Back in the day, you had to take your entertainment where you could get it. I guess that is still true, except that right now my entertainment is coming from Law & Order reruns on cable and a laptop hooked up to wi-fi. The first people who owned our little blue house in the mid-1890s couldn’t do that, and so they had to actually leave the house if they wanted entertainment.

Lookit us! We’ve left the house!!!!

We had an opera house, and there were speakers coming into town, and church activities, but the big thing were parades. (One of the first pictures in my book is of a parade coming down Main Street). We don’t have as many parades in the ol’ deuce these days, but we have some good ones. And one of my personal favorites is coming soon–FESTIFOOLS!

Rededication Parade from 1948

Here in Ann Arbor, when we talk about Ann Arbor being cool and unique and Ann Arboring, we almost always include Festifools and Fool Moon in that conversation–as we should! Festifools takes place on Sunday, April 12 at 4:00pm and will feature paper mache puppets dancing in the streets. (I am proud to say that, thanks to my friend Andrea, I will be a prancing praying mantis!). FoolMoon takes place on Friday, April 10 from dusk (parade steps off around 8pm) until midnight. This parade will feature homemade luminaries all aglow. Ken and I will be hopping around in hats with lights on them (lights!!!!!) while we show off our wedding cake luminary (sorry, you can’t eat it. Well,  you can, but it would taste like paste and tissue paper and wire).

Both events will be a blast! We will leave the house and be entertained, just like our friends in the past. I only wish that the 1890s era owners of our home were around to dance around with us!