This past fall LIAA hosted the first annual Picture YourPlace photo contest.  We invited area photographers to showcase aspects of the Grand Traverse region's unique natural and cultural surroundings and to provoke thought about what we value in the Grand Traverse Area and how it can be preserved through submission of photography and accompanying essays in four catagories: Places to Work, Places of Cultural Value, Places to Recreate and Places of Natural Beauty.

Over the next few months, YourPlace will be featuring the winning entries in each catagory as well as our judges favorites.

This month we are featuring the winners in the "Places to Work" catagory.

We had a wonderful response and appreciate the participating photographers support of this project.

We hope you will join in the celebration of the Grand Traverse Region next fall by entering your photos for the 2008 Picture YourPlace Contest.

 

Barbara Overdier
Getting Ready For Success at Pleasanton Brick Oven Bakery!
First Place

A fire made Thursday night, stoked up to 700 degrees will be ready for bread baking on Friday morning. It will accommodate pie baking on Saturday, and still have enough heat left to bake cookies on Monday.  An old maple tree -recently fallen across trails at the commons - could provide wood to fuel this brick oven fire all winter.

Gerard Grabowski, owner, explains this to anyone who is interested in knowing about the efficient process he is engaged in at work.

Bread has been traced by scientists as one of our oldest foods: evidence of a crude form of bread (ground nuts, roots and other fibers) dates back 12,000 years ago. On a Friday evening in September 2007, a line is forming in front of the counter where Pleasanton bread is being sold. Grabowski, although possibly exhausted, shows patience and consideration to his customers and employees alike. 

It is so pleasant here!

A pregnant woman and her three year old son stop in and sit down at a round table to warm up.  The little boy is eager to sample a sesame cookie Gerard generously bestowed upon him.  An Italian friend, in town for the Epicurean Classic this weekend, stops to drop off or discuss a recipe for Brick Oven Pizza.  A relative, visiting from California comments, "How ironic!", Building 66, the 'Fire Building', that once housed emergency fire extinguishing equipment, now has a contained fire burning, raging inside weekly!

 

Kristin Norrod
The Trench
Second Place

Building 53, the old laundry facility for the former Traverse City State Hospital, was poised to become the new urban winery in The Village at Grand Traverse Commons...but first, it needed fresh plumbing. This trench was the first of many that were dug, by MAM Contracting, to accommodate the elaborate system of pipes necessary for renovating the half-century old structure. This is where I work. Well...not in the trench, exactly...you know what I mean. As an employee of MAM Contracting, I have been able to experience, firsthand, the amazing transformation of an ex-asylum to the vibrant village that is now coming into its own. When I hopped into that trench, I could see for the first time that the building was actually welcoming this change...Its enormous windows spilling sunlight onto the chilled workers, and its considerable ceiling height lending a pleasant echo to the foreman's whistle. That indomitable mass of bricks sat awkwardly vacant for so many years, just waiting for this inevitable conversion. Was Building 53 destined to become a winery? Some say so. Left Foot Charley Winery is a perfect fit inside the old laundry building, and in the community that we now call The Village.

Jocelyn Trepte
The River Clean-up 
Third Place

Work? Or Play? In reality both and certainly addictive! Very similar to looking for morels, where you find it hard to tear your eyes away from the forest floor for fear of missing one. Possible treasure lurks everywhere on a river paddle ... on the bottom, along the banks, in log jams, under overhanging bushes. A group of local paddlers has become addicted to the hunt, and now we it very difficult to pass up the beer cans both empty and full, flip flops never in pairs, water bottles, punctured tubes, plastic bags, coolers, fishing lures, a t-shirt, jacket ... and items unrecognizable they have been there so long. The camaraderie of being unofficial river stewards is fun, and we hope keeping our area rivers clean is contagious.