(((Queen)))

Sad reality in this write (((Jimmy)))

(((slow)))

Neat share (((Lady)))

Love this write (((kc)))

Thankyou (((nvkikigirl)))
It was wrote for someone I really cared about and
is no longer here. Perhaps one day I will
be able to open up again and let someone else
dip into my heart... Glad you enjoyed it.

Grettings, Nice writes.
Thankyou for sharing with us.
Welcome to our poetry forum and Mingle.

Nice

(((Jimmy))) This is beautiful

Awwww Thanks you guys

(((Ainjel)))

(((MzEm)))

(((greeneyedlady42))) You too write from your
heart and I so enjoy your writes.

(((kc)))

(((Jimmy))) I am flattered, thankyou.

(((cy))) Bearhugs

Thankyou {{{Lady)))

Battle Creek, Michigan...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The name "Battle Creek" had its origin in a skirmish between a government land survey party led by Colonel John Mullett and two Indians. According to various accounts, while Mullett and his group were surveying an area several miles from the present city in the winter of 1823-1824, the work of the survey party was interrupted by Native Americans. Two members of the party, who remained at the camp, were attacked by two Indians, reportedly attempting to steal the party's provisions. During the fight, shots were fired from a rifle, and the two white men subdued the Indians, inflicting a serious injury to one of them. The survey party promptly left the area and did not return until June 1824, after Governor Cass had settled the issue with the Indians. Due to this incident, the nearby stream was called the Battle Creek River.The river was formerly known by the Native American name of Waupakisco, to which some attribute a folk etymology for the name. By this account, the name Waupakisco or Waupokisco was a reference to an earlier battle fought between Native American tribes before the arrival of white settlers. However, Virgil J. Vogel establishes that this native term had "nothing to do with blood or battle".

(From Wikipedia)
_____________________________________________________________________

Named for a skirmish between a government land surveyor and two Indians which took place seven miles away and almost 175 years ago, Battle Creek is proud of its rich and varied past. Known in different eras of its history as the Queen City, Health City and the International City, today Battle Creek is Cereal City, the "best known city of its size in the country."
The village of Battle Creek began as a market and mill center for prairie farmers. By the last part of the nineteenth century, the city developed into a major industrial center supplying a variety goods, including agricultural machinery, steam pumps, violin strings and newspaper printing presses, to markets around the world.

Currently an international business center and amateur sports capital, Battle Creek was once a health and diet reform mecca for the chronically ill.

As the birthplace of the cereal industry, Battle Creek was known around the world. As an army town, it was the basic training site for American soldiers during both world wars, and the home of the famous Percy Jones Orthopedic Hospital.

We invite you to explore Battle Creek's interesting -- and somewhat unconventional -- past with us and to discover the many faces of its rich heritage. These faces include former slave and abolitionist Sojourner Truth, Seventh-day Adventist visionary Ellen White, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg who transformed health care in the nineteenth century and cereal industry magnates C. W. Post and W. K. Kellogg.

When pioneer land speculator Sands McCamly stood at the confluence of the Battle Creek and Kalamazoo rivers in 1831, he knew he had found an ideal location for a settlement. Other pioneering families, including many Quakers from upper New York state, agreed. By the 1840s the village, then known as Milton, was thriving. Growing rapidly as a grain, flour and saw mill center for area farmers, the village changed its name to Battle Creek and incorporated as a town in 1859.

With the coming of the railroad, the fast-growing local industries found national markets. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, Battle Creek grew into a city of more than 22,000 inhabitants. It was the home of Nichols & Shepard and Advance threshing machine companies, supplying agricultural implements to farmers of the great plains of America and Russia. Duplex Printing Press Company, inventors and manufacturers of newspaper printing presses, shipped their mammoth machines around the world. Union Steam Pump and American Marsh Pump Company supplied hydraulic pumps for the industrialized world. V. C. Squier was a pioneer in creating an American company which produced violins and instrumental strings for musicians around the world.

From its earliest days, Battle Creek has welcomed social and religious non-conformists. Quaker pioneer Erastus Hussey operated a station on the Underground Railroad, helping escaping slaves reach freedom in Canada. In the last years of the nineteenth century, the town became a Spiritualist center, where séances and "table knocking" were common, if inexplicable, phenomena.

Sojourner Truth, nationally known as a charismatic speaker for abolition and women's rights, visited Battle Creek in 1856. She was impressed with the people she met and moved here a year later. For the next 27 years, the illiterate ex-slave made Battle Creek her home, as she continued to travel the country, agitating for human rights for black and white alike.

For the first ten years she lived in the area, Truth had a home in the village of Harmonia, a community of Quakers and Spiritualists a few miles west of Battle Creek (now the location of Fort Custer Industrial Park). In 1867 she and her family moved into town, where she lived until her death in 1883. Sojourner Truth, along with several members of her family, are buried in Oak Hill Cemetery, on the east side of the city.

Another non-conformist was attracted by the tolerance and openness of the Battle Creek community in this period. In 1855, a small group of Seventh-day Adventists invited visionary Ellen White, and her husband, Elder James White , to settle here and make the village the headquarters for their new denomination. In the next fifty years, the small band of believers grew to over 200,000 members world-wide. The SDA church initiated an extensive missionary and health education evangelical ministry, established one of the largest printing and publishing houses in the United States , sponsored colleges and medical training institutions and founded a health care facility which became "the largest institution of its kind in the world."

Until the early years of the twentieth century when it decentralized, the SDA church was a major influence in Battle Creek. Centered in the west end of town, known as "Advent Town," the more than 2,000 local church members observed the Sabbath on Saturday. From the 1860s they adhered to revolutionary dietary and health principles, based on the teachings of Ellen White.

These principles were put into practice by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the director of the world-renowned Battle Creek Sanitarium. The "San," as it was known locally, was famous around the world for its water and fresh air treatments, exercise regimens and diet reform. The San doctors were universally recognized for their diagnostic, surgical and medical expertise. In its 65 years of operation under Dr. Kellogg's leadership, the San served thousands of patients, including presidents, kings, movie stars, educators and industrial giants, as well as impoverished charity patients.

One of the first to realize that "you are what you eat," Dr. Kellogg incorporated radical dietary reforms into the San's treatment program. He advocated a lighter, vegetarian diet with no artificial stimulants as a cure for the prevalent 'dyspepsia,' or chronic indigestion. Among several new products developed for this regime was Granose, a ready-to-eat breakfast food made of flaked, baked wheat kernels.

In 1891, a chronically ill middle-aged business failure named C. W. Post came to the San as a patient. While he was there he became fascinated by the marketing potential of the new health foods, including a grain-based coffee substitute. When he left the hospital, Post opened his own spa, LaVita Inn, serving his version of the beverage which he called Postum. A few years later he developed Grape-Nuts cereal.
Through canny salesmanship and bold advertising campaigns, Post became a millionaire and inspired a host of imitators. In the first decade of the twentieth century Battle Creek was home to a "cereal boom." There were more than 80 cereal companies in some stage of existence, manufacturing products made from corn, wheat, rice or oats and flavored with everything from apples to celery.

During this whole time, W. K. Kellogg was working diligently for his older brother at the Sanitarium. But by 1906 he decided he was ready to form his own cereal business -- the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company. Kellogg used extensive and innovative advertising to make his distinctive signature and the Sweetheart of the Corn universally recognizable. To families everywhere, "Kellogg's of Battle Creek" meant cereal.

Most of the small cereal companies disappeared by 1910, but Battle Creek remained the cereal capital of the world as Kellogg, Ralston and Post products became staples on the breakfast tables around the world.

During World War I Battle Creek was the second home to the "doughboys" who passed through the Army training center at Camp Custer. Thousands of young American men received their first taste of military life here and sampled the generous hospitality of the townspeople. Renamed Fort Custer, the base was reactivated during World War II. In addition to serving as a basic training location, the Fort was an internment center for German Prisoners of War.

Hundreds of wounded World War II GI's were sent to Percy Jones Army Hospital for rehabilitation. By the end of the war, it was the largest medical installation operated by the Army and specialized in amputations, neuro-surgery, deep X-ray therapy and plastic artificial eyes. In the decade it was open , the hospital made a lasting impact on the city. Battle Creek was the first city in America to install wheelchair ramps in its sidewalks, to accommodate the Percy Jones patients when they went downtown.

Battle Creek contains many souvenirs of its rich heritage, including the Victorian Kimball House Museum , the stately mansions of Capital Avenue, NE, cereal workers housing in Post Addition , the Underground Railroad Monument, the Sanitarium building (now used as a Federal Center), Sojourner Truth's grave in Oak Hill Cemetery and Kellogg's Cereal City USA. In the near future, a museum devoted to Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the Sanitarium and the city's Adventist heritage will open. A maquette of a monument to Sojourner Truth will be dedicated in September 1998, with the full-size statue installed a year later.

For more information, check the Web site of the Historical Society of Battle Creek, or the Sojourner Truth Institute of Battle Creek.

(prepared by the Historical Society of Battle Creek - August 1998)
_____________________________________________________________________

Pitty that my home town appears to be dying these days.
Also called Waupakisco or Waupokisco, and Milton
before being named Battle Creek.

I know that my Great Grandparents on my Fathers side owned
and operated "Seedorf's Seed and Grain Company" and "Seedorf Coal
Company". They also owned land that was sold to the railoroad at a
later time Known as "Grand Trunk" in more modern times.
They were participants in hiding slaves on their way to Canada.
My Great Grandma was of Native American heritage.

My Great Grandparents on my Mothers side were Seventh Day Adventists
and my Great Grandfather Lewis was a pastor. My Great Grandma was
named "Erie" after "Lake Erie".

My family on both sides had much to do with Battle Creeks growth.
My Great Grandfather Seedorf had a falling out with "Kellogg" back in
the day. So hence not listed along with "W.K. Kellogg and C.W. Post in the archives.
Its a shame since the three of them were friends and business partners.
I believe the reason the town was called Milton
at one point was due to the town basically being a milling town
in the begining. The Seedorf and Lewis families
were here before the Kellogg and Post Families.
The Native Americans originally had
named this area.

My Father also started the tree business in Battle Creek known
as "C and D Tree Service" in its beginnings in 1958. Starting with an
old ford truck and a saw. Years later the tree business became
popular and other tree services began popping up.

(From Family Archives)

Can you talk to your child?

For seven years I lived next door to two little girls.
Their parents would often make them go outside to play
and lock the door on them. While they got high and drank.
I would be sitting out on my porch when this happened.
Eventually the girls would wander over to my house to talk.
They did'nt have anyone else to really play with, and my
children were older, some were adults by then.

So I took to talking with them on a regular basis. We would play out
in the yard (cause at that time I still had toys around).
Sometimes we would sit out in the yard on the picnic
table and do arts and crafts. They would take their projects
back home to their parents. The youngest one always walked
to school, many times alone. I took to giving her a ride
to the elementary in the mornings as I was taking my
daughter to high school. I grew to love these girls as if
they were my own and they loved me too.

I had thought about busting their parents, but thought it
none of my business that they got high. As long as they were'nt
abusing the girls. They never beat them or anything like that.
They always put them out when ever they were getting high.
I eventually moved away. They cried when I told them I was
moving and so did I. Over the next few years I thought of
them often and wondered how they were. Then last night I got
the horrible news...

Last year the youngest one comitted suicide at the age of
fifteen. She hung herself with an exstention cord while her
sister and mom went to go get pizza for dinner. They were only
gone tweenty minutes when they came back and found her.
It was later discovered on her myspace profile that she
was pregnant and afraid to tell her parents. The father of
the baby- her boyfriend was older and very abusive to her.

I cried and was devastated when I heard. It saddens me that
she felt so helpless, afraid and alone that she took that route.




So Folks...

Can you talk to your child?

Can your child talk to you?

Have you hugged your child today?

Have you told your child you love them today?

Do you know where your child is this very moment, do you know
what they are doing?

Do you do activities with your child, or do you just not have the time?

Do you realize everyone makes mistakes, or do you criticize
them when they do something wrong?


How can you exspect your child to face this world, if you
can't even face it straight and/or sober?

Do you know someone that is down and feeling hopeless,
are you there for them?


*This is NOT directed to the good parents out there. If by
posting this I can save one child/persons life... *