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From Elise J. Schwartz:

I have a favor to ask of you.  Pepsi, Co. is hosting their most recent round of giveaways to charitable organizations, ending on December 31st.  While I don’t in any way support or recommend Pepsi or any of their products, I truly don’t mind them supporting people and organizations in need in our communities.  I have to ask for your votes.  I call this place my third home (after mom’s and the in-laws): The Calumet Theatre.  Located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, it is a historic theatre offering a diverse selection of performances each year, from local theater groups to your big name groups and performers.  I have been performing on this stage since I was 4 years old, so it hit home to learn that they are in desperate need of a new roof.  Winters are hard that far north, and water damage is a big deal when your roof is worn out, especially when the building is over 100 years old.  So, I am asking you to help the Calumet Theatre!  Give them your votes to up them in the running for $250k.  You can vote EVERY DAY until December 31st.  And get this, you can actually vote three different ways (meaning 3 votes from you every day!): facebook account, twitter account, and texting in.  Please help!  Visit this site!  APPRECIATE IT!!

This weekend was supposed to be the peak of the colors for the fall season, so Stacy and I made a point to go out to a few different places to enjoy our favorite time of year.  On Saturday we went to Covered Road, on the way to Freda, MI.  On Sunday, we went to Hungarian Falls to take a look at the colors.  Anyway, here is what the Keweenaw has to offer for fall colors this year.

Stace and I were pretty bored this afternoon so we decided to check out the Cliff Range area, home of one of the first copper mines in the Upper Peninsula.  It has been a while since we lingered around this beautiful area, so we figured it was time to go back and take a look at everything.

Still, after many visits to the Cliff Mine cemeteries, it still amazes me at how creepy it is to find these headstones in the middle of the woods.  Nonetheless, it is very interesting to see how short people lived in the harsh winters of the Upper Penisula in the mid 1800s.  Here are some pics from todays adventure.

Last Weekend, the Keweenaw Brewing Company hosted the first brewfest in the Houghton Area. The event included 20 breweries with 60 different beers for tasting, live music by the Keweenaw Bluegrass Band and Captain Woody Boogie & the Pirates of Grove, chicken BBQ and rib dinners, and a rib cook off.  And lets face it, the best type of beer drinking is afternoon drinking on a gorgeous Keweenaw summer day…

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Since our old wedding website is stagnant, I figured I would update folks on my website.  Our wedding photos are up, and they are pretty damn good.  Adam Johnson and his crew did a fantastic job shooting our wedding.  I’ll stop writing, I think the photos speak for themselves.  If you would like to see the full highlight gallery, visit the gallery.

It has been a few weeks since I have last posted anything, and for good reason.  Over the last 3 weeks, between work (preparation for Orientation), wedding planning, the wedding itself, and the honeymoon, I haven’t had much time to myself to sit down and write.  Now, I can reflect on everything that happened over the last three weeks.

The wedding was fantastic.  I am fortunate to have a bunch of really good friends who drove hundreds of miles to get here, some of which I did not see for the better part of six years.  From Kansas, Wyoming, Downstate, Wisconsin, and Illinois, friends and family joined Stacy and I on our wedding day, and we were grateful to have such a wonderful to join us on this special day.

The weather was perfect, the church was air conditioned, and so was the reception hall. During the ceremony, both Stace and I were very nervous, but we managed to make it through the half hour ceremony without any problems.

We rented the Red Jacket Trolley for the wedding to booze cruise on between the ceremony and the reception.  We drove out to Mclain State Park, and shot a bunch of photos, and half the wedding party jumped into the water off the breaker.  I can’t see what Adam Johnson was able to capture with the shots of us out here, but I’m sure they were pretty amazing.

The reception was great as well.  There were a lot of people on the dance floor right on up to the last dance, which was very nice to see.  People seemed to have a lot of fun, and so did Stace and I.

Where the real fun started for Stace and I was during the honeymoon.  The following morning, we opened gifts real quick, and we were on our way to Marquette to fly into San Fransisco.  Our itinerary included 3 full days in San Fransisco, and 4 full days in Yosemite National Park.  We didn’t get into San Fransisco until late Sunday night, so we just went to bed that night, and Monday was the day we actually started our Honeymoon.

Monday morning we decided that we should probably do the cliche thing and head over to the Golden Gate Bridge.  So the first thing we did after breakfast was get in our Ruby Red convertible Ford Mustang and drove across the Golden Gate Bridge.  We felt like the Full House family, so we had to make sure that we went and found the Full House house as well.  We did a little bit of shopping to prepare for the woods, stopped at the Apple Headquarters (yes, I’m a fanboi), and got dressed up all fancy and went out to eat at Kincaids Bayhouse.

On Tuesday we found ourselves driving into Yosemite National Park.  About 3 hours away from San Fransisco, it felt as if we were never going to get there.  Very dry, desert like region, and all of a sudden, you drive over a big hill and we approached some of the greenest landscape I have ever been in to.  Absolutely gorgeous.  We checked into our cabin at the Evergreen Lodge, took a quick “tourist tour” of Yosemite Valley, went to dinner, and went to bed early to prepare for a busy day on Wednesday.

Wednesday was a day where we planned to Horseback ride, check out Hetch Hetchy, and go a day hike.  Hetch Hetchy to me, was the highlight of the trip.  Absolutely gorgeous, little to no people and some of the most unique rock faces I have encountered in my time on this earth.  After hiking around Hetch Hetchy, we went back to Camp Mather to do a bit of Horseback riding, as it was Stacy’s wish to go trail riding through the National Park and surrounding areas.  For me, I wasn’t all that exciting to go horseback riding, but after we were on our way, it actually was a lot of fun.  On Friday, we ended up going horseback riding again at the south entrance of the park for 5 hours, but I’ll touch base on that later.

Thursday was by far the most ambitious day.  We planned a day jam packed with activities that started at 7 in the morning and went until 10 at night.  We started with a big breakfast before going on a 10 mile bike ride to Granite Gorge trail head, where we ended up hiking 4 miles and going on a swim.  We came across a few creatures, a whip-tail and a snake, and some huge pine cones.  Fortunately we were done hiking before it hit the warm part of the day, and we were out of the Gorge by 1:30 in the afternoon.

In the afternoon, we each got a massage.  This was my first massage, and it was definitely something I was doing out of my comfort zone, but it was totally worth it. I am totally game for doing this sort of thing again.  After the massage, we went down to the Mariposa Grove to see our first batch of Redwoods on the trip.  We hustled down the trail knowing that we needed to to grab a quick bite to eat, before we went on our way out to a vista to watch the Sunset.  After we ate to hang out for the evening with a bottle of wine and some cheeses to watch the sunset.  There were some wildfires off to the North, so the haze of the Valley was great for the different colors we had on our sunset.

Friday, we went on our long horseback riding adventure.  We went for about 5 hours out to the Redwoods.  It was very dusty, but it was a lot of fun.  We started at Fish Camp, CA and rode into the National Park, tied up our horses, ate lunch, gawked at the Redwoods, and made our back to the Ranch.  That night, we  went back to San Fransisco to board our plane the next day after a quick visit to the zoo.  All in all, the Honeymoon was a perfect vacation and we had a lot of fun.  We both left Yosemite thinking of all the things we missed and all the things we would like to do in another visit.

One of the reasons I love the Keweenaw and will probably never leave is because of the awesome berry season we have in the area.  Strawberries come first, usually starting at the end of June and going through the beginning of July.  Shortly after strawberries are out of cycle, wild blueberries, thimbleberries and raspberries start to ripen. Stacy and I took a trip out to Big Traverse Bay on Saturday to see how the blueberries were doing, and the berries were not quite ready, but we said they would be ready in a few days.

Yesterday we decided it was time…a few of us went out to Hungarian Falls with the goal of picking thimbleberries for jam making, however, they were not quite ready in a lot of shady spots, and the patches that were ready were mostly picked by other people.  We gave up on the thimbleberries, and went out to one of the most beautiful beaches in Michigan, Big Traverse Bay, and picked enough blueberries to last us quite some time.   Below are some pictures courtesy of my good friend Michael Blanchard.

While an inmate breaking out of jail happens once in a blue moon, I hope people start to realize the immediate threat a jail has to the Houghton area. This proposed new Justice Center will hurt downtown businesses, with a jail towering over Shelden Avenue. It will be visible to all of Hancock and Ripley and Keweenaw waterway visitors, looking like a permanent bruise on a beautiful town. Homes in the neighborhood will depreciate in value with a huge jail on site. There are many other options that are way cheaper (Camp Kitwen, Keweenaw Academy, etc…) and can be considered and make a lot more sense. The state of Michigan closes justice centers and let them rot into ruins, and the county wants to build them and avoid monetary efficiency and common sense. Furiating.

Houghton County Justice Center
www.houghtoncountyjusticecenter.com

Over the past few weeks, I have been using a new app on my iPhone called “Foursquare.”  Foursquare is a form of communication in which you and your friends can explore your city or town.  There have been many attempts to this before, Brightkite, Loopt, and Yelp to name a few.  For some reason or another, Foursquare has been the one that has stuck.  At first, I thought this app was quite useless, but after some thinking, I think it could provide us a new way of thinking in terms of social media and the way we communicate.

At face value, the user checks in at a venue, and you can earn badges or become the Foursquare mayor, after the user checks in so many places so many times.  Seems pretty lame, right?  Well, I think there is a larger message behind this service.  Every time you stop at a cafe or a bar, you have the option to check in at your current location.  You can put your house on FourSquare, or the Laundromat, but the focus is primarily on going out.  You can find out if some of your friends are in the same area and meet up with them.

You are probably thinking, “Well, this is STILL pretty lame, Bryant. You live in Houghton, Michigan, and there is no need to mark where you are in a town of 10,000 people. ”  Maybe this all seems lame to you, but I think structured datasets such as those being collected by Foursquare are going to become highly effective resources for cost-per-action advertising.  Businesses could use Foursquare as an advertising platform for Foursquare to make money, and in return, businesses can learn what they are doing right, or what they are doing wrong, by how often people are returning, or a tip they provide.

The more popular Foursquare becomes, the more useful of a service it will be to each user.  Like Twitter, Foursquare provides us the ability to let our voice be heard.  If we hate a coffee shop, or love a restaurant, Foursquare provides one central location where our voice can be heard.  I’m sure, just like Twitter, once celebrities find a use in this new social media platform, this will be another technological phenomenon that will actually be good for American businesses, and stroke the egos of us everyday users, knowing that our favorite celebrity or our best friend has stepped foot in the same place at one point or another.  Watch out, because I do think this is the new social media phenomenon.

A lot of people have asked me recently why I haven’t been updating my blog.  Needless to say, I’ve kind of been on hiatus.  There are a couple questions that I have been trying to answer as I move forward with my web development and blogging.

1. What is my role in the world wide web?

2. Who reads my blog?  Who looks at my website?

3.  What is my goal/purpose?  Why is it important to reach that goal?

A lot of the blogs I read have a certain purpose, whether its news about music, social media, politics, graphic design, photography, silent sports, etc.  I feel as if my blog serves no purpose other than being a diary for myself to go back and reflect on.   Sure, I have a handful of readers, but nothing I write has an intended structure.  Within the next few weeks, I hope to answer these questions and be able to make a blog that serves a purpose for an intended audience.  Should I focus on personal endeavors, entertainment, or educational topics?

Until then, we’ll see how things go, and I’ll be sure to keep you posted…

-BW