Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School in Midland

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Santa Chair

Santa Chair, photo by LadyDragonflyCC -See through my eyes!.

“He errs who thinks Santa enters through the chimney. Santa enters through the heart.”
– Charles W. Howard

The Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School in Midland was established in 1937 and is the longest continuously running Santa Claus School in the world. The school is a nonprofit and seeks to uphold the traditions and history of Santa Claus and to help its students improve their presentations of Santa Claus. A nice feature on the school in the LA Times explains that:

Howard, the school founder, was a Santa with an impressive resume that included being St. Nick for Macy’s. He opened the school in 1937 after coming across too many other Santas with frayed beards, shoddy suits and limited knowledge of reindeer. (current director Tom) Valent took over the school in 1986 and retains most of Howard’s original curriculum, along with modern additions such as contract issues and how to endure the rigors of being a mall Santa (get a flu shot and negotiate regular bathroom breaks).

…Valent’s cheerful demeanor belies the seriousness with which he approaches his mission of ensuring that Santa Claus embodies perfection, from fresh breath and clean whiskers to impeccable morals. He’s not here to get these Santas jobs — the school has no placement services. He’s here to make sure that whether they play Santa in malls or parades, or in hospitals, homeless shelters or private parties, they do it flawlessly.

“It’s a privilege to be Santa Claus,” said Valent, who has been Santa Claus himself for 35 years, from Greenland to Midland. “You’re taking on a character that stands for all good things.”

Be sure to check out their photo gallery on Facebook, and if you’re interested, the 2012 Santa School takes place October 18th – 20th and is taking reservations now.

Speaking of Santa, yesterday on Absolute Michigan we had an in-depth feature on including charities in your holiday gift plans that might give you chance to share some of that Santa spirit.

Check this out on black and in Christine’s My Favs slideshow.

Loop and Swirl – Superior Falls (Wisconsin/Upper Michigan Border)

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Loop and Swirl - Superior Falls (Wisconsin/Upper Michigan Border)

Loop and Swirl – Superior Falls (Wisconsin/Upper Michigan Border), photo by Aaron C. Jors.

On Saturday we dove into Mittengate – the lighthearted battle between Michigan & Wisconsin over the Badger State’s use of the mitten in tourism promotion.

To help keep the cheese-loving hordes at bay, we’re lucky to have the Montreal River and Superior Falls! GoWaterfalling’s page on Superior Falls explains:

Superior Falls is located on the Montreal River just a few hundred yards from Lake Superior. The Montreal River forms part of the border between Michigan and Wisconsin so the falls is technically in both states, but it is most easily visited from the Michigan side. I do not know if it can be visited from the Wisconsin side.

This is an impressive waterfall consisting of several drops and some very dramatic gorge walls. Unfortunately there is a dam a short distance above the falls and most of the water is diverted for power generation. The power company is required to maintain at least 20 cubic feet of water per second flowing over the falls. Early spring is the best time to see the falls…

The fence is a bit frustrating and often blocks your view, but it also will save you from a long, long fall into the gorge. The overlook is at the top of the gorge wall pictured below.

They also note that Northern States Power operates the Superior Falls Hydro plant in the area – you can see more photos of the falls and of the small power plant at the unofficial Superior Falls homepage.

Check this photo out bigger and in Aaron’s Waterfalls sideshow. He also has a great photo of Tannery Falls on Michigan in Pictures and there’s tons more Michigan waterfalls in our Waterfall category!

Mittengate in the Mitten State

Posted on by farlane

Michigan at the Archive of Michigan

Michigan at the Archive of Michigan, photo by farlane

“Sometimes you got to put your foot down, or your mitten, so to speak.”
~Dave Lorenz, Travel Michigan

Last week the state of Wisconsin touched off a firestorm – snowstorm? – by suggesting that they might in fact qualify as a mitten state, prompting Pure Michigan to ask Who is the Real Mitten State? that for some reason we are only winning 83% – 17%. mLive has a look at the controversy that includes a the Badger’s case for Mittenhood (which appears to be no more than Mitten envy) and a really cool Vernor’s commercial with former Red Wing Petr Klima demonstrating “where it is on the hand.”

My good friend Jacob Wheeler has an excellent rundown on the Mitten Wars in which he notes that:

…the Badger state did have reason to be peeved at the Wolverine state. In 1835-36, Michigan and Ohio “fought” the Toledo War, a completely bloodless boundary dispute that resulted in Ohio getting the narrow stretch of land where the Mud Hens now play baseball, and Michigan getting three-quarters of what’s now the Upper Peninsula from Congress (it was previously considered “Indian territory”). Michigan’s gain was Wisconsin’s loss, as the western part of the U.P. would yield untold mineral wealth — and the historic Calumet Theater — over the next century and a half.

Wisconsin became a U.S. state in 1848, and contented itself with the cheese curd as its gourmet food favorite, and not the meat and potato-filled pasty, which the Finnish immigrants to the U.P. carried with them into the mines. Wisconsin’s bitterness simmered, for 175 years, like Golum clutching the ring deep in the caves of Middle Earth.

That angst finally boiled over this week when the Travel Wisconsin website posted a knit mitten shaped like the state of Wisconsin on its website as part of a winter tourism promotion campaign. Michiganders who identify themselves in the world beyond with an open-faced right hand, took the news as a humorous, yet serious, challenge.

“People in Michigan, we do identify ourselves so closely with the Mitten State,” Alex Beaton of the Awesome Mitten website told the Washington Post (seriously, the Washington Post?). We’re America’s high five!”

Jacob adds that  Wisconsin PR pro Tom Lyons suggested that “Wisconsin is the left mitten. Michigan is the right mitten. Even children know that one mitten doesn’t cut it when it comes to Midwestern winters.” Lorenz (who seems to be on fire right now) shot back “We’re not going to take this lying down. Wisconsin already took the Rose Bowl from us this year. They’re not going to take the Mitten State status from us.” Amen. Definitely read on at the Sun for more including a Michigan vs. Wisconsin matchup.

I took this photo of the 4-story map showing Michigan’s topography at the Michigan Historical Museum in Lansing several years ago. I was never able to find out who designed it, but you can see another view and check out the online tour of the museum. View this photo background big and see more from the museum in the Michigan Historical Center group slideshow.

Christmas Moon, Snow Moon, Cold Moon, Oak Moon, December Moon

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Crisp Morning in December

Crisp Morning in December, photo by CaptPiper.

The moon is officially full at 9:36 AM tomorrow morning, so tonight is the fullest moon you will get for a December night. Full Moon Names in the Farmer’s Almanac says that December’s full moon was known as the Cold Moon or the Long Nights Moon by the Algonquin.

The Full Cold Moon; or the Full Long Nights Moon – December During this month the winter cold fastens its grip, and nights are at their longest and darkest. It is also sometimes called the Moon before Yule.

The term Long Night Moon is a doubly appropriate name because the midwinter night is indeed long, and because the Moon is above the horizon for a long time. The midwinter full Moon has a high trajectory across the sky because it is opposite a low Sun.

A few other names from Wikipedia’s full moon entry and elsewhere are the Bitter Moon (Chinese), Christmas Moon (Colonial America), Snow Moon (Cherokee), and Oak Moon (England).

Check this out background bigtacular and in Julie’s Michigan Barns slideshow.

More winter wallpaper from Michigan in Pictures.

Remembering Michigan’s legendary architect Albert Kahn

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Albert Kahn's legacy

Albert Kahn’s legacy, photo by .brianday.

“Architecture is 90 percent business and 10 percent art.”
~Albert Kahn

Legendary Detroit architect Albert Kahn died on December 8, 1942. The Albert Kahn entry at Wikipedia begins:

Kahn was born on March 21, 1869 in Rhaunen, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Kahn came to Detroit in 1880 at the age of 11. His father Joseph was trained as a rabbi. His mother Rosalie had a talent for the visual arts and music. As a teenager, he got a job at the architectural firm of Mason and Rice. Kahn won a year’s scholarship to study abroad in Europe, where he toured with another young architecture student, Henry Bacon, who would later design the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The architectural firm Albert Kahn Associates was founded in 1895. He developed a new style of construction where reinforced concrete replaced wood in factory walls, roofs, and supports. This gave better fire protection and allowed large volumes of unobstructed interior. Packard Motor Car Company’s factory built in 1907 was the first development of this principle.
The success of the Packard plant interested Henry Ford in Kahn’s designs. Kahn designed Ford Motor Company’s Highland Park plant, begun in 1909, where Ford consolidated production of the Ford Model T and perfected the assembly line. On Bob-Lo Island, Henry Ford had a dance hall designed and built by Albert Kahn, which was billed as the second largest in the world in a 1903 account…

Ten Albert Kahn designed buildings are recognized with Michigan historical markers:

    • Battle Creek Post Office
    • The Dearborn Inn
    • Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant in Warren, Michigan
    • Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan
    • Fisher Building
    • Delta Upsilon Fraternity, 1331 Hill St., Ann Arbor
    • Packard Motor Car Company factory
    • The Detroit News
    • The Detroit Free Press
    • Willow Run

Get the complete list of his firm’s buildings (including the Russell Industrial Center) at Wikipedia. The company that Kahn founded in 1895 is still in the business. There’s an interesting biography of Albert Kahn from Ford that notes that a Detroit sculptor recognized Albert’s artistic talent and allowed him to attend his art school free. However, after discovering that Kahn was color blind, the artist encouraged him to become an architect and secured him a job as an office boy.

Check this photo out bigger and see more in Brian’s Detroit Flavor slideshow. Coincidentally enough, Brian just let me know that this photo is being hung in a gallery today along with 10 other prints from Brian (and another 10 from two other michpics regulars,  Jon DeBoer and Jeff Gaydash) at Studio Couture gallery, 1433 Woodward Avenue. Opening night for the exhibition will be this Saturday from 6pm-9pm. Details right here!

More Michigan architects & architecture from Michigan in Pictures.

Hasselblad: White Fish Falls

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

White Fish Falls

White Fish Falls, photo by Sean Depuydt.

I think these are the lower falls on the Laughing Whitefish River in the U.P. Read more about Laughing Whitefish Falls from Michigan in Pictures.

Check this out on black and in Sean’s gorgeous Hasselblad slideshow.

More black & white photography on Michigan in Pictures.

A long shot in Vehicle City

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

A long shot

A long shot, photo by flintstoner.

Editor’s note: Midway through writing this post, I realized that I had blogged about the Vehicle City arches four years ago. I figured that if I had forgotten, most of you probably would have forgotten too or never seen it, so here you go.

Last week Governor Rick Snyder appointed Michael Brown as Emergency Manager for Flint. You can read all about that (including some interviews) on Absolute Michigan.

When I was looking at photos for that feature, this one with all the arches on Saginaw street caught my eye so I decided to learn a little more about them. Flinn’s Journal (which is a really cool site by the way that has a dynamic Facebook page) has a column on the Flint Arches that explains:

On November 29, 2003, a part of downtown Flint’s past officially returned to become part of Flint’s present and future when the replicated Flint Vehicle City arches were dedicated and lit for the first time. The arches are reminders of Flint’s glorious past as “The Vehicle City” as the city faces an uncertain future.

The vehicles which were made in Flint when the original arches were built were horse-drawn carriages. The leading maker of horse-drawn carriages in Flint was the Durant-Dort Carriage Company which was co-founded by William C. Durant and J. Dallas Dort and was in business from 1886 to 1917. Both men would also start companies which made horseless carriages. Dort founded the Dort Motor Car Company which was in business from 1915 to 1923. Dort Highway was named in his honor. Durant took over the then-small Buick Motor Company in 1904 and made it the leading motorcar company in 1908, the year that Durant founded Buick’s parent company General Motors Corporation. The first arches were erected in 1899 and built by Genesee Iron Works.

The arches were each fitted with 50 light bulbs which were illuminated at night. The arches replaced gas lighting. To celebrate Flint’s Golden Jubilee in 1905, an additional arch was erected near the point where Saginaw Street and Detroit Street (now M.L. King Ave.) split off north of the bridge over the Flint River. This arch was topped off by an illuminated sign saying “FLINT VEHICLE CITY”. For the Christmas holiday season, the regular light bulbs were replaced by multicolored light bulbs.

Click above to read more and see some photos. The arches were fabricated by Bristol Steel of Davison Michigan – check their site for photos and video of the installation. You can see some cool old photos at the Flint Vehicle City Arches site too.

Check this out background bigtacular and in flintstoner’s Flickriver.

Below is a photo by Arthur Crooks from the excellent Making of Modern Michigan gallery showing the Vehicle City Arch erected in 1905 as part of the City’s 50th anniversary. The caption of the photo says “South Saginaw St from Detroit Street looking South” while the description says it’s on Saginaw Street looking north. Can anyone clarify this?

The Grand Traverse Lighthouse

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

The Grand Traverse Lighthouse [2/2]

The Grand Traverse Lighthouse [2/2], photo by jimflix!.

The Grand Traverse Lighthouse is located at the tip of the Leelanau Peninsula in Leelanau State Park. If you have a lighthouse buff on your holiday list, you might consider a volunteer lightkeeper position in winter or summer at the light.

Construction of the Lighthouse was approved in 1849 at the northern tip of the Leelanau Peninsula at Cathead Point, the northern point of the important Manitou Passage and Grand Traverse Bay.

The Grand Traverse Lighthouse page from Terry Pepper’s Seeing the Light notes that – as was often the case with lighthouses constructed under the “fiscally tight-fisted Pleasonton administration” – work was shoddy and:

The old tower and dwelling were demolished in 1858, and a work on a new structure began on higher ground on the point. Over that summer a dirt-floored cellar with rubble stone walls was excavated and a two-story Cream City Brick keepers dwelling took shape. A short square wooden tower with white painted clapboard siding was integrally mounted at the center of the roof ridge, and both floors contained four rooms, with a centrally located entryway with stairs connecting the two floors. A narrower second set of stairs on the second floor led through the attic into the tower. The building featured first-class construction, with hardwood floors throughout and varnished wooden trim and wainscoting.

Atop the tower, a cast iron lantern with copper sheathed roof contained a new fixed white Fifth Order Fresnel lens illuminated with a sperm oil fueled lamp. With its ventilator ball standing 48 feet above the structure’s foundation, the building’s location on high ground provided a focal plane of 103 feet, and a range of visibility of 12 miles in clear weather.

Read on for much more and some historic photos. You can see more old photos of the Grand Traverse Light in the Lighthouse collection at the Michigan Arvchives.

Check this out background big and in Jim’s Lighthouses slideshow.

There’s a whole bunch more Michigan lighthouses at Michigan in Pictures!

Where does Michigan begin?

Posted on by farlane

Perkins + WIll 35
Perkins + WIll 35, photo by orijinal

The headline of Gary Wilson’s editorial at the Great Lakes Echo caught my eye this morning: Great Lakes: A ship with no name in search of a captain. Gary begins:

In the past two weeks Chicago has been the center of a rare commodity in the Great Lakes region: Forward-looking thought. And I mean the future, not just until the next election or fiscal year.

P-17= Steel Mills at mouth of Calumet river Chicago. Fire and boat at left. C.W. Cushman Nedill
Steel Mills at mouth of Calumet river Chicago by IMLS DCC

First, architect and MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award” winner Jeanne Gang presented her vision for transforming the Chicago River from that of an “open sewer” and invasive species highway to becoming a model of a 21st century urban waterway.

Gang’s proposal is conceptual, not an engineering plan. It’s meant to generate interest by the public and discussion that has been lacking. And judging by the large crowd that came to hear her speak, that interest exists.

At the same time Chicago Public Radio was also looking to the future.

Its Front & Center series that focuses on the Great Lakes hosted a one hour program about whether the region can truly collaborate for the greater good of the eight Great Lake states. Or will it continue to play in a zero sum economic game by competing with each other while the region’s combined strengths go untapped?

The consensus of the expert commentators is that the region’s governors see no political gain by collaborating. They’re focused on winning the jobs takeaway game that makes for nice press releases and ribbon cutting ceremonies when they win, but does nothing to strengthen the region.

Excellent questions. Read on for his thoughts about where the leadership to protect the amazingly interconnected wonder that are Lakes Michigan, Huron, Superior, Erie and Ontario may (or may not) come from .

There’s no doubt that it will take all the states on the lakes and the governments of the United States and Canada and their citizenry to do it. I’m pretty confident that the character & vision of our leaders and all of us on the Great Lakes will be important to generations yet unborn.

Turning Basin
Turning Basin by mindfrieze, photo by mindfrieze

Editor’s note: this isn’t the first time that Michigan in Pictures has featured multiple photos – more in the Sunday Study section. These also aren’t the first photos from outside of Michigan’s borders to appear on Michigan in Pictures – at least one is the Christmas Ship at the dock in Chicago.

Get Ready for a Cold Winter, Michigan

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Untitled

Untitled, photo by Anapko.

“Harsh, brutal, snowy and cold. What other adjectives can I use?”
~AccuWeather.com meteorologist Henry Margusity

I’ve been sitting on this Detroit News feature that says Old Man Winter will pack a wallop in Michigan this year. The Farmers Almanac winter outlook for the upper Midwest says:

Winter will be colder than normal, especially in February. Other cold periods will occur in mid- and late December and mid- and late January. Precipitation and snowfall will be below normal in the east and above normal in the west. The snowiest periods will be in early and mid-December, early to mid-February, and mid-March.

Get your computer background ready for the season with Michigan Winter Wallpaper from Michigan in Pictures!

Check this out background big and in Anapko’s Ice Storm 2011 slideshow.