deerlighthoue, photo by Zen Me.
I kind of ignored Mother’s Day here on Michigan in Pictures.
I think that’s OK because I didn’t ignore it offline … and maybe because I found you all this great collection of photos taken on Presque Isle on Mother’s Day.
Thanks, moms, for all you do.
The photo by rdmegr was taken from high above the Straits of Mackinac, the name for the narrow passage between the Lower and Upper Peninsulas of Michigan. Lake Michigan is on the left and Lake Huron, the right with Mackinaw City (with a “w”) and the Lower Peninsula in the foreground and St. Ignace and the UP in the distance. It’s part of his Daytrip to Mackinac set of photos. Another photo from his flight to Mackinac of a freighter, the North Manitou Shoal Light and South Manitou Island was also blogged to Michigan in Pictures for general coolness and the fact that I heard his plane fly over my house.
I also have a confession to make: For months, I have been scared of the Mackinac Bridge.
This is distinct from the uneasiness that my mild phobia of falling off the Mackinac Bridge gives me when I drive over it.
I have been scared because 2007 is the 50th Anniversary of the Mackinac Bridge. To me, other than the lake-etched outline of our state, there is no greater symbol of Michigan than the Mighty Mac.
5 miles long, 552 feet tall in nearly 300 feet of water, the Mackinac Bridge has seen over 120 million crossings required 3 years, over 11,000 people and 4 million tons of concrete and steel to build. (more facts)
And that’s only the barest glimmer of the story that needs to be told. From its conception in the 1800s, through the difficult construction, all the way up to the people who cross it for business or pleasure every day with hardly a pause, the Bridge is an essential part of what joins Michigan’s two peninsulas as one state.
If you have some links to share, please add them in the comments. We’ll be telling the story of the Mackinac Bridge piece by piece here and on Absolute Michigan, and we’ll post links to all the photos, stories and videos on The Mackinac Bridge page at Absolute Michigan. (look for the button!)
Some days the photo for Michigan in Pictures is easy to find. Some days it’s not. Today was one of those days and after a lot of time wandering around the Library of Congress, I went back to Flickr and started looking through photos matching a search for Michigan.
Somewhere around page 12, I found these two photos – Untitled (from a West Michigan Whitecaps game) by Em Smith and Klompen Dancing at the Tulip Festival by Norm Hoekstra (from a group of Tulip Time klompen photos) – sitting side by side. That seemed to me to be some kind of sign, and I read it to say: blog the photos and get back to work!
Happy Friday and I hope your weekend gives you a chance to kick up your heels!
Field of Dreams, photo by tenfrozentoes.
One of the first photos with a new lens (Canon 10-20 mm) … not a bad beginning.
I also have to note that Saline seems to be a good place to take photos of trees and fields.
Ryan writes: This is a house in the Brush Park neighborhood in Detroit. A few years ago the home was relocated to the spot it currently sits, but was done so poorly and now sags in the middle. Because of its sag this unique home as been dubbed “Slumpy” by people in Detroit. Its sad and only a matter of time before the home collapses.
Through the magic of FlickrVision, I have been watching Slumpy slump its way toward becoming a pile of rubble for a couple of years. Mac from Detroit BikeBlog (and also Bobby Alcott) pointed out this YouTube video of the front face of the mansion falling off (PG for language). UPDATE! Here’s an even better video (2nd one down). With Slumpy now one step closer to the ultimate end, I thought it would be a good time to dig for a little of the history.
The best I found is at Detroit 1701’s page on the William Livingstone Residence which says:
A prosperous family in Detroit in the 1890s likely wanted to build a home in one of the city’s most elegant neighborhoods. The two most prestigious, arguably, were Brush Park with its numerous mansions or Woodward Avenue where David Whitney and Colonel Hecker had built their castle-like mansion. William Livingstone selected Eliot Street in Brush Park and then employed a very young Albert Kahn who was working for the George Mason-Zachariah Rice firm. When he obtained this commission – presumably with Mason’s help; Kahn was only 22 or 23 years old and had just returned from spending 1891 in Europe studying the classical architecture of the Old World.
Albert Kahn designed in a French Renaissance mode for the home you see, perhaps, reflecting the time he spent sketching the best Gallic architecture. Currently, it takes a great deal of imagination to understand what this once-impressive home looked like in 1893 when Kahn completed it. You can see an interesting array of windows, an appealing tower with its conical roof along with an impressive entryway. This residence was originally built about one block to the west of its present location to the west of John R. The Red Cross intended to demolish this home for their new building. Preservationists succeeded in successfully moving the Livingstone Home about one block to the east.
Wikipedia has a list of buildings designed by Albert Kahn and more information about the architect. They note that as of 2006, Kahn had around 60 buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Day 10b, photo by inverness_torch_lake
I can’t help but think that a lot of the photos that have appeared on Michigan in Pictures – and many more by the photographers – should be entered in the Detroit News and WWJ Radio’s Celebrate Michigan photo contest. They say Give us your best shot of the towering pine forests of Northern Michigan or kids frolicking in the dunes along Lake Michigan. We’ll pick the photos that best capture the unique character of our home state.
Entries are due by Friday, May 25, 2007 and the grand prize is (I think) one of three vacation packages at BOYNE resorts (near Harbor Springs), Crystal Mountain Resort (Thompsonville) or Cobblestone Manor Bed & Breakfast (Auburn Hills) and they are also giving away a pair of Tiger tickets a week!
we finally got our lighthouse!, photo by weaving major & tractor dan.
weaving major & tractor dan write that they’ve long admired everyone else’s lighthouse-from-a-kite shots, and now finally have a few of their own. They say if you’re interested, you can learn more about Kite Aerial Photography (KAP) right here. They have also added location information so you can view this photo on a map!
Terry Pepper’s Seeing the Light has a page on Little Sable Point Light that begins:
In the early 1800’s western Michigan consisted of seemingly endless forests, and with the skyrocketing growth of Chicago and Milwaukee, it was inevitable that there would be those who would come to the area to take advantage of the areas bounty. In the 1850’s, Charles Mears and Reverend William Ferry were both operating sawmills in the area around Little Sable Point. While almost all of the pine forests had been harvested by the 1880’s, there were still plenty of hemlock and hardwoods remaining.
In the late 1860’s Summers Fox, a local merchant supplying the lumber trade began lobbying the Lighthouse Board for the construction of a coastal lighthouse at what was then known as Petite Pointe Au Sable. With the grounding of the schooner “Pride” on Little Sable Point in 1871, cries for the construction of a lighthouse swelled…
The light was built activated in 1874. At 107′ tall, it is the tallest lighthouse on Lake Michigan.
Editor’s Note: The photo that originally appeared here was deleted by the photographer so I am using one of my own!
Trillium lit by Spring Beauties, photo by farlane
The Wikipedia page on trillium lists the 40-50 species of genus trillium. This photo is Trillium grandiflorum, also known as white trillium, grand trillium and snow trillium. The flower is protected in Michigan and is most often on steep slopes where it is protected from grazing white-tailed deer who dislike grazing on inclines.
The USDA’s Trillium grandiflorum (white trillium) page has excellent information regarding classification and lots of photos and links.
some cute chicks, photo by paulhitz.
As is usually the case, I came upon today’s picture in a roundabout way. Stylurus (who seems to know a thing or two about birds) noted that Paul could submit this to the Michigan Breeding Bird Atlas II. The Michigan DNR’s page on MBB II explains:
In the 1980s, volunteers surveyed the entire state in a massive effort to record and map in an atlas the birds which breed in Michigan. This information has proved invaluable to scientists and natural resource managers, but there are indications that bird distribution and abundance has changed since this atlas was created.
Starting in 2002, the Kalamazoo Nature Center was contracted to coordinate the creation of a second Michigan Breeding Bird Atlas. The data collection portion of this process is scheduled to be completed in 2008, and its success depends again on the dedication of a corps of volunteers: backyard birdfeeders, hunters, amateur birdwatchers, and professionals.
You can get all the details on this project at the links above and go to the main MichiganBirds.org page for a flock of links to Michigan birding sites.
Michigan in Pictures 