Fall Things To Do

It is official. We made it to autumn. We have started seeing the changing of leaves and some drop off the tree, but full colors won't be for another few weeks. That doesn't mean you have to wait until then to celebrate the season. Below is a list of things you can start planning or participating in this fall:

Uncle John's Cider Mill

If you have never been to this place, you have to put this on your docket to visit this year. It is conveniently located off 127, right next to the highway, with big signs that let you know you're getting close so its difficult to miss. There is a generous amount of parking so even if its busy you can usually find a spot.

You have so many choices when it comes to what to enjoy first, but many people's favorite thing is to participate in the cider and donuts they provide. If you head into the main building, you are immediately hit with the scent of freshly made cake donuts and pressed apples. You may have to wait in a line to get your hands on either of these treats, but once you do you will be enchanted by the flavors and the atmosphere. If you are lucky, you might even come when they are in the process of crushing the apples to make the cider. 

You can enjoy these while you mull around and if you find your way to the lower level you can enjoy the cute gift shop full of interesting bits and bobbles. If you make your way outdoors, you might wander your way to the wine tasting room or the bakery building nearby. Overall, this can be a solid location to spend a few, lazy hours enjoying fall activities.

Potter Park Zoo

What could be better than looking at cute and/or fascinating animals while leaves tumble down all around? The zoo is the perfect place to blend learning about animals and enjoying fall scenery. If you wait until October you can also participate in Boo at the Zoo. You can dress up in costumes as you parade around the park looking for activities all around as well as brushing up on your animal knowledge. There is a hay ride, cider and donuts, an inflatable bouncy spot, and so much more! Be aware that some of the activities may be available at an additional cost and not included in the price of the ticket.

Fall Festivals

The fun thing about living in Michigan is that each season brings about different types of festivals and catching one of them is a must. Check out:

1. Grand Ledge Fall Festival: features vendors, crafts, and family-friendly activities like a petting zoo and pony rides.
2. Oktoberfests: Old Town, Brewhouses, and Pubs all take advantage of the fall season to celebrate different kinds of beers, some specifically around the German culture. Horrocks is also a popular place to stop by because they have a biergarden and live music.
3. Fall in love with Old Town: usually a Saturday in September, this festival is more about exploring and supporting the historic parts of town.

You can keep abreast of festivals popping up near you by a quick Google search or by scrolling on social media. There's always something you can find and plan for!

Nature Centers

A perfect way to start viewing the leaves changing is to visit a nature center. There are a few in the Lansing area that attract attention, but even visiting a park can afford you some wholesome experience. Consider visiting Fenner Nature Center, Harris Nature Center, and Woldumar Nature Center and walk their many different trails to take in the sights and sounds of the changing season. Fenner Nature Center often does cider & donuts, live music, pressing apples, and pumpkin painting. Be on the lookout for other events on their websites or social media.

Tunnel of Trees

Speaking of nature, the best way to view the changing colors is to drive from Harbor Springs to Cross Village. It is a scenic drive down M-119 that spans around 20-miles of winding roads. The narrow roads can oftentimes feel like an actual tunnel so just imagine the majesty of reds, oranges, and yellows gliding over you! It can double as a road trip and give you an excuse to visit the smaller towns, enjoying the quaint charm of sleepier Michigan areas.

Pumpkin Patches and Orchards

If you do a quick Google search, you will see various options in the Greater Lansing area including:

1. Country Mill Orchard and Cider Mill
2. Uncle Johns Orchard and Cider Mill (see above information)
3. Reese Farms
4. Peacock Road Family Farm
5. Brimley's Pumpkin Farm
6. Barkham Creek Farms
7. Clearview Orchards

Any of these locations will have a load of pumpkins to choose from, but how you do it is up to you. You can walk to a row of pumpkins and pick your choice, or you can look through a variety that have been assorted for you. One is more involved and requires more stamina, but the experience of doing this activity is unforgettable. If you have a family or want to make a memory with a loved one, this is a perfect excuse.

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Fact Checkers Favorites

Have you ever wondered if what you were hearing or reading was real or fake? Being concerned with whether or not something is true should be considered a civil responsibility, and one that we should take upon ourselves to uphold with integrity. With that being said, you may have not been introduced to the CRAAP test, but it's one of the best ways to source the information you might come across. Here's how to use the test, ask yourself:

1. Currency: Is the information timely and up-to-date for your topic?
2. Relevance: Does the information relate directly to your research needs?
3. Authority: Who is the author or publisher, and are they qualified and reputable in the field?
4. Accuracy: Is the information supported by evidence and correctly cited, and can it be verified by other sources?
5. Purpose: What was the motive behind creating the content—to inform, persuade, or sell, and does it show bias?

From these questions, you should be able to identify whether or not something holds some value. If information does not conform under these rules, you may have a biased or inaccurate piece. And for fun, once something is verifiably true, you can say, "Well, that was a load of CRAAP."

Another great way is to use your library or local colleges to look up information via the databases that are available. You can access some of these resources for free on their websites without the need of a library card or being a student of their college. A quick Google search can get you to the right place.

Test your skills and fact checking by looking at sites like Not Real News or The Onion to see if you can spot the lies, misinformation, and other misleading tidbits within their articles.

Here is a short, reliable list of vetted sources you can refer to when you need to fact check:

• PolitiFact
• Fact Check
• Snopes
• NPR Fact Check
• Media Bias Fact Check
• SciCheck

The strongest position you can take is one where you are correctly informed...and have fun saying "CRAAP"!

Is September the new January?

Change is a constant. People gravitate toward constants, but may struggle with the concept of change itself. Many people think favorably of things that remain steady, predictable, and planned. However, we also tend to build things around great change: changing of seasons, political figures, weather, a new school year, etc. So, when summer begins its transition into fall, it's natural to feel either a sense of upheaval and/or renewal. This time of the year begs us to face the ever-constant: our relationship with change.

Just as we go into the New Year with a sense of renewal and hope, so too can September be the time of transition and reevaluation. In fact, this month can be called a 'temporal landmark' which is a significant time where goal-setting creates a boost in motivation and psychological sense of a clean slate. This can be a time of self-reflection and separation from the past. You can make September a routine "checking-in" point in the year to identify whether or not you are hitting your goals and/or achieving what you want in life.

Ride the same back-to-school energy by using that mindset to carry you through an intentional look at your year. A few bits of advice that can help you on your way:

1. Revisit goals you set earlier within the year.
2. If it's not working, reset it.
3. Break down goals into smaller, manageable ones.
4. Create a way to track your progress.
5. Keep things simple.

You can set practical steps towards your goals or create new habits starting this fall - it's the perfect new start to the year! 🍁

Late Summer Reads

In our particular area of the world, there is a certain rhythm that fills the days. We may not notice the small ones, but the seasonal ones are more apparent. Late summer is a time in the year with colder nights but mercifully warmer days. Yet, it hallmarks what is to come when autumn finally arrives. Although most people enjoy the change to fall, it is also one step closer to the dreaded frigid winter months. So, why not hold onto the end of summer or even celebrate the transition into fall with some books!

Persephone Fraser is pulled back to Barry's Bay, her home town, when a call about a former close friend's mother's funeral comes, pulling her back into orbit with Sam Florek. It was their friendship over the course of 6 summers that turned into something breathtaking, only to be ripped apart, that pushed her far away from anything her heart could want. When she returns, their connection is undeniable. Yet, unless Percy can find a way to face her choices and make peace with the things she tortures herself with, neither will know what all of it amounts to. This story is built on nostalgia, love, and choices that change people forever.

One summer in the late '70s, Caitlin Somers chooses Victoria Leonard as her friend, thrusting her into the heart of her sprawling, eccentric family and sweeping her off to places of unimaginable privilege. During their vacations, they become "summer sisters". Years later, their long, complicated friendship has faded but when Caitlin begs Vix to come to her Vineyard wedding to be her maid of honor, she knows she will go. Not simply as principle, but to finally know what happened during that last shattering summer and why her summer sister still has the power to break her heart.

Four freshman arrive at a college, they strike up a conversation in their shared room, and seeds of friendship are planted despite their backgrounds being from completely different worlds. Their bonds grow tighter as their college years pass, making them inseparable, but as graduation looms, a desperate act leads to tragic consequences. In the aftermath, the friends promise to always be there for one another no matters the distance. 10 years down the road, one calls the other after remembering their pact, testing whether promises made have the strength to stand the test of time. In this portrayal of grief, hope, and love, you will be asking yourself, "When things fall apart, who will be by your side to help pick up the pieces?".

Brought back to Grace, Arizona by her ailing and distant father, Codi is attempting to confront her past while struggling to follow Loyd Peregrina's advice of, "If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life." What she comes back to, however, is a silent environmental disaster and some illuminating clues to her own identity. With a blend of flashbacks, dreams, and Native American legends, the book is a suspenseful story around Cori and a man whose view of the world could change the course of her life.

At the age of 58, divorced and facing an empty nest, Dawn is trying to settle herself into her new future. However, she finds herself continually returning to the past and a secret she's kept for so many years: when she was 16, she found herself pregnant. Being in Trinidad, and as was a common practice, she was forced by her parents to give the baby up for adoption. Now, more than 40 years later, she feels the overwhelming need to reconnect with her lost daughter, but tracking her down is not easy. It will take an immense emotional load to retrace her steps back home and to question the very choice she had to face all those years ago, the one that has shaped all the choices she has made since then. Depicting the powerful bonds of a mother-and-child, this story echoes of enduring bonds in love, family, and home.

Thomas is caught in the mundane of being a shrimp shanker while selling his wares in the afternoon and rehearsing songs on his guitar as he pines for Joan Wyeth down the street. Although he is a folk musician at heart, a private dream he keeps, he must eek out a slow, deliberate life in his grandfather's trade with his mother in Longferry. However, when a stranger shows up with the temptation of Hollywood glamour, he is shaken from the drudgery of life and sees the silver lining in a different future. Will Thomas trust the American's promises of a bright future, and how far can he truly carry his dreams? This is a haunting story about a young man hemmed in by his circumstances though longs to fulfill the purpose he believes will lead him away from it.

This is a story about a young woman attending a liberal arts college in New England as an international student and her long distance Skype calls to her mother who lives in Brazil. In the blue glows of their computer screens, the two women develop new rituals of intimacy and caretaking. Although their realities apart are vastly different, they find communion in drinking whiskey together in the middle of the night and keeping watch as the other slides into sleep. 
Yet as Autumn approaches, each begins to realize that spring might not hold hopeful beginnings but rather difficult endings. This follows the difficult transition of a person making a home in a foreign place and the sacrifices they and their loved ones make in order to fulfill that dream.

In this book of mystery and heart, you will meet a strange character named Ayumi Shibuya. Carrying a tattered notebook, dressed in a designer duffel coat, he intercedes on behalf of the living searching for a way to bridge the gap between this world and the next. Ayumi meets his clients at a luxury hotel to lay down ground rules: the service is entirely free, but the reunion is a one-time deal. Oh, and it can be refused by the dead and only happen during a full moon. During these encounters, we see a variety of longings unfulfilled only fulfilled by the Go-Betweeners. With each rendezvous, you are given a clue as to who Ayumi really is. In this page-turner you are led through both living and dead as they are given one last chance at closure.