Big Mac

The Mackinac Bridge
The Mackinac Bridge

The Mackinac Bridge is currently the third longest suspension bridge in the world. In 1998, the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge in Japan became the longest with a total suspension of 12,826 feet. The Great Belt Bridge in Halsskov-Sprogoe, Denmark, which also opened in 1998, is the second longest suspension bridge in the world with a total suspension of 8,921 feet. The Mackinac Bridge is the longest suspension bridge in the western hemisphere. The total length of the Mackinac Bridge is 26,372 feet. The length of the suspension bridge (including anchorages) is 8,614 feet. The length from cable bent pier to cable bent pier is 7,400 feet. Length of main span (between towers) is 3,800 feet.
…

The height of the roadway at mid-span is approximately 200 feet above water level.

Mackinac Bridge Authority

The bridge began construction in May 1954 and was opened to traffic on November 1, 1957. Mackinac, from Michilimackinac, is an Iroquois term for strait, adapted by the French and pronounced Mackinaw, which is the English spelling.

This photo was taken from the northern side, alas further from the suspension part of the bridge. Lake Michigan is in the foreground; Lake Huron beyond the bridge. Click image for a larger version.

While many states have islands, no other state is divided into two land masses like Michigan. It’s lower peninsula, shaped like a left-handed mitten, has 97% of the people and two-thirds of the land. The Upper Peninsula — more commonly the U.P. — remains one of the most rural areas in the U.S., its economy dependent on tourism and logging since its mines have closed. Many long-time residents descend from Scandinavian and Finnish miners who first settled the area.

And a favorite food is the pastie (pronounced pah-stie, not pay-stie). It’s a Cornish dish of meat, potatoes and other vegetables baked in a thick crust. A yummy lunch for miners and road-trippers.

The toll was $3. The toll taker took one look at us in the Z with the top down on a beautiful day and said, “I’d always heard that life was unfair, but this is too much.”

Sleeping Bear

Long ago, along the Wisconsin shoreline, a mother bear and her two cubs were driven into Lake Michigan by a raging forest fire. The bears swam for many hours, but eventually the cubs tired and lagged behind. Mother bear reached the shore and climbed to the top of a high bluff to watch and wait for her cubs. Too tired to continue, the cubs drowned within sight of the shore. The Great Spirit Manitou created two islands to mark the spot where the cubs disappeared and then created a solitary dune to represent the faithful mother bear.

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

SleepingBear1

Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore is on the Michigan shore of Lake Michigan. In the first photo (click any of the photos for an album of larger versions) you see the mother bear dune and, in the distance, South Manitou Island, one of her cubs.

SleepingBear2

This photo shows the more than 400-foot drop from the bluff to the lake (and no I didn’t make the trek).

SleepingBear3

The third photo reveals more of the top of the dune and the vegetation that fights with the ever shifting sand.

SleepingBear4

Lastly, this area of Michigan is dotted with many large lakes just inland from the Great Lake. Both Lake Michigan and the inland lakes were gouged by glaciers during the last ice age, ending some 11,800 years ago. Similarly, the glaciers amassed the hilly terrain surrounding the lakes.

Jim Harrison

Click image for larger version
Click image for larger version

I’m told that Jim Harrison did much of his writing in this cabin on his farm near Leland, Michigan, before moving to Livingston, Montana, and Patagonia, Arizona.

Jim Harrison has probed the breadth of human appetites — for food and drink, for art, for sex, for violence and, most significantly, for the great twin engines of love and death. Perhaps no American writer better appreciates those myriad drives; since the publication of his first collection of poetry, “Plain Songs,” in 1966, Harrison has become their poet laureate. His characters — and, by extension, their creator — hunger for a wild and sinewy abundance: for, in his words, “mental heat, experience, jubilance,” for a life fully lived.

The Salon Interview

Harrison’s work is considered men’s lit I suppose (or whatever the opposite of chick-lit would be called), but he was first brought to my attention by my daughter-in-law Veronica. His fiction is set mostly in rural America, often near places he’s lived.

Harrison’s latest novel is The English Major. I’ve just finished it and am eager to try another, perhaps True North or Dalva. Harrison wrote the screenplay — based on his own stories — for Legends of the Fall.

Fishtown

Click image for larger version
Click image for larger version

This is an iPhone photo taken from the table while at lunch in Leland, Michigan, August 24th. It shows just a small part of Fishtown, Leland’s authentic fishing community. (And a couple of very nice boats.)

Fishtown is a collection of weathered fishing shanties, smokehouses, overhanging docks, fish tugs and charter boats along the Leland River in Leland, Michigan. Once the heart of a commercial fishing village, the structures and docks are real places where people can walk through, see and feel a connection to Lake Michigan’s fishing heritage. For the past half-century it has been enjoyed and appreciated by thousands of visitors and regional residents who find the shanties, fish tugs and docks that make up the property a living legacy of our maritime culture. 

Fishtown Preservation Society

I had a very nice burger at lunch that day, but my aunt only let me have half so I was pretty hungry still. We had fresh whitefish bought in Fishtown the next evening. And some great green beans and slaw, all fresh and locally grown.

Best line of yesterday not concerning health care

Just as the news cycle has shrunk, so has the bottom line.

And too often, we fill that void with instant commentary and celebrity gossip and the softer stories that Walter disdained, rather than the hard news and investigative journalism he championed. “What happened today?” is replaced with “Who won today?” The public debate cheapens. The public trust falters. We fail to understand our world or one another as well as we should—and that has real consequences in our own lives and in the life of our nation.

President Obama at Walter Cronkite’s memorial service as reported by CJR.

Another redux post of the day

This one was posted here in a slightly different form six years ago today. Even more applicable now I’d say. It’s from a 2001 New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell on the evolution of air bags and the continuing importance of seat belts.

Daniel Simons, a professor of psychology at Harvard, has done a more dramatic set of experiments, following on the same idea. He and a colleague, Christopher Chabris, recently made a video of two teams of basketball players, one team in white shirts and the other in black, each player in constant motion as two basketballs are passed back and forth. Observers were asked to count the number of passes completed by the members of the white team. After about forty-five seconds of passes, a woman in a gorilla suit walks into the middle of the group, stands in front of the camera, beats her chest vigorously, and then walks away. “Fifty per cent of the people missed the gorilla,” Simons says. “We got the most striking reactions. We’d ask people, ‘Did you see anyone walking across the screen?’ They’d say no. Anything at all? No. Eventually, we’d ask them, ‘Did you notice the gorilla?’ And they’d say, ‘The what?’…Talking on a cell phone and trying to drive, for instance, is not unlike trying to count passes in a basketball game and simultaneously keep track of wandering animals.”

Redux post of the day

First posted here six years ago today.

Yesterday was the first day of school at Harvey Milk High, the first gay high school in the country, that is if you don’t count the one in Fame. There were about a dozen protestors demonstrating in front of the school, yelling out good, Christian things like ‘God hates fags.’ To which the gay kids replied, ‘God hates your outfit.’ Personally, I’m against gay high schools; good-intentioned segregation is still segregation, and it’s wrong. But you have to wonder at the mental health of someone who would fly all the way from Topeka just to scream insults at a bunch of vulnerable kids.

Bill Maher

9-10 a big fat hen

Today is the birthday

… of Arnold Palmer. Arnie is 80 today.

… of Jose Feliciano. He’s 64. Feliciano was one of the first to stylize The Star Spangled Banner, giving it a Latin touch at Tiger Stadium during the 1968 World Series.

… of Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Bob Lanier. He’s 61.

… of Amy Irving. She’s 56. Ms. Irving was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for her performance in Yentl.

… of future Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Randy Johnson. He’s 46.

And it’s the birthday of Roger Maris, born on this date in 1934. The following is from The Official Roger Maris Web Site:

Roger and teammate Mickey Mantle entertained baseball fans throughout the summer of ’61 as the two New York Yankee sluggers chased the record many called the most cherished in all of sports. Mickey dropped out of the home run race early due to an illness, but finished with a career high 54 home runs. Roger tied Ruth on September 26, hitting his 60th home run. He then hit his 61st home run on the final day of the season, October 1, 1961, against the Boston Red Sox to set a new record. The Yankees won the game, 1 to 0, and later went on to win the World Series.

Roger was voted the Most Valuable Player in the American league for the second straight year, as he led the league in home runs and RBI’s. He was also named the 1961 Associated Press’ Male Athlete of the Year.

During his career, Roger Maris played in seven World Series and seven All-Star games. He hit 275 career home runs and won the Gold Glove Award for outstanding defensive play. The New York Yankees retired his number “9” in 1984.

It was on September 10, 1813, that Oliver Hazard Perry sent the message, “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” The enemy was a British fleet. Perry’s fleet had defeated it in the Battle of Lake Erie.

More quarters to collect

The United States Mint today announced the nation will honor 56 national sites to be honored through the United States Mint America the Beautiful Quarters Program.  In 2010, the first year of the program, the agency will mint commemorative quarter-dollar coins honoring the Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas, Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, Yosemite National Park in California, Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona and Mount Hood National Forest in Oregon. 

The United States Mint 

Here’s a list of all 56 sites through 2021. 56 is the number of states and territories.

The New Mexico quarter will feature Chaco Culture National Historical Park in 2012.

Idle thought

Apple is having a big deal today and Steve Jobs has appeared.

It’s almost, though obviously not quite, as if the Beatles reunited and John Lennon showed up.

(Jobs had a liver transplant around five months ago.)

Apple has sold 30 million iPhones (in two years) and 1.8 billion apps.

New iPhone/iPod touch operating system available today (3.1). It’s free for iPhones, $5 for iPods.

The iTunes store has 100 million accounts (that’s a lot of credit card numbers).

New iTunes version 9 available free today with several new features. Among other things, you’ll be able to use iTunes to organize your apps on the iPhone or iPod. Also a new feature will create mixes of related songs.

Over 220 million iPods sold. 73.8% of the market. 20 million are iPod touches.

Madden NFL 2010 is at the App Store. ONLY $7.99 until tomorrow night (NFL first game).

Big price reductions for iPod touch models. 8GB just $199. 32GB $299. New 64GB $399 (that’s what my 16GB cost two years ago).

Oh, and an 8GB video camera in every iPod Nano. The Nano will also have an FM radio and a pedometer. Microphone and speaker. 8GB $149. 16GB $179. Wow!

Oh, and Norah Jones appeared to close the show.

Elvis 53 years ago tonight

From Peter Guralnick’s excellent Last Train to Memphis:

On September 9 he was scheduled to appear on the premier Ed Sullivan Show of the season. Sullivan, however, was recuperating from an August automobile accident and, as a result, was not going to be able to host the program, which Elvis would perform from the CBS studio in Los Angeles. Elvis sent Sullivan a get-well card and a picture autographed to “Mr. Ed Sullivan” and was thrilled to learn that the show would be guest-hosted by Charles Laughton, star of Mutiny an the Bounty. Steve Allen, who had presented him in his last television appearance, was not even going to challenge Sullivan on the night in question: NBC was simply going to show a movie.

He opened with “Don’t Be Cruel,” strolling out alone from the darkened wings onto a stage spotlighted with silhouettes of guitars and a bass fiddle. He was wearing a loud plaid jacket and an open-necked shirt, but his performance was relatively subdued, as every shoulder shrug, every clearing of his throat and probing of his mouth with his tongue, evoked screams and uncontrolled paroxysms of emotion. Then he announced he was going to sing a brand-new song, “it’s completely different from anything we’ve ever done. This is the title of our brand-new Twentieth Century Fox movie and also my newest RCA Victor escape – er, release.” There was an apologetic shrug in response to the audience’s laughter, and then, after an altogether sincere tribute to the studio, the director, and all the members of the cast, and “with the help of the very wonderful Jordanaires,” he sang “Love Me Tender.” It is a curious moment. Just after beginning the song he takes the guitar off and hands it to an unseen stagehand, and there are those awkward moments when he doesn’t seem to know quite what to do without his prop and shrugs his shoulders or twitchily adjusts his lapels, but the moans which greet the song — of surprise? of shock? of delight? most likely all three — clearly gratify him, and at the end of the song he bows and gestures graciously to the Jordanaires.

When he comes back for the second sequence, the band is shown, with Jordanaire Gordon Stoker at the piano and the other Jordanaires in plaid jackets at least as loud (but nowhere near as cool) as his own. They rock out on Little Richard’s “Ready Teddy,” but when Elvis goes into his dance the camera pulls away and, as reviews in the following days will note, “censors” his movements. It doesn’t matter. The girls scream just when he stands still, and when he does two verses of “Hound Dog” to end the performance, the West Coast studio audience goes crazy, though the New York Journal-American‘s Jack O’Brian, after first taking note of Presley’s “ridiculously tasteless jacket and hairdo (hairdon’t)” and granting that “Elvis added to his gamut (A to B) by crossing his eyes,” pointed out that the New York audience “laughed and hooted.” “Well, what did someone say?” remarked host Charles Laughton, with good humor, at the conclusion of the performance. “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast?”

The show got a 43.7 Trendex rating (it reached 82.6 percent of the television audience), and in the Colonel’s view, which he shared gleefully with Steve Sholes, really boosted Presley’s stock with an adult audience for the first time.

It was about this time that Elvis began dying his hair from its natural sandy-dark blond to jet black — “Clairol Black Velvet.”

Nine Nine Nine

Cliff Robertson is 86. Robertson won the best acting Oscar in 1969 for Charly. Most recently he has played Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben.

Joe Theismann is 60. Allegedly his name was pronounced Thees-man until he went to Notre Dame and they realized that Thighs-man rhymed with Heisman (as in the Trophy). No, really. (Theismann was runner-up to Jim Plunkett of Stanford for the Heisman in 1970.) NewMexiKen was at RFK that Monday night in 1985 when Lawrence Taylor broke Theismann’s leg.

Once-upon-a-time child star Angela Cartwright is 57.

Hugh Grant is 49. Is it just me, or do he and Phil Mickelson have the same goofy look?

Adam Sandler turns 43 today.

Best supporting actress nominee for Brokeback Mountain, Michelle Williams is 29.

Otis Redding was born on this date in 1941.

Though his career was relatively brief, cut short by a tragic plane crash, Otis Redding was a singer of such commanding stature that to this day he embodies the essence of soul music in its purist form. His name is synonymous with the term soul, music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of funky, secular testifying. Redding left behind a legacy of recordings made during the four-year period from his first sessions for Stax/Volt Records in 1963 until his death in 1967. Ironically, although he consistently impacted the R&B charts beginning with the Top Ten appearance of “Mr. Pitiful” in 1965, none of his singles fared better than #21 on the pop Top Forty until the posthumous release of “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.” That landmark song, recorded just four days before Redding’s death, went to #1 and stayed there for four weeks in early 1968.

— Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Redding wrote the song known as Aretha Franklin’s signature hit, “Respect.”

Try a Little Tenderness

The Compromise of 1850

California was admitted to the Union as the 31st state 159 years ago today (1850).

Admission of California as a free state (that is, no slavery) was the first in the series of five measures known as the Compromise of 1850.

The second measure organized the New Mexico Territory (which included present-day Arizona), settled the Texas-New Mexico boundary, and paid Texas $10 million to abandon its claims in New Mexico (everything east of the Rio Grande). The act also stated: “That, when admitted as a State, the said territory, or any portion of the same, shall be received into the Union, with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission.” In other words, slavery in New Mexico would be decided by the people of New Mexico. This became known as “popular sovereignty.”

The third measure was the organization of the Utah Territory (which included Nevada and western Colorado) with an identical provision about slavery.

The fourth was a revised Fugitive Slave Act, amending the law passed in 1793. This act set up commissioners authorized to issue warrants for fugitives and order their return. The commissioners were to receive $10 when the person apprehended was a fugitive slave. They were to receive $5 when they decided he/she was a free person. Fugitives claiming to be freedmen were denied a trial by jury and their testimony was not to be evidence in any of the proceedings under the law. Citizens aiding fugitives could be fined or imprisoned.

The fifth measure was the abolition of the slave trade (but not slavery) in the District of Columbia.

Like most political compromises, there was more for each side to dislike than to like. Slave states disliked California’s admission as a free state. And they disliked the end of the slave trade in D.C., not because it was important but because it demonstrated federal power over any aspect of slavery. Many northerners objected to the Fugitive Slave Act; and many violated it.

And, of course, slavery in the territories became the prime issue of the 1850s, the election of 1860, and coming of the Civil War.

Rodrigo y Gabriela

Rodrigo (Sanchez) and Gabriela (Quintero), the one-time heavy metal rock guitarists who turned their Flamenco and Latin roots into something truly unique, have a new album out today, 11:11 (link opens iTunes).

More passionate and exciting acoustic guitar music from the duo from Mexico City that hit it big first in Ireland.