Here’s another sidewalkless sidewalk blog update, from the southwest corner of Kalamazoo and Magnolia. This seems to be the newest style of manhole covers around Lansing, and they look quite spiffy. They depict the city seal (or the city flag, as it’s the same image). The city’s flag and seal were adopted in 1994, replacing the previous, rather obscure flag. No one seems quite sure what the old flag even meant. It depicts a man felling a barren tree by a log cabin, with other bare stumps nearby, and a sunset in the background. The best explanation I have seen is that it depicted the sun setting on the pioneer era. Many found it to be a downbeat image (though it was surely not intended as such) so it is perhaps unsurprising that it was replaced with the current image, which, while inoffensive, also feels a bit too slick and corporate.

The manhole cover’s inner ring identifies its origin as our old friend “East Jordan Iron Works – East Jordan, Michigan, USA.”