Mackinac Bridge

Posts

Reflecting on a Mighty Mac Swim

I’d been in the water for five hours before I began to hallucinate. It was subtle at first. Kind of like at Thanksgiving dinner when you eat too much, sit on the couch and start to go into that dream state where you can kind-of still hear everyone’s voices around you, but you’re also probably drooling. It was Labor Day, and while 40,000 people walked across the Mackinaw Bridge, 80 of us were swimming underneath it, writes Matt Soderquist, who shared this story at the Leelanau Clean Water and Here:Say storytelling event “Bubbling Up” on Aug. 4 at the Lively NeighborFood Market.

Read more
/by

Climb the Mackinac Bridge, support Leelanau Christian Neighbors

Leelanau Christian Neighbors is auctioning off one pass for two people to experience a once-in-a-lifetime climb of the 552-foot tower of the Mackinac Bridge as part of the Mackinac Bridge Authority’s limited Tower Tour. As of press time, bidding was at $350. Bidding ends on Sept. 29. Click here to bid in the auction: LeelanauChristianNeighbors.org/auction.

Read more
/by

What lurks beneath

,

Environmentalists, activists, citizens and a growing number of Michigan policymakers worry that if Pipeline 5 under the Mackinac Straits were to rupture and spill oil directly into the world’s largest freshwater resource, the damage could decimate aquatic ecosystems, local economies and the tourism industry. One in five Michigan jobs are tied, directly or indirectly, to safe and clean water.

Read more
/by

Banging the drum for Climate Change action

, ,

Fifteen-year-olds Annabel Skrocki and Annie Lively, both sophomores at Glen Lake School, stood in complete silence with more than 400,000 other climate activists at the People’s Climate march on Sept. 21—mourning, for the melting glaciers, the rising oceans, the dryer mid-continents, the stronger storms, the disappearing islands and the paralyzed politicians.

Read more
/by

Tar Sands oil ain’t Jed Clampett’s bubblin’ crude

Three years after the July 25, 2010 Kalamazoo River oil spill, this tragedy holds important warning signs for communities and municipal and state governments. Oil pipelines now crisscross the entire country, running through Midwestern states that are not oil producers but have become oil transit zones. Many of them already carry Canadian Tar Sands oil.

Read more
/by

This Land, This Water

Traverse City author Jerry Dennis will read “This Land, This Water: A Winter on the Great Lakes”, excerpted from his book “The Windward Shore” at the July 14 oil pipeline protest at the Mackinac Bridge.

Read more
/by

Protesting oil pipeline across Mackinac Straits

On Sunday, July 14, a group of state and national environmental organizations intend to bring the two lines out of the depths at a noon rally in St. Ignace, Michigan. The goal of “The Oil & Water Don’t Mix Rally”, say organizers, is twofold. The first is to define the potential risks of a leak or rupture to the Great Lakes, the largest body of clean surface freshwater in North America. The second, more ambitious, is to clarify the role that Enbridge and its customers are playing in expanding the transport and processing of a gusher of oil and natural gas under development on the American and Canadian Great Plains, and from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada.

Read more
/by

Derek Bailey the bridge builder

,

When I spoke on the phone recently with Derek Bailey, current chair of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and now Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress, he was crossing the Mackinac Bridge and returning home to Traverse City. The tires on his 2005 Saturn VUE hummed loudly as he passed over the rumble strips on the majestic arch that connects Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas.

Read more
/by