From the rock paintings of the First Peoples to The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the Great Lakes have inspired art in painting, poetry, literature and song. In this section, we want to know about Great Lakes-related events and creations in all of these areas and more.
Perhaps you have a song or a poem about the lakes that you'd like to share? Maybe you know of a great festival or artist event? Or, if you just love art inspired by the Great Lakes, post your thoughts on new and old works and we'll do the same.
Fascinating history of the Muskegon River watershed Steven Huyser-Honig (Grand Rapids, MI)
Rapacious logging, indiscriminate damming, wanton discharge of industrial pollution, invasion of pernicious exotic species, relentless urban sprawl, exploitation by multinational corporations?Jeff Alexander?s book, The Muskegon: The Majesty and Tragedy of Michigan?s Rarest River, tells it all. The book reads like an Homeric epic, with the river itself as the central character. I couldn?t help but be fascinated as the author recounts in vivid detail each new assault on this much beset river. But somehow, like Ulysses, the river seems always to survive, and in the end, even thrive.
Miraculously, the Muskegon River today hosts a world-class sport fishery for Chinook salmon, steelhead, and trout. Even the majestic Great Lakes sturgeon still seeks out its spawning beds as it has for thousands of years. As Alexander observes, ?The Muskegon is a far healthier river now than it has been in 175 years.? Of course, challenges remain, and neither we, nor the river, can afford complacency.
?It will never again be the pristine river the Native Americans discovered when they settled along its scenic banks,? Alexander writes. ?Still, it is possible to have a free-flowing, clean, biologically rich river system in the midst of a half million people. Achieving that will require making personal sacrifices and politically unpopular decision.? For the sake of the river, and ourselves, let?s hope we have that courage.
12:19 pm 03/13/2007
Women Writing on the Great Lakes Dave Dempsey (St. Paul, MN)
A great new book edited by Alison Swan is now available from the Michigan State University Press:
"There is the hydrology, the biology, and the biochemistry of our Great Lakes...the history, the economics, and the sociology...somewhere in there we forget the aesthetics?but it is our sense of their beauty that brings us back to our Lakes and which will ultimately protect them. Alison Swan?s Fresh Water is an essential collection of essays by some of our finest women writers. This book reminds us of the small transformative moments we experience on and around our Great Lakes, and it adds significantly to the record of the beauty we find there." ? Keith Taylor, author of Guilty at the Rapture and co-editor of The Huron River: Voices from the Watershed
I Recommend These Two Books Lissa Radke (Ashland, WI)
I'd like to recommend two great books about the Great Lakes that have recently been published. The first is called The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas by Jerry Dennis. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312251939/103-0624804 -7267026?v=glance&n=283155Mr. Dennis's book skillfully blends human and natural history in an entertaining but thoughtful way. He ends his tales of traveling on the Great Lakes in a renovated clipper ship by discussing challenges to maintaining or improving the health of Great Lakes ecosystems. His book won the 2004 Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award for excellence in nature writing.
A perfect companion to this is David Dempsey's book called On the Brink: The Great Lakes in the 21st Century.http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0870137050/qid=1143750 972/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-0624804-7267026?s=books &v=glance&n=283155
Mr. Dempsey picks up where Dennis leaves us--by examining the Great Lakes as an "early warning system" for many national environmental problems. This nonfiction book reads like a well-paced story of what is happening on the lakes and why, and what we can do to keep the Great Lakes truly great.
01:43 pm 03/30/2006
New Book Explores Lake Michigan Science Mysteries, Dilemmas Dave Dempsey (St. Paul, MN)
Thomas Edsall is the co-editor of a new book on Lake Michigan entitled, State of Lake Michigan: Ecology, Health and Management, published by the Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management Society.
Edsall retired as chief scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey?s Great Lakes Science Center in 2003. He has had a long and distinguished scientific career in the Great Lakes region.
In the 1960s and 1970s his efforts provided a basis for establishing new federal policy on cooling water use by the electric power industry and requiring them to adopt closed-cycle cooling in all new plants sited on Great Lakes shorelines, thus preventing further massive entrainment losses of fish and other aquatic biota. In the 1980s he helped demonstrate that a proposed extension of the commercial navigation season into the period of solid ice cover would cause substantial damage to Great Lakes connecting channel ecosystems and as a result the navigation season extension proposal was withdrawn.
In the mid-to-late 1980s, he performed research and also chaired the biological research program component of a major study by USEPA and Environment Canada that documented and eliminated massive, ongoing discharges of oil, grease, phosphorus, ammonia nitrogen, suspended solids, heavy metals, and organochlorine compounds that were destroying aquatic habitat in the St. Marys, St. Clair, and Detroit rivers and Lake St. Clair.
He has authored 85 technical articles and related, science-based documents and is the published editor of 5 books.
How did this book come to be?
It?s the formal outcome of an international symposium on Lake Michigan organized and chaired by M. Munawar and me, with support from the Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management Society. The symposium was convened as a special session at the 44th Annual Conference on Great Lakes Research, International Association of Great Lakes Research, which was held on June 10-14, 2001 at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, Wisconsin. It?s the ninth in a series of books dealing with the health and management of Great Lakes basin aquatic ecosystems and produced by editors Edsall and Munawar, individually, jointly, or in collaboration with others.
Who would be interested in reading the book?
The book was intended to present an informative view of the lake and its ...
03:42 pm 03/27/2006
The Dynamic Great Lakes Barbara Spring (Grand Haven, MI)
The Dynamic Great Lakes by Barbara Spring is a book about changes in the five Great Lakes ecosystems and their connecting waters through natural forces and the hand of man. It is widely available at bookstores and on line at Amazon.com, bn.com etc.
03:19 pm 01/10/2006
Great Lakes book titles Dave Dempsey (St. Paul, MN)
If you're interested in reading more about Great Lakes environmental issues, folklore and history, here are a few sample titles from university and commercial presses. Please add more!
Evolution of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement
Water quality concerns are not new to the Great Lakes. They emerged early in the 20th century, in 1909, and matured in 1972 and 1978. They remain a prominent part of today?s conflicted politics and advancing industrial growth. The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, under the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909, became a model to the world for environmental management across an international boundary. Evolution of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement recounts this historic binational relationship, an agreement intended to protect the fragile Great Lakes.
Michigan State University Press
Restoration of the Great Lakes: Promises, Practices, and Performance
By Mark Sproule-Jones
The Great Lakes inspire evocative language and hyperbolic metaphors, from the ?sweet seas? of Samuel de Champlain to the ?bold shores? of Henry R. Schoolcraft. Yet, the attitudes, values, and behaviors of settlers, both Native American and European, often reflect the utilitarian values of the Lakes and their resources. In this challenging study, Mark Sproule-Jones examines the history of the key uses of the Great Lakes, and the relative successes and failures of the institutions that govern the Lakes? resource management. Ultimately, he concludes that human beings need to find better ways of integrating social, community, and individual human needs with the needs of the Lakes themselves, in an effort to create new policies of balance and usage.
Great Lakes Nature: An Outdoor Year, Revised and in Color
By Mary Blocksma
From blue moons to bald eagles, this new edition of Great Lakes Nature-- now lavishly illustrated in color -- is a guide to nature's everyday but ...
10:21 am 01/04/2006
The Buried Town of Singapore Barbara Spring (Grand Haven, MI)
The Buried Town of Singapore
The buried town of Singapore
once hummed with life,
but now no more.
And what do the singing sands say
of streets and houses below the dunes?
Ask the west wind--
the intimate wind may know.
Ask Lake Michigan's waves or
the river that flows
to the sweet water seas.
Go ask the wild rose.
*In Saugatuk there is a historical marker saying there was once a town named Singapore nearby that is now buried under the shifting sands.
--Barbara Spring
07:21 am 12/29/2005
New Apostle Islands Book Jeff Rennicke (Bayfield, WI)
I wanted to let everyone know about a new book and a new organization both dealing with the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. The book is JEWELS ON THE WATER: LAKE SUPERIOR'S APOSTLE ISLANDS and it is published by and is a fund-raiser for a new organization called Friends of the Apostle Islands. The Apostles are a place that is showing us the value of hope and of "rewilding". Imagine an area that in the 1930's was too logged over to be considered a candidate for a national park. Yet just last year the National Geographic Society picked the area as this nation's most "pristine" national park unit and gateway community (Bayfield). That speaks to beauty. It speaks to power, and it speaks to hope. For info contact me: Jeff Rennicke at http://Jeff.Rennicke@Conserveschool.org or see the website at http://www.friendsoftheapostleislands.org.
02:28 pm 12/26/2005
binational book about binational treasure Dave Dempsey (St. Paul, MN)
Paul Muldoon of the Canadian Environmental Law Association and Lee Botts of Indiana -- whose long career as an environmental advocate could fill this whole website -- have just co-authored a book on the importance of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement in restoring the Great Lakes in the 1970s and 1980s. They embody the very point they make, that protecting the Great Lakes is the job of both Canadians and Americans, and that a commitment by both countries through the agreement is critical.
Report a violation to Brenna Wanous, Town Hall Manager.
Note: The opinions expressed in the Great Lakes Town Hall are those of Town Hall participants and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Biodiversity Project or any participant's institution.
From the rock paintings of the First Peoples to The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the Great Lakes have inspired art in painting, poetry, literature and song. In this section, we want to know about Great Lakes-related events and creations in all of these areas and more.
