“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” -Albert Einstein
Julie shared this photo back in April of 2021, but I wanted to make sure everybody saw these sweet little fox babies. She has more great photos of these foxes & others having fun on Flickr.
Have a great weekend everyone, and if you have an extra dollar or three & enjoy Michigan in Pictures, consider clicking the Patreon button below to help me reach my current goal, an asiago bacon croissant at Cannelle Detroit! 😋
Hiawatha & Minnehaha Sculptures by Edmonia Lewis from the Detroit Institute of Arts
WARNING: Novella incoming ;)
The Northern Express shares that the Interlochen Center for the Arts is getting ready for the May 3-4 world premier of Edmonia, the story of 19th-century Black and Ojibwe sculptor Edmonia Lewis who carved out an artistic identity against all odds (click for tickets!). Here are a few highlights but read the whole because WOW this is a huge deal for Interlochen and the whole state of Michigan:
The two-act opera was originally commissioned in 2000 by prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison and composed by acclaimed musician and education Dr. Bill Banfield. The tale follows Lewis’ life, travel, and career at Oberlin College, Boston, Florence, Italy, Chicago, San Francisco, and Philadelphia at a time when travel, a career, and life itself was difficult for many women.
The driving force behind the Edmonia opera is Dr. Bill Banfield, a native Detroiter, whose wide-ranging resume includes musician, composer, guitarist, professor, educator, author, and record company owner.
…Banfield has twice served as a Pulitzer Prize judge in American Music (2010 and 2016). He’s an award-winning composer whose symphonies, operas, and chamber works have been performed and recorded by major symphonies across the nation. Dr. Cornel West has called him “one of the last grand Renaissance men in our time, a towering artist, exemplary educator, rigorous scholar, courageous freedom fighter.”
With all those impressive credentials, what was it like working with the young people at the academy? “Young people jump into the music and they make the music jump,” he says with a smile. “They bring the soul, the imagination, and energy.”
…Patrice Rushen, Broadway actor Sydney James Harcourt of Hamilton fame, and emerging opera performer Amber Merritt star alongside Arts Academy students in the production.
Auditions began in December under co-directors Laura Osgood Brown and Justin Lee Miller. In a nutshell, Brown deems the cast “an explosion of talent. There are 65 in the cast, the largest cast ever on campus,” says Brown. “The first few days were overwhelming. And we were practicing from 4:00 to 6:30 [pm], four or five days a week, in three different locations.”
…One of the highlights of Edmonia is a high-tech rotating stage that carries a $70,000 price tag.
“We received a generous donation which allowed us to purchase a motor-controlled scenery system,” explains Wrobel. “This system moves scenery ‘magically’ on the stage. For the production of Edmonia, we are using the system in two ways. We will have a 20-foot diameter turntable that is in the middle of the stage. This allows us to move other pieces of scenery or performers magically during the show.”
…So why should a northern Michigan audience come to see Edmonia? Wrobel is quick to offer three reasons.
“First, the story is important,” he says. “Edmonia Lewis was an African American and Native American marble sculptor in the late 1800s. The story spans Lewis’ courageous life from her birth in upstate New York through her turbulent days at Oberlin College and formative studio days in Boston, to her astonishing move to Rome, Italy. In 1876, at the age of 32, Lewis captivated the world with her larger-than-life marble statue The Death of Cleopatra that now stands in the Smithsonian.
The photographer of this pair of marble busts is me (Andy McFarlane). I went looking at the Detroit Institute of Arts that is an actual city block from my apartment & F-R-E-E for all Wayne, Oakland & Macomb county residents. It wasn’t in the African American section as it says on the DIA website, but in the much more appropriate American Art before 1950 section. There I found a bonus – Hiawatha! Both sculptures are about a foot tall and STUNNING.
The credit for Minnehaha is: Mary Edmonia Lewis, Minnehaha, 1868, marble. Detroit Institute of Arts, Gift of the Centennial Planning Committee for Sharing Traditions and Romare Bearden Exhibitions with a major contribution from Founders Junior Council, 1986.33.
I have emailed the DIA asking them for information about Hiawatha. They may think it’s still at the MET because the MET does!! And while the website is out of date, the card indicates Hiawatha is on loan from the Detroit-based Manoogian Collection which must have loaned it the the MET.
Here’s a bonus pic of Hiawatha & Minnehaha by Edmonia Lewis on display at the DIA by yours truly.
It’s almost Tulip Time, (May 4-12, 2024) and Discover Holland is once again inviting anyone with a passion for petals to take part in their 2025 Holland Area Visitor’s Guide Cover Contest. They say that the cover shot must be taken in 2024 and stand out when surrounded by other brochures. Photos must be vertical (portrait) in orientation or be able to be cropped as such. The winning photographer gets a $500 cash prize and photo credit when it’s used editorially. The top ten photos each get $50 and the winner of the “People’s Choice” vote online will receive $150.
This photo by Measie Elizabeth was the winner last year. Learn more about the photographer at Measie Elizabeth Photography.
I saw a couple other photos of this cloud as it rolled across the Straits of Mackinac & northeast Michigan the other day but wowzas – the Mighty Mac takes it!! Our friends at the Earth Science Picture of the Day have an excellent post on the difference between roll clouds & shelf clouds:
Roll clouds and shelf clouds are found near the leading edge of thunderstorms and form when relatively cool air, from the storm’s downdraft, forges ahead into the warm, moist air that’s feeding the storm. The main difference between roll clouds and shelf clouds (both are called arcus clouds) is that a roll cloud is detached from the parent thunderstorm, whereas a shelf cloud (right) is affixed to the base of a cumulonimbus cloud.
NOTE: Just learned that this picture is from 2018 – still love it! (buy it here)
I’m still recovering from the MASSIVE event that was the 2024 NFL Draft in Detroit which hosted over 3/4 of a million people. There will be more posts, but I thought this post that Jamon Jordan of Black Scroll Network History & Tours shared on Facebook gives some great perspective on some of the massive events the Motor City has hosted over the years:
I’m sure everyone is aware that the crowds at the NFL Draft in Detroit are so large that no one else is being allowed into the 3 entry points. About 275,000 people are right here at, in or near Campus Martius, and Cadillac Square plus another 100,000 people in other venues downtown – Greektown, Hart Plaza, Grand Circus Park.
But Detroit has hosted large crowds before. Take a look at some of the large crowds – 100,000 or above – in Detroit’s history:
June 23, 1963 – Detroit Walk to Freedom – 125,000-250,000 people marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. & Rev. CL Franklin and heard Dr. King’s “Dream” 2 months before Washington DC.
August 19 – September 5, 1966 – Michigan State Fair – 1.2 Million people (our record attendance) The Temptations was one of the acts performing that year on Woodward between 7 & 8 Mile.
June 6, 1997 – Detroit Red Wings Stanley Cup Victory Parade – 1.4 Million people came down to celebrate with the Wings. And they threw an octopus on the streets too.
July 21, 2001 – 300th Birthday of Detroit/Free Stevie Wonder concert – 500,000-1 Million people listened to Stevie Wonder at Hart Plaza and watched the fireworks.
May 24-27, 2002 – Detroit Electronic Music Festival – 1.7 Million people. The Techno Festival surpassed a million people each of it’s 1st 3 years – 2000, 2001 & 2002 (2002 DEMF is pictured).
Not all of Michigan’s great hikes are trails. This trek is a journey through Silver Lake State Park’s trailless backcountry, a mile-wide strip of dunes between Silver Lake and Lake Michigan. There’s not another hike like this in Michigan or even the Midwest because no other stretch of dunes are so barren.
Perched on a plateau and rising more than 100 feet high above Silver Lake, the heart of these dunes are totally devoid of any vegetation, even dune grass. The only thing besides sand are the stumps and trunks of ghost forests, ancient trees that the migrating dunes had buried and killed. Almost half of the hike is in this Sahara Desert-like terrain, the other half is spent strolling a stretch of Lake Michigan that is free of cottages and frozen custard stands.
The 2024 NFL Draft kicks off TODAY in Detroit, Michigan. WXYZ Sports Director Brad Galli shared this photo of the stage lit up & ready to go! In case you’re wondering, they didn’t use Ford Field, Comerica Park, Fox Theatre or any of Detroit’s other big venues because the crowd is so massive. Detroit is anticipating 300,000 – 400,000 people over three days!!
Sixty years ago this week a person standing next to Michigan’s Mackinac Bridge might have been witness to an amazing sight: a six engine U.S. Air Force nuclear bomber flying between the spans of the bridge, barely clearing the structure. The stunt was roasted in the local press, which declared the incident “capricious” and “foolish”, and ended the military pilot’s flying career.
The incident, which took place on April 28th, 1959, involved Air Force Captain John S. Lappo, a native of Muskegon, Michigan. Lappo flew his B-47 nuclear bomber under the Mackinac Bridge.
The Mackinac Bridge is five miles long but there is only 155 feet maximum clearance between the bottom of the deck and the waters of the Great Lakes (Lake Huron and Lake Michigan) below. The B-47 bomber is 28 feet high, meaning there wasn’t much margin for error in Lappo’s flying.
The Michigan National Guard shared this this is a pic of four A-10 Thunderbolt IIs and a KC-135 Stratotanker flying (safely) over Michigan’s iconic Mackinac Bridge back in 2016. The aircraft were based at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Macomb County, Mich. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Elizabeth Hollicker) You can see their latest pics on Flickr.
Feels like folks are starting to open up their summer cottages & rentals for the season, so it’s a good time for this picture of mailboxes on Bois Blanc Island. James it shared back on April 23, 2020, and it remains one of my all time favorite pics I’ve shared on Michigan in Pictures. I’ll probably have to have some kind of bracket challenge one of these days to figure out what the audience thinks one of these days 😉
Who needs a happy Earth Day? All of us really. 2023 was the warmest year since global records began nearly 200 years ago. The global temperature beat the previous high from 2016 & the 10 warmest years have ALL been from the last 10 years. If you know anything at all about math, 10 out of 10 is 100% and we are 100% in trouble because we seem unable as a species to process what actual danger is when it is this big. There’s probably nothing I can say if you don’t believe in science, so here is a link to a story about Earth Day’s Michigan roots & here is EarthDay.org where they are trying to raise awareness about microplastics, which many scientists believe are behind the explosion of Alzheimers.
James is an Empire-based photographer who shared this barred owl – based in parts unknown – along with some other great pics to wish everyone a happy Earth Day! See more by clicking the picture & on his website.
Michigan in Pictures 