The big list of items recommended by the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund was released earlier this evening. Containing 99 projects for funding, here are some of the more interesting ones to me I found:
The City of Detroit is recommended to receive $600,000 for renovations and improvements to two city parks, which includes relocation of several athletic fields and renovating walking trails.
Kensington Metro Park is recommended to receive $94,000 for a pond overlook, seawall and interpretative signage, among other items.
Kent County is recommended to receive $300,000 for a bridge for M-6 trail users.
Petoskey will be recommended to receive $300,000 for a 10-foot concrete path and parking, among other items, for the city's Downtown Greenway north segment.
Newberry is recommended to receive $300,000 for the development of a complex with an outdoor skating rink and hockey facility.
The trust fund is recommending the spending of $3 million to purchase an area near Manchester and rename it the River Raisin Recreation Area. More on that here.
The brouhaha is as follows: an image shows up on a Wisconsin tourism site of the state of Wisconsin shaped using a mitten. Kalamazoo Gazette picks up on the story, and mad Michigan chaos ensues.
Many Michiganders are upset seeing an item that many associate with us being associated with those cheeseheads over across the lake (sorry, had to).
It's sparked dozens of posts on news sites. Tweets and Facebook posts abound. Even the Pure Michigan campaign has jumped in, hosting a poll that asks which is the Mitten State. You can probably figure out how that's going right now.
It's been interesting to watch how this has developed throughout the day. And the more it goes on, the more I realize this little debate is worthless and should end.
The only real argument is that Wisconsinites use their hand to identify where they come from, much like us Michiganders. I doubt this, unless they all have deformed hands in Wisconsin. I tried getting my hand to bend the way the mitten is bent, but couldn't do it too naturally. But that's all we can bicker about.
The site isn't trying to lay claim to this concept: it's simply using a mitten as a winter piece for its website. Apparently, it had leaves shaped like Wisconsin during the fall. The mitten isn't a dominant force on the site, its an element as a part of a rotating carousel of different items. It's an element, not a complete attack.
Even the state's Department of Tourism is admitting it's not a tactic to take the title of Mitten State away from us (Even though the next line says Wisconsin's trying to be the "fun state," whatever that means). But we've launched into full-attack mode ourselves. Fun-poking is one thing, but there's going to be some that will fight this in the morning. Michigan.org even has whoistherealmittenstate.com launched with said poll above. It's slightly overboard, to say the least.
I compiled several tweets this morning on this subject for work, and compiled them below. Take a look:
