We Are Rochester

05/30/2026

05/30/2026

Saturday!

05/30/2026

Michigan has more lighthouses than any other state in the country and it is not particularly close. With over 130 lighthouses dotting its coastline, Michigan holds a collection that reflects the extraordinary geographic reality of a state surrounded by four of the five Great Lakes, with thousands of miles of shoreline, hundreds of miles of navigable rivers, and a maritime history that required more warning lights than any other state ever needed to build.

The reason Michigan needed so many lighthouses comes down to the same reason Michigan is extraordinary in every other way. The Great Lakes are enormous, unpredictable, and historically unforgiving to vessels that didn't know where the shoals were, where the harbor entrance was, or where the rocky shoreline ended and safe water began. From the 1820s onward, the federal government built lighthouse after lighthouse along Michigan's coasts as commercial traffic on the Great Lakes expanded and the cost of losing ships and cargo became impossible to ignore. Each lighthouse represents a specific danger that required a specific light to address, and Michigan had more specific dangers than anywhere else in the country.

The lighthouses themselves span nearly two centuries of American architectural history and engineering evolution. Grand Haven's lighthouse stands at the end of a pier extending into Lake Michigan, producing one of the most photographed images in the state. Whitefish Point lighthouse on Lake Superior is the oldest active lighthouse on the Great Lakes, operating since 1849 at the site the Ojibwe called the safe harbor and that maritime history knows as the graveyard of the Great Lakes. Point Betsie, Big Sable Point, Presque Isle, Tawas Point—each one anchors a stretch of Michigan coastline with its own character and its own history and its own community that has organized itself around the light for generations.

Michigan's lighthouse collection is one of the great unsung treasures of the state and one of the most visited sets of historic landmarks in the Midwest. People drive the entire Lake Michigan shoreline specifically to check them off a list, stopping at harbor after harbor, pier after pier, to photograph structures that have been warning ships away from Michigan's shores since before the Civil War. Michigan built them because the lakes demanded it. Michigan kept them because they are extraordinary and because a state that understands what it has does not tear down its lighthouses. It restores them, maintains them, and opens them to everyone who wants to climb to the top and see what the keeper saw every night for a hundred years.

05/29/2026

What an Amazing Local Charity

Cancer patients who receive emotional support as part of their treatment plan are more compliant, more consistent, and have a better quality of life.

Keep reading: https://sbrew.link/7wZqX6YG

05/29/2026

📣CALL FOR ART: The Art of Glass: A Michigan Perspective

Submissions are open for Paint Creek Center for the Arts' tribute show honoring and celebrating Michigan glass blowers and their works. The Art of Glass: A Michigan Perspective will open at Paint Creek Center for the Arts on July 31st from 5-8. The exhibition will be on view in PCCA's gallery during business hours through August 21st.

Entry Requirements:
🌟 Artwork must be submitted by a Michigan-based artist
🌟Submissions must be blown glass, no stained glass or slumped glass works.
🌟Artwork submitted cannot be recognizable pipes or smokeware.
🌟Any glassware submitted will not be considered if it contains excess profanity.
🌟Artwork must have any hardware required for hanging installed (where applicable)

Artists are welcome to submit multiple works for consideration.

The deadline to apply is Sunday June 7 at 11:59PM. To submit, click here: https://form.jotform.com/253374601564154

05/28/2026

Macomb county fireworks list