Michigan June Events!

Posted on by farlane


June, photo by creed_400

“There are moments, above all on June evenings, when the lakes that hold our moons are sucked into the earth, and nothing is left but wine and the touch of a hand.” ~ Charles Morgan

Absolute Michigan’s June Michigan Event Calendar says that June’s birthstone is the pear and flower is the rose or the honeysuckle. The month is named after Juno (Hera), who was the goddess of marriage and the married couple’s household, and it’s considered good luck to be married June.

The month kicks off with this weekend’s Kalamazoo’s Greek Festival & KIA Annual Art Fair & Beer Garden. There’s also the Festival of the Arts in Grand Rapids, one of the longest-running festivals in the state and the largest all-volunteer arts event in the nation!

Next weekend launches the Mackinac Island Lilac Festival (Jun 11-20) as well as the Water Front Film Festival in Saugatuck (Jun 10-13) the
Nor-East’r Music & Art Festival (Jun 11-13) in Mio and the Ella Sharp Wine and Art Festival in Jackson (Jun 12). If you’re in Leelanau County on June 12th, you van check out the M-22 Challenge in the Sleeping Bear Dunes and the Leland Wine & Food Festival.

June rolls on with the Ann Arbor Summer Festival (Jun 18 – Jul 11), the Hot Blues and BBQ / Detroit Blues Challenge Kickoff 2008 (Jun 17-19), Kalamazoo’s Island Festival celebration of reggae music (Jun 17-19), Lansing’s Lansing Juneteenth Celebration (Jun 18-19), the Belleville National Strawberry Festival (Jun 18-20), the Dearborn Arab International Festival (Jun 18-20) and the International Freedom Festival in Detroit (Jun 18-20).

We’re just halfway through the month and have’t touched on the Ann Arbor Summer Festival (Jun 18 – Jul 11), the Lake Michigan Shore Wine Festival in Bridgman on June 19th, Muskegon’s Summer Celebration (Jun 23 – Jul 4) and the Detroit Windsor International Film Festival (Jun 24-27) – head over to the Absolute Michigan June Event Calendar for details on all these events and more!

Be sure to check this out bigger and in his June 2009 set (slideshow).

Hey – it’s summertime – check our Michigan Summer Wallpaper Archive for photos to get your desktop in sync with the season!

Open Field, Upnorth Michigan

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

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_______, photo by ryan sandoval.

Taken with Minolta Autopak 600x.

Check it out background boomtacular and in Ryan’s slideshow.

Stand for the land … and the Yellow Dog River

Posted on by farlane

Yellow Dog
Yellow Dog, photo by Luminous Light Huntress

Stand for the Land is asking folks to show up at the State Capitol this Thursday (June 3) at 11:30 AM for a peaceful rally as they deliver a petition to the Natural Resources Commission regarding Michigan’s first permitted sulfide mine. The event features speakers and Michigan musicians and you can get all the details on Facebook.

The mine is located on the Yellow Dog Plains north of Marquette, where this lovely little river flows. Acid mine drainage from sulfide mines has killed many of the rivers in the west, and there has yet to be a sulfide mine that hasn’t created acid mine drainage.

Have a look at what acid mining has done to Sudbury, and then see if the “jobs” argument holds water when you put the 100 or so mine jobs in one hand and Michigan’s countless tourism industry jobs in the other.

The Yellow Dog Watershed has this to say about the river & watershed:

The Yellow Dog River Watershed lies in eastern Baraga and western Marquette Counties in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The area is known as the Huron Peninsula and is one of the last wild areas in the state. The river begins in the McCormick Wilderness Area as an outflow of Bulldog Lake. It then runs 52 miles and drops 1096 feet at an average rate of 1:150ft through granite gorges, open plains, and hemlock forests to end in Lake Independence. From there, another outflow, the Iron River, runs from Independence to Lake Superior. The Iron River was historically part of the Yellow Dog River but had its name changed once industry came to the area.

The watershed encompasses 98 square miles and drains over six smaller subwatersheds. The Lost, Bob, Bushey, Big Pup, and Little Pup creeks all flow into the Yellow Dog River. Waterfalls abound along the Yellow Dog and its tributaries. The terrain is very hilly (some flatlanders might even say mountainous) with high ridges and low valleys giving a spectacular view. The highest point in the watershed is over 1600 ft. Not only can you see the river and forests from the hilltops but also Lake Superior. Wetlands abound and the forest type varies from old growth pine groves to aspen regeneration to stands of hardwood/conifer mix.

Be sure to check this out bigger.

A Memorial Day Idea

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Idea

Idea, photo by docksidepress.

The tragedy of war is that it uses man’s best to do man’s worst.
~Henry Fosdick

As oil spews into the Gulf of Mexico, is is racking up an incalculable debt, one that all of us will have to pay. Place it on top of the barely calculable debt for the stimulus package, add it to the still growing debt for the ongoing wars in Afganistan and the Middle East and fold it into our apparently untameable national debt. Feel that number, and everything else those dollars could have been spent on.

Now pile on the cost of the life that will be lost in the Gulf of Mexico as rampant oil invades teeming fisheries, vibrant beaches and lush and renewing marshes. Add the toll to the lives and livelihoods of the residents of Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Mexico and the Caribbean. Don’t forget the people whose medical and other assistance monies have probably been spent on a bank that was too big to fail either.

And on Memorial Day and every day, don’t ever, ever forget the men and women whose lives have been cut short by war, who never came home and made the unknowable differences in their communities and families that their unbroken lives would undoubtedly have made.

When I weigh all that in my heart, it seems obvious to me that war is a cancer on our world. We can’t afford its cost if we are to have any hope of saving our fragile Earth, our families and friends and fellow citizens, and our brothers and sisters in all nations.

View this bigger in Matt’s slideshow.

More Michigan Memorial Day at Absolute Michigan.

M is for Michigan (and Memorial Day Weekend)

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

M is for Michigan

M is for Michigan, photo by David Belo.

Absolute Michigan reports that 1.1 million Michiganians will hit the roads over Memorial Day Weekend 2010. I hope a good number of them get to hold hands and take in one of our stunning make that magical sunsets, and that some of them are you!!

David writes that this shot (and sunset) from the last stop of a wonderful 4th of July weekend getaway through Northern Michigan was most definitely worth the 3 am arrival back home in Ann Arbor. Be sure to check it out bigger in his Interesting slideshow and have and awesome make that marvelous weekend!

The Place of the Torches: Torch Lake

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Untitled, photo by ( Jennifer ).

Wikipedia’s Torch Lake (Antrim County, Michigan) entry says:

Torch Lake at 19 miles (31 km) long is Michigan’s longest inland lake and at approximately 18,770 acres (76 km²) is Michigan’s second largest inland lake … It has a maximum depth of 330 feet (100 m) just off the east end of Campbell Rd. (Milton Twp.) and an average depth of 111 feet (34 m), making it Michigan’s deepest inland lake. It is a popular lake for fishing, featuring lake trout, rock bass, yellow perch, smallmouth bass, muskellunge, ciscoes, brown trout, rainbow trout, and whitefish.

The name of the lake is not due to its shape, rather, is derived from translation from the Ojibwa name Was-wa-gon-ong meaning “Place of the Torches”, referring to the practice of the local native American population who once used torches at night to attract fish for harvesting with spears and nets. For a time it was referred to by local European settlers as “Torch Light Lake”, which eventually was shortened to its current name.

You can see Torch Lake on the Absolute Michigan Map of Michigan and fly around it in Google Earth!

See this bigger in Jennifer’s Torch Lake Spring slideshow and see many more pics in the Torch Lake group on Flickr!

Enter the Great Lakes Forever Photo Contest!

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Crashing Wave

Crashing Wave, photo by James Marvin Phelps (mandj98).

When I was posting information about the Absolute Michigan Summer Photo Celebration to some Flickr photo groups, I came across another cool contest. Rebecca Dill from Great Lakes Forever writes:

With summer vacations to the Lakes just around the corner, the sixth annual Great Lakes Forever Photo Contest is accepting submissions from May 20 – July 18, 2010. Through the 2010 Great Lakes Forever Photo Contest, photographers can help defend the Great Lakes with their cameras – and get noticed throughout the Great Lakes region.

Biodiversity Project’s Great Lakes Forever program has again partnered with Budweiser to sponsor a photography contest that celebrates the beauty of the Great Lakes through the incredible talent of local photographers. Great Lakes Forever is a non-profit education and activism campaign designed to raise awareness about our vulnerable and valuable Lakes.

The grand prize winner in both the professional and amateur categories will be featured on the 2010 Great Lakes Forever/Budweiser beer coasters. These coasters will be distributed to bars and restaurants throughout the Great Lakes region…

Interested photographers can visit the Great Lakes Forever website for contest rules and submission details. The submission deadline is July 18, 2010.

The Grand Prize is a kayak and portable navigation system and you can get all the details on their 6th Annual Photo Contest page!

Check this out bigger and in James’ Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore set (slideshow). You can also purchase it if you like!

The Bus Stops Here: Detroit’s Rosa Parks Transit Center

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

The Bus Stops Here

The Bus Stops Here, photo by Mike Darga.

Mike writes:

Located at Michigan and Cass Avenues, the Rosa Parks Transit Center is a 25,000-square-foot indoor facility with over two acres of exterior transit access. It enables customers to make connections to 21 DDOT bus routes, the SMART suburban bus system, Transit Windsor for international connections, and taxi access in a single downtown transportation hub. It also provides pedestrian connectivity to the Detroit People Mover stations at Michigan and Times Square, and was planned to eventually connect to the city’s future light rail transit system.

You can learn how the Transit Center fits into a wider plan for transforming Detroit’s transportation system from Tushar Advani of Parsons Brinkerhoff — one of the architects behind the Rosa Parks Transit Center.

See this bigger in Mike’s Structures/Buildings slideshow.

100,000 photos in the Absolute Michigan Pool

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures
Can You See Me Now...?(.142/365) by Sydney Marie Photography

Can You See Me Now…?(.142/365) by Sydney Marie Photography

Sometime over the weekend, the 100,000th photo was added to the Absolute Michigan pool on Flickr.

One hundred thousand.

What an amazing gift you nearly 2400 photographers have shared with Absolute Michigan and Michigan in Pictures over the last four and a half years. Whether it’s dandelions or Detroit Lions, hill sides or mud slides, if it’s Michigan, chances are there’s a photo of it in the Absolute Michigan photo group!

Check this out bigger and in Sydney’s 365 slideshow.

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Bop (till you drop) with Bop (harvey)

Posted on by farlane

bop (harvey
bop (harvey), photo courtesy Bop (harvey) Fan Club

Today’s post comes to you under the heading of “What good is your own blog if you can’t feature your favorite band from college when they play a reunion show?”

Bop (Harvey) returns to the East Lansing Art Festival for a 4:45 – 6 PM show today on the main stage. Michigan’s premiere worldbeat band, Bop (harvey), reunites for East Lansing fest on Absolute Michigan quotes longtime Tonight Show & Bruce Springsteen E‐Street Band drummer Max Weinberg:

“Bop (harvey) was the first American band that I had heard successfully integrate American pop, R&B and funk with island and African grooves and form. I flew out to Seattle and was blown away by the power coming off of the stage.” In no time the band was in the studio finishing up “Gitchee Gumee To Me”, their 1992 studio release.

And then the president called. Or to be more accurate, the Clinton campaign team, who were seeking an act to fire up crowds attending various Midwest rallies. The band ended up playing a string of Clinton events, including an election day airport rally, concluding with substantial face‐time with the candidate, who returned the favor by inviting the band to play not one by two events during his inaugural festivities.

Nobody ever said the music industry was kind or predictable, however, and within a few years, Bop decided to hang up their goofy hats and dance groove. Last winter, they played a pair of shows at Rick’s and have launched a mini-tour this summer that takes them to East Lansing, the Kalamazoo Island Fest and maybe one more location.