The city of Chelsea recently began work on its new Scultpure Walk, a project that will display ten outdoor sculptures on sites scattered throughout downtown. On Thursday I visited one of the sites — the corner of Summit and Main — to get a few pictures of the site preparation being done by local artist Rick DeTroyer.
A couple months ago, several CHS musicians were honored at the state level. The Standard put together an article about the musicians and their accomplishments, and Editor Terry asked me to shoot portraits of each of the musicians to accompany the article.
My first victi…uh, subject was Viktor, a cellist. For his session, we decided to take advantage of an open field behind his house; he sat down on a chair in the middle of the field and started playing, I started shooting, and we ended up with the shots you’re about to see. And, as a bonus, I got to spend most of the session listening to beautiful cello music in the great outdoors on a perfect Michigan spring day.
Viktor (15 April 2009)
Monday (13 April) marked three years since the tragic deaths of Chelsea police chief Riley Scott Sumner and Chelsea Area Fire Authority captain Matt Tuttle; despite the surprisingly cold weather, family and friends gathered outside the police station as officers observed a moment of silence.
On Saturday, I traveled to Ann Arbor to take in the Michigan football spring game. I’ve been to several spring games in the past, and I’ve gotten used to their being sparsely-attended affairs with little excitement or fanfare surrounding the scrimmage; it always felt like the program staged the event because they felt they had to, not because it really wanted to. But as part of the culture change Rich Rodriguez has brought to Michigan football, the spring game has been drastically upgraded: in addition to bringing in the band and dance team for a taste of the game day atmosphere, they added a flag football game featuring former Michigan football players. And if that wasn’t enough, they also opened up the locker room to the fans for two hours in the morning.
The locker room was open from 8:00-10:00; we showed up shortly after 9:00, thinking that would be plenty of time to get in line. Uh … not so much.
The large structure poking above the stadium fence in the background on the right is Crisler Arena; the locker room entrance is on the other side of Crisler in this photo, which means the line snaked all the way around the arena and along the south end of the stadium (and, when it was at its longest, halfway along the west side of the stadium). We took one look at the line and decided we’d rather enjoy coffee at the nearby Caribou than stand in line and maybe make it into the locker room.
After our Caribou visit, we headed into the stadium in time to see the last couple minutes of the flag football game … and to gape at the new structures towering over the stadium.
Don’t worry — I didn’t take pictures only of our gaping at the new structures. I turned the camera on the new construction towering over the old press box, too.
The scrimmage itself wasn’t unusually thrilling, but it was good to have an oasis of football in a season featuring sports that aren’t football. And now that the program is trying to make the game more of an event, it’s more fun to spend a spring Saturday at the stadium.
Thursday: Soccer
In a thrilling game that finished under the lights, Chelsea defeated Parma Western 1-0; Cara Johnson scored the lone goal with under five minutes to play.
Back in late December, I posted photos of the damage done when an impudent wind storm dropped an old tree on a corral fence. Astute readers may recall that the wind storm was the only winner: the tree was unequivocally separated from its roots (a thoroughly drastic action on par with separating Alex Rodriguez from his performance-enhancing drugs) and the fence transitioned from keeping the horses out of the yard to keeping the ground out of the sky (which, in retrospect, was an easier job for the fence, as the ground does not have four legs and an unquenchable desire to find greener grass). The tree, having no mobility of its own and thus having no say in its career path, immediately took up the position of Horse Freedom Preventer.
This state of affairs was intended to be temporary, of course, but those familiar with both fence construction and the winter season — and I mean the real winter season, not the southern winter season that means it’s 60 degrees and we’re all going to die — know that freezing temperatures have a convincing way of hindering repairs to the fundamental structure of a fence: when the ground is frozen, fence posts in the ground stay in the ground, fence posts above the ground socialize in lumber yards and update their resumes to prepare for the inevitable hiring blitz of spring, and landowners with broken fences watch hockey. Since the reconstruction plans had to wait, the tree’s HFP contract was extended through the practical end of winter (because more often than not the calendar end of winter has as much real-world relevance as Plaxico Burress has gun-safety skills).
Now, with the temperatures rising and the ground thawing, the tree has been put asunder by a corps of eager chainsaws and the pieces have been carried away by one happy wood-burning neighbor. This, of course, has left a gaping hole whereby the horses might escape into the world they’ve been ogling from the safety of the corral; however, in the tree’s absence, clever use of a few ladders and the remaining detritus of the tree has both kept the horses confined to quarters and opened up the area for repairs. So, three months after the wind storm, Engineer Bob has found himself with room to work and thawed ground to dig, and he has happily undertaken the overdue project of making the fence whole once again.
Can he fix it? Yes he can! (4 April 2009)
Shown above is the post that was driven further into the ground by the falling tree; the lower part — the last two feet — of the post broke off, and like the crane in Michigan Stadium, remains in the ground because it was easier to leave it than it would have been to remove it.
On Saturday, the Chelsea Retirement Community — or, as any self-respecting Chelsea old-timer would call it, the Methodist Home — undertook a formidable task: it replaced every last one of its incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs in an effort to cut its energy consumption. How formidable was this task? Well, while it’s fairly simple to unscrew one light bulb and screw in another, it’s a bit less simple to do that for more than 2,200 bulbs. The newspaper wanted a few pictures, so I joined the fun for an hour to document the laborious undertaking.
Light bulb changing (4 April 2009)
Thursday: Soccer
Chelsea played East Lansing to a 2-2 draw.
Saturday: Lacrosse
Prior to Saturday, the full extent of my experience with the sport of lacrosse consisted of watching five minutes of a professional lacrosse match on tv several years ago. But I found the sport to be a lot of fun to watch — a good mix of hockey, soccer and football — and easy to follow even without knowing all the rules, and I enjoyed watching Chelsea defeat Belleville, Q to 12.
(All Calvinball jokes aside, it truly was easy to follow, and Chelsea really did defeat Belleville; the score was 12-1.)
