Red river fireworks, photo by JohnnyRR.
John says this was shot from the Liberty Bridge in Bay City. You can see a great video titled Fireworks Melee that he took from there as well!
Hope you have a safe and happy 4th of July!
Night Moves: Homeless in Michigan
Night Moves, photo by SGallagh.
At this time of year, the thought of all the people without homes weighs heavily on me. The Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness is a nonprofit association of emergency shelters, transitional housing programs, nonprofit housing and service programs, government programs and concerned citizens from across the state. Visit their web site for information about organizations & events across Michigan where your money or time can make a huge difference.
While reading some of the articles on their web site, I found it surprising that families make up more than half the homeless in Michigan. 77% of families are homeless due to a lack of affordable housing, and one out of every 3 homeless persons is a child. Here’s a Michigan Radio series on homeless teens in Michigan and a Free Press feature on first-time homelessness in MIchigan that I think are worth your time.
Check out this photo from Bay City bigger or in Sean’s Street set (slideshow).
Speaking of streets, Sean is the photo of the day editor for a cool new site for Saginaw/Bay City/Midland and beyond called 360 Main Street.
Creating Cities in Michigan
Lansing, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Flint, Traverse City, Marquette and Kalamazoo are by no means all of Michigan’s cities (or even the largest). Each, however, seems to be an anchor for its region – a center to which people look to for culture, entertainment and commerce.
October 13-15, 2008, lovers of cities large & small from Michigan and all over the country will head to Detroit for the Creative Cities Summit 2.0 (CCS2), an exploration of what our cities could become and how we can work to make them. Organizers have chosen Detroit, a city so deeply forged in America’s industrial fires that it’s been devastated by the flickering of that flame. I’m headed down there and will try to bring some of the ideas back to you through Absolute Michigan – I hope that some of you can join me there.
The Photos (left to right)
- Downtown View – Lansing, Michigan by Mario.Q
- Motor Within a City by SNWEB.ORG Photography, LLC.
- Partly Cloudy by GR58
- Old Flint (HDR) by Hemicuda82
- Traverse City, Michigan by farlane
- View from Mt. Marquette by fastbird232
- The Kalamazoo Radisson by bill.d
Creative Cities Summit 2.0 in Detroit on Oct. 13-15, 2008
CCS2 will present a dynamic and engaging conversation about how communities around the world are integrating innovation, social entrepreneurship, sustainability, arts & culture and business to create vibrant economies. Full conference registration is $300 for the two and half day event, and there’s also a “no frills” registration that is only $100. There’s also a free “Unconference” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) on the 12th for designers, urban planners, civic leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, students, community leaders to explore and discuss what’s possible for Detroit.
Keynote speakers include:
- Bill Strickland, MCG-Bidwell Corp.
- Richard Florida, Author Who’s Your City
- Charles Landry, Author The Art of City Making
- John Howkins, Author The Creative Economy
- Dean Kamen, Inventor, DEKA
- Majora Carter, Sustainable South Bronx
- Doug Farr, Architect and Author Sustainable Urbanism
- Ben Hecht, Pres. & CEO Living Cities
- Tom Wujec, Fellow, Autodesk
- Carol Coletta, CEOs for Cities
- Giorgio Di Cicco, Poet Laureate, City of Toronto and Author, The Municipal Mind
- Diana Lind, Editor, Next American City magazine
Breakout sessions on topics such as:
- Race and the Creative City
- Cities, Universities & Talent
- Marketing, Media and the Creative City
- Measuring New Things – ROI in the Creative Economy
- Creative (Small) Cities
- New Ideas in Urban Amenities
- Community Vitality: The Role of Artists, Gays, Lesbians & Immigrants
- Midwest Mega-region: How the Midwest Can Compete
- Transportation Innovation for Cities
- Making the Scene: Music & Economic Development
Much (much) more at creativecitiessummit.com.
Friendship Circle at Bay City’s Wenonah Park
011, photo by mark5032001.
Patty Inglis’s Bay City, Michigan page on hubpages identifies this sculpture as Friendship Circle at Wenonah Park.
You can see another view of this sculpture in Wenonah Park by stenbough and see more lots more views of Bay City from Mark (slideshow).
Saginaw Waterfront, 1912 in the Panoramic Photograph Collection
Saginaw Michigan Waterfront, c1912, photo Courtesy Library of Congress.
Needs to be seen bigger.
This photo is part of the Panoramic Photograph Collection at the Library of Congress, which:
…contains approximately four thousand images featuring American cityscapes, landscapes, and group portraits. These panoramas offer an overview of the nation, its enterprises and its interests, with a focus on the start of the twentieth century when the panoramic photo format was at the height of its popularity. Subject strengths include: agricultural life; beauty contests; disasters; engineering work such as bridges, canals and dams; fairs and expositions; military and naval activities, especially during World War I; the oil industry; schools and college campuses, sports, and transportation… The images date from 1851 to 1991 and depict scenes in all fifty states and the District of Columbia. More than twenty foreign countries and a few U.S. territories are also represented. These panoramas average between twenty-eight inches and six feet in length, with an average width of ten inches.
If you click through and search for “Michigan” you can see a lot of cool panoramas like Camp Grayling, 1921, downtown Bay City and the workers of the Michigan Tanning and Extract Co. of Boyne City.
Check the comments below for a guide to what you’re looking at in the photo!
Pickerel Spears, Ice Shanties and the Fishing History of Saginaw Bay
Saginaw Bay Ice Shanty c.1925, photo by oldog_oltrix.
Larry writes that this photo was taken by his grandfather at his ice shanty on Saginaw Bay (probably near Bay Park) in the mid-1920s. The 6′ bar between the shovel and the axe is a “spud” used with the axe to make the hole in the hole in ice and the pole coming from the top of the shanty is likely a “pickerel spear”. The This is one of the photos in his Oldog’s OLD PHOTOS set, and it also appears in the Michigan Thumb Memories group.
Over on Michigan Sportsman, Capt. Dan Manyen has written a nice little article titled The Fishing History of the Saginaw Bay. In it, he shares a number of old photos and provides a nice overview of the last few centuries of fishing on what I’m going to guess is Michigan’s largest bay. Capt. Manyen writes that walleye was mis-identified by many back then as pickerel and sold in great numbers to both local fish market outlets and buyers from the eastern states. He says that for many in the area, the burgeoning auto industry…
…did not stop or ease the pain of the Great Depression during this time. What did for many though, including my own Grandfather, was the plentiful fishing and hunting resources the Bay area offered. When Grandpa couldn’t get a job unloading the (Bean Boat) as he called it for .50 cents a day, he’d be out hunting or fishing for a meal for his family. Grandpa talked often about spending all winter out on the ice on Saginaw Bay in a (Pickerel Shanty) spearing pickerel.
I’m not sure where you might want to take this, so here’s the Wikipedia entries for Pickerel, Walleye and Saginaw Bay. You might also be interested in the Saginaw Bay Watershed Initiative Network, the Saginaw Bay Fishing Report and a more recent photo of ice fishing on Saginaw Bay.
Also see Saginaw Bay on Absolute Michigan’s Map of Michigan.
Europa Tall Ship
Europa Tall Ship, photo by taylorcraft75.
This photo is from the 2003 Bay City Tall Ship Celebration. News reports say that the popularity of the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie is boosting the festival this year.
Linda pointed out that this ship is the Europa … hard to tell since they don’t put the name & numbers on the side. Here’s the web site for the tall ship Europa (click the British flag at the top left if you don’t speak Dutch).
unusual store
unusual store, photo by ralphdagza.
Mill End in Bay City, billed as the World’s Most Unusual Store, is apparently no longer in business.
Michigan in Pictures 