’s home at Meteor Ridge Farm,
Her Art Studio, The Graves House, and
The GAW Center for the Arts.
“Tales and Talk” presented at 10 AM at
The First Congregational Church,
Union City.
Book Signing at the GAW Center
Throughout the day.
Book Sales @ Hensley’s Variety Store,
Downtown Union City.
"Fi Fi" the Clown will be at festival doing super dooper face painting!
Come join us for a "Meteoric" day!
For More Information visit www.patriciapolacco.com or better yet,
Look right here at my blog under “meteor festival!”
or call Donna @ (269) 317-7723
THE STUDIO OF PATRICIA POLACCO
118 Barry Street
(Patricia's studio, Meteor Ridge Farm, and the Graves Home are all open for tour the day of festival, Sat, July 12, 2008)
It is believed that this stately Georgian brick home was built in 1878 with bricks imported from England. Through the years, this home has had many owners, including a doctor who lived upstairs and used the downstairs as his office. At one time, the home had been divided into apartments and in doing so; the staircase had been compromised to allow for a wall. Patricia hired Amish craftsmen to redo the staircase, returning it to its former glory. A wrap around porch was added and remodeling done upstairs, to accommodate an office for staff.
Patricia thought this stately old home would be perfect for an art studio. She does her writing in an office at her home on Calhoun Street, but needed a space for office machines, office staff, and her art equipment, archives and drawing tables. This house suited her needs perfectly.
She shares this space with 9 cats…Stripey, Blackie, Angel kitty, Big Foot Eddie, little Blackie, tripod kitty “Hope”, Tiger Boy, Pinkie, and Pocket. Yes, Patricia is a great lover of cats!
Donna Claar, Patricia’s Executive Director, has her office here as well. Donna has worked for Patricia for over 7 years now. She has a rescue farm for cast off and disabled critters a few miles outside of town that includes a horse, 4 donkeys, 13 goats, 3 sheep, 2 pigs, chickens, ducks, geese, dogs, cats, and a cockatiel.
Married and the mother of 5 grown children, Donna also welcomed two young boys into her home. You can only image what a busy household she has! Often times, kids and nursing critters follow her to work, making for interesting days for Patricia as well.
THE GRAVES HOUSE!
It was a dark and eerie night. There was a full moon. Dogs howled. The town clock ran backwards and struck chimes wildly. The water in the village fountain ran crimson red. Shrubs and house plants mysteriously dried and withered…
This was the night that Doug and Shalleaux Graves and their five children arrived in Union City. Patricia Polacco’s neighbors were here!
A rather odd family, some say. Doctor Graves is a scientist, inventor and entomologist…specializing in collecting very rare and exceptionally LARGE varieties if spiders. They are given free run of his house! “A happy spider is a welcome guest,” Dr. Graves says. They also keep bats as pets…
Mrs. Graves is a gourmet cook as well as having a veritable “green thumb” when it comes to raising the largest species of Venus flytrap in recorded history. She has even managed to domesticate her flytraps and requires them to do household duties from babysitting the quadruplets to helping prepare meals.
This family and their home are the stars of two books by Patricia called “The Graves Family” and “The Graves Family Go Camping”. Every year on Halloween night, the Graves family opens their home to trick or treaters from 6 to 8 pm for those brave enough to enter! But you can also tour it in daylight at the Meteor Festival!
WELCOME TO METEOR RIDGE FARM
(Open for tour on Meteor Festival!)
Patricia Polacco purchased the home that was formerly known as “The Plantation” in 1994. After moving to the house in 1996 after two years of renovation and restoration, she renamed it “Meteor Ridge Farm”.
Col. Thomas Mosley built this stately home in 1856. His family owned the steel mill that once thrived here in Union City. Unfortunately Col. Mosley died before the house was completed. His wife and children then maintained the home by making it an Inn. U.S.60, which you can see running behind the pasture, was the original stagecoach route between Jackson and Kalamazoo. The Inn was the half waypoint and travelers were invited to dine, rest, and stay if they wished. But for the most part, this was simply a stopping point of refreshment; horses were exchanged for fresh ones and the stagecoach continued on its journey.
It is said that Abraham Lincoln stopped here as he was in the stage coming from Jackson with his destination being Kalamazoo. He “took a ladle of water, then went into the front yard and played catch with his son, Robert Todd Lincoln, who was accompanying him on the journey.
If you look above the doors in the second vestibule down the main hall of the house, you will notice faint lettering above both doorways. One says “Baggage Room” and the other is marked, “Stage Office”.
Mrs. Polacco enjoys this home with 9 goats, 3 sheep, 2 weimeraumer dogs (Faye and Blanche), and numerous cats. Patricia recently built a “cattery” on her property to house several of her feline friends. Located in front of the barn, you are welcome to peek in the windows!
As you walk the grounds and visit with the goats and sheep, please do not enter the outbuildings or the animal pens.
OUR IDEA of TRANSPORTATION!
Horse and carriage rides are free the day of Meteor Festival! Ride from the GAW Center (downtown) to Meteor Ridge Farm (Patricia's home) by your choice of several horse drawn vehicles.
Horses are transporting from 11 AM to 4 PM.
Riverside Cemetery
Having rested in the front yard of her grandmother’s farm for many years, Patricia’s family believes the meteor is very special, indeed! It was moved to the cemetery to become the family headstone in 1949. That is where it is to this very day…all except a small piece that Patricia takes to schools for children to see.
Patricia wrote a book about the meteor story, aptly named, “Meteor!” It was Patricia’s first book and as we know, was followed by almost 50 more! The special thing about the meteor is that when you make wishes on it, they come true! The thing is, the family became worried that someone with a cruel heart would make a wish that would hurt people. So they came up with three wishes that you CANNOT make. Are you ready?
1) You cannot wish for money! OK, kids, think about all the harm that can come from wishing for and getting money. ..It carries a price you are not willing to pay. Nothing wrong with EARNING it!
2) You cannot change other people. Yes, we have issues with people….but did you know you already have the power to change other people? Yes! You change other people by how you treat them! When someone is being less than wonderful to you, respond with kindness.
3) You cannot wish for toys, possessions, or things, another words, you cannot wish for anything purchased with money.
Now, when Patricia’s grandpa told her the three things she could not wish for, she pouted and thought hey, those are all MY wishes! He was disappointed that she did have an imagination. Patricia did so have an imagination, she thought. So she began to think of what she could wish for for other people. Instead of what people could do for her, buy for her; she began to thing of wishes of what she could do for other people.
Go ahead, try it! By all means, have all the wishes you can make!
We spent last weekend at Pokagon in our little 1968 Yellowstone. Untouched since it's manufacture, it isn't much to look at but we love it none the less. Having suited our purpose for a few years now, we have made great memories already as we easily pull up and into any spot we can find.
The boys like to camp too and I'm glad, as these kids were raised on tv and video games and could barely function if I told them to find something to do that didn't involve electricity. The husband and I watched them ride bikes for hours on end, meet new friends, swim and play in the nearby lake, roast hot dogs, assemble Smores and make shadow puppets from flashlight,
We had a woodchuck walk through the camp site mid day and a raccoon later that night, fearing not as they scarfed a few dropped tidbits of jello and strawberries. Making for great imaginations pondering wildlife and what else could come into camp and eat us, the boys got a chuckle over a tiny mouse later trying to eat some cinnamon rolls on the camper table. For the husband and I, escaping the phone, sleeping in and putting our feet up is welcome R & R and we plan to do it again soon!
If you noticed the hospital wristband on Michael, it's because just 12 hours earlier we were in the ER as he overdid some lifting and swimming, pulling a muscle in his chest wall, causing severe pain. Michael has a congenital heart defect, so chest pain for him is truly a cause for alarm. Luckily it was easily treated and he was good as new very quickly. Regardless, Michael will eventually need open heart surgery to replace a synthetic artery placed when he was just 6 months old.
As we were waiting in the hospital, Jennifer also fronted up in the ER with a lacerated knuckle. She had her hand in a glass washing it and the glass broke. She received 5 stitches and we had a bit of a family reunion in the ER, making for another exciting weekend in the Claar household. We can't wait to see what this weekend will bring!
