Turnip Rock, Port Austin and The Thumb
January 7, 2010
Turnip Rock, Port Austin, Michigan, photo by jensenl.
It’s been a while since Michigan in Pictures got out with the incomparable Lars Jensen, for my money one of Michigan’s best outdoor photographers.
His winter visit to The Thumb offers this photo and many more larger and he writes:
Turnip Rock and Kai standing on the “thumbnail” in Michigan’s thumb area. Unfortunately, this area is privately owned so Kai and I skied to it from the harbor at Port Austin (about 2.25 miles away) on Lake Huron. We then skied out to the Port Austin Lighthouse which sits out in the middle of the bay on a shallow shoal (about 2.5 miles from the shores of Port Austin). We saw all sorts of interesting ice formations along the way and had a great time on a cold and blustery day.
Click over to his site for the whole day of photos. Here’s more of Lars Jensen on Michigan in Pictures and I also recommend kicking back for his Michigan slideshow.
PS: Too cold for you? He has summertime photos in Kayaking the Thumb!
Seeing Red: Rose Hips
January 6, 2010
Seeing Red, photo by Kiley_Evanne.
One of my favorite books as a kid was My Side of the Mountain. In it, the teenaged hero Sam Gribley learns how to feed himself and survive in the woods. Inspired by Sam’s example, I got as far as being able to identify rose hips, the red-orange fruit of the rose plant.
When snowshoeing or skiing in the winter, I like to snack on these when I find them. This article about gathering rose hips begins:
Known mostly for beauty in the garden and as a floral declaration of love, roses don’t usually come to mind when we think of either food or nutrition. Yet, all parts of the rose, and especially the hips, are storehouses of Vitamin C and other important nutrients.
Compare the nutritional content of oranges to rose hips and you will find that rose hips contain 25 percent more iron, 20 to 40 percent more Vitamin C (depending upon variety), 25 times the Vitamin A, and 28 percent more calcium.
They’re also a great source of bioflavanoids, pectin, Vitamin E, selenium, manganese, and the B-complex vitamins. Read on for suggestions about gathering and drying them. The BBC has an article about Rose-hips as a possible remedy for arthritis that you might enjoy as well. One tip: you have to leave the blossoms on the rose bush for hips to fully develop.
Check it out bigger or in Kiley’s slideshow.
Winter Wonderland at the Tahquamenon Falls
January 5, 2010
Winter Wonderland, photo by Kiran Bhat..
Kiran says that he absolutely loves the Tahquamenon Falls. I confess that I do too.
He’s just begun posting his UP Trip slideshow where you can see it bigger.
Need more? How about the Tahquamenon Falls in winter slideshow from Flickr or more of the Tahquamenon Falls from Michigan in Pictures?
Michigan January Event Calendar
January 4, 2010
Untitled, photo by Terrapin Dawg.
“The Old Year has gone. Let the dead past bury its own dead. The New Year has taken possession of the clock of time. All hail the duties and possibilities of the coming twelve months!”
~ Edward Payson Powell
Every month Absolute Michigan puts together a massive list of events from all across the state designed to help you get more out of Michigan.
Our January Michigan Event Calendar features some great events designed to help you get more out of the outdoors like Newberry’s Tahquamenon Country Sled Dog Race, Kalkaska Winterfest, Tip Up Town USA (Houghton Lake), Snowfest in Frankenmuth and the Subaru Noquemanon Ski Marathon in Marquette. If you like your events on the indoors side, there’s Ferndale’s Bluesfest, the Ann Arbor Folk Festival and the The North American International Auto Show in Detroit.
Matt took this photo in Cheboygan County. Be sure to check this out backround big or in his snowmobile trip set (slideshow).
Where To Now?
January 2, 2010
Where To Now?, photo by Mike Lanzetta.
Mike took this photo yesterday at Michigan’s largest ruins, Michigan Central Station in Detroit. Check it out bigger in the Exposure.Detroit slideshow or in the MCS slideshow on Flickr.
Seeing this and other photos prompted me to look back in on TIME Magazine’s Assignment Detroit (?) to see what one of the nation’s largest media outlets was thinking about the future of Michigan’s largest city.
They have been exploring how people in the city are grappling with the profound challenges in Detroit including rising budget deficits in the face of soaring costs, reduced public services, unemployment and also (according to Detroit Mayor Dave Bing) a failure by many to recognize just how serious the situation is. In many ways, these are the same issues that folks in other places in Michigan are dealing with.
One feature that caught my eye and that I really feel offers the kind of thinking that it will take to raise Michigan from its current depths is Can farming save Detroit?. They talk with Detroit businessman and millionaire John Hantz, who envisions:
A large-scale, for-profit agricultural enterprise, wholly contained within the city limits of Detroit. Hantz thinks farming could do his city a lot of good: restore big chunks of tax-delinquent, resource-draining urban blight to pastoral productivity; provide decent jobs with benefits; supply local markets and restaurants with fresh produce; attract tourists from all over the world; and — most important of all — stimulate development around the edges as the local land market tilts from stultifying abundance to something more like scarcity and investors move in. Hantz is willing to commit $30 million to the project. He’ll start with a pilot program this spring involving up to 50 acres on Detroit’s east side. “Out of the gates,” he says, “it’ll be the largest urban farm in the world.”
…But still there’s the problem of what to do with the city’s enormous amount of abandoned land, conservatively estimated at 40 square miles in a sprawling metropolis whose 139-square-mile footprint is easily bigger than San Francisco, Boston, and Manhattan combined. If you let it revert to nature, you abandon all hope of productive use. If you turn it over to parks and recreation, you add costs to an overburdened city government that can’t afford to teach its children, police its streets, or maintain the infrastructure it already has.
Faced with those facts, a growing number of policymakers and urban planners have begun to endorse farming as a solution. Former HUD secretary Henry Cisneros, now chairman of CityView, a private equity firm that invests in urban development, is familiar with Detroit’s land problem. He says he’s in favor of “other uses that engage human beings in their maintenance, such as urban agriculture.” After studying the city’s options at the request of civic leaders, the American Institute of Architects came to this conclusion in a recent report: “Detroit is particularly well suited to become a pioneer in urban agriculture at a commercial scale.”
Can you see the halls of massive ruins like Michigan Central Station, the Packard Plant or any of the countless other abandoned buildings across the state filled with green growth and warm light? Michigan is already a leader in agricultural diversity, producing an amazing array of crops. Rampant unemployment is a huge drain on our public services. Why not try and recover some of what we’re spending everywhere in Michigan by putting folks to work growing food and paying them in part in food?
Definitely check it out and offer your thoughts in the comments.
Hello 2010!
January 1, 2010
molly in snow 006, photo by northern_latitudes.
Happy New Year everyone! I hope you’re waking up relatively unharmed and eager to dive into 2010.
In no particular order, I’m hoping for snow, sun, a lot of trips to Michigan’s parks, more time on my bike, a championship by the Pistons, Tigers, Red Wings or (hold your laughter please) Lions, more pictures of ducks, continuing rebirth in Detroit and other Michigan cities and many, many more amazing pictures of the Great Lakes State.
How about you?
Check this out bigger in Tim’s Harbor Springs slideshow.
