2009 Traverse City Film Festival Opening Ceremony

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Opening Ceremony

Opening Ceremony, photo by tcfilmfest.

All week long I’m covering the 5th Annual Traverse City Film Festival in Traverse City for Absolute Michigan: On Location (check the TCFF posts if you’re coming to this after the festival!). It’s a great celebration of film and filmmaking with a healthy dose of Michigan.

Check this out bigger in the 2009 Traverse City Film Festival slideshow (or view the set).

You can get a ton more Michigan film goodness through the Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and blog feeds at Traverse City Film Festival 2009!

Traverse City: Cherry (Festival) Capital of the World

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Traverse City Cherry Capital Postcard

Traverse City Cherry Capital Postcard, photo by Seeking Michigan.

The annual National Cherry Festival kicks off on July 4th, 2009. The first festival was held in 1926 and it has grown into an $26 million dollar powerhouse. Many of the concerts and events are free, and in addition to a number of parades, there’s music (headlined by Kenny Wayne Shepherd), food & wine tasting and an air show.

Check it out bigger and also in their Tourism set (slideshow).

I think the woman above barely missed the cut for this amazing travelogue from the 1940s.

Happy Birthday to you, Traverse Colantha Walker

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

The 2010 Traverse Colantha Walker Festival happens on Sunday, June 13, 2010.

State Hospital Memorial Marker For Traverse Colantha Walker (Traverse City, MI)

State Hospital Memorial Marker For Traverse Colantha Walker (Traverse City, MI), photo by takomabibelot.

From World Champion Cow of the Insane at Roadside America:

Northern Michigan Asylum opened in 1885 and gradually became a sprawling complex on the western outskirts of Traverse City. It was so vast that it had orchards of cherries, peaches and apples, vineyards and vegetable gardens, field crops, and livestock from beef to chickens, horses to pigs. And it had its own herd of cows.

The most famous of these — the most famous inhabitant, period, of the entire Asylum — was Traverse Colantha Walker. She was a grand champion milk cow, producing 200,114 pounds of milk and 7,525 pounds of butterfat in her long life. When she died in 1932 the hospital staff and patients held a banquet in her honor. They buried her in a small, grassy knoll, under a marble tombstone, outside of the stately brick dairy barn that had been her home.

The inaugural Traverse Colantha Walker Dairy Festival will take place on Saturday, September 12, 2009 at the Grand Traverse Commons.

See this bigger right here and also check out takomabibelot’s slideshow. The marker reads:

Traverse Colantha Walker
361604
Born 4-29-1916
Died 1-8-1932
World’s Champion Cow
Milk 200,114.9 lbs.
Fat 7,525.8 lbs.
Nine Lactations
Bred, Owned, Developed
By Traverse City Hospital

Underwater images from a Lake Michigan Stonehenge

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

If you’ve ever wondered what the most popular post on Michigan in Pictures was, you’ve arrived. Over 100,000 people followed a Reddit post here to learn about an underwater discovery.

September 29, 2011 Welcome everyone from Reddit. We don’t have any update to this story right now but I’ve emailed Mark and will post anything I learn. You might enjoy some of our Weird Michigan features from Absolute Michigan too!

Lake Michigan Stones

Lake Michigan Stones, photo via bldgblog.

In Stonehenge Beneath the Waters of Lake Michigan, Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG writes:

In a surprisingly under-reported story from 2007, Mark Holley, a professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan University, discovered a series of stones – some of them arranged in a circle and one of which seemed to show carvings of a mastodon – 40-feet beneath the surface waters of Lake Michigan. If verified, the carvings could be as much as 10,000 years old – coincident with the post-Ice Age presence of both humans and mastodons in the upper midwest.

Regarding the slightly repurposed “sector scan sonar” device that Northwestern Michigan University College professor and underwater archaeologist Dr. Mark Holley & Brian Abbott were using to survey some old wrecks when they made their discovery, Geoff writes:

The circular images this thing produces are unreal; like some strange new art-historical branch of landscape representation, they form cryptic dioramas of long-lost wreckage on the lakebed. Shipwrecks (like the Tramp, which went down in 1974); a “junk pile” of old boats and cars; a Civil War-era pier; and even an old buggy are just some of the topographic features the divers discovered.

You’ll definitely want to click through to read the rest and see more pictures!

You can read a detailed feature about this in U.S. archeologists find possible mastodon carving on Lake Michigan rock at NowPublic and listen to some radio reports from the time of the discovery in August of 2007 that include an interview with Dr. Holley and another with Grand Traverse Bay Ottawa Indian tribal member and historian John Bailey in Mammoth discovery beneath Grand Traverse Bay? on Absolute Michigan.

Creating Cities in Michigan

Posted on by farlane

Lansing, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Flint, Traverse City, Marquette and Kalamazoo are by no means all of Michigan’s cities (or even the largest). Each, however, seems to be an anchor for its region – a center to which people look to for culture, entertainment and commerce.

October 13-15, 2008, lovers of cities large & small from Michigan and all over the country will head to Detroit for the Creative Cities Summit 2.0 (CCS2), an exploration of what our cities could become and how we can work to make them. Organizers have chosen Detroit, a city so deeply forged in America’s industrial fires that it’s been devastated by the flickering of that flame. I’m headed down there and will try to bring some of the ideas back to you through Absolute Michigan – I hope that some of you can join me there.

The Photos (left to right)

Creative Cities Summit 2.0 in Detroit on Oct. 13-15, 2008

CCS2 will present a dynamic and engaging conversation about how communities around the world are integrating innovation, social entrepreneurship, sustainability, arts & culture and business to create vibrant economies. Full conference registration is $300 for the two and half day event, and there’s also a “no frills” registration that is only $100. There’s also a free “Unconference” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) on the 12th for designers, urban planners, civic leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, students, community leaders to explore and discuss what’s possible for Detroit.
Keynote speakers include:

  • Bill Strickland, MCG-Bidwell Corp.
  • Richard Florida, Author Who’s Your City
  • Charles Landry, Author The Art of City Making
  • John Howkins, Author The Creative Economy
  • Dean Kamen, Inventor, DEKA
  • Majora Carter, Sustainable South Bronx
  • Doug Farr, Architect and Author Sustainable Urbanism
  • Ben Hecht, Pres. & CEO Living Cities
  • Tom Wujec, Fellow, Autodesk
  • Carol Coletta, CEOs for Cities
  • Giorgio Di Cicco, Poet Laureate, City of Toronto and Author, The Municipal Mind
  • Diana Lind, Editor, Next American City magazine

Breakout sessions on topics such as:

  • Race and the Creative City
  • Cities, Universities & Talent
  • Marketing, Media and the Creative City
  • Measuring New Things – ROI in the Creative Economy
  • Creative (Small) Cities
  • New Ideas in Urban Amenities
  • Community Vitality: The Role of Artists, Gays, Lesbians & Immigrants
  • Midwest Mega-region: How the Midwest Can Compete
  • Transportation Innovation for Cities
  • Making the Scene: Music & Economic Development

Much (much) more at creativecitiessummit.com.

The Power of Green

Posted on by farlane

We’ve Got the Power, photo by Ann Teliczan

I was just working on a simple post about Green Jobs Now, who have designated this Saturday (Sep 27) as a national day of action in support of jobs in renewable energy and other green industries so I could link to their list of Green Jobs Now Events in Michigan.

It got kind of out hand though, and ended up being a Renewable Energy linkfest of epic proportions that is now on Absolute Michigan.

As a side note, this lonely windmill just outside of Traverse City was the first utility windmill in Michigan and the largest machine in North America. As another side note, Ann has more great photos from the Leelanau/Traverse area right here!

Heidi Johnson and the angels in the architecture

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Heidi Johnson, Third Floor, Men's Ward

Heidi Johnson, Third Floor, Men’s Ward, photo by mstephens7.

Michael told me yesterday that Heidi Johnson passed on. He has a post Remembering Heidi Johnson and took a tour of Building 50 with her (slideshow).

I didn’t know her well, but I’ve always had an enormous amount of respect for her work and her depth of passion for photography, and specifically her teaching of photography and Interlochen and her photography of the former Traverse City State Hospital. I don’t know what role (if any) her work played in the rebirth of the former mental institution as The Village at Grand Traverse Commons, but I do know that it did awaken the community to what an architectural and natural treasure it was.

On her web site, heidijohnson.com she wrote:

about the book Angels in the Architecture

I have been fascinated by the history of rural America for years and specifically with the history of the former Traverse City State Hospital in Traverse City Michigan (also called The Northern Michigan Asylum until 1911.) Based upon childhood memories of having an Aunt institutionalized there from the 1950’s – 1970’s to the belief that I was meant to tell this story lead me to embark upon a three year immersion into the early history of the facility as well as special permission to photograph inside the various structures (primarily Building 50) from 1997 -1998. This body of work evolved into a book which was published by Wayne State University Press in 2001 entitled Angels in the Architecture: A Photographic Elegy to an American Asylum

You can view an amazing gallery of Heidi Johnson’s photography through her site and learn more about the Traverse City State Hospital from Kirkbride Buildings.

Heidi’s obituary in the Record-Eagle directs memorials to the American Institute for Cancer Research and the Arthritis Foundation.

Getting ready for the 2008 Traverse City Film Festival

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Crowd at Open Space Film, Beth Price

Crowd at Open Space Film, Beth Price, photo by tcfilmfest.

This photo is part of the 2007 Traverse City Film Festival set (slideshow) and also in the Traverse City Film Festival group.

Beth Price is just one of a great crew of volunteer photographers who will be posting daily photos from this week’s Traverse City Film Festival. The festival takes place July 29 – August 3rd in Traverse City through the film festival web site – bringing you all the Moore, Madonna and Movies you can handle.

Cherry Blossom Time in Michigan

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Cherry Blossom Time, Benzie County Michigan by John Clement Howe

Cherry Blossom Time, Benzie County Michigan, photo by John Clement Howe.

The photo is part of John’s amazing Benzie County! photo set (slideshow) and it’s no coincidence that the next photo is a tasty looking morel mushroom – both cherry blossoms and morels are found at the same time of year!

Every May, the cherry trees of Michigan burst forth in white clouds of splendor, and dwelling as I do in the heart of Michigan’s cherry country, I am lucky enough to have a front row seat. I was struck by how little presence Michigan has in the cherry blossom information that can be found online. We’re just an afterthought on Wikipedia’s Sakura (cherry blossom) entry and event a search for Michigan cherry blossoms yields mostly Japanese restaurants.

I suppose that the fruit has become the bigger deal, but it wasn’t always that way. In their History of the National Cherry Festival, the Agile Writer notes that the Festival began in 1910 with a prayer ceremony for a good cherry crop. It was formalized in 1925, when the cherry growers partnered with Traverse City merchants to create the “Blessing of the Blossoms Festival” to promote the region and the cherry business.

stacked

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

stacked

stacked, photo by The Real Ferg.

Ferg took this @ Deepwater Point Natural Area. The Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy says Deepwater Point is a 15 acres property is owned by Acme Township on East Bay, north of Traverse City. The plaque reads:

In memory of Clyde H. Reed
Who along with his neighbors fought to protect Acme Township’s Deepwater Point Area – a place precious and dear to him. May we follow his example by being good stewards of this beautiful land for the benefit of future generations.

When I saw this photo, I realized that I had never shared on Michigan in Pictures something that I saw this summer. We called it the Amazing Frankfort Rock Gallery. I spend a ton of time on Michigan’s beaches, but this summer I seemed to see these rock structures everywhere. I wasn’t the only one either.

Anyone in the audience have any idea what’s behind this rock-stacking mania in Michigan?