farlane.blog

Wait. Guns too. Cows with Guns actually. When I stumbled upon this photo this morning, I had a brief bit of fear that one of the funniest internet things I’ve ever seen was coming true.

Also food. Good food. An excellent program I heard on the radio last night featured Ricardo Salvador of the WK Kellogg Foundation talking about “good food”. Apparently the Michigan-based WKKF is hoping to change things so that 10% of our food is good for us, our environment and the people who grow it. They add a fourth criteria that it be affordable too.

I have to warn you that the Cows with Guns song & animation may cause uncontrollable bouts of bovine-based bemusement.

The photo is called mr. timmers cows and it was taken by Martin McReynolds. Martin is located just east of me along parallel #45 and I really (really) love his photos.

The above is my favorite photo ever of my favorite thing ever. Daisy May Erlewine says the shoreline is a dance hall and I don’t know the moves.

This applies to most of the natural world, and it makes me sad that I don’t know why birds are dying on the shores of the Great Lakes or how to stop jumping carp, voracious gobies and zebra mussels from zeroing out this that I love.

I heard Tom Kelly, captain of the schoolship Inland Seas, say last night that he gazed into Lake Michigan and saw 50 feet to the bottom. He said it was “clear as gin” and that he knew despite the amazing beauty that it was wrong to see that deeply and clearly into something that should be cloudy and teeming with life.

We need to learn the dance of the shoreline. Daisy May also says that the shoreline can be home when we don’t know the way.

Walk the shore, revel in Michigan’s beauty, adopt a beach, understand that this is the only home we’ve got and know beyond everything else that we’re never alone when we’re working together.

Happy Earth Day.

I love the Library of Congress. Today in History for April 18 from the Library of Congress’s American Memory project features the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906.

At 5:12 A.M. on April 18, 1906, an 8.3 magnitude earthquake struck San Francisco. With thousands of un-reinforced brick buildings and closely-spaced wooden Victorian dwellings, the city was poorly prepared for the quake. Collapsed buildings, broken chimneys, and a shortage of water due to broken mains led to several large fires that soon coalesced into a city-wide holocaust. The fire raged for three days, sweeping over nearly a quarter of the city, including the entire downtown area.

Over 3,000 people are estimated to have died as a result of the disaster. For those who survived, the first few weeks were hard; as aid poured in from around the country, thousands slept in tents in city parks, and citizens were asked to do their cooking in the street. A severe shortage of public transportation made a taxicab out of anything on wheels. Numerous businesses relocated temporarily to Oakland, and many refugees found lodgings outside the city. Most of the cities of central California were badly damaged. However, reconstruction proceeded at a furious pace, and by 1908, San Francisco was well on the way to recovery.

The associated media includes the panoramic view of the devastation from which I took the above photo and a TON of movies of San Francisco from before and after the earthquake such as a Balloon’s Eye View of San Francisco.

I fiddled with the picture a bit in Photoshop … because … well … the photo wanted me to I guess.

As a resident of the Economically Devastated State of Michigan, I see great hope in this picture because I know that what those folks in San Francisco overcame was far, far more challenging than our current troubles.

I think that this is quite uplifting.

The above photo by Ian Freimuth is titled The Other Way. It was taken underneath Michigan Avenue in Chicago and is one of the very many cool non-Michigan photos that I come across when looking for photos for Michigan in Pictures.

This is probably not news to lots of people, but apparently Howard Stern is urging people to visit votefortheworst.com and vote for Sanjaya Malakar to win American Idol. Sanjaya is apparently quite untalented so we of course should not be idolizing him. Simon Cowell has threatened to quit if Sanjaya is not met with the voter scorn he apparently deserves.

A Fox spokeswoman declined to comment on Mr. Cowell’s comment, but the network said in a statement that efforts like Mr. Stern’s do not affect the results. “With 30 million votes every week, and hundreds of millions of votes over the season, the power of true fans of ‘American Idol’ dwarfs any attempt of people trying to gain notoriety,” the statement said. “Despite the press coverage, these campaigns don’t affect who moves forward in the competition.”

I am a little bit skeptical of the notion that Howard Stern could actually gain any more notoriety than he already has, but I could be wrong. I am also a little scared of the awesome power of true fans of the Idol*. Read Howard Stern Tries to Kill ‘American Idol’ With Kindness for a Weak Link in the New York Times.

The photo is titled Golden Calf and was taking in Chinatown, NYC by Candace Hope. Do yourself a favor and spend some time with her photos.

* I’m also a little alarmed about this.