Sophie Knorek (right) and friend Leah South bottle feeding a lamb. Jack Knorek says farm life has taught their kids important lessons about life and death.
Large flocks of sheep are typically found in the Rocky Mountains, California, and Texas.
But there's a growing number of shepherds in Michigan.
There's solid demand for lamb meat from Michigan's ethnic communities. Lamb prices are good. And the farmland in Michigan not suited for traditional crops makes for good pasture.
I visited Jack and Martha Knorek who showed me around their farm during the height of spring lambing season.
The mama ewes were a little camera shy, so unfortunately I didn't get to see a lamb being born. One was born ten minutes before I arrived, and another was born about an hour after I left.
Neighbors play music from their front porch during the Water Hill Music Festival in Ann Arbor, Michigan. There were 60 performances around the neighborhood.
""It must be something in the water." - Paul Tinkerhess.
Last Sunday, I walked around a neighborhood in Ann Arbor's west side and witnessed a new music phenomenon - the Water Hill Music Festival - where neighbors played music from their front porches, backyards, and garages.
The idea for the festival came from Paul Tinkerhess, a local business owner and musician.
"The concept is simple," Tinkerhess said. "On the afternoon of Sunday, May 1st, everyone in the neighborhood who either is a musician or wants to pretend to be a musician is encouraged to step out onto their front porch and play music. That's it. Or half of it. The other half is that we are inviting all the other neighbors, and the rest of the world, to wander through the neighborhood that afternoon and enjoy something like a music festival with a lot of stages."
The neighborhood in Ann Arbor's west side, dubbed "Water Hill" by Tinkerhess, if filled with musical talent.
I caught a small fraction of the festival, and made this video:
Battery electric cars like the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt count the federal government as a good friend these days. The government has spent two and a half billion dollars in just a few years to boost battery technology.
But there’s another way to propel an electric car– with hydrogen. And proponents are making a last-ditch effort to convince the Obama administration that fuel cell cars are ready for prime time.
Take Honda’s fuel cell electric car, the FCX Clarity. It can go about 240 miles on a tank of hydrogen fuel. About 60 miles to the gallon if you want to compare it to gasoline. The only emission from the car is water so pure you could drink it
(Here's a video of me taking the FCX Clarity for a test drive)
There are emissions from the process used to create hydrogen, from natural gas. But the emissions are about 60% less than comparable emissions from cars using internal combustion engines.
Cliff Bell’s is one of the oldest Jazz clubs in the city - a little history from Cliff Bell's website:
Through the 30's 40's and 50's Cliff Bell's and the Town Pump Tavern anchored two ends of what was Detroit's busiest night crawl with clubs, pubs and Burlesques dotting Park Avenue. During the 70's and 80's the Club operated under a series of other names. Many remember The Winery, La Cave, or AJ's on the Park.
In 1985 the famous club closed and remained empty until in late 2005.
Like a lot of places in Detroit, it was left empty for a long time. The plaster cracked, the ceiling leaked, but that all changed in 2005 when Paul Howard and Scott Lowell began the renovation of the shuttered club.
In this video, the owner of the building that houses Cliff Bell's talks about the restoration of the club.
This video was shot by Lindsey Smith, and produced by Juan Freitez.
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