Famous Yoopers and Sorta Yoopers

Michigan's Upper Peninsula, currently with about 300,000 people spread over land making up one third of the state, may be small in population, but we can boast a few famous folks that have a connection with our area.  Here's a short list:

George "The Gipper" Gipp - first football All American for Notre Dame University and immortalized by Ronald Reagan in the movie "Knute Rockne: All American", was born in Laurium on the Keweenaw Peninsula.

John Voelker - a Marquette lawyer, judge and Michigan Supreme Court Justice wrote Anatomy of a Murder under the pen name Robert Traver.  The book was made into a movie of the same name starring Jimmy Stewart.

Tom Izzo - from Iron Mountain, is now Michigan State University's head basketball coach.

Steve Mariucci - also from Iron Mountain, starred as a quarterback at Northern University and later coached the San Francisco 49'ers and Detroit Lions.

Lloyd Carr - also played quarterback for NMU and later coached the University of Michigan's football team.

Earnest Hemingway - no, not really a Yooper.  He did spend a lot of time in the Yoop and based some of his famous short stories about fishing, etc. on U.P. locations.

Jim Harrison - no, this author is not a born Yooper either but he did have a place near Grand Marais for a while and, like Hemingway, wrote a lot of material in and about the U.P.

James Tolkan - (*Tolkan* not Tolkien!) This authentic Yooper is from Calumet.  You might recognize him as the bald high school principal from "Back to the Future" and the gritty navy officer in "Top Gun", as well as many other roles in movies and television.

Terry O'Quinn - Another bald actor - this one from Sault St. Marie - is best known as John Locke in the TV series "Lost".

Some other folks that may not be all that famous to the general public, but who have made impressive contributions:

Clarence Leonard "Kelly" Johnson - from Ishpeming.  First leader of the Lockheed Skunkworks team.  A major contributor to the design of famous aircraft: U2, SR-71 Blackbird, the P-38 and 37 other aircraft.

Glenn T. Seaborg - also from Ishpeming, was the only living person to have an element - seaborgium (Sg) named after him.

Spring? We've Heard of That...

"Spring" on the Keweenaw Peninsula of Upper Michigan is a matter of semantics.  "First Day of Spring" looks nice on the calendar.  However, those words are the only thing Spring-like the Keweenaw will see for a while.

As I sit typing this post here in exile near Saginaw, I can hear at least three different kinds of frog's singing to the moon in the nearby pond.  On the Keweenaw, I hear there is still about a four foot base of snow on the ground.  They've gotten about 280 inches of snow this season - most of it since New Year's.  While southeastern Lower Michigan is drowning in heavy rain this Spring, the Keweenaw has gotten 27 inches of new snow.  Holy Wah!

The well used joke is that the Upper Peninsula has just two seasons:  Winter and a few days of bad skiing in July.  Well, its not that extreme.  However, I *have* seen in snow in June on the Keweenaw.  That has it's good side because cold snap at that time of the year can help kill off those tiny demons called black flies.  Don't get me started on them.

Spring will come to the Keweenaw....eventually.  In late April or early May the Yooper snow factory will just stop.  All of a sudden, it will get really sunny and warm and the snow will melt.  And, melt it does.  *Fast!*  For a week or two any snow packed roads will turn into slushy, chunky battle zones that make quick travel impossible.  Water will be running everywhere - in the streets, in the streams, and yup, in basements.  The rivers will rise with all the former snow rushing down out of the hills.  Streams and ponds that don't exist the other fifty weeks of the year suddenly appear and then overflow.  The forests sing with running water, birds and frogs.

And then, its over.  It's Summer.  Right about the same time everyone else in the Midwest has summer.  Our Spring is somewhat late and very short.  It's Winter, two weeks of Spring and then Summer.

The frogs calling frantically outside my window here in mid-April, Mid-Michigan seem anxious to get going with life right now.  Their U.P. cousins are still slumbering beneath inches of snow and ice.  Things can be so different in the U.P. from the rest of Michigan.

A View of the Bay and Half the Pay

"A view of the Bay and half the pay".   That's one I first heard describing wages in the Traverse City, Michigan area.  It works for the Upper Peninsula, too.  It even fits well for the Keweenaw Peninsula, given its location with Keweenaw Bay on the east side.

Yes, it can be hard to make a living in the Upper Peninsula.  Jobs can be hard to find, especially lately.  Often, they don't pay as much as the same jobs downstate.  Partly because the economy might not support the same wages.  Partly, I believe, some employers seem to believe that just living in the U.P. is part of your compensation package.

And, in a way, it is.  To borrow from the old fishing saying, a bad day at work in the U.P. beats the best day at work anywhere else.  It's just plain better to work in the Yoop.  Many jobs are related to the great natural resources - tourism, logging, mining, etc.  Even jobs in K-12 and higher education have some sort of connection to the outdoors.  Even if you have a hard day at work in a cubicle, in the U.P. you can get in your vehicle after work and be out in the wilderness in minutes.

Workers in Upper Michigan do have to contend with the factor of distance from "the rest of the world".  It is a eleven hour drive from the western tip of the U.P. to Detroit if you drive through Michigan.  The closest "big city" to the western Yoop is Green Bay, Wisconsin.  Shipping of goods is challenge.  Networking with colleagues "down below" is more of a challenge.  Air travel is a true odyssey, starting out at small regional airports using feeder airline flights.  Often there are only a few flights in or out of your local airport.  If you even have a local airport with airline service.  If you do, you often only have one airline to choose from.

The curse of distance can also be a blessing for employers and employees alike.  We Yoopers can have one word response when people say: "Oh, you are so far away from everything".  We say "Exactly".  There is a majority of people in the U.P. who *want* to be far away from "everything".  You can have Detroit.  You can have New York City or L.A.  You can even have Saginaw, Grand Rapids, etc.  Too big for us.  Too many people, too much traffic, too much of just about everything.

Yoopers know how to work and have fun in the middle of nowhere.  Hunting, fishing, hiking, camping, skiing, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, climbing, four wheeling, mountain biking, kayaking, mineral collecting - the list goes on and on.  And some of us even get to do one or more of those things for a living.  Sweet.

True we may not make as much money as a Wall Street banker.  We may not have chic places to eat and party after work.  We may even have to work more than one job to make ends meet.  However, like I said, you can have those other things.  We do just fine up here in the Yoop.

There and Back Again: A Trip Home... And Back to Not Home

Hello All,

Hurray!  Hurrah!  Huzzah!  Huzzah?  Sorry, I'm a historian, so I picked that one up from my Civil War studies.

Hurray, etc. because I finally made it up to the Upper Peninsula for a few days.  A few glorious days.  Yes, the drive up was long.  Yes, I had to work like a maniac to get huge amounts of snow off of roofs.  Yes, it was too short of a time.  However, any time - good, mediocre or bad - in the U.P. is better than the best time anywhere else.

Our main purpose in going to our house in Houghton, on the Keweenaw Peninsula, was to maintain the house.  Snow was the biggest problem.  From photos that our neighbor sent us showed what I had heard about - massive amounts of snow on top of our camper and on our porch roof.  The Keweenaw had almost no snow at all when we were there over New Year's weekend.  Since then, however, they have been socked and socked hard.  In January sixty seven inches fell.  In February they got fifty one.  Our daughter had been up in the beginning of March and there had been at least a foot since then.  That's over ten feet of snow in a little over three months.  Holy Wah!

Some people would say to that: "Why would anyone ever want to live in a place where you get so much snow?"  To that, *I* say: "That's exactly why I like to live there."

You see, winter in downstate Michigan is this on again, off again, thirty degrees then forty degrees, snow/rain/ice/mud kind of season.  Most of the time here in the Great Lakes Bay region, you really can't do anything outdoors.   It's just miserable.  I'd rather have some snow to play on - snowshoe, ski, snowmobile, etc.  Fishing can be done through the ice - because we have solid, stable ice on the inland lakes.  If you're going to have winter, let's have a real winter.  Otherwise let's go to Florida or Arizona, eh?

Yes with great opportunity can come great challenges.  I had to carve out a cube of snow from our driveway about equivalent to our mid-size Honda Element.  The snowplows had piled up about five feet of snow in the mouth of our driveway.  And I needed to do that excavation before the end of the day we got there because you are not allowed to park on the street overnight in the City of Houghton.  The plows don't like dodging around vehicles as they work at night.  However, the driveway adventure was do-able.  That's what snow blowers and good shovels are for.

The next day was doing some "you've got to be there in person" kind of banking and also for clearing about two feet of snow off of the top of our camper.  Also found time to get some good food.

Saturday we took the dogs up to the Delaware Mine, just south of Copper Harbor, to go snowshoeing.  It looked dicey for my wife and our elderly dogs as there was about four feet of snow on the ground with no snowmobile tracks to pave the way for us.  However, Intrepid Jim was able to break a trail through the drifts and fun was had for all.

Sunday called for climbing out the second story bedroom window out to the porch roof.  Three to four foot drifts were up there threatening to do harm to the porch structure.  All in a day's work.  A Yooper day's work, eh?

Add in some good Keweenaw food and some great Keweenaw beer and it was a very good trip.  My wife had some much needed R&R after organizing and leading a huge fundraising event for the foundation she directs.  I got some much needed time away from school, work and family illnesses.  We even survived with little or no Internet access and sometimes limited cell phone service.

On the nine hour trip back we worked on plans for getting us back up to the Keweenaw for good.  It could happen.

In closing, I'll note that as I write this the Keweenaw has a winter storm warning with 12-17 inches of new snow possible.  Holy Wah!

Hanging On. None Too Soon.

As I look up from the computer tonight I can see the full moon bathing the earth with it's ghostly glorious light.  It is so clear and close that I can see the craters and seas even though I am peering through the slats of the window blinds. Beautiful.  Heart wrenching.

It is heart wrenching because this kind of massive moon makes me think of the Keweenaw Peninsula.  That is where the moon and I have shared some private moments.  Moments where its just us.  Just the two of us.

You see, at this time in my life I could really use some of those heart to heart conversations with a Keweenaw moon.  College (again?!). Drone job. Offspring struggling to find themselves.  Standing beside a spouse whose mother is facing a showdown with Mr Grim.  Watching my own mother slide farther and farther adrift in the cognitive ocean.  Wondering what in the hell I am to do when I grow up.  All this has me wanting to run off to the where the wild things are.  I am intensely Yearning for the U.P.

I won't run off.  I will stand here.  At least for now.  Hanging on.  That is what I will do.  What I must do.

There must be others who have known the Yoop that feel this way.  Yearning for those woods.  Those rocks.  Those streams.  The Big Lake.  All the while stuck in some other thing, some other where, some other how.  Cut off from the land that gives them strength.  The land that gives them shelter.  The land.

Is there something wrong with me that I have such an attachment to some bits of wood, rock and H2O?  I don't know.

And I don't know if anyone will ever see this besides my instructor.  This classwork spawned blog has not exactly been burning up the Internet.  Ah, ......well.

If anyone who is also Yearning for the U.P. does see this, now you know you are not the only one.  Look forward to when you can at least visit your heart land.  Myself, I will be visiting in mid-March.  None too soon.

Beautiful Day in the Keweenaw

Hi,

A quick post.

I just had to share this photo of Houghton, MI (not Houghton Lake for my confused Lowper readers).  This cam is located in Hancock, just across the Portage Waterway from Houghton.  That is the Portage Lift Bridge - the only way to get north up the Keweenaw Peninsula from Houghton on land.  The Portage Waterway cuts across the Keweenaw Peninsula.  If this cam was scootched over just a bit to the right you could see my house about halfway up the hill in West Houghton.

To see the live version of this webcam go to this link.

Winter Carnival in the Keweenaw!

Trivia question for you: What is the northernmost university in the state of Michigan?  Michigan Technological University in Houghton?  (wrong answer buzzer).  Nope, it's Finlandia University in Hancock.  True its just about 100 yards or so farther north than Michigan Tech, but it is farther north.

However, Tech *is* Michigan's most northern *public* university.  And, this week is one of Michigan Tech's and the Keweenaw's coolest events - The MTU Winter Carnival.

From snow sculpture creations to broomball tournaments, the Tech Winter Carnival has something for everyone.  Students, faculty, visitors and the whole community pull together to put on a wild winter shindig.

One of the neato things I ran across this year is MTU's webcams for the broomball tournaments.  You can actually watch them play broomball live - and you get to stay warm while you watch.

My meager blog post this time can't really portray this ultra-cool (cold?) event the way it should be done.  However, check out some of the links and you'll get a taste of what the Carnival is like.

And, if you jump in your car soon, you might catch the judging of the snow statue competition that starts on Thursday morning.  Come, on - its only about a nine hour drive from the Saginaw/Bay City area.  I can do that in my sleep (and sometimes have).  ;-)