Three of Many, photo by smfmi
View the photo from the Poseyville wetland in Midland County bigger and see more in smfmi’s Birds slideshow.
Cadillac
Cadillac, photo by Gregg Mulholland
View the photo background bigtacular and see more in Gregg’s seriously cool Crystal Car Show slideshow.
Even Mr. Brightside has a dark side
Mr. Brightside, photo by Aaron Springer
The Frankfort North Pier Head Light marks the entrance to Betsie Lake. It’s a popular fishing spot, but on Friday afternoon as UpNorthLive reports, a fisherman learned to pay a little more attention to his surroundings:
The Coast Guard says the man was fishing when the weather picked up. He then became stuck on the pier due to crashing waves over the break wall. The Coast Guard was notified by the Benzie County Central Dispatch around 9:25 p.m.
Coast Guard Station Frankfort then launched a 25-foot response boat, a small crew and a Coast Guard Air Station Traverse City MH-60 jayhawk helicopter crew. The response boat arrived on scene first and confirmed the man was on the wall. The boat could not help with the rescue due to the shallow water.
The Coast Guard says the MH-60 helicopter crew hovered over the lighthouse on the pier and lowered a rescue swimmer who then basket-hoisted the man to safety with no injuries before flying to Frankfort Dow Memorial Airport where local EMS were standing by.
Click through for more including a video of the man and the pier taken from the Coast Guard helicopter.
View the photo bigger and see more in Aaron’s slideshow.
More from the Frankfort Light on Michigan in Pictures.
Sunflowers Galore!
Sunflowers Galore, photo by Shawn Jenks
If you’re a fan of sunflowers, it’s your season! I love seeing fields bursting with sunflowers as I’m out and about this time of year.
View the photo background bigilicious and see more in Shawn’s slideshow.
More summer wallpaper on Michigan in Pictures.
Michigan Lighthouses: Gravelly Shoal Light
Gravelly Shoals offshore Light in Saginaw Bay, photo by George Thomas
The entry on Gravelly Shoal Light at Terry Pepper’s Seeing the Light begins:
Point Lookout juts from the shore on the western shore of Lake Huron, approximately half-way between the mouth of the Saginaw River and Tawas Point. With only five to eighteen feet above it, Gravelly Shoal extends some 3 miles southeasterly from Point Lookout towards Big Charity Island. To help guide down-bound vessels headed for Saginaw Bay through the deeper water lying between the southeast end of Gravelly Shoal and Big Charity Island, Congress appropriated $5,000 to construct a lighthouse on the northwestern shore of Big Charity on August 18, 1856. Work began at the site that year, but as a result of being started so late in the season, the station was not completed and lighted until the following year.
Perhaps as a result of its exposed location, or as a result of its keeper’s dwelling being one of the few of wooden frame construction on any of the Great Lakes, the station was a constant source of maintenance problems, and was not surprisingly one of the first to be automated through the installation of an acetylene illumination system in 1900. At this time an occulting white Pintsch gas buoy was also placed at the southeastern end of Gravelly Shoal to better mark the western edge of the passage between the shoal and Big Charity Island.
As a result of the combination of increasing vessel size, improvements in offshore light construction and the growing adoption of radio direction finding equipment, it became plain in the late 1930’s that the old Charity light and the gas buoy on Gravelly Shoal had outlived their usefulness, and consideration turned to the construction of a state-of-the-art offshore aid to navigation at the eastern end of Gravelly Shoal to better mark the deeper water of the passage.
View the photo background big and see more in George’s Lighthouses slideshow.
More Michigan lighthouses on Michigan in Pictures.
American Pie redux: Grand Rapids Lip Dub Edition
Grand Rapids Lip Dub – Rosa Parks Circle, photo by Gary Syrba
Tina Jones couldn’t believe I didn’t share the groundbreaking Grand Rapids Lip Dub of American Pie yesterday and neither could I! It was filmed in May of 2011 for Experience Grand Rapids by Scott Erickson Films and produced & directed by Rob Bliss. The YouTube page thanks a bunch of people involved and dedicates it to the late Roger Ebert, who loved movies and even named the GR LipDub “The Greatest Music Video Ever Made.” Rob (who is the musician on stage in the photo above) writes:
The Grand Rapids LipDub Video was filmed May 22nd, 2011 with 5,000 people, and involved a major shutdown of downtown Grand Rapids, which was filled with marching bands, parades, weddings, motorcades, bridges on fire, and helicopter take offs. It is the largest and longest LipDub video, to date.
This video was created as an official response to the Newsweek article calling Grand Rapids a “dying city.” We disagreed strongly, and wanted to create a video that encompasses the passion and energy we all feel is growing exponentially, in this great city. We felt Don McLean’s “American Pie,” a song about death, was in the end, triumphant and filled to the brim with life and hope.
If you know Grand Rapids and the people who were making it vibrant in 2011 – many who continue today – you’ll definitely see some friends. In any case – what fun!!
View the photo bigger and see more in Gary’s In the City (Grand Rapids) slideshow.
This United States of America stuff is for real folks.
EDITOR’S NOTE: If you’re a person who doesn’t like my personal comments and viewpoints, particularly when they veer into the political realm, please consider browsing the beach, lighthouse, or animals categories today because you better believe I am veering that direction today.
I’d like to add that I recognize that for many of you, Michigan in Pictures is a place to go to retreat from the cares of the world, and I appreciate that what I share has that effect much of the time. Michigan in Pictures is also a creative outlet for me, and since I’m a person who is fiercely committed to preserving our land & water and the future of my children and the futures of others, you’re going to have to accept that sometimes those concerns will be reflected here.
The last Fallout shelter, photo by Richard Deming Photography
“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. He has been very threatening beyond a normal state. And as I said, they will be met with fire, fury, and, frankly, power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.”
-President Donald J. Trump
Helter skelter in a summer swelter
The birds flew off with a fallout shelter
Eight miles high and falling fast
-Don McClean, American Pie
Yesterday’s Detroit Free Press had a breezy bit on the Nukemap, a web app that lets you play around with nuclear explosions. If you’d like to see what North Korea can do to us, their warheads are somewhere in the 15-25 kiloton range these days. While you’re there you could check out what our own “fire & fury” would do to the Korean Peninsula, Japan & China were we to nuke Pyongyang. Our weapons are in the multiple megaton range and do a heck of a lot more damage.
President Trump’s remarks above were apparently unscripted, delivered from a press conference on opioids from his private golf club, and directed at one of the world’s biggest madmen, Kim Jong-un, who was making threats following the implementation of new and tougher international sanctions that the UN Security Council voted 15-0 to impose just last week. They are expected to remove 1/3 of North Korea’s trade revenue.
In the event your geopolitics are hazy, North & South Korea are each about the size of the UP, yet the population of the Korean Peninsula is almost 75 million people. The threat to unleash “fire & fury” on North Korea is like threatening to nuke North Dakota. It’s going to make South Dakota (South Korea), Minnesota (Japan), and Canada (China) and many others extremely concerned. Unlike that scenario, everything is much closer together and simply overflowing with all kinds of conventional and nuclear weaponry.
I urge anyone who is uncomfortable with this to contact your Representative & Senators and urge them to take this whole business of governing our nation a hell of a lot more seriously. In my opinion, Congress needs to take back war powers granted in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution and provide a check on the President’s reckless impulses.
Apologies to Richard who has had a bunch of great photos on Michigan in Pictures over the years for using his dramatic picture in dramatic fashion. View the photo bigger and see more in Richard’s Things I’ve Seen in Grand Rapids slideshow.
OK, here’s American Pie by Don McClean because it’s the perfect song for this sort of time:
