Friday Links: Protect The Great Lakes Edition
"A Great Lake can hold all the mysteries of an ocean, and then some." - Dan Egan, 'The Death and Life of The Great Lakes'
Microscopes are so underrated, dude. Think about how much we didn’t know simply because we couldn’t see it. Now, though, we know things—ballast water is a contaminant, plankton are sometimes larvae for larger animals, atoms are things that can be split in a way that allows you to take over the world. WMDs notwithstanding, microscopes are great because they let us know, in no uncertain terms, that the world is bigger and more full of life than we can comprehend, and humans need to be a little more humble about our place in the ecosystem.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
It will not surprise you to learn that I, your humble Shipwrecked Sailor, bought this book based on title alone. I knew it was nonfiction, too. Don’t put it in the newspaper that I thought this was about a sea ghost sinking ships. Yr man likes to do some science reading sometimes, even some highly scientific writing, from time to time. I’m talking, of course, about The Death And Life Of The Great Lakes by Dan Egan.
I tend to despise the need for hope in books, but I felt it acutely here. The American Century was extremely unkind to the Great Lakes, with some cruelties more understandable than others. Why shouldn’t we dig a canal to connect the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean? Why shouldn’t we drain this massive swamp at the tip of Lake Erie and turn it to farmland? Lots of reasons, it turns out. You want me to take our your kidney? Why you wanna take out Lake Erie’s kidney then? As I mentioned Wednesday, don’t go dropping random animal/plant species into random foreign environments. Invasive species aren’t good for anybody. In the last chapter—the hopeful chapter—there’s talk of a poison to kill the zebra/quagga mussels, whitefish evolving to eat the mussels, a returning whitefish population, of walleye making its way back to the dinner plates of Midwesterners, and the guy who introduced chinook and coho salmon talking about how catching whitefish is boring. Hey, guy: fuck you. Trust me, I love sport fishing, but “the thrill of a salmon being your line” or whatever is not worth the collapse of an ecosystem.
This book should absolutely be read in conjunction with An Indigenous People’s History Of The United States. Dan Egan’s book is about how settler-colonialist groups who wouldn’t even consider themselves settler-colonialist—USians and Canadians in the 19th and 20th centuries—have nearly destroyed the largest supply of fish-filled freshwater in the world. Indigenous peoples in both Americas are the greatest land managers the world has ever seen. Reading this book and thinking about Land Back—a movement that argues for increased Indigenous decision-making power and cooperation between US/Canadian governments and tribal groups, not dissolving the United States or whatever Fox News-style fearmongering that might pop in your head—it’s hard to feel like industrial societies have earned that bounty that the Great Lakes provide. Then again, it’s hard to say things aren’t improving. Awareness of the importance of native plants has grown, laws are on the books about the need for flushing and replacing your ballast water. Definitely read this book and reflect on how broken our relationship with nature has become, and reflect on ways to change that. Sorry to sound like a youth pastor, but I feel religious about nature lately.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? Decidedly not a Great Lakes resident, but the beach music I’ll be jamming most this summer (non- “Not Like Us” division) is Reyna Tropical, a band with a tragic backstory I’m only just learning about, a motto of “queer love and Afro-Mexico,” and a guitarist who is super reluctant about singing. I can get behind the latter two.
Speaking of Lake Michigan, too many goddamn Divvy bikes in there, reports Mack Liederman at Block Club. Fortunately, the Divvy Fishers Society is on the case. Founded by Glenn Rishke, a homie of Great Lake Jumper Dan O’Conor (man Chicago is a city of wonderful kooks), this group pulled like 15 Divvies out of the lake by the Shedd Aquarium. Good.
Frank O’Hara once said “I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life.” In this piece about Walter De Maria’s Earth Room, David Roth at Defector says “The reason that people who hate cities always describe them as dying or being killed or already dead—“nobody lives there except the criminals,” Donald Trump said earlier this month, “you can’t survive”—is because they do not like that they are alive in the first place. There is a sense of possibility inherent in that aliveness, and it is fundamentally opposed to the order that those people and their institutions are forever trying to impose on the things they aim to Take Back. I like to be surprised, and I like finding things where they are not supposed to be; making 280,000 pounds of weird wet earth at home in a walk-up apartment building more than qualifies, there. I also like—more than that, I depend upon—the idea that those out-of-place things can resist every force working to bring them to heel or make them impossible or just make them make sense, and that they might endure not despite but because of their strangeness, their uselessness, their simple defiant vitality.”
Piping Plovers—the Monty and Rose birds—have hatched four chicks at Montrose Beach this year, Madison Savedra at Block Club reports. Great news, as last years nesting season was unsuccessful. Piping Plovers are still endangered, so Monty and Rose getting grandkids is really something to feel good about.
Just for fun, a short story from Ted Chiang, written from the perspective of a parrot, over at Electric Lit and introduced by Karen Joy Fowler. Why are we looking for intelligent life in space where there is intelligent life here on Earth? At the bird sanctuary I went to in Mexico City, the parrots said hola.
At Guardian, Dan Milmo reports that GOOGLE’S GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS HAVE CLIMBED 48% IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS THANKS TO AI IMPLEMENTATION. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO NEED FOR AI. IT DRINKS ALL OF OUR WATER AND TELLS YOU TO EAT ROCKS AND GLUE. IF WE HAD A FUNCTIONING GOVERNMENT AI WOULD BE KILLED 80 TIMES OVER. KILL AI WITH FIRE AND SHAME ANYONE WHO USES IT EVEN FOR JOKES. THIS IS THE FUTURE OF THE FUCKING PLANET WE’RE TALKING ABOUT.
What’re you still doing here? Need more lake? I need more lake.
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If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. Try talking to some animals like Tilly Green after your shift, I bet they’re nicer and more reasonable than your customers.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris