Big Red and sailboat, photo by ER Post.
It’s true we have challenges aplenty in Michigan, but how many other places have colors like these?
Happy Independence Day and I hope you all have something to celebrate!
Holland Harbor Lighthouse aka “Big Red” on Lake Michigan.
Here’s a few more 4th of July posts from the Michigan in Pictures archives:
Updated September 30, 2008: LuckyGus captured this photo on the Betsie Valley Trail in Benzie County. Below you can read about TurtleGate ’08, which was touched off when I misidentified this turtle as a common snapping turtle. My Ranger Rick Top Terrapin Tagger badge has been repossessed and sources tell me that a number of zoologists are “keeping an eye on me”.
The Michigan DNR’s page on the wood turtle (which should have helped me identify it) says that:
As its scientific name, Glyptemys insculpta, implies, the shell of the wood turtle is one of the most ornate of the turtles in Michigan. A noticeable keel running down the back of the carapace and the pointed edges of the scutes along the back edge add to its sculpted appearance. The yellow on the underparts of its neck, legs, and stomach, plus the highly visible deep circular growth rings of the scutes on the brownish carapace help with identification. The adult carapace length is 6.3 to 9.4 inches (16 to 24 cm)
Wood turtles live in rivers with sandy-bottomed streams and rivers. They spend most of their time in the river from September to May, but in summer can be found foraging in woods, swamps, and meadows in the upland areas edging the stream or river. Logs or banks near water and sunny woodland openings are often utilized for basking.
These turtles are omnivores eating a variety of plants and animals and carrion found in and along the river. Wood turtles employ a unique technique to hunt earthworms. Using either an alternating foot stomp, or by lifting and dropping its shell on the ground, they create vibrations in the ground. These vibrations will cause earthworms to surface where they are quickly snatched for a meal. Anglers seeking bait can employ a similar technique. A stick stuck in the ground and wiggled back and forth to create vibrations will cause earthworms to leave the ground.
Michigan’s wood turtle population has declined in recent years and it’s considered rare in the northern Lower and Upper Peninsulas. More about wood turtles can be found at Wikipedia’s Wood Turtle entry, woodturtle.com and from the MSU Museum’s “critter guy”, James Harding who notes that They may not be taken from the wild or possessed without a scientific collector’s permit issued by the DNR.
You can also check out What’s Up With the Wood Turtle? from MyNorth.com for a look at fieldwork being done in Northern Michigan on the wood turtle.
(from July 2008) TurtleGate Update: A Nation in Slow, but Very Real Peril
I have finally gotten back to this to find out if I am indeed a dirty, no-good turtle mis-indentifying so-and-so or merely guilty of the litany of other things that I may or may not be guilty of per the comments. From the Michigan DNR Turtle page I was able to learn:
anberlin_108, photo by Nicole Rork.
GMNext Plug In offered Absolute Michigan a pair of tickets to the inaugural Rothbury Festival (this week – July 3-6) the other day. While it won’t top the Goose Lake International Music Festival as Michigan’s biggest ever, it is expected to draw upwards of 50,000 people and is packed with bands, entertainment and even educational/visioning opportunities.
To say that I wanted to go is a massive understatement. I yearn to go so badly that I can actually write “yearn” and not feel silly. (OK, I feel a little silly having written it) In the end, I couldn’t and neither could anyone else so we decided the thing to do was to give them away.
If you want a chance at 2 free Rothbury tickets, head over to the Rothbury Ticket Giveaway from GM Next & Absolute Michigan. It’s really easy to enter, so do it if you can go!
Nicole took this photo of the band Anberlin at the Jack Breslin Center in East Lansing and it’s just one of many amazing Live Music shots she has taken. If you like concert photography, you’ll love the slideshow.
Untitled, photo by caterpillars.
What: EXPOSURE.Detroit Photography Exhibit Opening Party
When: Friday, July 18th 7pm – 10pm
Where: The Bean & Leaf Cafe in Royal Oak
Music: DJ ADROIT
ITS FREE!
Featuring: Caterpillers | Urban Picasso | Rob2655 | Kevin Ridge Photo | Copperrein |
Here’s the flickr group Exposure.Detroit
Here’s a map
Here’s the discussion thread
Flyer Design: Ralph Krawczyk Jr
Lunchtime is Laker Time!, photo by mdprovost and American Victory, photo by smiles7
Last Wednesday, mdprovost captured this photo of the American Victory under the Blue Water Bridges between Port Huron, Michigan and Pte. Edward, Ontario. On Friday, smiles7 photographed the vessel as she passed through Sault St. Marie on the annual Engineer’s Day. And then they both added them to the Absolute Michigan pool on Flickr – how cool is that??!!
No word as to whether or not Kevin Bacon was aboard.
The Higgins boats discharge their cargo. (IMG_1314), photo by bill.d.
From the Things I Wish I Had Known About in Advance files comes this fantastic set of photos of last weekend’s D-Day re-enactment in Benton Harbor and St. Joseph (slideshow). Bill uploaded them all nice and big so be sure to cruise through that slideshow link. Or even better, download PicLens, click the set link and enjoy. (trust me on the PicLens thing – coolest web software I’ve seen in quite some time).
The 2008 Saint Joseph and Benton Harbor WWII Reenactment Weekend took place last weekend and was sponsored by the veterans’ organization Lest We Forget of SW Michigan. It was designed to teach folks about WWII history, veterans, and the equipment utilized and featured reenactments of the battles at Normandy (D-Day) and Peleliu (Palaus archipelago in the Phillipines).
Because I can, here’s a link to an amazing reenactment of the landing at Omaha Beach.
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!
Michigan Women Antique Northern MI Bathing Beauties Card Love It, photo by UpNorth Memories – Don Harrison.
I am sure that the publishers of this card intended the title to be slightly mocking.
When I saw it, however, I was struck by how much fun they appear to be having and how little they care about anything other than each other’s company and enjoying Michigan’s amazing watery fun.
Hope you get a chance to do some beautiful bathing of your own this summer, and also that you check out Don’s postcards (slideshow) because he posts them big and has hundreds and hundreds!
72nd floor / 2008 fireworks, photo by g. s. george.
Geoff took this from the 72nd floor of the Renaissance Center during the Detroit River Days fireworks (formerly Detroit International Freedom Festival). He explains that we’re looking down onto the Detroit River, Hart Plaza and Jefferson Avenue. The entrance to the Detroit-Windsor tunnel is seen at the very bottom. In the distance, the Ambassador Bridge spans the Strait of Detroit. Windsor, Ontario Canada can be seen behind the fireworks at far left.
Geoff is obviously one of the many photographers who have a deep love for Michigan’s largest city. Introducing his the city on the strait: detroit set (slideshow) he writes:
a city without bounds, connected to the world and to its vast country by an aquamarine strait nestled between five of the world’s largest freshwater lakes. its capital, industry, and population developed so rapidly that it imploded under the pressure of social strife, and today Detroit stands as a living urban document of the capabilities–and failures–of the American people. But the city chugs along, and its million-odd residents continue to embrace the city’s many cultural and historical vestiges–those links to the past that may, one day, be used to revitalize and reignite the city’s vibrancy and industrial prowess. already signs of that reemergence have appeared, and its only a matter of time before these majestic structures, occupied and abandoned, end up as a pile of rubble or an icon.
Michigan in Pictures has some more Detroit Freedom Festival fireworks pics (from 2006).
Michigan in Pictures 
