Diving a Late 1800s Unknown Schooner-Researching Shipwrecks

A couple of small vessels carrying 7 divers launched onto Lake Michigan October 2nd, 2021 to dive a sunken vessel found (Can't really say discovered because it might be a well known ship to others on an informal or formal level.) near Gulliver Michigan. The divers weren't sure what the ships name was or how long it may have been there but do understand that sometimes Great Lakes raises from the grave 100+ year old nautical time capsules in places they weren't there before. The local divers call it the "unknown boat" and label it on their GPS as such. 

After diving and taking a closer examination, pictures and film it might be helpful to pinpoint whether or not that boat has already been listed somewhere (Chances are it has been logged.). The research side is part of the fun because you have to look at maps, logs, compare pictures, request information, etc... When you have touched a piece of history up close and receive new information that helps you solve the puzzle of where it came from, the process of gaining new knowledge can be very exciting!

Likely very similar in design
 to another schooner found in the area
R. Kanters

Chances are that the ship has been discovered prior but as of yet I haven't come up with anything during a brief review of the literature. I came close with a similar discovered ship last year in the area that has parallel characteristics as this boat; a late 1800's schooner model (I think 🤷). Unfortunately that one was closer/on shore and not in as good shape as the one we were diving (You can see the haul, mast, nails, design, etc... in the video). 

Thus after a quick review just to make sure I don't miss something obvious (which I sometimes do...actually often. 😬) I sent Gulliver Historical Society an email with hopes they may know right away the name of the boat and its history (Which I will post information on the blog if I get and it can be shared.) On the off chance they don't know the vessel, I will then contact MSRA and see what they think (Again...its very possible the boat is known and listed somewhere but none of the seasoned local divers in the group seemed to have any real facts....and they like to have facts on a sunk ship....part of the archeological-explorer life and story telling. Explorer Types  love to talk about their ships. Sixteen Personalities-Explorer)

You may also read the following article on shipwreck case study methods and the scientific method in an actual published study. (Notice the sections and activities involved in archeology type research.)

Something a little more light hearted with nice pics I took of the light house/launch area.... Seul Choix Lighthouse-The Haunted Lighthouse

Sites: 

National Park Service provides some information on how to document shipwrecks. Collecting and sharing information can lead to better preservation of the artifacts and historical cataloging of the ship (Assuming it wasn't done already). 

Gulliver Historical Society may be able to provide a level of insight on the ship and often such local historical societies keep records safe and are able to retrieve historical documents that are relevant to the area and its people. This is one reasons why you should consider donating to such groups because they preserve our past so we can grasp our futures. 

Michigan Shipwreck Research Association (MSRA) is The organization’s work includes research and documentation of submerged ships and the development educational resources. (I'm trying to make a solid video for educational purposes.) .Article HERE (They would be a good source to contact if the local historical society doesn't have anything to add.)

A website Shipwreck Explorers doesn't list any schooners in the area so I can't say when they were last updated because one was found last year 2020. HERE

An article by Smithsonian Magazine indicates a late 1800 schooner was discovered in the area near shore. Our bow was still intact but the age and model appear similar. The one they discussed in their article is the "20th-century schooner named after part-owner Rokus Kanters, a marine contractor and the former mayor of Holland, Michigan" (Fox April 30, 2020, para 2). HERE

Another great site Michigan Shipwrecks doesn't show a shipwreck at our location. Location Map

NOAA also didn't show a shipwreck in the area. HERE...........so we will wait to see what the historians say. Don't get too excited! 

CEO Confidence Down on Delta Variant and Labor Market (Conference Board)

A report entitled Measure of CEO Confidence created by The Confidence Board and The Business Council indicates that CEO confidence has declined somewhat from Q2-2021 (I just looked up both the websites and what we find is that both are leading authorities in business based on the intellectual and financial capital of their members in US and global markets. 🦉 You can see some of their members HERE.) A measure of CEO confidence can impact things like corporate strategy and how they are going to adjust to the market. Short term concerns (which the numbers are still positive) are unlikely to derail strategy as much as say major market shifts. 

You can review the specific numbers in their report but it looks like current economic conditions and comparisons of outlooks when compared to 6 months ago were down from a prior assessment in Q2. Likewise, CEO sentiment was also down in feelings of prospects over the next six months as well as those activities in the short term. Much of this can be expected with Delta variant, economic shifts, labor shortages (Why we should innovate our production, robotics and wearable tech to improve productivity.) and a few big bills debated in Congress. Sometimes they are going to be short term issues and some can be long term problems. 

Dana Peterson, Chief Economist of The Conference Board states, “A summer surge of the highly infectious Delta variant—coupled with slumping vaccination rates—has brought pandemic uncertainty back to the fore in Q3. Nevertheless, optimism remains well above pre-pandemic levels, boding well for employment and investment growth in the months ahead.” (Conference Board, 2021, para 4.)

The Conference Board Measure of CEO Confidence

Conference Board (October 7th, 2021, para 4). CEO Confidence Retreated in Q3, but CEOs Remain Optimistic. Retrieved October 8th, 2021 from https://www.conference-board.org/research/CEO-Confidence/

YouTube Report Highlights the $20.5 Billion and 394K Jobs Value of the Creative Class and the Digital Economy

The digital economy is growing and will likely continue to transform our traditional economic system and raise the stature of the creative class. Over the past few decades content sharing services (and other digital GDP activities) have risen and people have flocked to them to develop productions that attracts followers and diversifies publishing. But there is more to this because those that create and develop new ideas are highly sought after individuals....

You can read YouTube's announcement and executive summary and the full report.

Some of the highlights from the report are ...

$20.5 Billion contribution to GDP. 

394K Jobs 

80% SMB with a YouTube channel indicate that YouTube helped them. 

Digital GDP

Digital GDP is growing but thus far has been calculated as part of these sort "virtual content services" and is currently in the process of reforming. See BEA Digital GDP Definition. We also find that in 2019 Digital GDP comprises 9.6 percent ($2,051.6 billion) of current-dollar gross domestic product ($21,433.2 billion) and just barely being manufacturing (meaning creativity and manufacturing can go together to maximize market position.). See BEA Digital GDP Estimates (I also want to see how we adapted to COVID and suspect the 2021 numbers will be higher because of how the data has been drawn from previous estimates as well as the 2022/23 interchange when companies and policies makers had a chance to adapt to new market realities. See 2021 GDP Explosions). That definition will likely adjust again at some point in the future to encourage a long-term accurate description as more and more parts of our economy move online and bridge the virtual-physical divide. 

Things like block chain and cryptocurrencies are going to continue to adapt and what we will find are further adjustments to our digital economic existence. Furthermore, we are also likely need to be open to the possibility of utilizing new methodologies to further encourage this class to use their creative and academic capital to realize tangible products for market leading industries and taxable net positives. This is also why I advocate for the development of clusters where where novel ideas, matched with R&D and skilled labor produce innovative outcomes. See Digital GDP Govt. Mind, Gerome Powell Central Digital Currency, US Digital GDP Rises, and Infrastructure and Synergy

What is the Creative Class and the Type of People Involved? 

Creative class people invent new things and utilize their creative intelligences to solve problems in new ways that develop advanced businesses and products. Those in the creative class are people who are in the ,"... design, education, arts, music and entertainment, whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology and/or creative content" (Florida, 2002, p. 8). They are an emerging group much like the Merchant Class of the past but instead use their their creative intelligence to get things done in novel ways.

The Creative Class is derived, at least in initial theory, of super creative core and creative professionals. One is engaged in the development of new science while others are more focused on the application of creative knowledge. One might think of this as the inventor-scientist and the other is the builder-artisan. Super creatives can use formal science and non-formal idea development to generate new and leading products while creative professionals are the one's that put this knowledge into daily use within our economy; creators and builders (I'm not sure if this is the right way to look at it but its an emerging sociological class so there might be some room for definition tweaking.)

Within the super creative core are people who can bridge multiple developmental domains and can further science by drawing on a diverse set of skills and backgrounds that blend them into something new way of approaching problems. I suspect such individuals would need exposure to a wide variety of life experiences and activities to develop multiple skill sets. As our technological lines in virtual world (....mixed with physical world. i.e. education. Waiting for VR education to come out.) we can start thinking diversifying our offline and online activities to focus on people's emerging skills to maximize them (....probably about 10 years off or more. Time will tell.).

Can Towns like Escanaba/Gladstone Attract Digital Nomads and Tourists in a Way that Increases Local Jobs?

One of the reasons why I'm working on a hypothetical cluster model in Delta County MI is because they have the opportunity to utilize new strategies such as the development of a Digital Nomads Land that attracts international creative talent bent towards A.) engineering & design, micro-manufacturing, etc...(create and develop new products as well as develop certain local skills.) that would fit within the B.) outdoor adventure lifestyle (retention by lifestyle appeal that improves tourism dollars.) that enhances local industry, tourism, and small business development. 

In other words, I'm matching existing geographic/outdoor, infrastructure, and local skill sets with market trends and industry needs to revitalize certain key industry(s) as well highlight the economic advantages of high potential-appeal towns like Escanaba/Gladstone (Its just a unfinished model so please wait before throwing tomatoes. Sometimes dumb ideas bear fruit. ...and yes a tomato is a fruit. 🍅 😯)

We should also consider that while much of the research has focused on the attraction of the creative class to large cities it is also growing as a demographic and some of those creative types are going to be interested in rural outdoor enthusiast areas. Because of their lifestyle of events, fun, and activities they also can build tourism interest. This is why smart policy can sometimes shoot many birds with one stone when focusing on meeting emerging market targets that raise value. See Attracting SME and Rebuilding Downtowns. 

Innovative Clusters comprised of the creative class and local skilled labor can help to innovate those industries involved in the cluster process (...again its just an idea. I'm a creative type. 😏). Countries are clamoring to attract the creative class because they also generate new products and in turn higher economic growth. Places like Delta County have the fundamentals to attract inventors, scientists, artisans and entrepreneurs but could use a boost with stronger marketing, investment, and city-state-industry-military/aerospace type coordination on important key projects that anchor other stakeholders. If there is a will there is a way because “The Only Constant in Life Is Change.”- Heraclitus (...or we can just keep doing the same thing over and over and hope for a better result.) 

Florida, Richard (2002). "Bohemia and Economic Geography" (PDF). Journal of Economic Geography. 2: 55–71. http://creativeclass.com/rfcgdb/articles/6%20Bohemia_and_Economic_Geography.pdf

Bergman Announces Congressional App Challenge

Encouraging students to get into STEM and find new ways of competing on the market is important. While competitions like these are fun they also provide an outlet to showcase those who have the skills that might blossom into whole new products and product lines when they get out of college/school/specialization. 

The following was taken from an email snippet. You can learn more about your first district congressman HERE.  You may learn about some of the politicians that impact the 1st District HERE

Bergman Announces Congressional App Challenge

Washington - Each year, students in the First District create and submit their original apps for a chance to win the Congressional App Challenge (CAC). The competition was created in 2013 through House Resolution 77, which outlined plans for Representatives to host individual app competitions in their Districts to promote computer science and STEM. Last year’s winners from Michigan's First District were Brett Bruner, Joshua Doctor, Shane Pilate, and Gabrielle Krakow from Elk Rapids High School for their work titled, “Space Hop.” The competition is for middle and high school students who can either register individually or as teams of up to four. Interested participants should submit their applications by November 1st, 2021. You can learn more about the competition here

 

Michigan SENATE BILL NO. 82 Gross Appropriations $ 4,345,228,600

The Bi-Partisan Senate Bill 82 Passed Senate and Signed by Michigan's Governor Whitmer in the past few days. Budgets are important because it puts our money where our mouth is. Any sustainable system must balance those needs with the revenue it receives. States receive revenue and there is often disagreement on the source and how to spend it. I advocated when possible to find net positive return from investments that increase state short, medium, and long term revenue prospects (easier said then done...especially with large systems where everyone wants a piece of the cake in a world of corporate pressure that can move anywhere around the globe. That is also why we might someday consider alternative tax systems. This one is just sort of starting to form around attracting international headquarters and in turn their supply chains. See Calibrated Tax HQ). The reasons why something like that might work or not are many and its too big of a discussion for this article. However, it might include hard infrastructure, attracting FDI, innovating industries, creating vacation locations/digital nomads, streamlining and increasing effectiveness of regulations, developing local talent, stronger international/national state marketing/branding etc.... (This could go on and on but it takes a lot of time and research to design an inflow-outflow type of system/model. The most basic thing I can think of for the moment is Perpetual Sustainable Development and Delta County Firm Invest Model)

"The General Government budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, 2021. The bill appropriates $50.706 billion for all non-education state spending, of which $10.378 billion is federal money, including unprecedented amounts enacted by Congress as part of epidemic "stimulus" and relief bills.

When the state education spending authorized in House Bill 4400 is added, the combined budgets propose spending a grand total of $68.9 billion in the 2021-22 fiscal year, which is $10.4 billion more than the state has ever spent prior to the pandemic. That includes $3.6 billion more in state spending, a 10.4% increase, and $6.7 billion more in federal spending, a 28.4% increase. (MichiganVotes.Org"

These budgets are big and its helpful to review the whole thing in its entirety but then focus a little more on those parts that are of special interest. I will have to look around a little to see if I can find a budget year by year comparison. What often happens is that societal trends and environmental pressures are followed by allocating more or less money in certain budget issues/areas. Thus, there is a little lag but it does show how we respond in terms of managing crisis. At this moment I'm just looking for a couple of things that relate to state tech and hard infrastructure development as well as those things that impact Delta County Michigan.

A funny side note on something that drew my attention based on interest. This is an example of how marketing works in real life. When we have something in our head and we see something related in our perceptual field we pay more attention to it. This is also why politics can be so difficult because people become indoctrinated and in turn only pay attention to what they are already interested in and in turn ignoring alternative messages/logics. Our visual and other senses work like that...when we have used certain neural networks we also become more aware of differences in our perceptual fields. Some have the ability to better detect patterns and less subject to strict filtering mechanisms because they are better able to collect and make multiple meanings out of information. Anyway....blah.....blah....you can read Perceptual Selective Attention if this topic interests you.

Motorcycle safety education grants			2,100,000
Organ donor program			129,100

I better wear my helmet (I know I see a lot of people without helmets and it gives me a shiver. Cement is harder then head. ...and of course we are free to choose to wear or not wear. 🏍)I'm thinking of getting an entry level Harley next year and as I'm reviewing the budget my mind drifted to information I'm already interested in. 

You can review SENATE BILL NO. 82

Seul Choix Lighthouse-The Haunted Lighthouse

Seul Choix Lighthouse is located near Gulliver Michigan in the spectacular Upper Peninsula. A place where French fur traders and Native Americans once traded. During the mid1800s it had a thriving fishing community like much of the other U.P. villages (My fantasy of buying a small Great Lakes commercial fishing boat and working a few days a week on it with my laptop is still alive! We will see if we can get the fish to come back.).

A few boats took off to dive an unknown late 1800's schooner with the hull intact. I need to do a little research to find out what boat it might be.

A couple of interesting websites.

Seul Choix Point Lighthouse on Lake Michigan The Haunted Lighthouse

Facebook's Seul Choix Pointe Lighthouse

The paranormal stories of Seul Choix Pointe Lighthouse

Halloween is coming..... Ha Ha 👻

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai speaks at Center for Strategic and International Studies

There are changes coming forth in our relationship with China and how the market will be approached as it relates to long-term strategies. There must be some change because we are losing our competitive advantages and being bested as an economic system. Its not so much that we don't have the way its that we don't have a unified will to compete. Our fundamental infrastructure components are still in tact and our innovative ingenuity is already present but that might not be the same case in a decade down the road as China begins to innovate as well. (Meaning lets capitalize on our current strengths, set course to a strategic destination, and hedge our weaknesses with our allies.)

Thus, focusing on our fundamentals (transactions) can create wider impact among many different paths in business development. This means infrastructure can impact the businesses that rely on it (i.e. shipping of resources in a couple of days vs a couple of months, and speeding transference of information through innovative networks, etc... that lead to flourishing industries and increased focus on R&D.) The market guides us and our policies encourages us but ultimately it is our competitive spirit that will save us (...depending on whether we enjoy competing with each other or competing globally.)

That doesn't mean we don't work with China and restore trading relationships but that the time for an open fair economy has come or otherwise we are going to have two major influential players that will carve up large parts of the global economy through exclusionary identities (It just means like the old Cold War we have areas of influence that impact trading, commerce, etc...). Trading relationships need to be fair, honest, and balanced (i.e. diverting public money into specifically chosen industries designed to bankrupt the industries of other countries via cheaper products so as to redraw the supply chains.  

Use of significant public monies and technology transfer requirements are strategies designed to consolidate amazing wealth/power from the fundamental building blocks of economies. They would call that a monopoly on certain technologies needed in the digital era like CPUs, chips and semi-conductors. 

An inability to innovate during a "window of opportunity" may mean being #2 in the development of products, services, and value emulation. The consequences will be dire not only for the U.S. but also for the current socio-political-economic structure of global business. I don't know...maybe? Its a big claim with only partial support. 

This is where a little risky intuitive cognitive/mental leap/hop based on prior economic patterns becomes helpful in viewing and possibly solving an important problem. In laymen's, terms while we haven't put it all into an iron clad study we can say that the trends, based on prior situations, indicates that if we do not return the manufacturing of core advance industry components back to the U.S. soon we may lose that ability for a long long time thereby leading to a weaker competitive position on a global scale. 

In such a case we weak cases the ability to act strategically as a single national organism to meet emerging/and nearly passed environmental challenges. Our system could weaken from an inability to work together and negotiate in good faith toward a beneficial end.

 I may not be the expert but I think our leaders have a moral and fiscal responsibility to work together to put us in the best place possible. A focus on solving problems for the widest group of stakeholders seems appropriate in this case. Someday we have to look in our grandchildren's eyes and say, "I did the best job I could to give you the most opportunities in life." 🤷 )

BBC has a fairly solid description of the specific interview. 'US will 'take all steps necessary' to defend itself on China trade'