It was another productive week around the Upper Peninsula, where local governments established legally acceptable lifespans for temporary signs, police officers climbed onto doughnut shops, and Calumet continued working tirelessly to ensure the ketchup-versus-gravy dispute is never peacefully resolved.
Here’s what happened Around Da Yoop.
Rock: Everybody Into the Sunflowers
Hall Farms in Rock has opened its sunflower field for the season, unleashing hundreds of thousands of blooms and the annual migration of U.P. residents attempting to take the perfect family photograph before somebody gets hot, cranky or stung by something.
The roughly 10-acre field has become a short-lived summer tradition that attracts thousands of visitors while the flowers are at their peak. This year’s attractions also include a corn sandbox and painted hay bales featuring characters including Minions and the Statue of Liberty.
For approximately two weeks, Rock will therefore contain one of the highest concentrations of sunflowers, cameras and children being instructed to “just smile normal” anywhere in Michigan.
Houghton: Temporary Means 100 Days
The Houghton City Council has settled one of civilization’s lingering questions by establishing exactly how long something can remain temporary.
The answer is 100 days.
Council members approved amendments to the city’s sign ordinance Wednesday allowing temporary signs to remain in place for up to 100 days before the event or date they reference. Owners then have 10 days afterward to remove them.
This provides Houghton residents with valuable regulatory certainty and gives every temporary sign in town a clearer understanding of its own mortality.
At Day 101, presumably, it has lived a full life.
Negaunee Township: Utility Truck Becomes the Utility Problem
An Upper Peninsula Power Company utility truck apparently decided there wasn’t enough going on at 2:52 Friday morning and began smoldering along County Road 510.
One lane was closed while crews dealt with the vehicle.
Utility trucks are normally dispatched when something else has gone wrong, making this a rare reversal in which the equipment arrived at the emergency before the emergency did.
UPPCO crews are trained for a wide variety of situations. “What if the truck is the problem?” has now presumably been added to the manual.
Trenary: Literacy Now Available With Frosting
Trenary Toast Cafe and the Literacy Legacy Fund of Michigan joined forces for “Reading is Sweet,” an event supporting Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library 49855.
Children decorated cinnamon rolls while helping raise money for a program that provides books to young children. A blueberry sparkle lemonade was also sold to benefit the effort.
It is an innovative approach to literacy based on the increasingly compelling educational theory that children will participate in almost anything if you put frosting nearby.
Researchers have not yet established whether cinnamon rolls improve reading comprehension, but nobody appears particularly interested in funding a control group.
Copper Harbor: Farm-to-School Achievement Permanently Applied to Wall
Copper Harbor unveiled a mural Friday celebrating six years of the region’s Farm-to-School project.
The mural at Donny Kilpela Memorial Park recognizes efforts to connect locally produced food with area schools and educate students about food production. The unveiling was accompanied by a corn roast and mocktails, because apparently simply pulling a sheet off a mural was not sufficiently Copper Harbor.
Future generations can now visit the park, admire the artwork and learn about locally grown food before asking their parents if there is anywhere nearby that sells chicken nuggets.
Around the U.P.: Police Seize the High Ground at Dunkin’
Upper Peninsula motorists encountering Dunkin’ locations Friday may have noticed something unusual on the roof.
Police officers.
This was intentional.
Law enforcement agencies around the region participated in the annual Cop on a Rooftop fundraiser benefiting Special Olympics Michigan, putting officers above Dunkin’ locations while collecting donations.
For several hours, police controlled both the high ground and immediate access to doughnuts, giving law enforcement a tactical advantage rarely achieved outside of cartoons.
Calumet: Pasty Dispute Enters Medieval Phase
There are moments when The Daily Pasty encounters a story so perfectly suited to this publication that we become suspicious somebody is setting us up.
Pasty Fest returned to Calumet this weekend with a Renaissance theme, turning downtown into a celebration of pasties, costumes, contests and medieval behavior.
Organizers have also continued encouraging the ancient U.P. theological dispute over whether a pasty belongs with ketchup or gravy. This year’s festivities included a Michigan Tech-versus-CLK pep-band ketchup-versus-gravy song battle, while Pasty Fest’s own social media has enthusiastically continued provoking the condiment argument.
And because apparently that wasn’t enough, Sunday brings roller-derby jousting to what organizers have dubbed the “Calumet Colosseum.”
At some point a community has to recognize when it has achieved perfection and stop adding things.
Calumet has chosen not to.
Marquette: Hit Somebody, Help a Dog
Marquette discovered another innovative approach to public fundraising Saturday.
Put adults on roller skates and let them hit each other.
Marquette Roller Derby hosted its Dog’s Day Tournament at Lakeview Arena, bringing teams together for a day of competition benefiting Dog Park Friends and Marquette’s summer dog park.
This represents an unusually efficient civic arrangement. The dogs need somewhere to run. The dog park needs money. Roller-derby players need somebody to body-check.
Everybody gets something.
The Daily Pasty supports any community-improvement model that can eventually be explained with the sentence, “We built it by knocking people over.”
