Bay Mills students on YouTube

As we're wrapping up the project, which ends tomorrow, we've allowed the students to have a little fun and create their own "youth based" content. The highlight of these are the two student created films, now available on a YouTube near you...

• Blueberry Picking (or "What To Do If You See A Bear") -- I get some co-creator credits here for procuring some sound effects and bear footage. I'm also credited for my appearance as "That one white girl."
• The Brad and Cole Show -- Brad and Cole go fishing and don't catch anything.

The Return to Agawa Rock

After my previous trip to see the Agawa pictographs, I mentioned it to Wanda Perron, one of the Bay Mills historians, and she lent me a book about the pictographs written in 1992. While I knew I hadn't gotten to all of the accessible pictographs because of the weather, official park literature told me that the last panel of pictographs was accessible only by boat. However, the book mentioned that if the water is calm and you are feeling adventuresome, you can veer off the coastal trail a bit a reach the other side of the rock. The potential for finding the remaining pictographs was enough to get me to go back this weekend, armed with a newer camera borrowed from the virtual museum project.

Saturday, before the alarm clock went off, I woke up at 5 am. As an extended aside, knowing the Olympics had started and that it was 5 pm in Beijng, I flipped on the TV and observed that while NBC was re-airing the opening ceremonies for a second time, the CBC (Canada) was airing live coverage of the first day of swimming prelims, including Michael Phelps first Olympic race. Guess which channel I watched... NBC take note.

After I had my Olympic fix, I got on the road. Before reaching the park, I took a detour to check out the Chippewa Falls. After stopping to get a park pass, I went straight to Agawa Rock where I found much calmer water than during my previous trip. (The two linked photos were taken at almost exactly the same spot.) As a result of the nicer weather, I saw both things I had seen before and was able to make it further down the rock and see pictographs that were new to me.

But that wasn't the exciting part.

Continue reading "The Return to Agawa Rock"

I Found My Thrill

On Friday we had a partial class field trip, with me and a little over half the class, to go blueberry picking at one of the many wild blueberry patches on the reservation. Rikki Timmer, one of the students, taught me the merits of "blue mouth" picking -- eating as you go. Despite the stomach ache I may or may not have developed, it was a delicious pre-lunch snack.

After returning back to the apartment in Sault Ste Marie, I took my bucket of berries (which was a little less full than when I left) and made a wild blueberry streudel. It's proven to be an excellent breakfast... and lunch... and after dinner snack.

And because, yes, I am mostly posting en masse mostly to dump photos, here are the blueberry images.

Agawa Canyon Tour Train

Last weekend I went on the Agawa Canyon Tour Train, which takes you 114 miles into northern Ontario into areas where roads don't go and drops you off at Agawa Canyon. Unfortunately, they only give you an hour and a half there, which is just barely enough time to see all three waterfalls and go up the lookout -- if you're fast. I saw everything, but it felt very rushed. Three hours would have been better.

I brought my camera and discovered just how difficult it is to take pictures on a moving train. Because the train doesn't slow down just because you're passing something pretty, taking a photograph pretty much consists of putting the lens against the window, snapping the picture, and hoping it's not terrible. But nevertheless, I took pictures and, a week later, they are here.

Red Sox and Sparking Rocks

Two things of note...

1) Manny is no longer a Red Sox, as reports have a trade sending him to LA coming in just under the wire. But the real question is... do they have a bathroom in Dodger Stadium's left field?

I jest, but the Red Sox sure are going to miss a guy who can make plays like this one.

2) Yesterday I went to a flint mine with four of my students. I'm not supposed to tell you where it is, but given the directions I had, they probably wouldn't help you anyway. One step was "Take this unmarked dirt road that's across the way from a blue house, except that I think they might have painted recently, so the house isn't blue anymore."

But, using a steel striker one of the students brought along, we did manage to build a fire without the aid of matches. Having rained the night before, finding dry birch bark was non-trivial and what we did find was struggling to light. As things were looking bleak, one of my students reached into his pocket, said, "I know a trick that indians have been using for days," and pulled out a lighter. But he didn't have to use it -- another student finally managed to get a spark to catch on.

By the shores of Gitche Gumee

This weekend I took advantage of being at the eastern tip of Lake Superior. On Saturday morning, I woke up at 5:30 AM (!) and drove two and half hours north into Ontario to Lake Superior Provincial Park. It turns out I was a little too early as I got there before the visitors center opened and thus couldn't buy a park pass right away. But once that was settled, I saw Ojibwe pictographs at Agawa Rock and opted to go on the 10 km hike up a mountain rated "demanding" on a cloudy day. The latter was a questionable decision due to the weather -- nothing like getting rained on when you're isolated and alone halfway up a mountain. I might go back up there another weekend and try another trail.

Upon my return to the US, Brad and Russ arrived for a weekend visit and after a late night showing of The Dark Knight on Saturday night, we spent most of Sunday at Tahquamenon Falls. Russ (who is neither my father nor the Good Doctor) summed up our adventures with his farewell rhyme: "We watched Batman, went to the falls, and saw old people with tennis balls." I'll miss those guys.

Pictures:
• Lake Superior Provincial Park, including the Agawa Rock pictographs, the Awausee Trail (a 10 km hike up Agawa Mountain), and a few roadside lookouts off the Trans-Canada highway.
• Tahquamenon Falls with Brad, Russ and a beetle. Oh, and of course, I was there with them.

The Coolest Thing Ever

From Johnston.

Bees!

I came back to Ann Arbor this weekend to find my room infested with yellow jackets. But the good thing is, I managed not to get stung! I killed eight of them Friday night and Saturday morning and observed a flock of many more hovering outside the window. Then I went off to Kroger to pick up some bee killing spray and something to put in whatever hole I might find. When I got home, there was yet another bee hanging out on my window -- so I killed it too. (Current dead bee count: 9)

Then, knowing there was a big bunch of them flying around outside the window, I went up to the fire escape where I found a hole and at this hole were about 50 or more bees. So, I aimed my bee spray (with a 27 foot range, says the bottle) and fired at them from the other side of the fire escape and they started dropping like... well, flies is the idiom but dead yellow jackets is more correct. Furthermore, any bee who flew over and tried to enter the hole seemed stopped by an invisible force field of poison and every so often a drunken looking bee would climb out of the hole and drop to the ground. (Current dead bee count: 9 + many)

Victory!

Or so I thought.

Upon returning to my room (after a treacherous fall down the fire escape stairs -- watch out, it's slippery when wet!), I observed *at least* 7 bees on the window or flying around inside. Clearly I hit their hive, freaked them out and they escaped inwards.

I called the landlord, got our less than useful house manager to come over and do nothing but confirm that there were many more than 7 bees in the room while I went to see Wall-E. (Good movie, by the way.) After the movie, I stopped and got some fly paper and a "Yellow Jacket and Wasp Trap" (says the box). As I was setting them up in my room, I noticed that the bees were flying into the light fixture and frying to death. After plugging up the hole on the outside of the house, my housemate and I determined that the best thing to do was leave the light on and sleep downstairs.

This morning, I found upwards of 40 yellow jacket carcasses in the light fixture -- and at least 15 dead bees on the floor while I cleaned my room. And yet, every so often a new one would appear seemingly out of nowhere and occasionally there would be a buzz coming from inside the wall. Eventually, I saw one fly out of the bottom of the window sill, where I found a hole. After plugging it up with aluminum foil (I don't have anything better at this moment), I could hear a few bees poking at the foil from inside the window frame.

I've tasked a housemate to spray the nest again and flip on the lights for a few hours tonight after I head back up north. With any luck, that will take care of them.

Total estimated dead bee count: 100s.

A little dirt never hurt anyone...

This morning I headed out with our students to the Bark Docks, a campsite on the shore of Lake Superior where some of the members of the Bay Mills tribe have a gathering permit. And what were we gathering? Clay! It sits under the sand at the mouth of a creek which flows into Whitefish Bay.

Wanda, one of the historians at the Bay Mills History center, canoed out to the clay deposits as the students, other instructors and I walked there along the beach. "You'll know you've hit the clay when you start to sink," she told us.

One of our students found a hole at the water's edge and stepped in up to his calf, so we figured we were there. "No, no, keep going," she said, "There's more clay up ahead." Eventually we reached the spot and started scouring the waters to find places where we might start to sink and thus would take the shovels and dig. The water was only about two feet deep, so we waded and scoped out the area with our feet. We could tell it was softer than regular sand, but no one was sinking...

... then one of our students let out a yell and we turned and saw him knee deep in sand and clay. His cousin and brother soon joined him in the sinkhole of clay that at one point had them chest deep in the water. We started digging and pulled up handfuls of clay and put them in plastic bags. Eventually I found another hole when I stepped thigh deep into it. Wanda apparently snapped a picture of me struggling to pull myself out, so if I get my hands on it, I'll post it.

After we finished collecting clay (and I took a brisk swim in Lake Superior to wash off the clay covering my legs and arms), we sat on the beach and kneaded sand into our clay as a binder. Once the clay had the sand worked into it and had dried out a little, we proceeded to make pots and beads and figurines and whatever else people felt like making. When they dry (possibly tonight or tomorrow), Wanda and her family will fire them in the firepit they dug on the beach.

Shortly before we had to take off, I took my second swim (to wash off the clay I had smeared on my arms in a futile attempt to fend off bugs) and dove head first into the cold waters of Lake Superior. I was a little disappointed that we couldn't stay longer -- I could get used to a life like this.

All-Star Letters

Dear Joe Buck,

It's pronounced "Mor-neau" (stress on the second syllable). Your "Morn-eau" mispronunciation is driving me crazy.

Dear All-Stars,

It's 1:32 in the AM. I have to get up early tomorrow. Please end this game soon (preferably with the AL winning) -- 15 innings is more than plenty.

Dear Bud Selig,

Don't be a punk and call a tie. That was lame in 2002 and would still be lame today.

Edit: Yayyyyy!!!!! And my future husband scored the winning run!!!! Of course this means Joe Buck is (still) mispronouncing his name all over the place. 4 hours, 50 minutes... wow.