Tag: Michigan
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Gephyrophobia
Gephyrophobia is a fear of bridges. People who experience this anxiety are gephyrophobiacs. I’ve known people with this fear to varying degrees although I didn’t realize it had an actual name until recently. I noticed a search engine query on Twelve Mile Circle from someone who appeared to be a gephyrophobiac. The person wanted to…
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Bridge Between Wisconsin and Michigan
My favorite inspiration, random Internet queries falling from the sky onto the Twelve Mile Circle via search engines, struck again recently. This time our anonymous explorer wanted to find more information about a bridge from Wisconsin to Michigan. The natural reflex would be to pull out a map… … and say to oneself, a bridge…
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But What’s the Meridian?
The definition of “meridian” sounds straight-forward enough. There are some ancillary definitions relating to greatest moments, highest achievements and such, plus one dealing with acupuncture. However, the one roughly analogous to longitude interests 12MC the most. From Dictionary.com: me·rid·i·an…(1.) Geography. (a.) a great circle of the earth passing through the poles and any given point…
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Want to be a Lighthouse Keeper?
Lighthouse Keeper is one of those occupations similar to lamp lighter, elevator operator, stenographer and ice delivery person that probably doesn’t offer many career opportunities in the modern world. It takes a special personality to endure days and weeks of loneliness and isolation. So imagine life in a lighthouse perched on rocky crags far removed…
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Longest International Bridge
I like extremes. The middle is boring. I’m also fairly certain that if I feature one end of the spectrum such as the Shortest International Bridge, that I’ll also feature the other end eventually. However, it’s going to be difficult to compete with that earlier article. Reader participation during the hunt and resulting discussions were…
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Biggest Losers
I’ve been playing around with the 2010 United States Census results by county again. This time I compared them to the previous decennial census conducted in 2000. This allows one to observe population shifts taking place over the prior decade. I tend to find more interest in the larger shifts, which is true I suppose…
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Gargantuan Garages
Were is the world’s largest parking garage? I’m not sure why that came to mind, as if I can ever figure out why I fixate on such oddities. It’s a tougher question than I imagined. I wanted to ponder this from the perspective of a single stand-alone structure. Lots of the sources I consulted happened…
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Odds and Ends 4
The mailbag runneth over with great finds and suggestions from the generous readers of the Twelve Mile Circle audience. I’ll combine that with a couple of my recent discoveries and voilà, instant article. I’m not sure if I’m feeling lazy or if I’m still in a food coma from the recent Thanksgiving holiday but either…
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Beaver Island in the News
There’s an interesting human interest story about Beaver Island, Michigan making the rounds via the Associated Press, “Technology a blessing, a curse for remote island.” I mention it both because it’s an interesting narrative and because I’m one of very few people who’ve actually visited Beaver Island. If you care to know more about that…
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Shortest River… or Not
What is a river, exactly? In all seriousness, what differentiates a river from a creek, a brook, a run or some of the other watercourses mapped on Toponymia? Clearly it comes down to size and volume. But where does one draw the line between what should be called a “river” and what should not? So…