8 Point White Tail Buck, photo by trekguy
November 15 is opening day of deer season in Michigan – follow that link over lots more from Absolute Michigan.
The Ultimate Sacrifice
The Ultimate Sacrifice – Black and White, photo by DarrinW.
Darrin took this photo at Veterans Cemetery in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I think it’s a good idea for everyone to take a pause in their activity this weekend to consider the profound sacrifices that so many have made on the behalf of our nation … and also that there are people today making those same sacrifices.
Of the nearly 4000 US Iraq War casualties listed at icasualties.org are 145 Michigan residents from Alpena to Ypsilanti and points in between. Take a moment to read the names listed under Michigan on this page.
I am reminded of a brief comment by former Governor William Milliken in this 2006 WKAR interview where he briefly touched on the war in Iraq, saying he was gravely concerned that Americans are not called upon to sacrifice personally in this war as we have been in past conflicts. Food for thought.
Speaking of WKAR, they are have a pretty cool Michigan Voices from World War II program airing at 7 PM Sunday night (Nov 11). Their web site includes stories shared by veterans – here’s a couple from Michigan WW II veterans and you can add your own story. There’s also a link to The War by Ken Burns on PBS that includes a number of online segments.
The Freep has a number of Detroit area Veteran’s Day observances and we received details on the Detroit Veteran’s Day March held today (Saturday, Nov 10) at noon from Grand Circus Park to Campus Martius. I suppose your local paper has more because there doesn’t seem to be a statewide listing to be found.
You might also appreciate the Michigan Soldiers & Sailors Monument on Michigan in Pictures, photos for “veteran” in the Absolute Michigan pool on Flickr (slideshow), and many of the items at Absolute Michigan keyword veteran including Michigan Veterans and Veterans Day from last year.
Diving the Wreck of the Vienna off Whitefish Point
Vienna – 19, photo by mschout.
Global Underwater Explorers page on diving the Vienna says that although extended range divers often use the Vienna as a “blow-off dive because it’s shallow and near shore, it’s also one of the finest wrecks to dive in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. They write that this 191′ wooden steamer:
…came to her demise the same way that many do in Lake Superior, by collision. On 16 September 1892, she was down bound from Marquette, Michigan, with a load of iron ore. In tow was the schooner Mattie C. Bell. At Whitefish Point, the Vienna met up with the Nipigon. The Nipigon also had schooners in tow. Without warning, the Nipigon suddenly veered and struck the Vienna. Despite the efforts of both crews to save the Vienna, the vessel sank approximately one mile from shore. It was never fully understood why the Nipigon veered off course.
You can get more information about this wreck and others near Whitefish Point including a great photo of the Vienna at the ore docks in Marquette at Nordic Diver’s page on the wreck of the steamer Vienna.
Michael Schout has more photos of diving the Vienna (slideshow) and from diving more Great Lakes wrecks including the William Young, Panther, Minneapolis, Northwest, Sandusky and the Eber Ward in his very cool Diving set.
Much more shipwreck info (along with another great photo from Michael) can be found at the Absolute Michigan word of the week: Shipwreck!
Along the Graveyard Coast
Keel at Au Sable, photo by swaneesimpalass.
The Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore says that the shipwrecks of Lake Superior’s “Graveyard Coast” represent many eras of shipping. They are relatively well preserved because they have been spared from the human pressures of population and industry.
Some of them have lost their names, while others like the Mary Jarecki or the Annie M Peterson retain some of their stories:
The Annie M. Peterson was a 2-masted wooden schooner-barge built in 1874. She sank in a storm on November 19, 1914 off the mouth of Two-Hearted River on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, when she was lost from her towline, and broke up offshore in heavy seas.
Winter storms in 2003 revealed her ice-encased remains, embedded in the Lake Superior shoreline, about 6 miles east of Grand Marais. Last I heard, she had disappeared again.
Click over to Bruce Moore’s site for the a map to the wreck and stay tuned to Absolute Michigan keyword shipwreck (there’s already a ton of stuff there!) and Michigan in Pictures all November for tales of the wrecks and information about museums, preserves and web sites to learn more about the unfortunate side of Michigan’s rich maritime history.
River of Mystery – exploring the St. Joseph River
St. Joseph River Valley, photo by mojophiltre.
Mojophiltre took this photo of the St. Joseph River, just above the Buchanan Hydro-Electric Dam. He has a view of the water going over the Buchanan Dam that you’ll want to check out too.
As usual, Wikipedia has an entry on the St. Joseph River – I like to include these so that people who are passionate and knowledgeable can add to the phenomenal resource that Wikipedia offers. The St. Joseph River Watershed site (which has some cool maps of the watershed but some rather annoying Java) says:
The St. Joseph River Watershed is located in the southwest portion of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan and northwestern portion of Indiana. It spans the Michigan-Indiana border and empties into Lake Michigan at St. Joseph, Michigan. The watershed drains 4,685 square miles from 15 counties (Berrien, Branch, Calhoun, Cass, Hillsdale, Kalamazoo, St. Joseph and Van Buren in Michigan and De Kalb, Elkhart, Kosciusko, Lagrange, Noble, St. Joseph and Steuben in Indiana). The watershed includes 3,742 river miles…
The Friends of the St. Joseph River has a nifty historical photo of the Buchanan Dam and a great article about the history of the names of the St. Joseph River by Bob Owens & Scott Null. The river was important to native peoples – all the way from the enigmatic Hopewell Mound Builders who made their home all along the Saint Joseph River valley to the Fox & Sauk who moved in as mercenaries for the English. This very interesting page lists various names for the river and I think it’s fascinating how one river can provide such a wealth of insight into Michigan’s history:
- The Miami called it Sauk-Wauk-Sil-Buck (which The Google thinks means “River of Mystery”).
- The Iroquois, who apparently conducted a nasty genocidal campaign on the Algonquian in the region, called the river The Illinois – maybe because the first Algonquian tribe they met were the Illinois.
- In spring of 1672, Explorer Rene-Robert Cavalier De La Salle (searching for the best route between Quebec and the mouth of the Mississippi) ran into the Miami (who by this time were in the pay of the Iroquois against their Algonquin brethren), so naturally he christened it The River of the Miamis.
- Jesuit Missionary Claude Allouez (who earlier had named Lake Michigan “Lake Saint Joseph” after first sighting it on Catholic Feast Day of Saint Joseph) founded a mission at the rail junction at Bertrand. It’s noteworthy that when LaSalle returned later, he still called it the River of the Miami.
- North and east, the French built Fort St. Joseph near Niles in 1691. At that time the Potowatomi (who called the river Sohg-Wah-Se-Pe – also Mystery River) were friendly with the French.
- Around 1700, the Fox & Sauk tribes, who were allied with the English and named the river O-Sang-E-Wong-Se-Pe (Mystery River again), began to tangle with the Potowatomi and French.
The authors advocate for naming the river the Sagwa. I don’t know about that, but I do know that time seems to mysteriously disappear when I run into cool Michigan history like this!
More from the Michigan Fall Wallpaper series
Raking Shadows on Halloween
Raking Shadows, photo © Richard Thompson
Probably the coolest Halloween photo I’ve ever seen. I would totally go to a movie with this on the poster. Richard says this is Sunset over farmlands in Dundee, Michigan. He has another in the same vein titled Darkness Looms.
Happy Halloween, Michigan … hope the treats far outnumber the tricks!
Spartan Stadium at Michigan State University
MSU Aerial Photo, photo by clayton_busbey
Be sure to take a look at other photos Clayton took on this day – they include aerial views of Lansing & Mackinac Island.
I’ve certainly given the University of Michigan and the Big House ample time here on Michigan in Pictures. Looking back, I see that the football stadium at my alma mater, Michigan State University, has received rather less attention. What can I say – my grandmother was a dyed-in-blue Wolverine fan. As usual, you can get lots of the basic information from Wikipedia’s entry for Spartan Stadium in East Lansing which begins:
In the early 1920s school officials decided to construct a new stadium to replace Old College Field. The resulting stadium was ready in the fall of 1923 with a capacity of 14,000. Over the years the stadium grew. In 1935 the seating capacity increased to 26,000 and the facility was dedicated as Macklin Field. John Macklin, football coach from 1911-15, put Michigan State football on the map with a 29-5 record over five seasons with victories over big name programs such as Michigan, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Penn State and Wisconsin. After admittance into the Big Ten in 1948, Michigan State increased stadium capacity to 51,000 and the field was renamed Macklin Stadium. With Spartan football attracting national attention under Clarence “Biggie” Munn and Hugh “Duffy” Daugherty, 9,000 seats were added in 1956. The following season upper decks were added to the east and west sides boosting the capacity to 76,000. That same season Michigan State dropped the name Macklin Stadium in favor of Spartan Stadium.
In August of 2005 a press box and luxury seating were added – here are photos and renderings of the addition to Spartan Stadium and the page on Spartan Stadium at Ballpark.com (has a cool view of the stadium on game day).
For more photos, head over to Flickr where Patrick Power (love the Spartan Stadium Sundown!) and Alex (excellent Spartan Stadium Panorama) each have a ton of photos of the stadium. Also look in of the Michigan State University Fans pool on Flickr and get some shots of on the field action from the Spartans Football photo gallery at MSU.
A Letter from Downstream
In the Michigan Immense Public Park, photo by Andy McFarlane
Welcome to a “Soapbox Saturday” on Michigan in Pictures, where your host takes you a little ways past “ain’t it cool” towards “ain’t it a shame.” Don’t worry though – it’s still cool. If it doesn’t seem cool – please click the photo above. I figured that since I was going to be sharing some personal feelings, I probably should use one of my own photos. This photo of my daughter exploring something on the Lake Michigan beach was taken a few years ago at the base of Pyramid Point in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. I had posted it in gratitude to the Michigan Supreme Court for upholding our right to walk the Great Lakes shore.
Flash forward to the present day when Michigan’s regulators appear poised to permit the first metallic sulfide mine in Michigan. Several years ago, my friend Dick Huey and a few others started a group called Save the Wild UP when Kennecott Minerals, a subsidiary of mining giant Rio Tinto (one of the world’s largest polluters), began the process of securing a permit for a sulfide mine north of Marquette. The proposed mine is located directly under the Salmon-Trout River on the wild and beautiful Yellow Dog Plains. This is state land, our land, and the Salmon-Trout flows just a few miles through it and then empties into Lake Superior. Over that time I’ve been working for them to maintain their web site and have learned a thing or two about “acid mining”.
Iron and copper mining are things that helped forge the character of the Upper Peninsula. You can think of traditional mining as picking the chocolate chips out of a cookie. Sulfide mining is like getting the sugar out of a cookie – a chemical rather than mechanical process that yields a dust as a by-product. If this dust mixes with water and air, it forms sulfuric acid aka battery acid. There has never been a sulfide mine with the potential to pollute ground or surface water that failed to do so. Sulfide mining has polluted 40% of the watersheds in the West, and you can read more of the facts about metallic sulfide mining at Save the Wild UP (has a nice video if you prefer).
A process with 100% failure rate of protecting water located directly under a pristine river that flows into the largest body of freshwater in the world seems like a bad idea. When you realize that they also plan to blow the sulfide dust into the air and that there are hundreds of other prospected sites waiting in the wings, it becomes terrifying. Michigan and the UP have a lot of challenges right now, but something we do have going for us is our water and wild places and the tourism dollars and jobs they generate. The picture to the right is a result of sulfide mining from Sudbury, Ontario. Multiply that across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and consider how many thousands of tourism jobs and millions of tourism and tax dollars might be lost.
One of the people who has considered this is a wonderful musician named Daisy May. She has donated a song called A Letter from Downstream to Save the Wild UP and I hope you take the time to listen to it and see the photos that folks have shared about what Michigan’s water means to them.
If you’re a Flickr member, consider adding a photo to the Downstream group.
Monocle Lake, Hiawatha National Forest
Monocle Lake, Hiawatha National Forest, photo by UofMBlonde415.
This photo is one of a number of photos Beth took on Saturday in the Straits & Soo.
Hunt’s Guide to the UP has this to say about Monocle Lake:
The centerpiece of this attractive natural area in the Hiawatha National Forest is 172-acre Monocle Lake. It’s stocked for fishing with walleye, bass, pike, and perch. There’s a beach, boat launch, and picnic area with charcoal grills. Lots of improvements, including a floating fishing dock and hard gravel paths, make Monocle Lake outstanding for handicapped people.
A two-mile hiking trail loop starts at the picnic area and goes through natural hardwoods intermixed with some very old white pines and hemlocks. The trail’s first 1,100 feet are fully accessible, including the boardwalk carrying the trail across a wetland and beaver dam … Ospreys (also called fish hawks) have a nest in the area, so it’s not unusual to see them catching fish in the wetland shallows.
There’s more about the lake on the Hiawatha National Forest Monocle Lake Campground page, but I couldn’t find the answer to my question of how Monocle Lake got its name. If you know, please share it in the comments!!
More photos in the Michigan Fall Wallpaper series.
Tahquamenon Falls double exposure(detroit)
Upper Falls, photo by rckrawczykjr.
Ralph recently returned from an autumn trip to the UP (slideshow). When I saw his double exposure of Tahquamenon’s Upper Falls, I knew I wasn’t going to be waiting any longer to give a shout out to the next Exposure.Detroit show.
Exposure.Detroit Presents!
When: November 9th 7pm-10pm
Who: Cris Rea, Joe Alisa, Ralph Krawczyk Jr., Rhonda McElroy, Sue Fraser
Where: The Bean & Leaf Cafe, Royal Oak
If you can, be sure to show up to see work from Ralph and the other very fine photographers in the show!
See more Tahquamenon Falls photos on Michigan in Pictures and don’t miss other photos in the Michigan Fall Wallpaper series.
Michigan in Pictures 
