early morning ann arbor
outside of washtenaw dairy
on a home game day
calm before the storm
go blue.
—
“you don’t show up on game day and expect to be great.
greatness happens in practice.
you have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.”
-michael jordan
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photo credit: washtenaw dairy
The annual summer festival, a celebration of the Upper Peninsula’s quintessential cultural cuisine held in the Keweenaw Peninsula village of Calumet, Michigan, is hosting a Pasty Olympics on Aug. 19 from noon to 4 p.m. The zany new competitive event is “probably a world’s first,” according to its website
In addition to the long-running festival’s traditional bake off and pasty eating contest, this year people can vie to win “eternal pasty glory” through an array of Olympic-style competitions that add a strongman-style element to Pasty Fest, “speaking to the history and culture of pasties and the Keweenaw’s copper mining history,” organizers said.
“Expect opening and closing ceremonies and the spirit of competition to prevail!” said Leah Polzien, Main Street Calumet executive director.
One of the new events, the Pasty Relay, involves teams racing to craft a giant pasty — using pool noodles for rolling pins and mops to apply egg wash — with awards for fastest time, most appetizing and best team costumes.
Meanwhile, contestants in the new Pasty Pull are challenged to “harness pure pasty power” in an attempt to pull a truck as fast as possible down a 100-foot track along one of Calumet’s historic streets.
A new Pasty Fest Art Prize competition, featuring two dozen pasty-themed works of art, is already underway. The art includes pasties immortalized in paintings, mixed media, crochet, and even a tiny copper pasty sculpture. Anyone can view the art in the online virtual gallery and vote for their favorites through August 18.
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“the pasty is the yooper burrito of the upper peninsula.”
-daily mining gazette (said by a naval recruiter in the u..p. in the early 90s)
—
imagine my delight
when discovering this spring baby giraffe
in the woods near my home
i had no idea that they were native to michigan.
—
“however much you know giraffes, to see one in the wild for the first time feels prehistoric.”
-jane goodall
morning has broken.
—
“the sun himself is weak when he first rises,
and gathers strength and courage as the day gets on.”
– charles dickens
—
on glen lake, empire, michigan, usa – april 2023
headed straight north
—
“you got to head north. it’s always about going north, you know?
-aaron bruno
s
snow day yesterday at last
a really good day to stay home from school
—
Inuit in Canada’s North have their own unique names for the months of the year. Aseena Mablick, an announcer for CBC Nunavut’s Inuktitut-language radio program Tausunni, has been collecting information on the names of the months in Inuktitut for years.
Mablick says one of the reasons she’s sharing this now is to “keep the language.”The names in Inuktitut are interconnected with the environment and wildlife surrounding the Inuit in Canada’s North.”It’s a truthful and honest calendar for people who are living over here, everyday, like us,” she says. “We just follow mother nature’s ways for naming the calendar.”
Each region in Nunavut has its own unique names for the calendar, and Mablick shared with us just two of the regions she’s looked into — Baffin region (also known as the Qikiqtaaluk Region) and Nunavik (northern Quebec).
January In Nunavik, January is “Naliqqaittuq”, literally meaning “nobody’s able to compete with it,” says Mablick. “It has to do with the coldest weather in that month.”
January is called “Qaummagiaq” in the Baffin region. It means “bright day coming back.”
meanwhile in ann arbor…
==
credits: cbc news (north), aseena mablick, deadline detroit
the city of ypsilanti, only 7 miles from ann arbor
home of eastern michigan university
was named for greek patriot, general demetrus ypsilanti,
a heroic figure in the battle the Greeks were fighting against Turkish tyranny
– a struggle for freedom that many Americans likened to our own.
but there has been another long-fought struggle at work here-
as people have endlessly tried to spell the city’s name correctly
the post office has worked tirelessly to decipher and deliver mail in the city
i’ll bet even the general has had his name misspelled more than a few times over the years
“my spelling is wobbly. It’s good spelling but it wobbles,
and the letters get in the wrong places.”
s.s. milne
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source: washtenaw literacy, the daily times archives, 1904
a go blue day in michigan:
morning- governor whitmer and obama (blue state rally)
evening- university of michigan vs. michigan state rivalry football game (go blue!)
“on a good day everybody can beat everybody.”
-chris hughton
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photo credit: michigan stadium, fox sports
I didn't have my glasses on.... 