A very happy Labor Day to everyone! Here’s a photo I originally shared eleven Labor Days ago. The struggle is every bit as real today as it was when Diego Rivera began painting the wall of the DIA’s Garden Court in 1932.
See more in Maia’s Rivera Court, Detroit Institute of Arts gallery & follow her on Flickr for her latest!
I shared this photo waaaaaay back on August 19, 2009! Since my old posts are becoming inaccessible as the modern web leaves them behind, I’m trying to “save” at least one a week. I love Jim’s writings about the photos he takes and thought you would as well. Enjoy!
Fog rolls off of Lake Superior and up the Grand Sable Dunes on the Pictured Rocks Lakeshore as seen from the Log Slide Overlook west of Grand Marais in the Upper Peninsula Of Michigan. The Grand Sable Dunes are located on a five mile stretch between the Sable River and Au Sable Point in Alger County. The banks rise up to 275 feet high, created during the last ice age when sand and gravel filled in a deep rift in the glacier. Atop the gravelly banks, sand dunes rise another 80 feet. These are “perched dunes” because they are perched on top of another landform. They were probably formed when wind and waves piled up sand at the edge of Lake Nipissing, the forerunner of Lake Superior.
Check out Jim’s Pictured Rocks or Lake Superior galleries for much more!
Fawn Finding Forest Fast by Jeff Dehmel
We’ve all heard of f-stops, but look at this fawn f-GO!! I shared this photo eleven Julys ago but wanted to update it with even more Fun Fawn Facts:
More great shots from Jeff in his most popular photos gallery on Flickr!
October 8, 2014 Lunar Eclipse, photo by David Marvin
On Sunday night we have a chance to see the last total lunar eclipse until May 26, 2021! EarthSky shares information about viewing the lunar eclipse:
On January 20-21, we’ll have the first full moon of 2019, and the first lunar eclipse of 2019 (and this is an eclipse-heavy year, with three solar and two lunar eclipses). It can be viewed from North and South America, Greenland, Iceland, Europe, northern and western Africa, plus the Arctic region of the globe. More details – and eclipse times for North America, plus links for those elsewhere – below.
The eclipse will happen on the night of the year’s first of three straight full supermoons, meaning the moon will be nearly at its closest to Earth for this January, as the eclipse takes place.
The January 20-21 total eclipse of the moon lasts for somewhat more than one hour. It’s preceded and followed by a partial umbral eclipse, each time persisting for over an hour. The whole umbral eclipse from start to finish has a duration of nearly 3 1/3 hours.
Additionally, a penumbral lunar eclipse takes place before and after the umbral lunar eclipse. However, a penumbral lunar eclipse is so faint that many people won’t even notice it while it is happening. In our post, we only give the times of the moon passing through the Earth’s umbra – dark, cone-shaped shadow.
The lunar disk often exhibits a coppery color during a total lunar eclipse. Although the moon is completely immersed in the Earth’s dark shadow, the Earth’s atmosphere refracts (or bends) sunlight and the longer wavelengths of light (red and orange) pass onward to fall on the moon’s face. The dispersed light from all of the world’s sunrises and sunsets softly illuminates the totally eclipsed moon. Actually, if you were on the moon, looking back on Earth, you’d see a total eclipse of the sun.
They note that the partial umbral eclipse begins at (roughly) 10:34 PM with the total eclipse starting at 11:41 PM. The greatest eclipse is at 12:12 AM with the total eclipse ending at 12:43 AM.
David took this photo in October of 2014. Check it out background bigilicious on Flickr and head over to his Marvin’s Gardens blog for more pics from the eclipse & David!
A Long Way Down, photo by Mark Smith
This stunning shot from the Leelanau Conservancy’s Clay Cliffs Natural Area was taken by Mark Smith.
He’s been a big contributor of photos to Michigan in Pictures and we’re wishing him a very happy birthday today and hoping Santa brings him all the photography gear his heart desires!!
See some of Mark’s best on Michigan in Pictures.
Check this out background bigtacular and see tons more shots by Mark on Flickr!
an oldie but a goodie for #TBT!
Above is a portrait of Elsie Schuenemann at the wheel of the Christmas Ship, near the Clark Street Bridge on the Chicago River in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. The boat carried Christmas trees to Chicago from Michigan. Her father, Captain H. Schuenemann, died when the Rouse Simmons, a ship carrying Christmas trees, sank in 1912.
The trees behind her likely came from the woods of Escanaba. Though the story of Barbara Schuenemann and her three daughters carrying on the tradition of the Christmas Tree Ships has perhaps been a little over-romanticized, there can be little doubt that the Schuenemann family and the many others who participated in the difficult trade of hauling Christmas trees south as the storms of winter closed in were heroes cut from a cloth that isn’t found too often today.
If you’d like to read more about all the Christmas tree ships (there were many more than just the famous Rouse Simmons) I recommend Christmas Tree Ships from Fred Neuschel. He has also written a book called Lives and Legends of the Christmas Tree Ships (available from UM Press). The National Archive also has The Christmas Tree Ship: Captain Herman E. Schuenemann and the Schooner Rouse Simmons that details the Schuenemann’s story.
You can also see Rich Evenhouse’s cool video of diving the Rouse Simmons.
Morning on the Dunes, photo by Owen Weber
Here’s a phenomenal shot of the sunrise on Glen Lake from atop the dunes in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
View Owen’s photo bigger and see more in his Michigan album.
Barred Owl, photo by Mark Miller
Those cool names are from the Wikipedia for the Barred Owl (Strix varia). The All About Birds page on Bard Owls says in part:
The Barred Owl’s hooting call, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?” (see video below) is a classic sound of old forests and treed swamps. But this attractive owl, with soulful brown eyes and brown-and-white-striped plumage, can also pass completely unnoticed as it flies noiselessly through the dense canopy or snoozes on a tree limb. Originally a bird of the east, during the twentieth century it spread through the Pacific Northwest and southward into California.
Barred Owls live year-round in mixed forests of large trees, often near water. They tend to occur in large, unfragmented blocks of mature forest, possibly because old woodlands support a higher diversity of prey and are more likely to have large cavities suitable for nesting. Their preferred habitats range from swamps to streamsides to uplands, and may contain hemlock, maple, oak, hickory, beech, aspen, white spruce, quaking aspen, balsam poplar, Douglas-fir, lodgepole pine, or western larch.
Barred Owls don’t migrate, and they don’t even move around very much. Of 158 birds that were banded and then found later, none had moved farther than 6 miles away. (In Michigan, the average range is about a mile)
View Mark’s photo bigger and see more in his In My Backyard slideshow.
More owls on Michigan in Pictures.
The Port Crescent Smokestack, photo by Joel Dinda
One of the blogs I enjoy reading is ThumbWind, a blog about (you guessed it) Michigan’s Thumb. In A Ghost Town in the Thumb they tell the story of the town of Port Crescent that was within what is now Port Crescent State Park:
Walter Hume established a trading post and hotel near the mouth of the Pinnebog River in 1844. From these humble beginnings the area took the name of Pinnebog, taking its name from the river of which it was located. However, a post office established some five miles upstream also took its name from the river. To avoid confusion the town changed its name to Port Crescent for the crescent-shaped harbor along which it was built.
Port Crescent had two steam-powered sawmills, two salt plants, a cooperage whichPort Cresent manufactured barrels for shipping fish and salt, a gristmill, a wagon factory, a boot and shoe factory, a pump factory, a brewery, several stores, two hotels, two blacksmith shops, a post office, a depot and telegraph office, and a roller rink. Pinnebog employed hundreds of area residents. Others worked at blockhouses where they extracted brine from evaporated water to produce salt. At one time a this 17 block village boasted of a population of more than 500.
Read on for more and click for more about Port Crescent State Park.
View Joel’s photo background big and see more in his Port Crescent Vacation slideshow.
On my Absolute Michigan website, I have a favorite feature called Five Things you need to know about Michigan.
Please go out and vote in the Michigan primaries today. I am going to vote for Bernie Sanders because I feel that in Michigan and elsewhere working folks, retirees, students, and many more who have ended up on the short end of a globalizing, transforming world are hurting. It seems to me that many of those we have elected to represent us have forgotten that government can be a powerful force for the betterment of society and that when profits come at the expense of others, we all suffer. Please vote for whoever you want to, and I’d love it if you took some time today to remember that you are a part of your government.
Wow. I had the chance to drive across Michigan yesterday, windows down, basking in near 60 degree temperatures and knowing that spring is on the way. Here’s hoping that the mercury stays moderate and our farmers, orchardists & vintners have a great growing season.
Liz Glass took today’s photo. You can visit her at the Lake Street Market in Boyne City. She shared today’s photo back in 2012 in the Absolute Michigan pool (where I get most of the photos for Michigan in Pictures). Liz wrote:
I’ve been saving some ice shots to sprinkle in during the warmer months. This is from March 15, when the ice on Lake Charlevoix had melted into a pack of splinters that could then be pushed into piles by the moving water. The color here is real. The low sun is bouncing the golden brown of the sandy lake bottom up through the ice mound, and the looser shards on top are picking up the shimmering silvers and blues of the water and sky.
View her photo bigger and see more in her crazy-awesome Ice slideshow.
If you have a problem with me being myself, please consider not telling me to “stick to the photos” and instead follow another blog/person/path that doesn’t bother you. I love Michigan, I love Michigan in Pictures, but I am an actual person who believes as I believe and does what I do. I will continue to do this, and telling me not to will just upset us both.
Congratulations! By making it to here, you can send me an idea for something about Michigan to feature. I can’t promise that I will be able to, but I can promise you that I will try and reply in any case. Just email me or post a comment below.
