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My daughter announced this morning, “The sun never shines in Houghton anymore.”  That’s an exaggeration of course, but it is certainly true that January can be a difficult month on the Keweenaw Peninsula.  The Holiday festivities are over, Michigan Tech’s Winter Carnival is still a month away, and it’s way too early in the year to even be thinking about when we might see leaves or grass again.  To make matters worse, it’s also the snowiest month (actually the wettest month of the whole year with an average of more than 4 inches of precipitation), which means you hardly ever see the sun.  Suffice it to say, it can really wear on a person after a while.

Fear not, intrepid winter warriors, this too shall pass.  The dark mornings with late sunrise, 8:40 a.m. at their worst, start to shift in January and you begin gaining a minute of morning daylight almost every day.  The regular snowfall of a little bit most days ensures optimal conditions for the incredible snow sports this area offers.  And if nothing else, January inevitably gives way to February, when the average precipitation is cut in half, you see more sun and the days get much longer.

To get through the month (and the season) like a pro, make plans to spend time playing outside.  It’s not enough to snuggle up by the fire with a good book; the Upper Peninsula winter is too long for that, and besides you’d be missing out on all the fun if you did.   Instead try something new: Rent some snowshoes and make your way through the woods, or head up to Swedetown in Calumet where you can sled on a groomed sledding hill or cross country ski, then take a break over hot chocolate and a board game in the facility’s chalet.

No sooner did I put up the last post about keeping the Upper Peninsula snowfall in perspective but the whole area, and particularly Houghton-Hancock and the Keweenaw, got hit by a massive blast.  This is a storm that’s getting measured in feet, not inches, and it’s been cause for comment even among the snow-tested locals.  It only seems appropriate, then, to offer the following list:

You Know It’s a Big Snowfall When

- Even the local news says it’s “worried” about the weather in your area.

- Your weather is national news.

- School is canceled.

- Your driveway gets plowed more than once in a day.

- People who’ve lived in the area for decades make comments like “this storm is something.”

- You lose track of how much snow you’ve gotten, and the prospect of another 15-32 inches in a day and a half seems manageable.

- Major landmarks — like your mailbox — start to get buried.

- And a related item, the snowplow knocks your mailbox off the post and you have to wear snowshoes to retrieve it from the snowbank (this really happened in this storm).

What additions would you make?  Got any storm stories to tell?  Leave a comment and share them here!

Jazz fans, you’ve now got a place to find great music on your Houghton radio dial.  If you like jazz, then The Other Eric Hall Show on Michigan Tech’s radio station, 91.9 WMTU, is not to be missed.  The show runs on Sunday evenings from 6-8 p.m. and offers a wide variety of jazz, blues and other instrumental music, along with some tongue-in-cheek “commercials” for local businesses.  Artists heard on recent shows include Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis and John Scofield.  Pretty straight-ahead, pretty great.

Too bad the show only runs two hours – its host, Eric Hall, clearly knows his stuff and often peppers the program with interesting background on the artists, their tunes, or the time period in which they were written.

It’s great to see this new addition to the radio music scene in the Copper Country; we hope it’s around for a long, long time.  And if live music is your thing, you can keep abreast of the many live music concerts of all kinds that happen in the area every weekend on the Keweenaw Music fan page on Facebook.

Support local music in the Copper Country!

A column in the Detroit Free Press has raised a few eyebrows around the Keweenaw Peninsula.  Titled Shades of Detroit in the Keweenaw, it suggests that the Keweenaw is a “miniature Motor City” because the two areas share the visible and infrastructural challenges of communities that were built up around now-declining industries (mining in the Copper Country’s case, and of course autos in Detroit’s).

The author, Bill McGraw, is in no way entirely negative about the Keweenaw Peninsula — he rightly gives a nod to its “natural beauty and friendly Yoopers” amid communities like Calumet (10 miles up the road from Houghton) that still have plenty of charm.   Noting that the Keweenaw is the “Upper Peninsula’s peninsula,” he describes it as “an enchanting land of hills, rocks, forests, bears, eagles, saunas, Lake Superior and pannukakku, Finnish custard pancakes.”

McGraw does, however, also rightly point out some side effects of economic decline that are inescapable for both Detroit and the Keweenaw.  Let’s be honest – it’s hard to miss the neglected buildings that dot the route between Houghton and Calumet and north towards Copper Harbor and the area’s population is not what it was 100 years ago.

It’s negatives such as those that got things going in the comments section of McGraw’s piece, where Yoopers and Detroit supporters traded barbs over the relative merits of city vs. country living.  One man’s unspoiled beauty is another’s animal-infested wilderness, apparently, just as what is to some an edgy, hip urban lifestyle is to others a crime-ridden ghetto.

What those obviously overblown criticisms underscore, as one commenter noted, is that both places don’t have a whole lot of direct contact with each other.  That’s not surprising.  Detroit is a 10-hour drive from Houghton, 3 hours farther away than Minneapolis or Chicago, and the only way to fly between the two is through Minneapolis.   The two communities are almost as far apart from each other as you can get and still be in Michigan.

Image: www.greenwichmeantime.com

And while the article gets it right in many ways, McGraw fails to point out one important distinction between the two: crime.  In a nutshell they’ve got it (like any other big city) and we don’t.  The federal statistics page for Detroit lists tens of thousands of violent crimes per year there, while the corresponding entry for Keweenaw County, where Calumet is located, doesn’t even include an entry for violent crime.

Now, this is not to suggest in any way that there is no crime of any kind in the Keweenaw, nor that you put your life at risk anytime you walk down a Detroit street (being from St. Louis, another city that has faced its issues, I know how statistics can distort reality).  However, there is no doubting that violent crime is minimal in the Copper Country, and that makes it a very safe and pleasant place to be a kid … or a grownup.

What’s your reaction to the Free Press column?  Can Houghton learn anything from Detroit, and vice versa?

The Mine Shaft under renovation

If the traffic on this blog is any indication there’s a huge amount of interest around the Keweenaw in the report in June of the planned reopening of the Mine Shaft entertainment complex in Houghton by the end of the summer.  Now it looks like it may only be a matter of days before the arcade comes back to life in all its noisy glory.

Here’s the evidence:

1) For weeks there’s been a “Coming Soon” sign on the outside of the building, but today that sign is gone and the parking lot is filled with pickups and other cars that presumably belong to construction workers inside.

2) A look at the Web site of the Trifecta Management Group, which is taking over the operation, lists the logos of the Mine Shaft and its companion Rock House Grill and Tavern as being “Now Open,” (scroll down on the page), although the corresponding links to the Mine Shaft and Rock House Grill & Tavern Web sites are not yet live (Update: As of August 25th both sites are live, though the link from the Trifecta Web site to the Rock House page is not working.).

3) There was some news in the Houghton Mining Gazette last week that the Mine Shaft’s permit was transferred from the previous owners to a new company, KMPD, Inc., and some small updates have trickled out over the summer with respect to signage and a liquor license for the business.

4) In probably the biggest development, a sign on the Mine Shaft’s door today notes that interviews are being conducted all week for new staff (great news for the Houghton Hancock area).

Despite all of this apparently good news we haven’t heard an official update since the initial announcement in early June.  How about it, Trifecta, can we have an update on the timeline?  I know a lot of kids who are ready to get out there and play minigolf before the snow flies.

What do you think?  Is the return of the Mine Shaft to Houghton a good thing?  What will it take for it to succeed this time around.   Leave a comment here and give us your thoughts.

UPDATE: WLUC, the NBC affiliate for the Upper Peninsula, reports  that the Mine Shaft will reopen August 24.  Changes being made to the facility include updated furniture for a trendier look and removing a dance area from the restaurant so it’s exclusively for dining.

Great news!!